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Show HN: NoDB - Mizza
https://blog.zappa.io/posts/introducing-nodb-pythonic-data-store-s3
======
Mizza
I wrote this, let me know if you have any questions. It should be useful for
online machine learning, simple landing pages, and prototyping microservices
that will have real databases in the future.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you think the Passenger drones have a very serious design flaw? - supervillain
All the new passenger drones that are coming out have the propellers sticking out, which clearly is a design flaw, and have a serious safety hazard issues around people. Why don't they consider a passenger drone with the design similar like the Hover Camera Passport?<p>• Workhorse SureFly
• Ehang 184
• Kittyhawk Flyer / Cora
• Uber Elevate (CES Air Taxi)
• Drone Hoverbikes
======
FabHK
I find the Ehang particularly egregious, yes - it seems designed to chop
people’s kneecaps and/or behead them.
The Volocopter, however, has the rotors above the vehicle, like a helicopter,
and I don’t see how that is any more problematic than a helicopter.
Having ducted rotors might be another solution (should give higher efficiency,
too, particularly when combined with counter rotating props).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
These charts show how the Edward Snowden story is overwhelming the NSA story - CrazedGeek
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/03/how-ed-snowden-became-a-bigger-story-than-nsa-spying-in-two-charts/
======
skwirl
Just don't imagine that HN is sitting on some moral high ground. Any time
there is a story here that could be construed as possibly being negative
towards Mr. Snowden, the top comments are overwhelmingly "Why is the media
focused on Snowden and not the NSA scandal?" Whenever a story favorable to Mr.
Snowden appears here, however, the comment threads are full of praise and much
speculation over his personal future.
I'm sure these are mostly disjoint groups of users and not evidence of
hypocrisy, but clearly even many hackers have great interest in the personal
story of Mr. Snowden. And who can blame them? Personal stories are easy to
identify with and easy to understand.
Now the story is about the stories, which is even further removed from the
point at hand. And I am commenting about the story being about the stories, so
I don't claim any moral high ground either. Just an observation, though.
~~~
saraid216
> And who can blame them? Personal stories are easy to identify with and easy
> to understand.
The problem with putting a human face on such a story is _exactly_ the problem
described, though. I call it "The Gallant Knight effect", though that is a
made up term because I don't know the correct one. It's an anti-
individualistic effect that occurs when people identify a particular person as
exceptional and, in doing so, erase the individual faces of every other
relevant actor. This is the same effect that centralizes so much power on the
chief executive. It's similar to the Bystander Effect, but I'm talking about a
systemic problem rather than a situational one[1]. By shunting responsibility,
you also shunt agency.
It's an excuse to carry on with your own life because someone else is doing
the real work. Worse, it is an excuse to hide in the tavern, peering out the
window, while the gunslingers are out on the street, which is what a decent
percentage of HNers are doing by resorting to silver bullet security
solutions.
Putting someone in shiny armor and sending him out after the Grail means that
the rest of us can continue to be serfs. That's not to say it'd be any
different if Snowden hadn't disclosed himself, though: indeed, we'd probably
be spending an inordinate amount of effort trying to figure out who it was.
Someone would have guessed that it was Satoshi Nakamoto by now.
[1] Clicking around Wikipedia, I notice stuff like "diffusion of
responsibility", "social loafing" and "deindividuation" that I would also put
down as close but not quite because they are limited to talking about groups
smaller than, say, a million.
[2] I talk about it more here:
[https://plus.google.com/113476531580617567600/posts/btX9T4ku...](https://plus.google.com/113476531580617567600/posts/btX9T4ku3ax)
It's worth pointing out that this post predates the leaks.
------
walexander
There's nothing particularly unexpected by this, is there?
You see a big spike for "NSA" and "Prism" initially, then "Snowden" gradually
takes over.
People consuming information about the NSA leak learned everything available
during the first week. There is nothing new to be learned there.
Snowden's whereabouts are, however, an ongoing saga. As a result, I, like many
others interested in this, are searching for Snowden news which is constantly
changing.
It's encouraging so many are searching for Snowden. No one would be interested
if they didn't already understand the context.
------
mtowle
Apparently WaPo's key demo is imbeciles.
>You can play around with the graph here, and the trends don’t change
substantially if you try “NSA” instead of “National Security Agency” or look
at how the whole world is searching rather than just Americans.
Oh yeah? What if you combine the two?
Further, Brad Plumer, you may want to put yourself in the position of someone
doing a Google search before you announce what people are trying to find info
on. If I search NSA, what happens? I get results that don't have anything to
do with the PRISM story. Same goes for the word 'prism'. 'Snowden', on the
other hand, will bring me exactly what I need, so that's what I'm going to
search for. Or don't they teach you how to Google at the Post?
I'll stop there. Anybody with half a brain could think of another dozen
mundane ways to call Brad Plumer stupid. Except, of course, for Blad Plumer,
who is stupid.
~~~
nitrogen
The name calling ("imbecile", "stupid") is unnecessary.
~~~
mtowle
When writers get on soapboxes, they open themselves up to this category of
response. Mere question-asking ("Is there a disparity? If so, why?") on Brad's
part would be one thing, but his article is accusatory; he condescends to
everyone but himself. And if he were right, again, that would be different,
but he's not. He's just being a dick. Fuck him.
~~~
nitrogen
The name calling is also unwelcome on HN, per local norms of civility and the
site guidelines:
_When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.
E.g. "That is an idiotic thing to say; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to
"1 + 1 is 2, not 3."_
([http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html))
------
contingencies
_Mainstream media fails to communicate vast totalitarian conspiracy; English
speaking world remains uninformed, indifferent_.
~~~
anigbrowl
Understatement can sometimes be more persuasive than hyperbole.
~~~
mtowle
Litotes
~~~
anigbrowl
Not bad, though I'm a meiosis fellow myself.
------
marshray
Why should we believe that "the Snowden story" is actually _detracting_ from
the NSA story?
That makes about as much sense as saying Deep Throat and the book "All the
President's Men" detracted from the Watergate story.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_President's_Men](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_the_President's_Men)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Throat_(Watergate)#Contro...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Throat_\(Watergate\)#Controversy_over_motives)
------
neoludite
This is simply shows how users interact with search engines. If I want to
visit the NSA homepage and learn what wonderful people they are I'll search
for "NSA", if I want to find out the last clusterf __k to hit the NSA I 'll
type in "Snowden".
------
unclebucknasty
In some ways I wonder if he (and the impact that he wanted his leak to have)
would be better off if he just turned himself in.
If the media insists that the story be about him, at least it won't be this
Hollywood style, "where in the world is Edward Snowden" drama. Perhaps it can
instead be about why this man is being prosecuted, and whether he should be.
It's an outside chance, but at least it gets us closer to the real story if it
goes that route. If nothing else, at least the mundane day to day details of
legal proceedings are less exciting than this global pursuit. And, perhaps in
those details, as the government begins to make its case, we can learn more
and have questions again raised about what the government is doing.
------
mpyne
What's interesting is how this all should have been entirely predictable to
Snowden. He's an American, he knows what Jerry Springer is. He said right from
the beginning that he didn't want this to be about him, so why has he let the
circus go on so long?
Did he think that the press focuses on human-interest stories because they
_don 't_ sell or drive pageviews? He's giving the media so much to drive
stories on, and all about Snowden and Assange and Wikileaks and asylum... but
not about the big bad NSA. But so be it, I'm sure his current padded cell must
be more comfortable.
~~~
el_fuser
You seem to believe that Snowden can control the media.
~~~
mpyne
In fact I claim the opposite; Snowden cannot control the media, and should
have predicted its _inevitable reaction_ to the input he has been feeding it.
~~~
mtowle
Ah, and were he not to have done so, are we so sure the NSA bits and pieces
would be dominating the headlines, or might those have drifted into the
background regardless? Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darueber muss man
schweigen.
~~~
mpyne
Last time I checked Greenwald is not an idiot. The ongoing leaks have come
without any interaction by Snowden at all, if I'm understanding him correctly.
If anything he keeps stealing the thunder of WaPo, Guardian, Der Spiegel, etc.
------
alayne
Snowden is important because it's a way to humanize the issues with the NSA.
He's a sympathetic character.
------
coopdog
This is classic journalism. People are wired to consume stories about other
people. Collections of facts and abstract concepts appeal to hackers,
engineers and analytical types, who are in the minority as most people can't
stomach that kind of information.
Journalists always add a face to a story, and Snowden is that face. I'd say
it's actually kind of encouraging because it means the message has been
tailored for the mainstream and/or mainstream readers are interested.
------
prostoalex
This crisis management technique is employed by politicians while running
their campaign, is it really that surprising that it persists when former
campaign staff gets government titles?
1) Move the limelight away from the story and onto the opponent.
2) Dig out some questionable behavior from the past, or coin a term that
portrays everyday common behavior in a negative light, e.g. if someone changed
their opinions about anything, they're now a "flip-flopper".
3) Profit.
------
awhitty
This article doesn't consider an aggregate like "nsa + national security
agency." Plotting the two terms combined shows the Snowden story isn't
clouding out the NSA searches.
For people who might suggest plotting "edward snowden + snowden," the graph
doesn't change at all, for obvious reasons.
------
bpatrianakos
It really doesn't help that Snowden himself keeps asking for attention. He
broke the story, gave away the docs, and still checks in every week so we all
don't forget about him. I still think his leak was at least in part motivated
by selfish reasons.
~~~
marshray
So you're living in the terminal of an international airport. The most
powerful government in the world is trying to shut you up by throwing you in
prison probably for the rest of your life. Every other spy in the world wants
to recover what's encrypted on your laptops, so you sleep with them as your
pillow.
You have a legal advisor from Wikileaks, and the Russians will probably keep
you from being killed where you are, but not much else in the way of tangible
support. International press are phoning your media relations consultant,
Julian Assange, around the clock begging to know if there are any updates
which they might possibly write about.
And folks on the Internet and the press at home call you a selfish narcissist
if you open your mouth once a week.
------
microb
I think people are interested in Snowden because people are curious to see
what happens to someone who so brazenly defies a democratic government in the
name of democracy.
------
junto
I disagree with the chart. The search terms don't make sense.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
LSP Change char offsets from utf16 to codepoints - Avi-D-coder
https://github.com/Microsoft/language-server-protocol/pull/709
======
Avi-D-coder
Related: My survey distinct implementations shows 11 UTF-8, 10 UTF-16 and 6
codepoints.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Infinity (life is short) - thibaut_barrere
http://www.awful-drawings.com/post/3502040865/infinity
======
thibaut_barrere
My brother always has healthy reminders.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kanban beats SCRUM (at Mozilla) - _ciembor
https://blog.mozilla.org/webdev/2013/04/22/kanban-for-mdn-development/
======
trcollinson
I don't know if this article actually claims that Kanban beats SCRUM but it
was a great example of someone moving away from SCRUM. One thing I have
noticed is that far too many people equate agile directly with scrum. We're
now getting scrum bigots. It's so nice to see people being agile about agile!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Streaming accounts for 75 percent of music industry revenue in the US - arayh
https://www.engadget.com/2018/09/21/streaming-75-percent-music-industry-revenue/
======
bilbo0s
1999 Revenue > USD40 Billion
If I'm understanding this article correctly, then the revenue for 2018
_should_ be somewhere around USD9.2 Billion.
Wow. I had never seen actual numbers on what revenue digital actually brings
in before. And these numbers are _total_ revenue. _Before_ expenses and such.
I can only hope that in this carnage it was the record labels that lost share
size in the pie and the artists got a larger piece. But somehow I think what's
more likely is that the record labels just started splitting the pie with the
tech companies. Or the tech companies _became_ the record labels in some
instances. Probably very few of the artists started getting a larger share of
the pie in this changeover.
It's sad to look at. I guess they make the music for the love of the art
anyway, but it'd be nice to see them get rewarded for it.
~~~
goatherders
Its been a long time since recordings paid artists very well. The money has
long been in touring. If anything, I think the rise in streaming where you can
pick whatever you want makes discovering new music a challenge...which reduces
the primary way artists used to move from unknown to known. At the same time
because its easier to get your music available to a larger audience I suspect
the long tail is much longer than ever before.
~~~
mercer
That's not been my experience, and that of many people around me.
I'm pretty 'vanilla' when it comes to my listening habits. Most of the artists
I listen to were famous enough already to show up on my radar, and then there
are a number of artists I discovered through word of mouth or attending music
festivals. Aside from a few people in my network who often provide me with new
artists to follow, my approach seems pretty common in my network.
But since I started using Spotify, the range of artists that I come across,
follow, or become a fan of, has increased. The total count of artists I listen
to in a given week is much higher than it used to be, and I'm much more likely
to attend a performance when they're in town.
Of course that doesn't mean artists get paid more, but as far as listening and
attending performances, my impression is that it's much better now for
'unknowns' than it used to be.
(obviously this doesn't mean the chances of a random artist/band becoming
successful have increased, it just indicates that the chances of this becoming
so is less dependent on obvious gate-keepers. I'm sure those in the know can
point out many obstacles to becoming successful that are not directly related
to the quality of the music)
------
jacquesm
I'm still solidly stuck in the 1600's and the 60's to 80's for the vast
majority of the music that I listen to.
Just the other day I noticed how little 'new' music I've got in my collection,
there is a couple of Passenger songs in there and some lesser known stuff that
my eldest sent me to listen to that got stuck but for the most part whatever
is new is not for me.
At the same time I hate the 'services' economy that we are moving to, the
whole feeling that for the rest of your life you are looking to divide your
income over a large number of forced subscriptions is something that runs
counter to how I want to live.
So I'm happy with my mostly ripped-from-CDs music collection and likely the
music industry will see less than $250 from me for the rest of my time.
------
snarfy
They lost control of it with the ipod and apple music. Any song $0.99. That
was the end of the record labels dictating prices. If they held out and
refused apple, they would lose to the other labels. The market was too big.
The ipod, too popular.
They were already feeling the squeeze from retail. Consolidation of record
stores left large retailers like Walmart with the bulk of sales. CD sales
would account for < 1% of Walmart's total sales but would account for > 40% of
the labels sales. This allowed Walmart to undercut the labels own prices and
sell CDs as a loss leader putting downward pressure on overall prices.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twitter announces Site Streams beta - abraham
http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-api-announce/browse_thread/thread/10592ec9038be810?hl=en
======
studer
I guess the fact that Twitter employees use bit.ly to map from short url:s to
slightly longer url:s even in mails means something, but I'm not sure what.
(the <http://bit.ly/sitestreams_doc> link goes to
<http://dev.twitter.com/pages/site_streams>)
~~~
abraham
I assume they just do it to track clicks.
------
richchan
Hm.. has any one hacked up some fancy visualizations using their framework
yet?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ron Wayne, Apple's forgotten third founder - farmer
http://extras.denverpost.com/books/chap0411h.htm?
======
far33d
dupe.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Making Cloud a Reality on the ZSystems Mainframe - dsheynin
http://www.techbetter.com/making-cloud-reality-zsystems-mainframe/
======
degilio
This is an awesome way of taking systems that have been around forever and
using them in a new and different way.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fliggo Lets You Build Your Own YouTube [YC S08] - RWilson
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/25/y-combinator-startup-fliggo-lets-you-build-your-own-youtube/
======
anuraggoel
I know techcrunch is(are) full of shit and Arrington is on vacation, but their
posts aren't even spell-checked anymore? teh, athough, sItes, Wrodpress?
~~~
jkincaid
It's pretty sad that the top rated comment on a Y Combinator forum about a Y
Combinator site launching is about typos. Get off your high horse. Leave a
comment in the post if you see a typo and we'll usually fix it within a few
minutes.
~~~
whacked_new
If anything, it shows an opinion shared by at least a handful of readers, with
a fast impression and comparatively high relevance. It is honest opinion, not
some high horse. And if anything, said sadness reflects upon TC, and not YC,
NH, nor the site in question. This is customer feedback.
------
mixmax
I've been wondering for a while - why doesn't Y-combinator take in more B2B
business ideas?
It's much easier to capitalise, the market (defined as customers willing to
pay you) is huge, and the products out there are crap.
Does Y-combinator just not believe in the B2B market, are none of the
applications in this area, or what? I'm genuinely puzzled.
~~~
pg
We invest in more b2b companies than you realize. You just don't hear about
them much because b2b companies are quieter. For example, one of the most
successful startups we've funded is Clustrix, but the nature of their business
is such that if the general public ever knows their name it will be as a
Nasdaq listing.
~~~
nreece
Isn't Clustrix funded by Sequoia Capital:
<http://www.sproutsys.com/investors.html>
~~~
pg
Yes, they're one of 3 YC alumni companies that are.
------
sachinag
Awesome - we've wanted to add user-generated reviews on Dawdle, and video
would be really neat. Definitely looking into this.
~~~
fallentimes
Join the party!
<http://ticketstumbler.fliggo.com/>
~~~
sachinag
You make me wish that Dawdle was in YC just so that we could be a pre-release
beta partner for other YC companies. :(
------
jeffesp
The business model of "We are going to create X for Y", where X is a service
like YouTube, never works. After viewing the intro video I saw that you can do
things like create private communities and invite people to join, and I
thought that this is the same way I share photos with the family on flickr.
But wait, doesn't flickr also support video? And so does Facebook, and I am
sure there are others.
Maybe I am just misunderstanding their business model, but I don't see the
value of this service.
~~~
fallentimes
X for Y is just an easy way of explaining things not a business model. It's
straight out of the book _Made to Stick_.
~~~
chrysb
Have you been looking at our bookshelf? Don't give away our trade secrets!
------
mcdowall
Ive spent a fair while scouring the site and yet to find any form of pricing
options for hosting on my own domain, the guys definitely need a lot more call
to action points.
Ill just have to go about it the old fashioned way of emailing the guys there,
shame as I would probably liked to read up on the pricing and possibly sign at
that point having seen the features.
~~~
danielrhodes
We've got a lot of demand for custom domains, so it has become one of our top
priorities Therefore, the answer is soon.
If you've got more questions, feel free to email me directly at dan [[at]]
fliggo.com.
------
whacked_new
Somehow I remembered seeing fliggo repeatedly submitted on reddit with content
taken from YouTube, and ended up associating it with blogspam. This must have
been before it went YC. It looks quite different now, but how close was my
impression?
~~~
whacked_new
To whomever is downmodding, your reason please? Basis of my perception:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/6cxqc/top_10_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/entertainment/comments/6cxqc/top_10_jackie_chan_stunts_video/)
<http://digg.com/celebrity/Top_10_Jackie_Chan_Stunts_3>
------
sam_in_nyc
How does one go about getting TechCrunch to cover their product, on launch
day?
~~~
Tichy
By getting accepted into YC.
------
djahng
It's always nice to hear updates from Y Combinator "graduates".
------
cpach
Letting users customize the CSS seems like a great idea. When I used MySpace I
really missed the ability to do this without resorting to really flaky hacks.
------
zer0
Should I start hogging up subdomain names?
~~~
almost
no
------
keltecp11
I only watched the video... but can you share video weblinks as well? The
interface is fantastic, well done.
~~~
arjunlall
If you mean video embeds then yes, each video has a code and can be embedded
just like YouTube.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stack Exchange tag correlations - mwsherman
http://clipperhouse.github.io/stack-correlation/
======
mholt
How do I correlate questions tagged "go"?
~~~
mwsherman
Should be good now: [http://clipperhouse.github.io/stack-
correlation/#stackoverfl...](http://clipperhouse.github.io/stack-
correlation/#stackoverflow/go) (may need to clear cache)
------
chrisamiller
FWIW, doesn't seem to allow me to look at the tag 'r'.
While I won't argue that R is an awful name for a programming language, it's a
legitimate tag:
[https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/r)
~~~
innoying
Opened a GitHub issue: [https://github.com/clipperhouse/stack-
correlation/issues/1](https://github.com/clipperhouse/stack-
correlation/issues/1)
~~~
mwsherman
Thanks, this should be resolved (after GitHub’s cache clears). I was returning
a limited # of results, and both R and Go ranked low enough not to appear.
------
achy
Interesting. What about including a second column showing the back
correlation? An example: 'WPF' appears 6% of the time for 'C#' questions,
while 46% of 'WPF' questions include the 'C#' tag. Would be interesting use
this to identify ontological hierarchy trends.
------
mey
[http://clipperhouse.github.io/stack-
correlation/#stackoverfl...](http://clipperhouse.github.io/stack-
correlation/#stackoverflow/security) is an interesting result to me at least.
------
danmaz74
If you're also interested in the correlation between Twitter hashtags, we show
those on [http://hashtagify.me](http://hashtagify.me) \- in a visual way; a
table is coming soon.
------
TrainedMonkey
Huh, C++ apparently not correlated much with anything.
------
cnlwsu
very nice! might want to remove api_key from source though :)
~~~
mwsherman
Thanks! The key is not private, it‘s simply a ‘favor’ to the API to identify
where the requests are coming from. The app gets a higher rate limit in
exchange for registering.
~~~
delinka
Still, it means that someone else can copy your API key and abuse the API on
your behalf.
~~~
y0ghur7_xxx
I don't think so. Stack Exchange checks the referer header.
~~~
delinka
Which can also be spoofed.
~~~
y0ghur7_xxx
This is a client JS API key. If you want to spoof the referer you have to hack
into all users of the web page and change the referer header their browser
sends. And for what? Makes no sense.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
ATS-Analytical Trouble Shooting, formal problem solving - dublinclontarf
http://www.itsmsolutions.com/newsletters/DITYvol6iss19.htm
======
dublinclontarf
When I was at Sun as part of the Solaris testing team we all did Kepner Tregoe
(SGRT) Sun Global Resolution Troubleshooting training, which was a formalised
method of troubleshooting and analysis.
I've found it very useful when trying to find the cause of failures and bugs,
maybe you will too.
Pay particular attention to WHAAT,WHERE,WHEN,and EXTENT.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Continuations in Racket - MichaelBurge
http://www.michaelburge.us/2018/03/06/continuations-in-racket.html
======
gus_massa
> _`begin` does not create a new continuation frame, so its expressions are in
> the top-level prompt._
Just a reminder. (begin ...) sometimes is too magical, specialy inside
modules. If someone want the nn magical versión, it should be replaced with
(let () ...).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pantera drummer Vinnie Paul dies aged 54 - okket
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44586238
======
contras1970
__I 'm Broken __
I wonder if we'll smile in our coffins
while loved ones mourn the day,
the absence of our faces,
living, laughing, eyes awake.
Is this too much for them to take?
Too young for one's conclusion, the lifestyle won.
Such values you taught your son.
That's how.
Look at me now.
I'm broken.
Inherit my life.
One day we all will die, a cliched fact of life.
Force fed to make us heed.
Inbred to sponge our bleed.
Every warning, a leaking rubber,
a poison apple for mingled blood.
Too young for one's delusion the lifestyle cost
Venereal Mother embrace the loss.
That's how
Look at you now.
You're broken
Inherit your life.
------
arsham
Rock In Peace.
------
oxide
Damned shame.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Post-apocalyptic life in American health care - primodemus
https://meaningness.com/metablog/post-apocalyptic-health-care
======
shrike
About 8 years ago I broke my leg and eventually developed a methicillin-
resistant infection where screws had been inserted. Fighting this type of
infection in the bone is difficult. I spent 11 months in a hospital bed plus
some time in a SNF. A total of 7 surgeries in the first 18 months and another
2 after that, the most recent 3 years ago.
I can second the experience of the author. All in I had contact with over 40
different providers. I was lucky in that I had to leave my job and could
concentrate on the administrative work required full time. I eventually
learned I needed to keep a detailed written narrative up to date with a tl;dr
at the top. Eventually I added appendixes that summarized lab tests and
surgery reports. This was the only way I could make sure each provider had the
details they needed. I would always send it advance, most of the time the
doctor hadn't read it so I brought paper copies and sat there while they did.
The billing and who covered what was hopeless. I had to fight with medical
insurance, the medical disability company and Medicare when I maxed both of
those out. I went through every bill line by line to identify mistakes, there
were many. Then I would make sure each had received a copy of each bill and
start figuring out who would cover what, sometimes line-by-line. This all had
to be done over phone and fax.
It's broken and I am sure it's killing people. I also don't see a technology
fix. Anything that requires more than two or three providers is an edge case,
this space is 90% edge cases.
~~~
grecy
A few years ago my brother broke his leg horribly. The Ambulance drivers said
it was the worst break they had ever seen.
Multiple surgeries, months in hospital, rehab, got addicted to morphine in the
process etc. etc.
At the end of it all was a handshake and "get well soon".
There was no bill.
Australia.
~~~
riverstones
I grew up in England. Same deal. In and out, no bill.
The Americans who decry "socialist" medicine have never used it. There has to
be a way to divorce health care and profit. English, Aussie, and Kiwi doctors
all make about the same pay as American doctors, but they work in a non-profit
system. Go figure...
Americans are largely opposed to a system where there is no profit. The
Americans are the Ferengi of medicine, this much is certain.
~~~
ido
American doctors make 6 figures $/year, sometimes _serious_ figures (like
$400k/year).
UK doctors don’t make near that much money.
~~~
inflagranti
Is this the average doctor or some specialist? The fact that some specialists
can hugely profit from the system the same way the hospitals, pharma companies
and insurance do, is likely port of the point of the previous comment. The
important takeway is the average doctor does likely also not see much of that
overhead money that goes to the pockets of a couple individuals and already
rich companies.
------
dbpatterson
It's amazing that someone can go through this and come to the conclusion, at
the end, that the solution is that this is a business opportunity that would
make a lot of money if someone could just make it more efficient. Trying to
make money off of healthcare is exactly how we have gotten the absolute mess
that is the American medical system. All the incredibly complex rules exist so
that health insurance companies can elect _not_ to pay for things that were
deemed necessary by a medical professional. If insurance companies would be
willing to pay for the services that were needed, there would be no 1600 page
rule books. Of course, a system that actually paid for the care that people
needed wouldn't be so obscenely profitable for them, and so they lobby
massively against it.
~~~
conanbatt
It isn't profit-seeking what makes healthcare what it is. Its the incredibly
burdensome regulation and restrictions.
If profit-seeking destroyed markets for profit, we would all be starving.
~~~
dragonwriter
Profit seeking destroys markets with large externalities or where utility
isn't readily discernable at low relative cost, and where for either or both
of those reasons the rational choice model doesn't reasonably approximate
actual behavior in the market.
Lots of real goods don't face that problem, but healthcare definitely does.
~~~
conanbatt
Whats the externality of providing healthcare, and in regards to the
diffuseness of utility, food has the same problem and its a relatively very
efficient market.
~~~
dragonwriter
> in regards to the diffuseness of utility, food has the same problem and its
> a relatively very efficient market.
Food is a frequently repeated purchase with significant immediately-apparent
utility and disutility, and so discovery of utilities is quick and the market
reasonably efficient in terms of immediate utilities. (There are long-term
utilities and disutilities that are less immediately experienced with
consumption, and the food market is hardly efficient in terms of those.)
Healthcare products are infrequently purchased, and the relative utilities of
different options are far from apparent. It's not at all similar to the
aspects of the food market that can reasonably be described as relatively
efficient.
~~~
conanbatt
I would argue that food escapes its measure of utility because otherwise, we
would all be eating only the cheapest and healthiest option all the time, but
our constant hunger also makes us purchase things against our long term
interest. If so, you would expect the market to be really inefficient, but at
least in terms of satisfying demand, its very hard to make money producing
food.
Its true healthcare has less frequency so you cant be a sophisticated
consumer: but its more frequent than a car, which is also a necessity in many
cases, and the lack of sophistry does not make it an inefficient market.
Im not even sure healthcare is a special market, certainly not for
infrequency, or because you must pay with your life (i.e. that you make a
decision of life and death for resources). Not for restrictive application of
labor (lawyers have that), not for the high costs of technology in its
application (consumer tech? space exploration?).
I think at this point what makes the healthcare market unique is the common
belief of the people that it is unique. It forces the consumer to consciously
think of the cost of life, a question we are somehow bred all our lives to
hate to ask, but that we answer every day unconsciously.
~~~
dragonwriter
> I would argue that food escapes its measure of utility because otherwise, we
> would all be eating only the cheapest and healthiest option all the time
Economic utility is subjective; while it includes health effects, to be sure,
it also includes things like the taste and other enjoyment factors. It
absolutely is not the case that, were food a perfect example of rational
choice, we would only be buying options that cost-effectively optimized
healthiness.
> Its true healthcare has less frequency so you cant be a sophisticated
> consumer: but its more frequent than a car
“Healthcare” is a broad class of different products and services, many of
which are far less frequently purchased than autos (if you buy open heart
surgery more often than you buy a car, you are way out in a tail of frequency-
of-purchase distribution of at least one of those items.)
OTOH, cars are also a market in which purchasers take a number of steps to
counteract the low frequency. No one is test driving a variety of different
surgerical interventions before choosing one.
~~~
conanbatt
> Economic utility is subjective; while it includes health effects, to be
> sure, it also includes things like the taste and other enjoyment factors. It
> absolutely is not the case that, were food a perfect example of rational
> choice, we would only be buying options that cost-effectively optimized
> healthiness.
Sure, I agree completely, but at least nominally the argument that healthcare
is unique because its a necessity and it has irrational behaving actors is not
qualitatively different than the food market.
> “Healthcare” is a broad class of different products and services, many of
> which are far less frequently purchased than autos (if you buy open heart
> surgery more often than you buy a car, you are way out in a tail of
> frequency-of-purchase distribution of at least one of those items.)
Thats as practical a segregation as saying that the people that buy the same
model of a car the same year and with the same gas price tends to be 1 at
most, hence almost no car purchases are ever repeated!
> OTOH, cars are also a market in which purchasers take a number of steps to
> counteract the low frequency. No one is test driving a variety of different
> surgerical interventions before choosing one.
Not really qualitative differences, just quantitative. Many car purchases are
done without test drives (argentina doesnt do test drives often for example).
But again, even if you find some truly unique property of healthcare, which in
this debate i don't recognize yet, i dont know how it will show that it should
be private but public.
~~~
dragonwriter
> Sure, I agree completely, but at least nominally the argument that
> healthcare is unique because its a necessity and it has irrational behaving
> actors is not qualitatively different than the food market.
“Necessity” wasn't part of the argument, and the argument wasn't really of a
qualitative difference so much as them being different degrees of the same
issues (food is considerably regulated—even by the same agency involved in
much healthcare regulation in the US—for many of the same reasons, though the
degree of deviation from ideal market conditions is lesser than for
healthcare.)
------
testplzignore
In the software world, we would fork or rewrite, and deprecate the old
version. I think we should do the same for healthcare. The existing system is
unmaintainable spaghetti code that needs to be deleted.
Create a new single payer healthcare system that is completely separate from
anything existing now. Don't attempt to incorporate any existing insurance,
regulations, medical records, etc. Allow the new system to ignore any existing
drug patents. Get a few brand-new hospitals, a few hundred doctors fresh out
of med school/residency, and tens of thousands of people using it - probably
do this in a single city, a la Google Fiber. Spend a couple years working out
the kinks.
Once that is done, migrate everyone to the new system over the course of a
decade or so. Any existing hospitals, doctors, and patients are free to stick
with the existing system, but I suspect they'll learn to regret that decision.
There are no technical or medical roadblocks to this that I can see. The only
obstacles are political and legal, which can be overcome in one or two
election cycles.
~~~
thehardsphere
It's arrogant to assume that a new system will be better than the old one
merely because it was re-written from scratch. Many companies died because
someone said "let's rewrite this bit of software" and the project ended up
failing because people vastly underestimated the difficulty of the re-write.
Even though they were smart professionals who knew how to write software well.
Considering that software companies frequently fail to succeed at re-writes
with something as inconsequential as software, what makes you think society
can do it with something as consequential as healthcare? Especially
considering that healthcare is in many ways much harder and more poorly
understood than software?
~~~
pat2man
One advantage we have is that other countries have systems we could copy. Its
not a complete re-write.
~~~
thehardsphere
This is like saying that Netscape can re-write Navigator because they can copy
Internet Explorer. It ignores that Netscape and Microsoft had totally
different reasons for the choices they made, and that changing those choices
in a re-write was very non-trivial for Netscape, to the point where it ceased
to be a company.
You will likely find similar problems with this in attempting to replicate
other health care systems. Indeed, you could complain that the mess we are in
now is the result of doing a poor job replicating Switzerland's health
insurance laws.
------
crispyambulance
I've been through similar experiences with my mother.
The best thing you can do, before your parent gets too old, is to consult with
an elderlaw firm to get health care directives, wills and power of attorney
written up. Most importantly, be sure to fully talk through the possible
scenarios for what happens financially in the event of putting your parent in
an SNF (skilled nursing facility).
Private pay for SNF in the USA is about $10000/month. That's a steep rate for
middle class and even upper middle class folks. That's what your family will
pay until medicaid "kicks in" when the savings of the parent are depleted. If
your parent made the mistake of giving away part of their wealth to family
within 5 years of entering SNF, that money still counts and they have to pay
it to the SNF. The medicaid provider for your state will demand 5 years of
bank statements for all accounts as well as query ALL financial transactions.
You might have to hire a lawyer just to untangle the mess. Dealing with this
stuff is a nightmare in paperwork at the worst possible time you can imagine.
I have found that face-to-face communication with the bureaucrats helps a lot.
The HHS staff people who process medicaid long term care enrollments in SNF's
have massive, soul-crushing workloads. Of course they're going to just skim
the hundreds (not exaggerating) of pages of documents you send them. The
article is right. You have to watch out for your family. No one else will do
it.
Eldercare consultants cost several thousand dollars. We decided not to engage
one because the SNF provided a lot of support and we had previously worked
with an elderlaw firm, but it probably would have saved us some stress when
dealing with medicaid/HHS as I was on the hook for $100K+ until a property
sale from 4 years ago was sorted out. There are families that end up going
bankrupt needlessly just because a parent wanted to "leave something" to their
children and didn't know about the 5-year-lookback trap (Thank George W Bush
for that fuck-up, see Deficit Reduction Act of 2005). We were fully aware of
the basics and still narrowly averted a financial disaster.
------
maxxxxx
"There is, in fact, no system. There are systems, but mostly they don’t talk
to each other. I have to do that."
That's something I have noticed too. My girlfriend had to visit several
doctors for a problem. One was confused about the notes of the other doctor so
I proposed to call and figure it out together. The doctor seemed really
perplexed about this suggestion and instead ordered the same series of tests
again.
~~~
yborg
Because ordering a redundant set of tests generates revenue. Just consulting
another doctor wastes both of their time better spent ordering up redundant
tests and quickly moving on to the next victim that can have tests ordered.
~~~
rdtsc
Yap that's what I realized as well. It is a complicated beast in that some
things happen because there is a profit attached to it, some happen because
there is regulation requiring it.
Unnecessary tests are not even the worst, unnecessary face and nose surgery as
suggested by one of the doctors for a family members was really terrifying.
Good thing we decided to spend more money an time to get second opinions.
------
nathanaldensr
I love this article. I feel like it gets down to the real root of the problems
with the complexity of Western culture. I feel like this perspective applies
to a lot more than healthcare. It matches my own thoughts that technological
complexity is getting so high that eventually it will be beyond our own
understanding, both individually or in a group of any size. We as a species
simply won't be able to make use of our own tools and systems because they are
so complex.
Ah, the hubris of humanity...
~~~
jerf
I'm as guilty as some people of just citing "excessive regulations" as a
problem without mentioning the mechanics that make that a problem, since so
many people see "regulation" as a good thing by just thinking of it as
"regulating away the bad outcomes". But this article gets to one of the
mechanisms I think of when I cite regulation as a problem; regulation casts in
concrete a particular way of doing business, and makes it _literally illegal_
to do it any other way. Can't even try something new as a one-off; it's
illegal to do anything else. Doesn't matter how brilliant your idea is; it's
illegal. Doesn't matter if you've got a startup with the software all ready to
go; it's illegal. Are two regulations either interacting poorly, or outright
contradictory? Not only is it illegal to not conform to both of them, now
we've introduced an adhoc meta-regulatory regime with regard to how to address
the overlaps, with the _de facto_ force of law behind this unwritten
metaregulation, and/or impedance mismatches between two bits of the industry
resolving them in different ways.
Even if we stipulate that The Hypothetical Medical Regulation Act of 1983 was
somehow the miraculous embodiment of perfect medical regulation for 1983, it
would be causing major problems for the medical system today. Mere time would
be enough to cause problems with medical regulations, and alas, they aren't
perfect to start with, and they seem to be ever-growing in size, and there's
no way the complexity growth is merely O(n). We've almost certainly passed the
point where regulations are appearing for the sole purpose (if one did a full
cause analysis) of dealing with the fact that regulations are blocking the
system up.
(My biggest objection to "national healthcare" is that unless you find me some
different authors to write it than our current Congress and current regulatory
state, I have approximately 0.001% confidence that "nationalizing healthcare"
will fix this. Advocates of nationalizing healthcare would have a much easier
time convincing me if Obamacare had _simplified_ health care, instead of
massively adding to the pile of regulations and massively empowering more
regulations going forward.)
~~~
NoGravitas
Obamacare complicated health care because it was designed to preserve the
existing system of insurance companies, employer-provided insurance, and
patchwork regulations. So, of course, it introduced more patchwork
regulations, along with subsidies to the existing players.
A single-payer system (Canadian style) would greatly simplify the health care
system, largely by cutting out the insurance-company layer for most people. A
British NHS-style system would arguably be even simpler, but is even more of a
political non-starter in the US.
~~~
jerf
I think you sort of misunderstood my point. My point was that you'd have an
easier time of selling me on it if Obamacare had actually simplified things.
Which was one of the promises it made, after all. Explaining _why_ it failed
to do so does not contradict my point, it reinforces it.
In terms of Obamacare not simplifying things, my engineering answer is "Then
why did we implement it?" If a goal is impossible for some reason, then the
correct solution is not to try to obtain it, not to just cruft up the system
harder anyhow. How many people can tell the same story of failure in their
engineering jobs? Since this is the same set of people who want to bring us
nationalized healthcare and want to write all the regulations for it, it does
not encourage me to think well of their judgment in doing so.
I am abundantly confident that our current ruling class would find _some_ way
to muck it up. Even if we handed them The Pristine National Healthcare System
Act of 2018, they'd have regulated it to death in just a handful of years. Our
current ruling class doesn't seem to be able to sneeze in anything less than
50 pages of legislation and several hundred pages of accompanying regulations.
~~~
nradov
That's not how politics works. Everyone has a different opinion and
priorities. Obamacare made the overall system better by providing more people
with affordable access to healthcare, at the cost of increased complexity in
some areas. It was a good trade-off. If everyone had insisted on perfection
then nothing would have been changed at all.
------
jf
I switched to Kaiser after my own dealings with the kafkaesque world of
healthcare that this article describes.
Kaiser is amazing in comparison.
With Kaiser, I no longer have to stare into the abyss of the "post-systematic
atomized era" of healthcare. I don't have to use CPT codes to compare prices
on bills with Medi-Cal rates, study legal agreements to find discrepancies, or
repeat myself to every different medical provider I visit. Instead, I can go
about my life and focus on the things I care about. Kaiser isn't perfect by
any means, but it's astonishingly better than the alternative.
------
JimboOmega
I'm living this situation right now. In my own life.
I'm transgender, and transgender care is a VERY complicated beast. I'm a
Kaiser member, and Kaiser NorCal (though not SoCal, so I hear...) is about as
good as you can get for Transgender care.
Do you know how hard it was to find someone who had some idea what Kaiser (or
any insurance) did actually did cover? And even when I did find that out, it
was (of course) changing. It took me talking to multiple member services reps
and people at both of the regional transgender facilities before I found
someone who could refer me to the person who knew.
What resonates most about the article - the "communal" aspect of it all - was
around a specific surgery I need - facial feminization. Kaiser has one
provider, basically. Great guy. Horribly backlogged - 2 year wait they told
me.
Through lots of redditing I found the one person who knows exactly how to work
this system. How to file the right grievances with the right language to put
everything in order. Things like - you need an appointment with another
provider so they can't merely claim there isn't a provider who can't do it.
This person has basically walked me through the entire process.
A fun and related fact is that California has a board that handles disputes
and does "Independent Medical Review". For facial feminization surgery, this
amounts to them deciding if given traits of a face fall within feminine norms
(which would make the surgery aesthetic, and not covered) or not (which would
make the surgery reconstructive, and covered). I've read a bunch of them that
go both ways. A really weird experience (the decisions are publicly
available!)
The ability to "work the system" is entirely too necessary - never mind the
cost, hassle, and everything else about it. You need "bureaucratic
perseverance". You _absolutely_ need to be ready to call, mail, file papers,
whatever it takes to kick up a fuss. And if you have somebody who knows how it
works on your side it's SO much easier.
------
bawana
Corporations increase complexity as they grow - each department needs to
maximize its revenue - thus complexification is justification for increased
budgetary needs. Healthcare is becoming increasingly corporatized. All the
talk about outcomes is just that. TALK. It has been so difficult to actually
understand how to improve efficiency because there is no good measure for it.
Everyone is arguing about outcomes and what actually is a meaningful measure.
The net result is laughable - everyone is looking at Press-Ganey scores
(basically a popularity contest as to how their 'customers' feel). Real
outcomes take decades to measure and for-profit healthcare systems are run by
CEOs who want to maximize their quarterly bonus(BTW the CEO of AETNA got a
$500million bonus for retiring-that came from premiums) It is criminal to
profit from the unintended misery of the unfortunate. The practitioners should
be paid. But everyone else who is pushing paper, massaging electrons or
jawboning about the share price is just dead weight on the system.
Ironically, the author found peace by hiring a consultant - back to square one
- a one on one transaction between two humans without a middleman.
~~~
bogomipz
>"Healthcare is becoming increasingly corporatized."
Hasn't healthcare been corporatized since the dawn of HMOs almost 50 years ago
though?
~~~
bawana
HMOs were a minor player 50 years ago. They are a euphemism for the corporate
cancer that maximizes profits at the expense of the sick. Even when I started
working in Mass 25 years ago, it was one of the few states with HMOs. They
have continued to morph and are now ripe for purchase by the more profitable
corporations (pharma) CVS buying Aetna is the first shot. Although Aetna is an
insurance company, they offered many stripped down 'products' = HMO like
plans.
------
Florin_Andrei
> _the biggest failing of the American health care system is its
> fragmentation_
This flaw will be extremely difficult to fix for as long as its nature is
perceived as "freedom" or "choice".
~~~
SN76477
I am always looking for the most fundamental answer, I think this is it.
------
carapace
> In 2017, software is conspicuously not eating the cost-disease economic
> sectors: health care, education, housing, government. They are being
> eaten—by communal mode tribalism.
Software can't fix political problems...
Bucky Fuller predicted that we would describe our problems to the computer and
it would calculate the optimal deployment of resources to solve them. He
estimated that we would have the technology to supply everyone on Earth with a
decent standard of living by sometime in the 1970's, provided that we used our
resource and technology _efficiently_. In other words, if you accept Bucky's
point, all of our problems now are _psychological_ rather than technological.
(We have all the technology we need.)
Standard of living problems have mathematical solutions, psychological
problems don't.[1]
> hire an independent health care administration consultant
"Add another layer of abstraction."
But now the consultant has a clear _disincentive_ ($150/hour!) to fix the
problem.
The U.S. health system is pathetically broken, and I have no idea how to fix
it. This seems like a poor solution, even though I can understand why the
author would do it.
I really feel for the author. My mother has dementia and is slipping away
fast. Thankfully my sister has the time and energy to move back in with our
mother and care for her. She's also with Kaiser-Permanente which seems to let
us avoid the worst of the systemic problems. So, in a way, we're really
_lucky_.
[1] "psychological problems don't [have mathematical solutions]" Although...
There is something called Neuro-Linguistic Programming (the other NLP) that is
a kind of model of psychology that does admit of algorithm-like protocols for
therapy. E.g. the "Five-Minute Phobia Cure" which is an algorithm that cures
phobias.
------
poppingtonic
[https://equilibriabook.com/molochs-
toolbox/](https://equilibriabook.com/molochs-toolbox/)
~~~
tvanantwerp
I read this a few weeks ago when it was linked from comments on a different HN
discussion. Definitely describes well the problems facing health care.
------
hectorr1
The need to hire a 'consultant' is extremely depressing. That is what doctors
(primary care managers in particular) are supposed to do.
But their pay is terrible compared to specialists, especially when you
consider medical school debt and that they don't start earning until years
later than most. They have diminishing power in the hospital organizations
unless they go into management. There are exceptions, but most medical
students with options don't choose Primary Care.
For specialists, the model is just as broken. If you do procedures, you are
incentivized to do procedures. Sometimes this is the best option for the
patient, sometimes it's not, but you are going to get paid one way and not the
other. And there is a good chance that unless you are at a top-tier academic
hospital, there will not be anyone around to second guess you unless you
realllllly screw up.
There is also tremendous pressure to produce, which is why doctors triple book
fifteen minute appointments, and you end up in freezing the waiting room with
no LTE for two hours. A good doctor would love to spend more time with you
directly, and a lot more time managing your care, but that's not what the
system incentivizes. And tying compensation to quality ratings is hugely
problematic when the job is to often tell people they are fat alcoholics who
need to quit doing opiates.
My wife is a doc, and it breaks my heart when she says she wouldn't recommend
it for our kids.
------
toomuchtodo
> For complex health care problems, I recommend hiring a consultant to provide
> administrative (not medical!) guidance.
This is called a patient advocate. Think of them as your healthcare guardian.
Sometimes you hire one, sometimes one will be assigned to you in more
progressive healthcare systems. If you are fighting a chronic or potentially
lethal disease, I highly recommend one.
Edit: Your patient advocate is usually covered by insurance if they work for
the hospital or the insurance company, but not if you hire them directly. Take
that for what you will.
~~~
gt_
Does American insurance cover this? I have inquired about something like this
before when I was getting conflicting diagnoses and treatment plans. Everyone
I asked (at my insurance company) acted like they didn’t know what I was
talking about. I did not size the phrase “patient advocate” but if one were
available, I think my need for them would have been clear.
~~~
pc86
If insurance denies claims for life-saving medical procedures because they
happened out of network, I have a hard time believing they'd pay for someone
to give you advice.
~~~
lukeschlather
The article gives a good example of why it's in the insurance companies'
interest to pay people to give you advice. It was obvious to everyone on the
ground that the insurer would save money if they just sent the author's mother
to an out-of-network physical therapist rather than keeping her in the
hospital. But the insurer didn't have anyone who could quickly make that cost-
saving judgment call.
Really, the biggest problem in a lot of cases is not that insurers deny claims
for life-saving procedures, it's that they prioritize expensive and
ineffective treatments over inexpensive and effective treatments.
------
mattchew
Best article I've read this year. (Haha, but it's very good, if a little
burdened with weird terminology.)
I have been through some similar experiences myself. Not as bad, but enough to
find OP's story not-really-remarkable.
This is what we've got for healthcare in the USA. I wish it was fixable, but I
do not believe it is. Powerful interests will resist or subvert any
substantive change. (I do expect new "reforms" that will promise fixes and
then pump even more money into the broken system, though.)
If you get sick, hope that it is something utterly routine that your
applicable system will process without a hiccup. Failing that, expect this
kind of craziness and prepare for it. Defensive record keeping and navigating
bureaucracies will be necessary skills in 21st century USA.
~~~
aeorgnoieang
> weird terminology
That's due to several factors but one of them is that some of the terms are
specific 'concepts' described elsewhere on the same site, which is itself a
'book'.
------
communalnotes1
The author concludes that communal or relational modes of interaction will
become more common as systems fail. It would have added a lot to the article
if he gave some tips on talking to the various providers and bureaucrats in
the system (the only advice is working in a medical office and "having
charm").
Once you've seen it, the communal/relational mode of interaction is
immediately easy to spot and is actually a very rewarding way to interact with
people. Although it doesn't happen as often in large cities except among large
families or tight-knit ethnic groups, I think a well-functioning workplace
should have some of it. People helping others out, getting to know each other,
and so on. The problem is the conflict between the way the health care system
presents itself and is organized (systematic/transactional) and the way it
really works.
Tips on seeing the communal mode and maybe practicing a bit: Note how your
group of friends relates when they're camping or otherwise on a trip of some
kind. Spend some time in a smaller town where you know at least a couple
people. Spend time with lower-income people from a similar background to you,
who have to rely on each other more versus their bank accounts. Outside large
cities, ask people at the stores or wherever how they're doing and actually
care about what their response is.
------
jbob2000
I know this is going to be controversial, but at this point:
> My mother’s mild dementia began accelerating rapidly a year ago. I’ve been
> picking up pieces of her life as she drops them. That has grown from a part-
> time job to a full-time job. In the past month, as she’s developed unrelated
> serious medical issues, it’s become a way-more-than-full-time job.
I would have kept my mother out of the healthcare system and let her pass at
home or in a hospice. You can't save someone from dementia and old age, don't
even try, you are just prolonging their pain. Let her drop the pieces of her
life and leave them there. Lymphedema treatment? She's 84 years old with
dementia, she isn't going to get up a run a marathon, why would you treat
this?
I say this having never have dealt with a dying parent, so this may be
ignorant on my part. I am sure it is difficult standing by while a loved one
fades. I think it would be better to spend a few stress-free, happy months in
a hospice than years running around between the confusing, painful, stressful
mess that is the healthcare system.
~~~
ams6110
I don't think it's controversial at all. Nobody gets out of life alive. If I
make it to 65 or so, I feel I've had my share. It's all downhill after that
point anyway, why would I want to prolong the misery?
~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
An easy statement to make when you're nowhere near 65. I've spent a lot of
time in my life thinking about death, and as a result I've come to certain
philosophical conclusions regarding it. But I know that philosophy is
something that exists comfortably in mind of someone without a gun to their
head.
------
EliRivers
_It appears that 73% of the labor cost of a health care organization is spent
on trying to communicate with other health care organizations that have no
defined interface._
So if it worked properly, US healthcare would cost one quarter if what it
does. Less, once the people engaged in trying to talk to each other are no
longer required. That's quite a statement.
~~~
ashark
Considering that (IIRC) other OECD states typically sit between 40% and 60% of
US spending on healthcare per-capita, and they presumably haven't actually
_eliminated_ these sorts of inefficiencies (so some percentage even of that
40% is still communication overhead) I'd say 73%'s at least plausible (could
still be wrong, of course).
------
maxander
If someone has a reasonably high-level position in a major medical services
organization, and wants to help us advance as a species, here's something to
push for; get your company to throw out all its fax machines.
Every office in the world _can_ use non-fax communication technologies; they
just have policies that prevent them. If they encounter a sufficiently large
healthcare entity that simply shrugs at them and says "we don't do faxes,"
_those policies won 't matter_, for precisely the reasons stated in the
article. People will do what needs to be done to get things to happen, policy
or no (if they care; if they don't, it won't get done, regardless of the
number of fax machines involved.)
One organization making a stand could start the process of getting us past
that particular perverse element of the medical system.
------
frgtpsswrdlame
I really can't agree with this paragraph:
_Are the confused rules Anthem’s fault? I imagine that the 1600 pages try to
reconcile federal, state, and local legislation, plus the rules of three
federal regulatory agencies, nine state agencies, and fifteen local agencies.
All those are vague and conflicting and constantly changing, but Anthem’s
rule-writing department does their best. They call the agencies to try to find
out what the regulations are supposed to mean, and they spend hours on hold,
are transferred from one official to another and back, and eventually get
directed to a .gov web site that says “program not implemented yet.” Then they
make something up, and hope that when the government sues Anthem, they don’t
get blamed for it personally._
Anthem doesn't do their best to help people navigate their insurance and get
solid answers. Individuals within the company may do their best but the
company itself chooses how to fund those departments, how to run them, etc.
Healthcare is confusing because 'healthcare explainers' and 'insurance
navigators' are cost centers and so our privatized system places no real
emphasis on them.
Besides it's not like these rules emerge from the ether either, they exist as
a response to shady tactics by insurance companies. Surely we're not so far
removed to have forgotten all the abuses of pre-existing conditions by
insurance companies?
I might be able to say this isn't the fault of healthcare and insurance
companies only so far as it's the fault of government for not just ending the
charade and making the whole thing public.
~~~
conanbatt
No matter how much money in lobbying anthem might have spent, the ultimate
responsiblity for the law as written is of government.
Government should fix the current problems it has before asking for more
responsibility.
~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
I don't understand how your comment relates to mine. Care to elucidate?
~~~
conanbatt
"Anthem should do their best to explain the complex rules set forth by
government"
------
justinhj
She retired in 97 and still has health coverage by her employer. Is that
typical in the US? Is it very expensive to insure someone in perpetuity like
that?
~~~
InitialLastName
I assume it's tied to some kind of pension (which is tied to the former
employer), so the premium would be ongoing and taken out of the pension
payout.
Otherwise, I'd imagine yes permanently insuring someone would be
extraordinarily expensive.
------
dredmorbius
This is a systems interface essay. The lede is buried very deeply:
_It’s like one those post-apocalyptic science fiction novels whose characters
hunt wild boars with spears in the ruins of a modern city. Surrounded by
machines no one understands any longer, they have reverted to primitive
technology._
_Except it’s in reverse. Hospitals can still operate modern material
technologies (like an MRI) just fine. It’s social technologies that have
broken down and reverted to a medieval level._
_Systematic social relationships involve formally-defined roles and
responsibilities. That is, “professionalism.” But across medical
organizations, there are none. Who do you call at Anthem to find out if
they’ll cover an out-of-state SNF stay? No one knows._
The author recommends hiring a consultant. I'd like to suggest an alternate
approach.
In complex disputes between parties, we have several systems or dispute
resolution. One is to engage the services of an alternative administrative
system: the courts.
While Anthem may be governed by 1,600-page rule-books, a judge is not. Or
rather, a judge has a _different_ set of rule books _and considerable autonomy
to make decisions independently_.
(With provisions for review.)
One way of considering this is as a collapsing of complexity: where a system
becomes _too complex_ to function reasonably, a third party is called in.
_The U.S. healthcare "system" has become vastly too complex to function with
any semblance of sanity._ It is in desperate need of a complexity constraint
being applied to it. What we might in other political contexts call a
revolution. Perhaps a reform.
But it seems vastly beyond the realm of incremental change.
------
yodsanklai
I'm wondering, is the American health care bad for (upper) middle-class too?
let say you have a good job in a big corporation, do you have to worry about
healthcare? can you go to a decent hospital for any problem you may have and
get appropriate care without spending any dime?
~~~
mnm1
Yes, it's horrifically terrible. The hospitals/doctors you can go to are
dictated by your insurance. Having a good job does not equal having good
insurance. It's hit or miss. Having a good job does not guarantee you have
someone to help you out with the paperwork and the stress from that can and
will kill you even if you survive the actual hell that is the healthcare
itself (topic of the article).
If you get injured on the job, you have to go through the worker's
compensation system which can take months to years just to be seen for certain
conditions like RSI. And if you change states, you're fucked because there's
literally no one who knows how the systems should work together. The more
history you have, the worse. Sometimes you have to lie and omit medical
history just to get your foot in the door.
I worry about healthcare and whether I will be able to do my job (writing
software) next year, let alone ten or thirty years from now because I simply
cannot get the care I need for a problem that's 100% caused by work. This is
supposed to be covered 100%. Now imagine how bad people without insurance or
people who have otherwise not-covered conditions have it. It's a fucking
nightmare for everyone who is not part of the upper class and can afford good
insurance and the ability to hire assistants to actually make the insurance
work for them, so much so that certain companies have contracted out for such
services for their employees. It's a perk of employment that very few
employers offer. I'm sorry, but horrific doesn't even begin to describe the
situation ... I'm actually at a loss for words in describing how bad
healthcare is in the US.
~~~
bradknowles
But if you have a bad job, or maybe just one that is less than perfect, it can
be almost impossible to get good insurance.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Optimized trading algorithms using IPython parallel and ec2 - twiecki
http://twiecki.github.com/zipline_in_the_cloud_talk/
======
smnl
Cool technical presentation, but trying to optimize moving average trading
strategies is a fool's game - you might find a set of parameters that work in
all out-sample/cross-validation tests, but there's still a good chance it'll
lose money in actual trading going forward - market paradigms can shift,
unforeseen world events, t-cost/slippage higher than what the model accounted
for (especially with more frequent rebalancing), etc.
If you actually want to trade moving average strategies, your best best is
just to diversify and run several different strategies across a variety of
parameter sets and across various sectors/asset classes, without trying to
overly optimize a single strategy
~~~
twiecki
Certainly that's always a risk. Zipline does however support simulating
transaction-costs and slippage so those will be accounted for (as best as
possible).
As for market-paradigm shifts, I totally agree. One way to deal with that is
to constantly re-optimize the parameters based on recent data. This is also
known as walk-forward optimization on which there is a slide at the very end
(see <http://blog.quantopian.com/parameter-optimization/> for a more
information).
Finally, as to running multiple strategies with different parameter settings.
The OLMAR paper that describes the algorithm
(<http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.4626>) has a variation of this where they use a
range of different-length moving averages, rather than just one.
------
aleyan
I noticed you got close prices from Yahoo that you are using for your
backtest. If you get the close prices in real life and optimize, when are you
going to trade?
You have to deal with intraday prices now. Got those? Well they are not split
or dividend adjusted. Good luck.
~~~
fawce
Don't forget mergers. I spoke about this problem recently at Matt Turck's Big
Data Meetup (<http://vimeo.com/60598560>). Quantopian provides zipline powered
backtesting over fully adjusted intra-day data (minute bars) for free.
~~~
aleyan
Unfortunately I wasn't able to attend February's Big Data Meetup, so I missed
your talk. EDIT: (I did just view it online, my comment takes what you said
into account.)
My point about intraday data with corporate actions wasn't really about the
difficulty with corporate actions, but rather the leaky abstraction of trading
present in the slides. To give you credit, I don't know what issues Quantopian
addresses. On the other hand, has any one tried running Zipline-backtested
strategies in real life? Does any one know what issues aren't addressed by
Quantopian? Corp actions was one part, T-cost model was hinted at in the
slides, but was any though given to borrow costs and availability? There leaks
everywhere. It is not that you don't seem like smart guys who made this cool
thing freely generously available to everyone, but that you seem like you
spent too little time downtown NYC.
PS. Fully adjusted bars are nice, but they have an epoch to be adjusted to.
Unfortunately having an epoch that is not today() means you can't add today's
data to it. If you can't add today's data to it, you can use this system to
generate real trades to trade. Now you need two sets of data and two sets of
code to work with. Good luck.
~~~
fawce
Thanks for taking a look, and for the feedback. Zipline does model transaction
costs, both commissions and price impact of your own trading (slippage). The
commissions and slippage models are pluggable, so you can use what is there or
roll your own.
Quantopian does not have data for stock borrowing costs or availability, and
Zipline's slippage/cost model does not account for them either. We'll find a
way to get that data and plug the hole. The challenge has been finding a clean
way to get it from the brokers, or finding an aggregator with a reasonable
price (any advice?). In the meantime, we've been open about this limitation,
and the zipline code is opensource, so I think/hope anyone who cares to know
does probably know.
Quantopian is building our live trading environment now, so we don't yet have
comparisons between the backtest results and real trading.
Regarding your point about the epoch, I'm not sure I entirely follow you. Part
of the point of zipline's design is to allow easy swapping of datasources,
mainly to allow the transition from backtesting to paper trading and then to
real trading to be seamless. One algo code can run either historically or
live. Adjustments from splits and mergers are back-projected, so that current
day prices need no adjustment. Dividends are dealt with as announce, ex, and
pay events, meaning we do not smooth out the over-night drops, instead we
increment/decrement cash.
I'm in NYC regularly to host the NYC Algorithmic Trading meetup - it would be
awesome to talk to you about these issues in person, please consider coming:
<http://www.meetup.com/NYC-Algorithmic-Trading/>
------
jschulenklopper
An interesting course on using software algorithms for stock analysis and
trading can be found at Coursera:
<https://www.coursera.org/course/compinvesting1>
That course also uses Python as programming language in the examples. Short
description from that URL: "Find out how modern electronic markets work, why
stock prices change in the ways they do, and how computation can help our
understanding of them. Build algorithms and visualizations to inform investing
practice."
------
md224
Fascinating from a technical perspective, but how does it add value to the
world beyond the search for increasingly complex ways to make money?
~~~
fawce
Investing is one way people plan for the future. Helping people plan for the
future is a good thing. Algorithmic trading has mostly focused on (ultra)
short timescales, without much regard for future planning. I think the world
would benefit tremendously if more of that effort went toward investing on
longer timescales. Investing is still almost fully manual today, and packed
with inefficiencies and costs that could be automated away.
------
ngoel36
Very cool! My question is, how do you use something like Zipline to actually
_execute_ trades.
~~~
vshastry
For those with an account, E*TRADE offers a REST based API @
<https://developer.etrade.com> . Onboarding is manual but once you get your
key you can execute trades for your account via the API. Equities / ETFs only
right now, they were working on support for other asset types but not sure
when they are going to launch it.
Full disclosure - I used to run their developer platform.
~~~
fawce
How do commissions work? per trade? Does the api provide any data, or just
execution?
~~~
vshastry
Commissions are the same as your E*TRADE account; list price is $9.99 for
equities although if you are doing higher volumes you can negotiate discounts
($7.99 if you do 150 trades / quarter, and call them up if you are doing a lot
of trades for lower pricing).
Data: [https://developer.etrade.com/ctnt/dev-
portal/getDetail?conte...](https://developer.etrade.com/ctnt/dev-
portal/getDetail?contentUri=V0_Documentation-MarketAPI-GetQuotes)
There's also a call for data on option chains.
------
arxanas
I can't scroll down the code on slide 8.
~~~
twiecki
Yeah, the code is cut-off unfortunately. It's the new IPython nbconverter that
still has some kinks. The idea of the algo is expressed on the next slide.
You can, however, view the full IPython NB here:
[http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/raw.github.com/twiecki/zipl...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/urls/raw.github.com/twiecki/zipline_in_the_cloud_talk/gh-
pages/Zipline%2520in%2520the%2520Cloud%2520--%2520PyData%252013.ipynb)
------
radikalus
Beautiful presentation; really loving all the stuff built on top nbviewer.
As an aside, I think an enterprise-quality zipline solution could be a worth a
pretty fat chunk of $$ especially considering that the budget for KX and its
support is generally > 1M per year per firm. (Yes, there's complex logistics
and legal issues)
I believe seeing on github some requests for h5 support -- this + support
could potentially be a big inroad...
------
pyre
Finally got it to load. Don't know what the problem was. I kept getting a
blank page (wouldn't even let me right-click). Cracked open the dev tools, and
the DOM was there, and all of the resources were loading. No clue what the
problem was.
[ Running: Chromium Version 26.0.1386.0 Ubuntu 12.10 (177362) ]
~~~
pathdependent
The third or forth slide causes my IPad's instance of Safari to crash. (IOS
6.1.3)
------
gourneau
This was a great talk, find it on pyvideo.org in a few days
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask YC: How do you project web traffic? - jon_dahl
As I raise funding for my startup, investors want to see pro forma financial projections. I think I can estimate our expenses fairly well for a year or two, and some of our revenue assumptions (e.g. subscription cost, ad CPMs). But our revenue depends on two unpredictable things:<p>-- traffic
-- conversion rates<p>This is crystal ball territory, and everyone knows it. But we still need to make claims and substantiate them.<p>Has anyone seen a good model for estimating traffic based on assumptions? Any insight into what to give our investors?
======
prakash
You can't predict traffic up or down meaning your conservative estimates might
be 10X high or low.
Conversation rates depend on a whole bunch of parameters like the content of
your site, traffic, etc. I have seen conversion rates as high as 5-15% and as
low as .5%.
Take a look at Powerset's growth modeling:
[http://www.blognewcomb.com/blog/2007/04/how_is_powerset_pred...](http://www.blognewcomb.com/blog/2007/04/how_is_powerset_predicting_gro.html)
That said, as antiismist mentions, model your traffic and conversion rates 10X
higher & than lower starting from what your predict.
If you are making claims it should be easy to substantiate :-)
------
nickb
This is one of the topics I always touch upon when talking to web
entrepreneurs who've launched sites. I usually ask it in terms of scaling and
how fast someone should worry about it. What people tell me is that they were
either surprised by how fast their site grew or they've been disappointed by
the slow uptake. In either case, the models they've created were pointless.
So worry less about modeling and spend more time planning for the best (or
worst) case when you have so much traffic coming in that you have to scale up.
Modeling is useful IF you're paying for the traffic. If you're buying traffic
and you have X amount of dollars to spend per month, then it's fairly easy to
project numbers. I'm assuming most of us here are building community sites and
are depending on either viral or SEO traffic so you're left to more guessing.
Edit: I just looked at the Powerset modeling they released and looked at their
actual numbers on alexa/compete and you can see they're absolutely nothing
like they projected.
------
joshwa
Think of it less as a "projection" as much as a "what if" exercise.
Do a few different scenarios: Single-digit, Double-Digit, Exponential, Hockey-
Stick, Shark-Fin, and explain how you would operate in each of these
situations, and how you would perform financially. Then show them what you
think are the most likely scenarios.
------
mattmaroon
You must not be dealing with typical tech investors if they're asking for
those sorts of things. Tech investors generally don't ask precisely because
they are meaningless.
The best you can do is look at your nearest competitor. Pro forma numbers work
great for the guy who ran one hotel and is opening another down the road. They
can justify using the same occupancy rate, etc.
Using your competitor's historic traffic data is, of course, meaningless, but
to someone who is asking you for numbers that are by definiton meaningless
guesses, it probably counts as justification.
------
jakewolf
I just spend $125 on Adwords sending traffic to a barebones/not really
launched site with a sales page and found out about 25% of visitors click to
my registration page and 10% sign up for a free account. Once I figure out how
to monetize those accounts (it's something health related) and get more than
$5 in revenue each it'll be a gold mine as this is something that 50% of the
population will deal with in their life (not gender based).
One of the beauties of Adwords and especially the content network is that you
get an idea of how many people are interested in you topic/market.
So if you're doing something subscription bases, throw up a prelaunch sales
page, spend $100 and see what you get. If that's the only data holding you
back from you VCs, consider it money well spent.
------
antiismist
I'm having a similar problem, mainly with revenue projections with
advertising.
So I'm just building out a table - each row in the table is some level of
traffic, and each column has some projection of yield (yield = CTR X CPC),
like reasonable worst case, probable case, and reasonable best case.
Basically, identify the variables in the model. Come up with some reasonable
ranges for what those could be, put those in a table. For example, for CPC
advertisements, the CTR that I have heard about range from a minimum .05% to a
maximum of 30%, and the CPC ranges from $.01 to $100 (e.g. for mesothelioma
related ads at one point).
------
diego
Honestly, you should use something like the Drake Equation:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drake_equation>
------
fleaflicker
It's impossible don't get hung up on it. As an early stage startup you should
have one concern--build the product. A working product is more impressive than
artificial projections.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How To Get Startup Ideas On Demand - IonRocket
http://compxpressinc.com/startup_ideas.html
======
darkmoon
This app may help get startup ideas.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stop Trying to Hire with Titles Like ‘DevOps Engineer’ or ‘Cloud Engineer’ - mrmondo
https://smcleod.net/tech/2019/08/08/camels-and-unicorns.html
======
cgraham
100% Absolutely this. When I hear companies talking about their "devops" team
I cringe. The entire concept of DevOps is lost when we throw up even more
silos. And then I go bang my head on the wall.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A tiny Python exception oddity - luord
https://aroberge.blogspot.com/2019/12/a-tiny-python-exception-oddity.html?m=1
======
mherdeg
I'm impressed by the humility here from someone who (a) is writing a library
to replace core traceback behavior in pypi; (b) has doubtless read both
cpython and pypi code; (c) nevertheless writes "While I have some general idea
of how the CPython interpreter works, I absolutely do not understand well
enough to claim with absolute certainty how this situation arise".
Jeepers, who WOULD be qualified to explain for sure how this works?
~~~
jedberg
> Jeepers, who WOULD be qualified to explain for sure how this works?
Guido?
------
underdeserver
If 99.999% of Python programmers won't care about this, and there are
approximately 8.2M Python programmers in the world [1], then only 82 people
will care about this. Given the number of upvotes you've covered them all.
[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+python+programmers+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+python+programmers+are+there+in+the+world)
~~~
aroberge
Thank you. I actually thought I was overestimated the interest. Then again, I
did not think that my blog post would attract the interest of the HackerNews
readers.
------
lilyball
I'm curious why this is reported as a SyntaxError. This doesn't seem like a
syntactical problem to me, but a semantical one.
~~~
lidHanteyk
Python's grammar is so very rich. Many programs are rejected for "syntactic"
reasons if they do not fit into the abstract syntax [0]; I suppose that this
could be some sort of "AbstractSyntaxError", if Python had such a thing.
For some examples:
x == not y
Rejected by the parser itself.
not x = y
Accepted by the parser and AST builder, and only rejected by the bytecode
compiler.
f(*xs,)
Rejected by the parser itself.
...
Rejected somewhere between the parser and the AST builder. Valid uses of
Ellipsis are actually special-cased; it is not a standard part of the abstract
syntax.
[0]
[https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/Parser/Python....](https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/Parser/Python.asdl)
~~~
kccqzy
Why is x == not x rejected by the parser? In many other languages this is
perfectly valid and, depending on the semantics, may allow the compiler that
into false. (Of course this can't generally be the case where operators are
user-overloadable.)
~~~
js2
Because that's how the grammar is defined:
[https://docs.python.org/3.8/reference/grammar.html](https://docs.python.org/3.8/reference/grammar.html)
The RHS of the == (comp_op) has to be an expr. You can force "not x" to be an
expr by parenthesizing it:
x == (not x)
~~~
kccqzy
That interesting. On the other hand,
not x == x
is totally valid.
------
bratao
I was impressed by the quality of PyPy errors!
------
Wheaties466
I seem like i'm alone in this but I think I would prefer the CPython handling
of this "Syntax Error".
I am not a "Programmer" so having feedback on the original problem line would
be more beneficial than returning the second.
------
_ZeD_
I'm wondering if this case will be handled differently by the new pegen
[https://github.com/gvanrossum/pegen](https://github.com/gvanrossum/pegen)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How recreational marijuana in California left chemists in the dark - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/22/16808964/california-weed-laws-legal-prop-64-safe-labs
======
staunch
> _“It’s not like people are dying from pesticides in cannabis... "_
It's entirely possible that many people are dying from carcinogenic pesticides
in cannabis. Similar to the way people die from impure cocaine, heroin, etc.
Igniting and inhaling petroleum products is not going to be found to be
healthy.
The secondary affects of drugs being illegal and unregulated is one of the
great sins of the War on Drugs.
Commercial cannabis should be highly regulated. Look to startups and
technology to bring the price of pure organic ganja down over a short few
years.
~~~
nightfly
> "Look to startups and technology to bring the price of pure organic ganja
> down over a short few years."
In general I'd prefer small businesses rather than startups with dreams of
going very large dominate in spaces like this.
As is it's already fairly expensive for new players to get a legal foothold.
Regulating it to the point that it requires the type of capital that startup
people can get raise is gonna shut out a lot of people.
~~~
GuiA
Fortunately, as many college students will tell you, weed is very easy to
grow. As long as commercial licenses are easily available, I think small,
locally owned, organic, etc. outfits will be able to coexist with any
potential "Starbucks for Weed".
~~~
petre
Legal recreational weed should be as easy as craft beer.
~~~
bfuller
Easier. All you need is a hole in the ground, some compost, and the sun.
------
delbel
the regulations for pesticide in Oregon is so strict, baby food would fail.
Tomatoes and grapes would fail with 10x above level. Some pesticides have no
known toxicity or health concerns were straight up banned. The lab companies
were able to lobby for sampling rate that ends up taking a huge percentage of
the profit. On top of that, they are corrupted, crooked and rumors of taking
bribe for failed tests. Even using certified products you can fail. They had
to change the approved list to "guide list" so you don't know what to use.
Toxic pesticides in baby food is OK in Oregon, but not in the marijuana.
~~~
gwern
The contrast with tobacco and alcohol (both legal) is ironic.
It's also amusing to imagine trying to get something like tea approved under
this kind of regulatory regime - fluoride, heavy metals, questions about China
pollution, addictive with many known deaths from abuse of the deadly stimulant
drug in it (caffeine), unknown potentially synergistic interactions between
its psychoactive substances (caffeine+theanine), a risk to dental health,
regularly adulterated with other substances, potentially contaminated with
coliform or botulinum, and typically consumed in a manner with known health
risks and elevated oral cancer classified by IARC as a probable carcinogen
(boiling hot water). I wonder how many ordinary things would be de jure or de
facto banned these days if they were not grandfathered in.
~~~
tomcooks
> known death from abuse of the deadly stimulant drug in it (caffeine)
Can you name 1 (one) example of tea (or coffee) induced death?
~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
It is feasible to brew enough strong tea, and drink it, to cause cardiac
arrest in a susceptible individual.
It's extremely unlikely someone would do that, and there's probable enough
bitters in tea, especially green tea, to cause the average person to vomit
before they ingested too much caffeine from tea.
But what green wrote is true and correct:
[https://www.caffeineinformer.com/a-real-life-death-by-
caffei...](https://www.caffeineinformer.com/a-real-life-death-by-caffeine)
~~~
vidarh
So it seems these were mainly suicides, and it's about as relevant as blaming
water for people intentionally drowning themselves.
Worth noting that e.g.the doses listed under energy drinks on that page are
well within ranges that have been used in various studies of impact of
caffeine on athletic ability. If those levels are dangerous to some it seems
likely to require a pre-existing heart problem as there seems to be
exceedingly little evidence that those levels are risky to the general
population.
To reach levels toxic to most people with tea you'd likely end up
concentrating it so much you'd end up eating a slurry with a spoon...
------
pmoriarty
Just as different psychological effects ensue from cannabis products when
eaten vs smoked, the health effects of eating vs smoking various pesticides
present on cannabis products are likely to differ.
While some testing and monitoring of health effects of various pesticides when
they're eaten from food has been done, we really don't know what effects those
same pesticides will have when they get in to the human body through smoking.
The smoking route of administration could potentially be much worse for some
of them.
Elsewhere in the thread someone mentioned the possibility of growing marijuana
organically. Well, organic pesticides aren't necessarily better for you than
inorganic ones. Their effects really have to be studied on a case-by-case
basis. Simply using organic pesticides isn't going to magically save you.
Going pesticide-free might, but then, well, you have to deal with pests.
~~~
simook
Pesticides are not the only solution to deal with pests, it's maybe the
easiest to understand but is also the worst human made solution. Nature has
solved this a problem long time ago through diversity of plants, insects, and
animals.
------
brian-armstrong
At a federal level, I wonder if cannabis will first move down to Schedule II
or lower, or if it'll just skip straight to legalized/decriminalized, whenever
that happens
~~~
taurath
It’s quite a challenge to the states rights people who are also pro drug war
when half the states have legalized it.
~~~
doubt_me
[https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
bill/1227...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-
bill/1227?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22tom+garrett%22%5D%7D&r=2)
------
tomcooks
Can't people grow their own in California?
Isn't being able to inject your self with some marinara reefers the point of
legalization?
~~~
ScottBurson
> inject your self with some marinara reefers
Wow, that gives a whole new meaning to the phrase "hitting the sauce"!
------
dreamdu5t
So pesticides are allowed on food consumed by kids with no label or warning,
and no testing required yet they’re not allowed on a product meant to be
incinerated and inhaled and used as a recreational drug by adults?
Okaaaaayyyy....
~~~
petre
By inhaling it, it's absorbed directly into your bloodstream, through the
lungs.
~~~
whatshisface
I'd like to see a 50-year longitudinal study on the effects of different
common chemcals over previously untested lengths of time.
Actually, it'd be nice to see more 50-year studies on the effect of anything
on anything.
~~~
petre
They're probably tainted by some industry lobby. Look at the sugar industry
which has hidden the link between sugar and cancer for 50 years. More like a
50 year cover up, than a 50 year study.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The sports footage you won't see on TV this Thanksgiving - brownie
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203716204577015903150731054.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
======
keeptrying
You can figure out whats happening on the field just from what they show on
TV. I wrote an answer on quora on how to do this:
What I enjoy in a football game is understanding the strategy thats being
carried out and the efficiency of execution on every play. I've broken down a
list of positions/schemes/plays to look for below.
The following applies when watching a regular play from scrimmage - ie one
that will be either a run or a pass.
_The offense_
1\. First pick out the number of tight ends and their position on the
offensive line. This will tell you what base formation the offense is
"telegraphing" to the defense. 2 or more tight ends implies that the offense
is showing "run" unless its the damn Patriots of 2010.
2\. Look at where the running backs are - the full back and the half back.
This along with the above, will give you an idea of whether the offense is
hedging towards a run or a pass. If they are in line, in front of the QB then
you can safely assume a pass or trick play.
3\. Next the formation of the wide recievers. Are they split, with a slot or
are they bunched on one side.
_The defense_
1\. Due to camera angles you wont be able to see some of the players on the
defense. But its okay because you can workout where they would be (except for
how deep they are playing) based on the offensive formation.
2\. The rectangular area in front of the offensive line is called "the box".
This is where the running back is expected to try to make a run. Count the
number of players in the box. A fast way is to group the players in 3s going
from bottom edge of the offensive line to the top.
The number of players in the box will tell you what the defense is showing the
offense. If the number of players is >=8 then the defense is expecting a run.
Using the following formula, you'll be able to figure out the number of
safeties.
Number of safeties = 11 - (the number of players in the box + the number of
wider receivers on offense )
_Position of the safeties_
* 2 Safeties
If you've figured out there are two safeties then this implies that the
defense is looking to take away big passing plays but give up the middle of
the field. This will usually be a cover-2 formation or a derivative. If you
see that a line-backer is cheating towards the safeties then you know its
tampa-2.
* 1 Safety
If there's only one single safety then this usually means that the defense is
being aggressive, ie they want to blitz, or are showing that they are
expecting a run.
_Blitz_
If the number of players on the line of scrimmage for the defense outnumbers
the number of players on the offensive and in the vicinity of the QB then this
implies the defense is showing a blitz. Picking out the blitzing player is a
lot of fun when watching the Jets, Eagles or Ravens play.
Player in motion
On a passing play, most teams will use the player in motion to figure out if
the defense is in zone or man coverage. (They are mostly always in zones but
do use man coverage to shake things up.)
So as the offensive player in motion moves, watch who covers him. Does he get
handed off from one player to another on the defense or does the same
defensive player follow him as he moves from one side of the field to the
next. If the same player moves to cover the man in motion then it usually
implies that the defense is playing a man-coverage. If the man in motion is
handed off between players then this usually implies a zone.
Of course there could be special cases in which the defense chooses man/zone
depending on which player is in motion at the time of the snap.
_Exercises_
How do you know if your seeing/understanding enough of the action:
1\. On regular plays you should be able to see the "hold penalty" at the same
time as it happens and before the commentator explains it on TV.
2\. You should be able to call some percentage of the plays as you get
familiar with understanding the strategy your team plays as well as the play
callers idiosyncrasies and the players who get the most attention on the team.
3\. Figure out if the defense is in a zone or man coverage. This will take a
while because most defenses dont run a scheme which is instantly recognizable.
As you enjoy more aspects of the game, you'll realize the true brilliance of
Peyton Manning, the genius of Rex Ryan and you'll be baffled by how precise
these NFL plays are.
These are the basics and there is so much more happening on the field. If you
have any questions then please ask them here and I'll update this answer.
~~~
mechanical_fish
This is excellent.
Here's a question: Where can I buy the equivalent of _this post_ , but in
video form with actual illustrative game footage?
I've wanted to see that for some time. Want it for every sport on earth,
really.
I've thought about trying to watch a bunch of coaching videos for my sport of
choice, but was never sure it would help. They aren't designed for me. I don't
need to know how to think like an above-average high-school coach or player; I
want to admire the work of top-level pros.
~~~
bokonist
If you have an xbox or playstation buy Madden and try learning to play the
game it a bit. The formations, plays, and strategy are pretty much all real.
You'll learn about different formations, routes, zone defense, etc.
~~~
kingnothing
Agreed. I really didn't understand football much at all until I started
playing Madden with a group of friends. They helped me out in the beginning by
answering questions like "why are there two different colored lines for the QB
routes?" (it's an option play). By learning the game of Madden, I learned the
game of football and now have an appreciation for the sport.
~~~
mechanical_fish
Interesting that this didn't occur to me. An artifact of being just a little
too old, I think. (In the Atari 2600 days one did _not_ play sports games for
the knowledge...)
What's sad is that I read a whole article about how much hard work it is for
sports-game programmers to get all this stuff perfect and I still didn't get
it until now!
Many thanks. Madden it is. ;)
------
loso
I have always been a football fan but when I was in college I lived in the
Football dorm and it changed how I saw the game forever. (Back story, I lived
in those dorms because I'm a big guy and the coach wanted me to play for the
team. I told him yeah because I noticed that at registration all of the
Football players were able to skip in line. I never did play because I loved
Basketball more than Football at the time).
Anyway, when you live around Football players 24/7 you start to learn facets
of the game that you never knew about. You learn what every position is doing
on every play and why they are doing it.Now when I watch Football it is more
like a game of chess than a brutal grudge match. The real excitement in the
game comes from watching the linemen and not the skilled positions.
On another side note, you would think that all of this football knowledge
would help actual players when playing Madden (That was all that was played in
those dorms. Hours and hours of Madden). It does but only to a certain extent.
Football players take Madden too literally and try to play it as a simulation.
They forget the video game part. I would use that to my advantage all of the
time.
~~~
nkassis
There a few things that are starting to bleed from the madden into the real
life game. Time management is one of them. I can't remember who it was but a
few years ago a player was running for the ends zone and had a huge lead on
the defense, 1 yard from the end zone he started running sideways draining as
much clock as possible, assuring no come back from the opposite team.
I saw I believe Leon Washington for the Jaguars pull a similar stunt once, the
D seemed to be giving him a free TD at the end of the game but he preferred to
just take a knee right before the end zone. With the new Canadian Football
rule requiring contact to end the play the D lost a few seconds not reacting
fast enough (first year it was implemented I believe) thinking he was down.
The game is also teaching much better strategy to players, getting them to
understand more than their position.
~~~
adestefan
It was Brian Westbrook for the Eagles on Dec 1, 2007. He actually just dropped
at the 1 because the Cowboys had no timeouts left and the game was effectively
over with a 1st down. I believe in the post game interview he acknowledged
that he did it because that's how he wastes the opponents time in Madden
games.
Maurice Jones-Drew did the same thing in 2009 against the Jets.
------
flyt
Here's the NFL survey asking fans if they would like access to this footage
for a fee: <https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9FXQC3D>
In case it gets pulled, here's the attached image:
<http://cl.ly/3e1m1b0x1L410V0I1i0h>
The poll says "The NFL is evaluating an online streaming product providing
consumers with exclusive Coaches Film footage of all 22 players on the field
for every play and game."
The whole survey: <http://cl.ly/1Q3R0h1L161b3J1a2J3u>
------
bumbledraven
Good article on the subject in Slate, from 2007: "The NFL's Perplexing Refusal
To Help Fans Understand the Game"
[http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/features/200...](http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/features/2007/how_to_watch_pro_football/the_nfls_perplexing_refusal_to_help_fans_understand_the_game.html)
A bit more from Football Outsiders:
[http://www.footballoutsiders.com/walkthrough/2006/too-
deep-z...](http://www.footballoutsiders.com/walkthrough/2006/too-deep-zone-
big-jaworski)
------
mechanical_fish
I used to watch NHL hockey when I was a kid. Then I started going to college
hockey games, and that was great, but a terrible side effect is that I've
never been able to enjoy TV hockey in quite the same way. Those players off
the screen are _really important_.
The advent of HDTV has done a lot to fix this for hockey, where the rink is
not so huge. But it would be awesome to have full-field perspective on
football.
~~~
adestefan
I agree that most sports are better live. The problem is that NFL games have
so many TV timeouts now that watching NFL games live gets _boring_. There is
so much downtime, that it's not worth the $100+ for a ticket anymore.
~~~
w1ntermute
You can get around this pretty easily by just using a DVR and starting the
game about halfway through. Fast forward through the commercials/breaks and
you'll progressively catch up as the game goes on, and hopefully finish at
about the same time.
The only major issue with this is if you have friends watching separately who
regularly text you about occurences in the game as it's going on. You'll also
have to make sure you don't look at any NFL websites during the game.
------
josephcooney
What's the reason for keeping the footage out of the public's hands?
"Proprietary NFL coaching information" doesn't really explain it. Are the NFL
making money off the teams by cutting them a special deal of All-22 footage of
their own games, and opponents?
~~~
curiouskat
The NFL's lawyers stated the NFL competes in the "entertainment marketplace"
([http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?renderfor...](http://judiciary.senate.gov/hearings/testimony.cfm?renderforprint=1&id=e655f9e2809e5476862f735da11d017d&wit_id=e655f9e2809e5476862f735da11d017d-1-2))
and operates as a single entity, not as 32 teams. The NFL makes a large
portion of its revenue from television, and ratings are higher on close,
competitive games.
What prevents owners from keeping the games close or trading wins/losses now
to help a storyline in exchange for markers for future wins when they're on a
championship track?
While it is illegal to fix sporting events for gambling purposes, evidently
you can fix sports for entertainment purposes. The All 22 footage would make
this more difficult because this type of stuff would be easier for fans to
detect.
~~~
matwood
The _only_ way the NFL could hope to come anywhere near fixing a game is the
either a) change the rules to benefit certain team makesup (as they have done
to make passing/scoring easier) or b) get the refs to call fouls more against
a certain team.
b) is watched frequently and doesn't seem to be happening statistically a) has
occurred but it's not secret and all teams know the rules. It's not really
'fixing' as much as it was the NFL wanting more scoring overall.
There is no way for the NFL to do mass game fixing because that's just too
many people that have to agree to doing it. Keep in mind this means they would
need current players, ex-players and the ex _disgruntled_ players too all
agree to not talk. I've talked to players from all 3 groups at the gym and
fixing a game is simply something that doesn't happen. Some of these guys are
very negative on the NFL and would have loved to say it's fake if it was true.
~~~
curiouskat
All you need is the coach calling the plays and one high-paid player to have a
bad day, like the quarterback. "Any given Sunday," right?
------
ja2ke
If college or Canadian football started doing it and fans responded extremely
positively and started asking for/expecting it elsewhere, that could force the
NFL's hand a bit. The XFL's crazy wire camera rigs almost immediately made
their way into the NFL, so there's at least a little precedent.
~~~
philwelch
Conversely, if the NFL released this footage, competing leagues could analyze
NFL tactics and raise their level of play. So it really is a competitive
advantage.
------
ghshephard
Seems like there's an opportunity here - how difficult would it be for a fan
to video / stream the "all-22" from high angle (read nosebleed) seats? I've
brought my Laptop and SLR into football and baseball games (Oakland), so they
aren't that strict about allowing media/comms equipment in.
~~~
babar
I am pretty sure the NFL would shut down any distribution very quickly - not
sure how much of an opportunity there is if it blatantly violates someone's IP
rights. What I don't understand is why the NFL wouldn't use it to generate
more revenue. Do they really think the criticism would be any worse than it is
today with 24/7 sports talk and online message boards? Why not have the
criticism be more grounded in reality?
~~~
ghshephard
I'm a pretty strong supporter of IP rights - but in this case I feel capturing
the game that I'm watching falls into grey area - something akin to a bootleg
of a concert.
I agree it's likely that a live stream would be shut down fairly quickly,
particularly at scale, but I'm thinking a combination of after-the-fact + some
intelligent post-processing might be useful/valuable.
Admittedly, the majority-value is in the real-time production, but, by
providing after-the game all-22 videos, you might be able to fly somewhat
under the radar.
I've never been asked to stop taking pictures with my (admittedly small)
70-200 lens - and it's usually perched atop a rail for the entire game - I
could just as easily have been filming the entire game as snapping pictures.
Looking at various venue's policies - it would be hard to do this on a
reliable basis with a larger lens:
<http://www.coliseum.com/info/prohibiteditems.php>
But, the all-22 isn't really a zoom situation anyways...
~~~
yarzigard
I can see them not letting you film in the stadium, but how about you rent a
blimp, and get sufficiently above/outside the stadiums airspace?
------
mnutt
It sounds extremely challenging, but could someone use image detection to
process the existing camera angles and use the field markers to recreate an
overhead view of the game? If it worked, you could probably use that to do
some interesting play analyses over a large number of games.
~~~
jleader
I think the point isn't specifically about the overhead angle, it's that the
existing camera angles don't show some of the players (who may be moving in
ways that are relevant to the overall strategy, but their movements aren't
sufficiently telegenic to bother showing them on TV).
------
malbs
I'd be willing to have a stab that the people who really don't want the public
with this footage are the sports bookies offering point spreads/line betting.
The bookmakers would already have access to this footage, because it is a
competitive edge over the public. If the public suddenly had access to the all
22, there might be a correction in those betting markets.
And if the bookmakers don't have access to the footage? Could be an
opportunity to capitalise on their in-efficiency ;)
------
jsight
Does anyone else just see this as them gauging interest in charging for this
footage? Some of the wording almost makes it sound like a market segmentation
strategy.
------
yewtree
end zone view would be good too.
------
1010101111001
Well, this is why NFL Films and the old programs they produced in the 70's and
80's are so cool. NFL Films had it all. Every angle, every sound plus the
all-22. They could do the full analysis. And their choice of music was, in
retrospect, brilliant. I can watch those old programs year after year. Somehow
I never get tired of them.
Now we have ESPN.
Hats off to keeptrying. You are a true fan.
~~~
nkassis
While ESPN has some problems, I'm not going to complain about them as the only
way I can watch my College team play while in Canada is through their
espnplayer.com service. My wife thinks I'm crazy for paying for it but hell
it's an addiction. If I can't be in the stadium I have to see every play
somehow. (I'm sure I'm not the only one watching then end of the game when
loosing by 50 points right? )
~~~
1010101111001
How about the CFL?
------
mekarpeles
I won't see this sports footage this Thanksgiving because I will be
programming and reading the hacker news articles related to hacking.
------
tobych
This reads like a dark parody of life on earth as we know it. Finally put me
off American Football for life, too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Notepad++ 6.0 Released - kefs
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/news/notepad-6.0-release.html
======
LVB
This personal favorite from their About page lives on:
"By optimizing as many routines as possible without losing user friendliness,
Notepad++ is trying to reduce the world carbon dioxide emissions. When using
less CPU power, the PC can throttle down and reduce power consumption,
resulting in a greener environment."
Gotta love such bold goals from a text editor :)
~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd like to use this joke as an opportunity for a more serious point. It's a
thing that I actually always wondered. Why is the industry spending so much
time advocating that we can write however unoptimal code we like, because it's
always cheaper to throw in another server? Wouldn't spending time to optimize
software be able to create serious savings in worldwide emissions, given that
any given piece of software is likely to be used by 10k - 10M people?
I know that optimizing software for carbon footprint is probably going against
The Economy itself, but isn't it the point where our current economy of
consumption and growth is leading us to destruction? Maybe there is way to
incentivize savings more?
~~~
lclarkmichalek
Pick a random article about a data centre, and see what it is about. Presuming
nothing awful has happened at that data centre, it's almost certainly about
some way the company has found to save money, and that usually means doing
something innovative with cooling. And that is saving a hell of a lot of
money. I'd be interested to see a break down of the energy consumption of a
data centre; I imagine cooling is the biggest output (though I'm happy to be
proved wrong). And it's probably easier to halve cooling output than it is to
halve the number of servers running, as improving the efficiency of a data
centre seems like a much more isolated task compared to improving the
efficiency of potentially thousands of programs written by several hundred
teams.
~~~
tudorw
I Agree, I understand that in some data centers power is the main bottleneck
on sales, not heat, emissions or hardware cost, there is plenty of interesting
stuff going on here which is sympathetic to environmental considerations.
[http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/24/google-opening-
seawater-c...](http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/24/google-opening-seawater-
cooled-data-center-finally-glad-it-appl/) [http://www.comms-
express.com/news/server-racks/servers-don-t...](http://www.comms-
express.com/news/server-racks/servers-don-t-mind-the-outdoor-life-experiment-
claims-18800045/)
------
vvnraman
Notepad++ is one of the fastest and the best editors out there.
Products like these show that over a given period of time, people being to
notice the subtle differences between the speed of simple things, like the
time taken for the context menu to appear, or the drop-down for word
completion to appear. This is primarily why my use of IDEs has decreased over
time. It just takes a little too long for doing stuff in them, and hinders
your natural flow.
By the way, their word completion (Settings -> Preferences -> Backup/Auto-
completion -> Word Completion) is simply their killer feature and has spoiled
me for any other editors.
~~~
meow
+1 for the speed. Not many IDEs seem to care for that any more. Especially
most java based IDEs. They feel so sluggish even for the most rudimentary of
tasks (opening menus, launching, closing, autocomplete etc)
~~~
Joeri
I switched from zend studio to phpstorm almost entirely due to speed, with
product quality being the other part of what drove me. Fundamentally, an ide
is still a code editor, and it has to do that at least as well as notepad++ or
i will not use it.
------
crusso
What a great product, free or otherwise. It's always one of the first
applications I download and install when I log into a Windows machine.
------
RegEx
Notepad++ was my first text editor of choice when I decided I wanted to do web
development. I've since moved on to VIM, but I'm very glad to hear Notepad++
is still going strong.
~~~
platz
Same story here! But I still use Notepad++ for quick tasks that I might
otherwise have to spend a few thought cycles on in VIM. Also, I really like
Notepad++'s Python Script plugin.
------
Achshar
everyone seems to be talking about how great notepad++ is. don't get me wrong,
i love it too, in fact it is my primary editor. But why isn't anyone talking
about the changes that came with the update? There seems to be no changes from
UI perspective. They could have just released another small update. One
expects major changes with a left-most version number change. Or am i missing
something?
plus if my view counts, i would like a UI overhaul. Its still very XP-eyee.
~~~
mulation
Perl style regular expression support is a big thing! I use notepad++ a lot,
but the search has always reminded me of vim.
~~~
Someone
It is not only that it is Perl-style; this version also supports multiline
regular expressions.
I do not like that it requires you to know a file's line endings to use them,
though:
Mac. : a\rb
Windows: a\r\nb
Unix. : a\nb
~~~
thewordis
I was able to do this in the previous version.
------
Osiris
I come from a Windows background and recently switched to Mac at work. I'm a
pretty heavy user of Notepad++ but so far all the good text editors I've found
for Mac are shareware.
What good free text editors do you recommend on Mac that have similar
features, like syntax highlighting, auto-indent, and regular expression
support?
~~~
anthonyb
Just a note to let mark_up and chevas know that they've been hellbanned. I
don't think you're trolls, so I thought I'd let you know (I can't respond to
your posts directly).
~~~
irahul
mark_up and chevas: Looking at your comments history, it doesn't look like you
post inappropriate comments, and have most likely been banned by mistake.
You can make new accounts, but I would suggest getting your current accounts
unbanned. A short mail to pg(you can guess the email address) on the lines of
"I believe my hn handle <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mark_up> is
wrongfully banned" does the trick.
------
pirateking
Ahh Notepad++. My editor of choice when I first got into programming. After
switching to Mac years ago, I have been using TextMate/Xcode/Emacs.
There are only 3 things I look back on fondly from Windows: MSPaint, Winamp,
and Notepad++.
~~~
dkharrat
Same here, though I also miss WinSCP.
~~~
rndstr
I switched to Filezilla instead.
------
sonar_un
I love Notepad++, but when I started using Sublime Text 2, I purchased it, and
never looked back.
~~~
blntechie
I'm little curious on their no time limit evaluation and a license to buy for
continuous use model. Is it just a good faith agreement to buy it if you
intend to use continuously or it can be enforced later if it's detected it's
used regularly?
~~~
georgemcbay
It is a good faith agreement, plus a nag dialog that pops up once in a while
if you're running unlicensed.
------
Karunamon
I love N++ for some of its XML handling features (being able to hit a menu
item to get an xpath readout is handy), but I still find myself using GVim
more often than not.
------
vinodkd
No love for Textpad on HN? Its been running strong for ages and has the "just
works" feel about it - always. Install it, switch to windows keybindings and
you're good to go. And, it has editable macros.
I live in the knowledge that I'm going to hell for not paying for that awesome
piece of software!
~~~
crescentfresh
Textpad's "Constrain the cursor to the text" feature is what I miss the most.
I have never seen it present elsewhere.
------
prophetjohn
Hands down my favorite editor for Windows, but when I'm using it, I still wish
I was using gedit or TextMate.
~~~
pooriaazimi
Try Sublime Text 2. It's fantastic (just like TextMate):
<http://www.sublimetext.com/2>
It's free for now.
Be sure to check Sublime package Manager. There are hundreds of Sublime
extensions, many of which were ported directly from TextMate (and have
.tmbundle suffix!):
<http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control>
List of packages: <http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/community#sort-installs>
~~~
xpose2000
I just tried out Sublime Text 2. I can see the reason why its users like it.
As for me, it seems to take somewhat easy tasks and makes them more difficult.
Installing packages was a head-scratcher at first, even with your guidance.
I'm just going to stick with Notepad++. It may not be pretty, but its
straightforward and gets the job done.
~~~
michael_fine
Yeah, packages by default are hard on sublime. I recommend installing package
control: <http://wbond.net/sublime_packages/package_control>
------
kemo
The only two things I miss from Windows are Notepad++ and Total Commander
(Ultima Prime). Killer combo.
~~~
rplnt
I also miss Winamp (although not that much) and Miranda (IM client). When I'm
on Linux I rather don't use any dedicated IM client at all. Just IRC +
something web based.
As with text editor, I never used Notepad++ too much but at the moment I use
Komodo Edit. It seems fine to me and it is cross platform.
~~~
jamesgeck0
Winamp? Bah, Foobar2000 is where it was at. Tiny resource usage, infinitely
customizable, and an arcane UI. Switching to anything else feels like that
cold, uneasy feeling you get when you run your favorite editor on a machine
without your personal config file and try to use one of your custom
keybindings.
------
zanny
I like notepad++, but have switched to geany because its cross platform :P
------
gcp
Does "Enhance the loading performance for the large file." mean it can edit
files larger than your RAM now?
UltraEdit could do this. I always find it unfortunate Notepad++ can't.
~~~
electrotype
I use EditPad Pro instead of Notepad++ because of this. I'll try this new
NotePad++ version today!
~~~
electrotype
Sadly I just tested it and it's still not that good with large files.
I created a 185MB text file. It opens well, but:
1) Scrolling to the end is very slow
2) Finding a keyword which is near the end is very slow too
I'll stick to EditPad Pro for now.
------
wenbert
Does it have "smart" word wrapping like Sublime Text 2? I think it is one of
the killer features for me. I sometimes need to work with a small screen and
need word-wrapping on.
~~~
demetris
If by smart wrapping you mean indented wrapping, yes, it does. Set you
preferred wrap mode to Indent in Settins, Preferences, Editing, and then
toggle Word Wrap from the View menu.
SciTE, with which Notepad++ shares the scintilla editing component, has quite
a few settings for wrapping:
<http://www.scintilla.org/SciTEDoc.html>
(Search for “wrap” in the page.)
I haven’t looked into how many of those are supported in Notepad++, as I don’t
use word wrap myself.
------
mp3geek
I'm personally a PSPad user, performs fine, does what I need to do in windows
<http://www.pspad.com/>
------
mey
Always preferred jEdit, vim, and Notetab over Notepad++.
------
ittan
my favoritest editor 1\. Love the way Notepad++ handles drag and drop with
hundreds of files.
2\. Also love the way it opens large files.
------
ale55andro
This is my editor of choice too. I love it and miss it everytime I have to
switch editors when not working on windows.
------
munchor
Even though I don't use it, because it's not cross-platform, it looks like a
great text editor for all Windows users.
------
bluetidepro
I don't know if I will get flak for this but I really wish they made a Mac
version.. :'(
------
swapsmagic
Why updating existing version shows "no update available" message?
------
yitchelle
Nothing like a text editor post to get the emotions going..:-)
------
paul9290
Can notepadd++ be directly connected to your server so you can code, save and
upload all from within the program?
------
drhowarddrfine
This makes the top of HN? What a sad day.
------
derrida
But Notepad++ requires a binary blob called "Windows".
~~~
Maro
Hi, sorry, I downvoted you. The Guidelines say:
Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics
unless you have something genuinely new to say about them.
Also.
Please don't submit comments complaining that a
submission is inappropriate for the site. If you think
something is spam or offtopic, flag it by going to its
page and clicking on the "flag" link. (Not all users will
see this; there is a karma threshold.) If you flag
something, please don't also comment that you did.
~~~
derrida
Sure, I understand. :-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Python Internals: PyObject - kercker
http://www.gahcep.com/python-internals-pyobject/
======
harrisi
Although it's been posted here (only twice, though!) before, Philip Guo put up
a 10-hour series of lectures on CPython internals[0]. I am nearly done with
them, and have found them very useful and well-paced. Posting here because the
author of this article seems to have stopped the series, and anyone interested
in this stuff should definitely check out the Guo lectures.
[0]: [http://pgbovine.net/cpython-internals.htm](http://pgbovine.net/cpython-
internals.htm)
~~~
giis
+1 Guo series is excellent. I completed them twice & very confident about my
python skills more than ever before :)
~~~
pgbovine
Thanks everyone! Recording lectures has been great since it doesn't take much
extra work than not recording; just takes some time to render the final videos
and upload. Ideally I'd have time to split the videos up into smaller chunks,
but alas free time is diminishing nowadays.
~~~
harrisi
Would you have any interest in providing someone (I would volunteer) the
videos so that they can package them in smaller, topic-specific pieces for
easier consumption? I don't know anything about editing videos, but if your
writings and lectures have taught me anything, it's that I'm capable of
learning things and using that knowledge to do interesting and useful work.
As an aside, you are one of my main sources of inspiration. I was a high
school dropout with several terms of failing out of community college courses,
but after reading your PhD Grind series/book, I'm now a (nearly) straight A
student and am very determined to go as far with my education as I can. I
would be honored to help you in any small way I can to express my gratitude!
Thanks again for unknowingly improving my life.
------
dfox
Contrary to what the article says, PyVarObject is still PyObject at the same
time and PyVarObjects have nothing to do with mutability (certainly, it's
trivialy obvious that not all PyVarObjects are mutable as immutable tuples are
PyVarObjects, while mutable lists are not)
The thing that is handled by PyVarObject are types whose instances can differ
in their size, with tuple and bytes objects being probably most common cases
when it is used.
------
partycoder
If you try to embed or extend Python in C you will be exposed to PyObject very
quickly. The official Python documentation can walk you through that process
(visit the embedding or extending parts). The PyObject structure mentioned in
the article also comes with many functions to manage them programatically,
cast them to other types, etc.
~~~
p4wnc6
I'm curious if you know much about jobs doing this kind of thing. I've worked
a ton with Python, and know a lot about using Cython to write extension
modules, wrap C++ code, etc.
I really want a job where I find performance bottlenecks in research or
business analytics or financial analytics code, migrate parts to robust Cython
implementations, and then build and maintain the broader Python libraries and
APIs surrounding that.
But what I'm unfortunately finding is that basically nobody uses this stuff
anywhere in practice. I've interviewed at a ton of places doing everything in
C++ entirely, and I just see their code and I think, my god, why would anyone
choose this? You can write the critical stuff in C++ just as you are, and then
so easily wrap it for Python, then write the other 99% of the code in super
easy, dynamic Python, even with various kinds of validating systems, or using
typing and type annotations to avoid certain kinds of bugs, and just
everyone's life is easier.
But they are just so entrenched in the old way of doing it that nobody is
willing to try.
I've been consistently amazed at how few jobs in the monthly Who Is Hiring
thread are tagged even just with NumPy. I think I've seen maybe one job in 6
months that mentions Cython, and then I found two others outside of HN and the
interviews with those places didn't work out.
How to find a job doing this stuff is like my main vexing work problem at the
moment. It's so useful, but it's sort of locked outside of some kind of energy
barrier that quant teams seem unwilling to cross.
~~~
osullivj
Suggest you look for an opening on JP Morgan's Athena project, or Bank of
America Merrill Lynch Quartz. Both those platforms are C++ on the inside with
Python APIs. The originators have gone independent here:
[http://www.wsq.io/about-us/](http://www.wsq.io/about-us/) The site says
they're hiring.
~~~
brianwawok
A few trading companies do this kind of work also.
Since you really want to write C and Python... Do you care if you have to
write trading code to help billionaires make more money?
~~~
p4wnc6
I don't think I would be a good match for bank culture or HFT, but if the work
you describe is in a small-to-medium sized asset manager or hedge fund, then I
would not mind, and would find it enjoyable. I worked at such a place a number
of years ago and it was one of the better jobs I've had.
The trouble I find is that a lot of small-to-medium sized asset managers and
hedge funds don't have very good technology practices in general, and are
pretty far from sophisticated use of low-level Python. There are often a lot
of political reasons why they cling to Excel/VBA, R, or MATLAB, and there's
almost always some political battle happening between the people that want to
rationalize the system to a proper software design, and people who just want
to keep cranking on the hodge podge of existing tools.
I'd probably be fine with some trade-off regarding all of that, if the pay was
acceptable and there was a strong commitment to a healthy work/life balance.
But among finance firms this is extremely hard to find.
So even though I am not at all opposed to doing this work in finance, I still
find the volume of acceptable job openings in that field to be too small to
make it realistic.
------
denfromufa
Here is blog post about python list implementation, one of 2 main data
structures used internally: [http://www.laurentluce.com/posts/python-list-
implementation/](http://www.laurentluce.com/posts/python-list-implementation/)
------
denfromufa
Cython can be used to auto-generate optimized Python C-API code that gets
source-mapped line by line to original Cython code in the form of HTML
annotations. This stuff is very hard to write by hand.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why IQ matters more than grit - wslh
http://www.vox.com/2016/5/25/11683192/iq-testing-intelligence
======
CuriouslyC
The frustrating thing for me with IQ as a measure is that realistically, it
conflates a couple of factors. Specifically, it is testing both the efficiency
of your thought process (which is _extremely_ trainable) and the speed and
error rate with which your brain executes that thought process (which is
probably somewhat less trainable). The IQ test should really be re-designed
into separate extremely challenging un-timed problems, and extremely simple
timed problems. Problems should also be timed separately rather than as a
group, and we should look at the average deviation from mean solution time;
this would avoid penalizing people with poor test-taking strategies (i.e.
spending an inordinate amount of time on one problem in a timed test,
resulting in less time for other problems).
As for IQ being more important than grit, IQ probably explains more variance
in success for the average person. On the other hand, if you look at the
extreme outliers in terms of success, I would confidently wager than extreme
grit is much more common than extreme intelligence.
~~~
naveen99
Isn't efficiency one of the things that allows you to go faster (at the same
effort level) ?
~~~
CuriouslyC
Yes and no. A useful analogy is to think of software and hardware. You have a
general purpose CPU that runs software designed to solve a particular type of
problem. The CPU (your brain) probably has a fixed frequency (you might be
able to "overclock" it slightly, but not much). On the other hand, you can
completely rewrite the software (your thought process) using better algorithms
and get a MASSIVE speed increase.
------
bko
> [in response to the idea that IQ doesn't change over time] Think about how
> it would it be if it was the other way around; there might actually be some
> bad outcomes. Because then parents would be able to totally control their
> kids with bad parenting, and wreck kids’ IQs for the rest of their lives.
> Governments could have big influences on people’s IQs by enacting different
> policies toward different sets of people in the country.
I can't quite put my finger on why I find this assertion so loathsome. As
though having autonomy over your intelligence is somehow a betrayal to what I
imagine is the interviewee's sense of societal "fairness" or "equality".
~~~
Bartweiss
One thing that put my eyebrows up is that the claim seems so contradictory to
what we actually observe. Governments and parents do have big influences on
IQ. Unleaded gasoline is the obvious winner, but there's fairly solid evidence
that iodized salt, childhood nutrition, acute childhood stress, and traumatic
brain damage all cause substantial changes in IQ.
Far from seeing some kind of discriminatory eugenics from all of this
(anywhere, even in dictatorships), we see the Flynn effect. Things have gotten
better across the board, and continue to whenever we track down a new way to
modify IQ.
The suggestion that "controlling IQ would be horrifying" seems so unsupported
that it's purely ideological.
~~~
rrobukef
One of the most horrifying things I ever read was the first(second?) chapter
of A Brave New World. The thought of not helping a person is bad. Fysically
stunting someones growth makes me sick. To just do it to escape the ethical
debate at a later point is horrifying.
~~~
Bartweiss
I've always held with the claim that BNW is far more interesting and
applicable to our world than _1984_. Totalitarianism is out there, but it's
not absolute and it's largely understood as evil. The sort of glib, "everyone
is happy" moralism of BNW presents much deeper questions.
------
hexane360
This is really surprising to me. It seems the popular narrative is much
different from that found by actual researchers. I do have some reservations
though. Do all of these correlations (happiness, job success, EQ, general
intelligence, etc.) hold up at the higher and lower end of IQ (e.g. 130 -> 150
or 60 -> 80) Does the vast amount of data near the middle cloud what's
happening at the ends?
Also, on the age 11 versus age 90 distribution, there appears to be a lot of
funneling of the residuals. Lower age 11 IQs seem to have a lot less
correlation with later life than higher age 11 IQs. I wonder if this has to do
with late development or behavioral problems that cause artificially low IQs.
Either way very interesting article.
------
Smeevy
That guy seems to put an awful lot of stock in a test that can only correctly
identify whether or not you're developmentally disabled.
"Congratulations on your high IQ! You're _REALLY REALLY NOT_ developmentally
disabled!"
Outside of identifying developmental disabilities, IQ testing is pretty
useless. What's more loathsome is all of the pseudoscience that's crept up
through overinterpretation.
~~~
gmarx
That's the kind of thing laymen always say. Whenever I read reports of what
the social scientists say it sounds like intelligence testing is one of the
few sub fields with consistently reproducible and meaningful results. Even in
this short article they contradict your point by stating the military finds it
correlates with success. The military filters out those with developmental
disabilities.
------
naveen99
I thought you can improve reaction times, performance on sats, other iq tests
using adrenaline or other stimulants. I have never taken them, but so I read
in another hacker news discussion on drugs recently.
Seems to me, you can control intelligence within a day. Get better rest, take
some coffee be smarter. Be tired, drink some beer, get dumber.
read all of hacker news, get smarter. Follow links from hacker news to
youtube, Reddit, wikipedia, github, etc for more goodness.
Watch lifetime, the shopping network, 5 day cricket match, get dumber (or
atleast no smarter during that time).
You give me an iq test, I will show you improvements on it over time in myself
and any trainee. You give me someone too dumb. I will give them a computer
peripheral brain / hardware to help them.
You can write a program to get good at iq tests, go, image classification. I
don't see why I can't train people to get smarter. I do it with my kids all
the time.
------
k__
I have an higher than average IQ and I can't say that it helped me more than
grit.
When I was lazy, I failed.
On the other hand, I don't know if I would have failed with a low IQ and not
being lazy.
~~~
nibs
I think a high IQ leads you to know what to quit when and when to persist. In
my experience, smart people quit bad things sooner, and persist through good
things longer. Stupid people quit the job of a lifetime or break up with a
great person when they should have endured, and/or stick with the same
horrible job/person through everything even though giving up would have
improved their life. Or so the thinking goes.
~~~
cylinder
This is interesting and helpful. Trying not to beat myself up for quickly
realizing certain opportunities aren't for me long term.
------
gmarx
I wonder why people assume accepting IQ implies a dystopian eugenics future. I
see it as an argument for a lot of progressive policies. If everyone is in
control of their mental abilities then it follows that lack of success is down
to personal laziness and success is all about how diligent a person is. People
"deserve" their fates.
On the other hand if some people are born with an advantage, they won the
genetic lottery, it seems to me more justifiable to have government policies
which prevent the clever from taking advantage of the dim. Today in the US the
principle is if you are clever enough you deserve all the money and screw the
people who didn;t have the good sense to be born smart.
------
sbardle
Wow. Intelligence is actually linked to short-sightedness, apparently. I
thought that was an urban myth.
~~~
randomgyatwork
I figured it was related to reading, which might also be correlated with
intelligence.
~~~
sbardle
Or acts of self-pollution? (that is an urban myth, right?)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In Utah, a plan to cut 12th grade -- altogether - robg
http://www.latimes.com/news/nation-and-world/la-na-utah-school15-2010feb15,0,906102.story
======
dsplittgerber
Instead of cutting public employees numbers, their salaries or pension plans,
they're focusing on cutting the actual benefits the state provides for its
people. Say hello to the inherent incentive structure of government.
~~~
hga
Maybe ... in this case the current proposal on the table is to make it
optional. For a significant subset of students, the ones who the school system
is essentially warehousing, that strikes me as OK. After all, a high school
degree nowadays is essentially worthless, a basic college degree has replaced
it.
There's the danger of the slippery slope, of course.
~~~
dsplittgerber
The danger of arguing about these proposals - they may very well be worthy of
separate appraisal - is that one accepts the basic principle that in times of
receding tax revenues it's ok to cut benefits for the taxpayers but not to
downsize the actual legislature or governing body with its employees as well.
It's a perfect smoke screen on the part of the legislature.
~~~
euroclydon
I was doing some work for the Office of the Speaker of the House in
California, which is huge and employees hundreds of people. They are paid by
the state. A guy there told me that when the is a gov. shutdown, they get IOUs
for months. Plus they do get laid off also.
~~~
dsplittgerber
"According to a 2007 analysis of data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics
by the Asbury Park Press, “the average federal worker made $59,864 in 2005,
compared with the average salary of $40,505 in the private sector.” Across
comparable jobs, the federal government paid higher salaries than the private
sector three times out of four, the paper found." There is an eye-opening
story in Reason magazine on how public servants have it much better than
private sector workers: <http://reason.com/archives/2010/01/12/class-war>
------
georgecmu
I went to high school in the States and a decision to graduate a year early
was one of the best ones I've made. There's no reason not to teach half of the
stuff that's covered in high school to middle schoolers. It was rather
ridiculous to see 9th-10th graders open algebra and geometry textbooks for the
first time.
Incidentally, there's no 12th grade in Russia and in most of the former Soviet
Union countries. There were only 10 grades until 1987-88 or so.
~~~
illumin8
Agreed, I did concurrent enrollment and by the age of 16 was taking half a day
of University courses and half a day of secondary courses.
However, this is quite a bit different. Will any out of state University
seriously consider a college application without 12 grades of experience?
This is tremendously short-sighted. There are some rabid conservative
Republicans that believe all public education should be removed and replaced
with private education. This is just taking advantage of a budget shortfall to
accelerate that process.
Would you trust private corporations to school your children? I'm sure nothing
could possibly go wrong...
~~~
dagw
Certainly here in Sweden there are several high school run by private for
profit companies. On the whole they seem to be doing OK, some are top of the
league, some are so bad the government has to threaten to close them down, but
most are perfectly average. Pretty much just like the state run schools. At
the end of the day choice is good. If a high school student has 8 different
schools he can go to then those school will work hard to up their game and try
to attract that student (since students=money)
~~~
enjo
It's the same thing here. We have a large number of private schools. Some are
based in religion, others are quite secular. These secular private schools
tend to offer a more rigorous education (although that does not seem to
necessarily reflect actual achievement).
~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
Define "here".
------
patrickgzill
I recall a millionaire couple (older folks, maybe 55-60) I knew when I was a
kid - they built and operated nursing homes; I recall very clearly them with
an architect's ruler going over the blueprints for a new building.
They worked on a farm, and were themselves the son and daughter of farmers
going back many generations.
Education level? 8th grade education.
------
jbellis
In the Philippines, completing high school means you've done a total of 10
years. I don't know of a good way to compare high school outcomes per se, but
RP college grads who go on US grad schools certainly seem to do okay.
------
jff
As long as BYU is on board, Utah can probably just go ahead and pass the bill.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scientists make precise edits to mitochondrial DNA for first time - pseudolus
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02054-5
======
koeng
I used to be a mitochondrial engineer. This advance is fantastic, and not
surprising. In 2006[0] they showed that you could get zinc fingers (similar to
TALENs, which is what they use in paper) to site-specifically modify things in
mitochondria. For reference, that is about 7 years before CRISPR was
discovered.
Base editors were more recently discovered, so it was only a matter of time
before they figured out how to do it in mitochondria.
I will be surprised if they figure out how to genetically transform
mitochondria robustly (in humans, etc). That research has been going on for
_decades_ , and still hasn't been figured out. One day, it will be, and I'm
looking forward to learning about how they do it. They figured out
transformation of yeast mitochondria in the 80s, still haven't figured out
human mitochondria.
I think it's going to do something with either RNA import + reverse
transcription OR conjugation[1]. I tried RNA import in yeast, and it doesn't
really work, but I think conjugation has real potential, especially now that
they got endosymbiosis of E.coli working[2].
[0]
[https://www.pnas.org/content/103/52/19689](https://www.pnas.org/content/103/52/19689)
[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC554353/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC554353/)
[2]
[https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1813143115](https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1813143115)
~~~
alfiedotwtf
Do you think this is the start of the land rush for gene manipulation
therapies?
~~~
koeng
Yep, pretty much. It’s a very interesting time - genetic therapies have
extremely low marginal cost, but very high capital cost. Unlike software
systems, they can mean life or death. Piracy of genetic therapies will be
really interesting.
Someday we might not just have antivaxers, but “rogue vaxers” who develop
vaccines to diseases that pharma ignore and DIY test themselves.
~~~
haxiomic
We have this today to an extent, here’s someone who tested a DIY gene editing
cure for lactose intolerance on themselves
[https://youtu.be/aoczYXJeMY4](https://youtu.be/aoczYXJeMY4)
(Spoiler: it worked, very well in fact!)
~~~
koeng
Im a bit suspicious of the lactose experiment, mainly because there wasn’t
hard data to back it up. Back then there was a spurt . AFAIK there are two
people who have DIY gene engineered themselves and have actually gotten data
to back it up, but only 1 who is public about it, and it wasn’t a cool
experiment (just showed RNA transcription) so it isn’t even easy to find.
Josiah Zayner pretty much knows everyone who has tried DIY gene injection and
over the last year or so there has actually been a decrease in people trying
it (bit stale from 2019, but here is his presentation at BioHTP
[https://youtu.be/1QOFDpYnEgY?t=4904](https://youtu.be/1QOFDpYnEgY?t=4904))
------
vikramkr
There's a host of rare diseases that originate from mtDNA mutations that this
could have applications in. I know the tech/Silicon Valley crowd tends to love
anti-aging stuff as well, so for all y'all into life extension stuff, this
should interest you as well because of mitochondria's hypothesized role in
aging[0].
[0]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4779179/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4779179/)
~~~
cachestash
I have been taking a high grade CoQ10 supplement.
CoQ10 is the primary antioxidant the human cell provides to protect and
support mitochondria. It helps generate ATP within the mitochondria, the main
energy driver we have.
CoQ10 is ubiquitous and produce within the body, however after the age of 20
levels start to drop, so it makes sense to consider supplements to top levels
up if you're north of 30.
I love the stuff myself. I went from a tired feeling 45 year old with brain
fog, to having a lot more energy and a mind keen to engage all day with
whatever I have going on at work
[https://examine.com/supplements/coenzyme-q10/#effect-
matrix](https://examine.com/supplements/coenzyme-q10/#effect-matrix)
~~~
pengaru
How did you disambiguate these claimed CoQ10 effects from the results of
taping your mouth shut at night?
"Not only did it fix my apnoea [sic] and huge lack of energy during the day"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23432440](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23432440)
~~~
LeonB
“apnoea” is the British spelling.
~~~
pengaru
TIL, thanks, I didn't know that.
------
fasteo
I suffer from a genetic disease in my mitochondrial DNA (single, large-scale
deletion), so this is great news for me.
I have been closely following mitochondrial research since I was diagnosed 12
years ago, and the progression in our knowledge about mitochondria have been
exponential. Truly impressive.
My sincere appreciation for all researchers out there (even though I do not
expect an actual cure in the foreseeable future; say, next 15 years)
~~~
oehtXRwMkIs
How does the disease impact your life, if I may ask?
~~~
fasteo
Mitochondrial disease is not a disease per se, but I broad category of all
kinds of both nuclear and mitochondrial mutations. Some of them are fatal and
kids die within days or years after birth and some are more like chronic
conditions with a varying degrees of severity.
In my case, my genotype is a single, large-scale mtDNA deletion. It is
heteroplasmic, meaning that some of my mitochondria are normal and some are
mutant. In these type of mutations, heteroplasmy percentage drives disease
severity.
Disease is also progressive. Mutant mitochondria have a replication advantage,
so that the percentage of mutant mitochondria goes up as you age.
My phenotype is called CPEO (Chronic Progressive External Ophthalmoplegia),
probably the most common and benign disease presentation. I have ptosis
(droopy eyelids) and diplopia (double vision). Both corrected by surgery.
I have also some systemic symptoms, mostly a profound "fatigue" that hits me
2-3 days per month. I quote fatigue because it is a unique feeling not like
normal fatigue. Malaise could be also a good definition.
I am lucky. I have a normal life with minor issues. A good diet and exercise
made a huge difference. I also take some over the counter supplements that
also help my body to cope with all the mutant mitochondria.
------
Symmetry
I wonder how you'd distribute these, therapeutically. Our bodies have
mechanisms to let healthier mitochondria out compete less healthy mitochondria
within a cell - the oxidative stress mitochondria are under basically requires
that for us to stay healthy - but how do you get the mitochondria into your
cells. Especially long lived cells like skeletal muscles much less neurons?
~~~
Koshkin
This sounds very complicated. Maybe the future of medicine is in _simplifying_
the human biology and possibly even "upgrading" it to something that is less
susceptible to illness and injury.
~~~
stallmanite
Interesting idea. I wonder if instead of requiring oxygen to hand off
electrons to during respiration we could substitute a simpler system by
dumping the excess charge via a wire? Anyone with domain expertise care to
comment on whether this is possible?
~~~
op03
Electroactive bacteria?
------
gwern
Paper mirror:
[https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/editing/2020-mok.pdf](https://www.gwern.net/docs/genetics/editing/2020-mok.pdf)
------
yters
Could someone create a respiratory virus that spreads throughout the earth's
population gene editing everyone into perfection?
~~~
jacquesm
What could possibly go wrong?
~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
Or right
------
douglaswlance
How long until we can write DNA as easily as we do Python?
------
siraben
Reminds me of xkcd's "hottest editors"[0].
In all seriousness, if I'm reading this correctly, Ddd9 would resolve the
challenge of using CRISPR-Cas9 to edit mitochondrial genomes. Could this be
used for treatments of mitochondrial diseases in the future? Additionally,
mitochondrial DNA is passed through the mother, so modification could
potentially have a long lasting effect.
[0] [https://xkcd.com/1823/](https://xkcd.com/1823/)
~~~
checker659
I think an electron app will beat both Vim and Emacs to it.
~~~
TomMarius
I would even happily suffer through Electron in this rare case
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Primer on Quantitative Easing (QE) and Its Inherent Limits - joshuafkon
https://medium.com/@joshuafkon/a-primer-on-quantitative-easing-qe-and-its-inherent-limits-391a0c2a3cbc
======
jacoblk1
>QE is essentially an asset swap where the amount of money in circulation
remains unchanged. It does not increase or decrease the money supply directly.
I've always heard of QE as just "printing money" so this was very
enlightening!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Most Requested Languages for Games - kris-master
https://www.gamedev.net/tutorials/business/production-and-management/the-top-ten-languages-for-game-localization-r5255/
======
RenRav
That website looks horrible on mobile, I can barely even see the content
behind the banner and navbars. "Let's make games" is such an unintuitive
button to dismiss the banner as well, it looks like it would jump to a sign-up
page.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Save Net Neutrality in Europe - ashitlerferad
http://savenetneutrality.eu
======
blatant
Except Britain.
~~~
fattire
They're still EU members for a while...
~~~
daenney
Yap. Once they invoke article 50 of the Lisbon treaty they're still a member
of the EU for at least another year or two, bound by the same rules and
legislation but without any say in it.
So no, not "except Britain".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Python Gangsta Rap - gar1t
http://shardingdevnull.com/python-gangsta-rap
======
mdg
kewl, if we r lucky then ppl will do this for other languagez 2!!!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stop Focusing on What You Don't Have - fourspace
http://timcheadle.com/posts/2013/08/06/stop-focusing-on-what-you-dont-have/
======
mattm
Like a lot of good advice, this is easy to say but sometimes difficult to
implement. But it's good to be reminded of this. When you say "If I only had
X, I could do Y" what you are really telling yourself is that now, you can't
do Y. So you don't do it. Excuses are easy to come up but hard to get out of.
As a shameless self-plug, I've put together a course that helps developers
reduce the tendency to think that the grass is always greener. If you're
interested, see my profile for the link.
------
vitd
While I agree with his premise, he doesn’t give a lot of useful advice on how
to implement his suggestion. In the case of the menswear website, how does
calling people and using a spreadsheet help? People on the phone can’t see the
clothes. Also, who are you calling in that example?
In the case of the project management idea - again, who do you call to get a
job implementing your idea?
The code idea is probably a reasonable one for some people, though coding is
often much harder than it looks.
Finally he says, "The problem is not what you’re missing; it’s that you are
not leveraging what you have,” but he gives no advice on how to do that
practically. It’s good advice, just not useful without more information.
~~~
fourspace
My goal wasn't to give specific advice to people in certain situations. My
examples are hypothetical; maybe I didn't make that clear.
Instead, the point of the article was to motivate you to go actually make
sales, create value, and build relationships. None of these things require a
developer. Do I know who you should specifically call to test the market in a
given context? No; that's your problem to figure out. The point is that you
CAN figure it out.
------
itsallbs
It's very easy to fall into this mental trap. Developers are creative people
by definition; we of all people have no excuse to pass the blame for our lack
of success to another. It's a way of avoiding responsibility and completely
counterproductive to success. Great post.
------
PufferBuffer
The sad reality is, even after reading this article most folks will resolve to
once again, blaming others for the things they don't have. It's not that most
people don't know they should work harder to strive for their own, but rather
it's a lot easier to blame someone else, and humans are naturally lazy. Most
people know, but don't act, imho.
------
speeder
He never addressed what you do when you need massive marketing and don't have
the funds.
~~~
tomasien
When is that a thing? I can imagine that those scenarios exist, for example
you make a product that isn't nearly as good as a product that every savvy
user already knows about (1and1mywebsite for example), but what is a common
example?
~~~
speeder
This is very routine when you make games for mobile.
Every successful game company for mobile had lots of investment in marketing.
This also applies for non-mobile too actually, Activision for example famously
spends more money in marketing than development, Modern Warfare 2 for example
had a marketing budget of 250 million.
Because of awful mobile "discoverability" you need marketing, there is no
other way, you just need it, people WON'T EVER find you unless they see a ad,
someone refers the thing to them, or they see front page in the store (and
when this happen, you already is doing well...)
EDIT about viral: My company in particular makes games for children, we cannot
rely on anything that looks remotely anti-ethical... All our competitors (both
with success and failures) rely mostly on marketing while they don't have a
brand.
about Marketing expenses: The need for money, is mostly to test what works,
and what does not, with some things is easy and every small company (including
us) already do, that is test campaigns in AdMob, AppBrain and so on, the
problem is the next "tier" is with companies that charge 20K USD upfront for
their basic services... We all know that you need to hire them, but for
obvious reasons everyone is secretive about WHO you hire, ensuring a sort of
barrier of entry, where newcomers must waste money around until they find the
company that really deliver.
And finally, organic growth and small marketing works, and the amount of users
do climb, the problem it is not fast enough to cover fixed costs for a LOOOONG
time, way longer than the runway.
~~~
tomasien
Tim is, in this blog, forcing you to REALLY define need, and I think "tons of
marketing dollars for initial launch" is not a need, ever. What you need is to
prove that, when they find the game, they'll download and pay for it. Invest
$100 in marketing, and see what your ROI is. If it's high enough, somebody
with half a brain would put up the money to amp up the spend.
I do not agree that these "need" massive marketing, but it does depend on the
scale. The only game I worked with delivering has over 20,000 downloads and
absolutely no marketing, because there are a ton of blogs that write about
iPhone games. It's not a very good game, and it has absolutely 0 viral
mechanics, or else I'd posit we'd have more.
We were lucky, to be fair, but I disagree that a "startup" that is making a
game "needs" massive marketing dollars. It seems like you "need" viral
mechanics, press, devoted fans, or an incremental ad spending campaign where
you constantly re-invest the money you have.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Imgur XSS - tetrep
https://www.reddit.com/r/4chan/comments/3lutoo/imgur_is_doing_fishy_things_with_4chan_screencaps/cv9lqrt
======
mgo
This was a pretty major exploit.
Imgur has acknowledged the exploit:
[https://twitter.com/imgur/status/646109742004224000](https://twitter.com/imgur/status/646109742004224000)
Looks like the exploit was a combination of a misconfiguration in the way
direct images are displayed on Imgur as well as some kind of Adobe Flash zero-
day.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Open sourcing my project, how to enforce the “social” license I chose? - nfc
I've created a suite of products for restaurants<i>. I started this project to try new models of development with a positive social impact.<p>I'd like to license everything (code</i><i>, marketing and legal materials...) under an open source license which with a clause by which the restaurants that use them have to donate at least 5 dollars per month to non profits. The non profits should help finance similar projects, hopefully creating a virtuous cycle of socially responsible code and businesses.<p>There are more details to how this would work but that's the gist of it, to create a "social open source" project that would encourage the creation of others</i><i></i><p>What is holding me back is that I do not know how I could enforce such a license. I have created the project on my own with little means and I would have no way of knowing who is using the code to create their own products. I've thought about several alternatives:<p>1) Giving the ownership of the code to an organization that would have the means to enforce the license. I suppose there could be organizations interested on fostering this kind of project.<p>2) Keeping the backend code closed so I could know which restaurants are using it and make sure they do the donation to the NGO. There are downsides to this approach from my lack of previous reputation to server costs.<p>Are there other ways to make sure a license is complied with?<p>* The product is described in www.alfiv.com, it is used by restaurants in Spain and France and everything (UI, legal terms, marketing...) is translated to English, French and Spanish<p><i></i> I've used a common software stack (react + redux + ramda) in order to facilitate collaboration<p><i></i>* I chose the restoration industry because of its size, if a "social open source" project could become an important player in this field with this kind of license it could allow the creation of many other similar projects
======
mtmail
If you make it a requirement to spend 5 dollars per month for using the
product, then I'd say it doesn't fit open licenses. If you want to enforce the
license in a structured way you might as well sell (a subscription to) the
product. You can of course donate any profit you make.
~~~
nfc
well, I was calling it open source in the sense that it could allow the same
kind of collaborative development that open source allows.
Any company or individual could see it, modify it and sell it.
Perhaps it's not open source by some definitions of it but it seems to me that
it shares some of its characteristics
------
endswapper
I agree that if there is a monetary requirement it fails to be open source.
That said, I appreciate the intention.
What about requiring a "powered by" type of mark that includes the
organization that they support. Then you can let the organization audit that.
They would know whether or not they received the $5.
~~~
nfc
That seems like a good idea, and is along the lines of things I've been
thinking about to verify the donation. However if a business did not want to
comply with the license they would probably just not include this "powered by"
mark and we would be where we started.
~~~
endswapper
Sure, and all sorts of systems are hacked one way or another. I suggest giving
up on the idea of policing it and release that idea of control.
If your intention truly is social impact then focus on what can be
accomplished by the participants. Forget about the bastards, they aren't
worried about you.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Slack is no longer using a cross-platform C++ library - felixrieseberg
https://slack.engineering/client-consistency-at-slack-beyond-libslack-c9cfbe778fb7
======
mikece
"We were spurred to write an update when Dropbox published this post about why
they also decided to stop using a C++ library in their mobile apps."
I was about to ask why this was being re-published... and also makes me wonder
about if there are use cases where C++ for cross-platform makes sense and has
been a huge success. To make a callback to AirBNB when they ditched React
Native, they made it clear that they weren't saying that mixing React Native
and vendor-native code wouldn't work for everyone, it just didn't work for
them.
------
augusto2112
> Objects from DataProviders are returned as immutable models. On iOS, where
> the app uses a CoreData cache, this means the rest of the app no longer
> needs to access mutable CoreData objects directly, which reduces the need to
> worry about concurrency issues and avoids the crashes due to accessing data
> on the wrong thread that are common with CoreData.
Is this the common way of dealing with core data? I am actually doing exactly
that at work right now, and was wondering if it was the right decision.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Silicon Valley: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, by David DuPouy - ekianjo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aqfKvXvXXk&feature=youtu.be
======
chmaynard
David Dupouy gives a very high-level presentation about Silicon Valley
business culture and why it is so unique and successful. By high-level, I mean
that he generalizes a great deal and doesn't discuss specific companies (other
than PayPal). When asked for a little information about his own businesses, he
avoids the question. That said, Dupouy is an articulate, engaging presenter
and I recommend this video highly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
'The Simpsons' Explains Its Provocative Banksy Opening - davewiner
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/the-simpsons-explains-its-button-pushing-banksy-opening/
======
bradly
It must have been weird for the workers in Korea to produce this opening.
~~~
mechanical_fish
I wouldn't know, but I would imagine that they might find it hilarious.
It's always nice to make a cameo appearance, even in extreme caricature.
(Which is generally the only way one gets to make a cameo appearance on _The
Simpsons_.)
~~~
sliverstorm
I imagine they would only find it hilarious assuming it IS an extreme
caricature ;)
------
ojbyrne
The embedded video has been taken down because of a copyright claim (at least
for me). Not sure what to think about that, except that it seems misguided.
~~~
skymt
This other NYT post has a working embedded video from Hulu:
[http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/with-a-
provocat...](http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/11/with-a-provocative-
couch-gag-banksy-tags-up-on-the-simpsons/)
~~~
jonasvp
Not for us outside the US...
~~~
barrkel
This kind of stuff - not just Hulu, but occasionally even Youtube, and other
random failures - prompted me to rent a cheap US-hosted VPS (36 USD/year) just
so I could ssh -D into it.
~~~
maximilian
How do you get flash to proxy properly? I've had trouble previously with flash
not respecting the OS and browser proxy settings.
~~~
barrkel
Firefox with FoxyProxy, using ssh -D as a SOCKS5 proxy, and with DNS lookups
remoted through the proxy rather than done locally (this is a setting in
Firefox which I don't think is exposed in the normal UI, but is exposed by
FoxyProxy). Flash in Firefox seems to respect the browser's settings just
fine.
I run the ssh on a general purpose server I have here at home, in a loop,
using ssh-agent for passwordless logins, in a loop, and connecting to a screen
session, so that things reconnect relatively seamlessly when the VPS provider
terminates TCP connections, as it does at exactly 10am my time every morning.
I'm also using the relevant TCPKeepAlive on the server and ServerAliveInterval
on the client.
------
chris_l
I think the opening is a statement about how the art is taken out of the
modern simpsons by the way they are produced. The links in the opening are the
asian workers and the sadness in their depiction. This fits with banksys
regular theme about the value of art and its opposition to commerce. Subtle
enough?
~~~
Tyrannosaurs
I'd be more bought into Banksy's opposition to commerce if he wasn't regularly
selling work for five and six figures, not to mention the five books he's
published.
Fight the system yeah?
~~~
chris_l
He doesn't stoop down to such slogans.
I'd venture it's not commerce but commercialisation he's opposed to.
~~~
Tyrannosaurs
You don't think five books of your work commercialises it? That's not exactly
being in it for the love of it is it?
~~~
steveklabnik
Having anarchist sympathies, this is something I've given a lot of thought to.
But basically, there's a difference between 'surviving' and 'selling out.'
Banksy's gotta live, too. As long as he doesn't feel that he's had to
compromise on his vision to release them, then I don't see any particular
clash between being anti-commercial and selling some work.
There's always a tension between the purity of the message and how many people
actually hear it. Banksy could stay totally anti-commercial, do no shows,
publish no works... and just stay on the streets of London. Or, he could sell
some works for 5 figures, do his art around the world, and have a larger
number of people hear his message.
~~~
TheAmazingIdiot
In a way, his message is satrically funny.
The hollywood machine will pay for the noose that hangs themselves, as long as
they make money in the next 6 months.
~~~
steveklabnik
They haven't hung themselves yet.
------
jonursenbach
It kills that after immediately showing this they go right back to the blaring
trumpet, thus making the viewing even more awkward.
~~~
risotto
At least that part made me laugh...
------
swombat
Is there a version of the video viewable from the other 95% of the world?
~~~
Bootvis
You can watch it here:
[http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/1151381/d293ebcd/simpsons_ba...](http://www.dumpert.nl/mediabase/1151381/d293ebcd/simpsons_bankgrap.html)
------
Sukotto
Wow... 5 commercials, just to watch that clip. :-(
------
pavel_lishin
Provocative, but not very subtle.
~~~
joeld42
I think it's more subtle than it lets on. The message wasn't "the simpsons is
produced by sweatshop labor" which of course isn't true. Because if it was,
this intro never would have aired. By joking openly, "we use sweatshop labor",
they're really reiterating that they don't.
The real message is "think about where your consumer goods come from". Which
of course isn't the most original or controversial statement in the world, but
the context makes you pay attention, much more so than if it had been direct,
like a documentary. I thought it was a clever, self-deprecating way to bring
up the subject, and a great use of context.
~~~
Jun8
Exactly! The more you think about it the more brilliant it gets. Like the
Babel Fish argument against the existence of God in the Hitchhiker's Guide:
The argument goes something like this: "I refuse to prove that I exist," says
God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says
Man, "the Babel fish is a dead giveaway isn't it? It could not have evolved by
chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you
don't. QED" "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of that," and promptly
vanishes in a puff of logic.
------
joshbert
As a very old fan of The Simpsons (including the newer seasons) I couldn't be
more pleased. The recent Zuckerberg cameo was brilliant as well:
[http://www.thedailybeast.com/video/item/mark-zuckerberg-
on-t...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/video/item/mark-zuckerberg-on-the-
simpsons)
------
nutjob123
Its kind of crazy how big Banksy has gotten
------
lotusleaf1987
I thought the this was an awesome opening (couch gag) I am surprised that it
made it past Fox though.
I recommend seeing 'Exit Through the Gift Shop' to anyone who is even slightly
interested in Banksy, street art, art in general, or documentaries.
~~~
adulau
'Exit Through the Gift Shop' is indeed an interesting piece of art work from
Banksy. The video is not really about him but just a way to divert the media
attention to a "creation of his own". In the video, he created a fake/pseudo
artist (Thierry Guetta) to show the "media" or the art market or even to see
us being lost in his maze.
~~~
27182818284
Has it even been settled who Banksy is at this point? I hope not. I very much
enjoyed the idea that was thrown around that Banksy was never a single person.
~~~
lotusleaf1987
There are pictures of a person who is possibly Banksy, but nothing concrete. I
think the mystery/anonymity makes him even more intriguing and mysterious
because you're left speculating without any definitive answers.
~~~
ilovecomputers
I won't be surprised if he turns out to be the Chav that he is described here:
[http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2003/jul/17/art.artsf...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2003/jul/17/art.artsfeatures)
------
gaius
Good to see Banksy going legit, maybe he can contribute to cleaning up the
vandalism now.
~~~
Tyrannosaurs
You are kidding right? The average Banksy piece can be sold for way more than
the clean up costs (and have been sold in the past on the stipulation that the
buyer "removes" it).
Moaning about a Banksy piece on the side of your building would be like
moaning about someone coming up and sticking gold to it.
~~~
doyoulikeworms
You're right and all, and I more or less agree, but it's still private
property we're talking about, isn't it? If I don't want someone to stick gold
onto my property, I shouldn't have to put up with it. It just so happens that
most people are OK with free money, though.
That said, I was under the impression that he asked permission first, at least
recently?
~~~
hugh3
Even if he does ask for permission, the whole cult-of-some-guy-who-sprays-
crap-on-other-people's-property is only serving to encourage other vandals who
consider themselves "artists".
If he gets permission before each and every one of his "artworks" then he
should come out and be explicit about it so that copycats don't get inspired.
And if he doesn't, he should be thrown in prison, and the various city
governments and other property owners who have been "blessed" by his work
should subpoena (or whatever) the Simpsons producers in order to find out who
exactly this asshole is.
edit: I wonder how many of the people who defend this guy are not property-
owners themselves.
~~~
justsee
You've demonstrated perfectly the old-grandpa 'get off my lawn position'.
However dismissing him as just some guy who sprays crap on other people's
property probably just indicates you aren't aware of the social / political
messaging he engages in.
"Any advert in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not
is yours…You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like
asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head…They have re-arranged
the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your
permission, don’t even start asking for theirs." - Banksy in Wall And Piece
He certainly doesn't ask for permission. Look at his "One nation under CCTV"
piece: [http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-559547/Graffiti-
arti...](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-559547/Graffiti-artist-
Banksy-pulls-audacious-stunt-date--despite-watched-CCTV.html)
~~~
dkarl
_However dismissing him as just some guy who sprays crap on other people's
property probably just indicates you aren't aware of the social / political
messaging he engages in._
It's easy to say that the law should not be enforced against Banksy because he
is engaged in worthy social/political messaging, but consider: what _if_ the
government can't be trusted to decide what is politically legitimate and
artistically worthy? I know, I know, crazy talk, but it's an interesting
thought experiment, right?
You and I might think Banksy is great and different, but it's a legitimate
point that "some guy who sprays crap on other people's property" doesn't
recognize that he is, in fact, different from Banksy. He thinks he's Banksy,
just like every gay-bashing, church-bombing white power thug thinks he's
Batman, cleaning up scum off the streets. And who are we to say they're wrong?
Even worse, who are the cops that we trust them to make the distinction? The
difference between Batman and a white power vigilante is politics; the
difference between Banksy and a paint-huffing teenage dipshit is political and
artistic understanding, as well as aesthetics. Tolerating Banksy means
selective law enforcement based on someone's political and artistic
sensibility. In the United States we have a long history of the cops being on
the wrong side of these kinds of distinctions, and I hope every other country
recognizes the same thing in their history.
Personally, I hope Banksy stays ahead of the cops, but I also hope they're
trying in earnest to bust him when he does something illegal.
~~~
justsee
The quote you snipped there was just making the point that throwing Banksy in
to the same category as your pedestrian vandal is a mischaracterization.
You make some good points. The artistic / social / political value of an act
is subjective - yes. However I never actually said the law shouldn't be
enforced against Banksy. Like you I'd expect the police to take on people
wilfully damaging private property.
It's a filter that ensures only the very committed will produce works as bold
as Banksy, and whether I like or loathe their messages, I expect they're
worthy of a pause for thought by society. Which is what Banksy is trying to
achieve.
Keep in mind graffiti has been a problem since forever (didn't Herodotus
record some citizen outrage in Athens?), and is mostly banal. So admitting
that in our times there is a very interesting character who is engaged in
something a little more high-minded than tagging or 'spraying crap' isn't a
cause for too much philosophical hand-wringing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Does Anyone Tolerate Skimlinks? - tpiddy
http://www.digital-dd.com/pinterest-skimlinks/
======
tpiddy
Until sites like Pinterest can actually share affiliate revenue somehow down
to their users, these sites will "send exactly as much [traffic] without the
modified links."
This leaves no incentive for a merchant to allow pinterest to affiliate their
links.
------
mirceagoia
Pinterest is using them, so...
~~~
tpiddy
The argument is that users have little reason to care that sites use
Skimlinks/Viglinks, but merchants have no incentive to allow it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Schizophrenia and genius – TempleOS and the strange, sad case of Terry a Davis - MilnerRoute
https://steemit.com/computers/@winstonalden/schizophrenia-and-genius-templeos-and-the-strange-sad-case-of-terry-a-davis
======
jetti
> but the America of the early 21st century is not kind to the mentally ill.
This line really strikes me and I have shared my thoughts on this before.
Mental illness like Depression has become much more accepted and view as a
real thing in the US and to me because it is something that people can
experience without having the disease. The combination of physical and mental
symptoms of depression can all be experienced without having depression. It
can be understood by many people. But there are many other mental illnesses
that are have symptoms foreign to most people and I think it makes it harder
to sympathize and even understand.
Personally, I was diagnosed with Schizoaffective Disorder when I was 17 (16
years ago) and had many hallucinations and delusions. It messed up my college
plans as my family didn't think I was safe enough to live on my own (which was
correct). A few years ago, I was diagnosed with OCD. Now, my OCD isn't like
the kind you see in movies or TV. I don't obsessively wash my hands or have to
count. Mine is much darker. I have homicidal thoughts as well as what pretty
much amounts to being a stalker. Again, it is hard to express to people my
thoughts. I grew up pretty much thinking that I was going to end up in jail as
my thoughts would get the best of me and I would act on them. It took me
several years before my wife found out about my thoughts and that was only
because I accidentally left a blog open that I was writing. She didn't
understand and she was scared for her own life. It made me feel even more like
a monster.
As I'm writing this I realize I'm getting off topic from the article, in a
sense, and I don't know what I'm trying to accomplish. Maybe this is just me
needing a release. We have come a long way in the US with mental health over
the past 50 years but we still have a long way to go.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Soylent Thinks It Found What Was Making People Sick: Algae - Rifu
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-11-07/soylent-thinks-it-found-what-was-making-people-sick-algae
======
old-gregg
Soylent's problem is not a seemingly overlooked ingredient. Their biggest
problem is inability to run the continuous food processing loop.
What's the point of tweaking the recipe if you can't guarantee the execution
and your customers get, basically, randomness for lunch?
We had a corporate subscription for Soylent 2.0 drink. The taste varied from
batch to batch on the scale from "milk in a cereal bowl" to "sewage water".
These issues have been regularly popping up on reddit and their own forums for
months now. We have suspended the subscription and I can't bring myself to try
another bottle, even though I originally loved the concept and the taste.
~~~
developer2
To be fair, this statement is something that needs to be followed up with hard
evidence. Inconsistent flavour between batches does not _necessarily_ mean
you're getting different percentages of ingredients. You can't simply blame
them for variation in taste; just look at orange juice companies for the
amount of chemical manipulation that goes into making a single brand of orange
juice taste exactly the same in every batch even though oranges naturally have
varying flavors. That is _not_ the kind of science I want behind my food.
There are thousands of individuals and organizations out there with the
equipment to analyze batches to determine whether the mix is consistent. Why
haven't we heard from them? I can't imagine risk of lawsuit for defamation is
the only reason. The whole appeal of Soylent is that the formula is public;
surely they can't be hiding behind "publishing analysis of our product is
exposing our corporate secrets".
~~~
IanCal
> There are thousands of individuals and organizations out there with the
> equipment to analyze batches to determine whether the mix is consistent. Why
> haven't we heard from them?
Honest question, why would anyone bother? Who would actually benefit from
being able to release a statement about how variable it is?
------
Pitarou
Inexcusable.
The only reason Soylent have gotten away with it for so long is that the FDA
rules for this category of product haven't been written yet.
A product shouldn't make people sick when used as intended. So if a product is
intended to be consumed as 100% of your diet, it MUST:
\- contain all known macro- and micro-nutrients necessary for human health
\- contain nothing that makes you sick when you eat it all the time
Soylent failed on both counts:
\- Early formulations lacked selenium. Beta testers duly developed symptoms of
selenium deficiency.
\- The latest formulation contained algae. Customers duly got sick from
consuming more of this kind of algae than humans have ever consumed before.
The first mistake might be excused as a beginner's error and a learning
experience. But they didn't learn. Luckily, Soylent lives in the land of class
action lawsuits. The lawyers are gonna shut these jokers down.
~~~
intopieces
Good lord. The percentage of people who 'got sick' by Soylent was less 0.1% of
all consumers. If we went into panic-mode for that kind of result for every
product, we wouldn't have any products. The variation in humans is too great
to test for everything.
"The Lawyers" aren't going to shut anyone down because no one is suing, and if
they tried I doubt any judge would allow a class-action lawsuit for a few
tummyaches.
Soylent lists the ingredients on the box. That the consumers were unaware of
their sensitivity to algae is not evidence of misconduct on the part of
Soylent.
~~~
Pitarou
I take your point about the class-action.
I also take your point about human choice, as far as it goes, but I still
think Soylent is a special case.
If I eat ridiculous amounts of pesto and rupture my duodenum, nobody would
hold the pesto producer responsible, because that's not the way people eat
pesto.
But if eating lots of Soylent made me ill, Soylent's makers should, in
principle, bear some responsibility, because they know that this is how people
eat Soylent. Indeed, Soylent was heavily hyped as something that could be 100%
of your diet, and they can't pretend that never happened.
The FDA actually DOES require that novel ingredients are tested to the point
where 0.1% problems are detectable. I know that the algae isn't a novel
ingredient, but if Soylent add it to their formula, it will suddenly comprise
a large part of the diet of a large number of people. That is a novel thing in
itself, so I would argue that Soylent has some responsibility to make sure
what they're doing is safe. If FDA rules say its okay not to, the FDA rules
need to catch up.
I might be inclined to give Soylent the benefit of the doubt if I thought they
had a better attitude. But when they made themselves sick because they forgot
humans need selenium in their diet, they didn't say, "Wow! How could we have
been so dumb? We need to take more care with people's bodies." It was more
like, "Hey, no problem. Nobody died and we fixed it now. Let's move on."
These are just the screw ups we know about. What are the odds there are plenty
more they managed to hush up? Nobody has been killed or injured so far, but if
they don't change their attitude and people continue to live off their
swill...
~~~
cthalupa
If I release a product containing lactose, clearly state it contains lactose,
and a bunch of people have stomach problems after ingesting it because they
are lactose intolerant, is it my fault? Regardless on whether or not it was
meant to be a 100% meal replacement?
This is a fairly ridiculous argument. People's lack of knowledge about their
own food sensitivities is not Soylent's fault, nor should it be expected to
be.
~~~
Pitarou
Your analogy is inappropriate. You know as well as I do that common
ingredients such as flour and milk are regulated differently from novel ones.
------
binarymax
Where is the FDA in all of this? I would hope that after the widespread issues
with the product, they would have stepped in and blocked shipment until safety
studies have been done that comply with regulations.
~~~
mstodd
They're busy regulating life saving drugs. If we got rid of the FDA all
together, there would be more competition for products like this, and
companies would need to win the trust of consumers by providing real health
study information.
~~~
sidlls
Please read about "The Jungle". (Wiki:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Jungle)).
Relying on companies to compete on the basis of maximizing customer health
is... short-sighted at best.
~~~
geofft
Right, I was gonna say, didn't we literally try this? And decide that it was a
mistake? And _come up with_ the FDA in response?
------
glenda
Sounds like they have a bug in their "food stack" and this modification is
like printf debugging - if no one gets sick then it was the algae, otherwise
they will need to continue poking around to figure out what's wrong.
What a silly game to play when people's health is at stake.
~~~
darawk
You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant. I really don't
understand the hate that's directed towards this product. Nobody was seriously
injured, it was a relatively small number of people that got sick.
Soylent is trying to do something more ambitious than other packaged food
manufacturers. It's not unreasonable to expect there to be some small hiccups.
If you can't tolerate that, then don't buy it.
People get food poisoning randomly from restaurants all the time. And usually
they can never figure otu exactly what it was that caused it, they just carry
on and maybe get their rating lowered or license taken away if it keeps
happening. Chipotle even just had the same problem.
Yes, they get a bunch of shit for it. But it's not like this is a problem that
doesn't afflict the 'normal' food industry as well.
~~~
amelius
> You can say the same thing about the food in any restaurant.
But Soylent is supposed to be consumable on a daily basis, so long-term
effects are important. Remember the documentary Super Size Me, which tested
long term effects of food from a certain fast-food restaurant? [1]
[1] [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390521)
~~~
hueving
That documentary tested overeating well outside the bounds of any sane
nutritional guidelines. It's sad that people don't have the critical thinking
skills required to realize the same thing would happen if you ate those levels
of calories at any restaurant or even at home.
~~~
dnautics
wasn't there a counter-documentary where someone ate from mcdonalds every day
and also followed a fairly strict exercise regimen and wound up being way
fitter than when he started?
~~~
endophage
Yep, it was called "Fat Head." The exercise regime wasn't even that strict, it
was basically continuing the regular walking the documentarian already did.
However, the food intake was strictly limited to 1800 calories and less then
100g of carbs per day. The goal being to show fast food isn't inherently
unhealthy, it was the quantity (as already noted above) being eaten in Super
Size Me that was unhealthy. In that regard, Fat Head succeeded as the
documentarian's health metrics all improved (lot weight, lower blood pressure,
better cholesterol measurements).
~~~
glandium
Note that the premise of "Super Size Me" was to get the "Super Size" menu
whenever asked by the Mc Donald's counter clerk, leading to overconsumption.
~~~
dogma1138
Yes, but the overall point remains if you overeat you'll get fat regardless of
what it is.
You can actually get a balanced daily diet out of mcdonalds if you ask for
unsalted fries and get one of their salads once in a while.
Honestly sodium aside the only thing you need to do not to over eat at MC is
to get water instead of soda and just regular sized burger.
It will be around 600-700 cals per meal with fries which means you can eat 3
of those a day and maintain weight or even lose some depending on your age,
sex, bodymass and daily regiment.
------
teaearlgraycold
>Since its introduction in 2013, the protein drink Soylent has become the go-
to food substitute
Maybe I'm being pedantic, but Soylent is not a protein drink. It's primarily a
carbohydrate drink.
~~~
nickff
Is actually more of a fat-drink than a carbohydrate or protein drink.[1]
[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_(food)#Ready-to-
Drink](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soylent_\(food\)#Ready-to-Drink)
------
jostmey
Soylent better be sure that they are right. They just fingered the problem
onto another company (TerraVia). What supplier would work with Soylent if it
turns out Soylent is wrong?
~~~
macspoofing
Plenty. Food is a cut-throat competitive business.
------
baby
I love what Soylent is doing, I have wished for such a meal replacer all my
life.
I've drank something like 40 bottles of Soylent (which are, so far presumably
safe) and they have helped me replace a lot of fast food. Never had problems
with them until I started getting nauseous and now I can't drink it anymore.
With all these news about people getting sick, I feel a bit silly having beta
tested stuff with my own body. And they definitely have lost at least one
customer here.
But I'm still happy to see them experimenting with such a product. I still
want this to happen, I will just not beta test it myself.
~~~
DanBC
> I have wished for such a meal replacer all my life.
why aren't any of the very many other products that have existed for years
been good enough?
~~~
resfirestar
What products would those be? Most meal replacement shakes marketed in the US
are for people trying to lose weight, so they have far less calories and fat
than a meal for people just trying to eat healthy.
~~~
catenthusiast
Have you heard of Ensure?
~~~
resfirestar
Yeah, I even wrote a paragraph bashing it (or at least, people claiming that
it's a product of serious medical research) last time we had a Soylent thread.
It has a lot more sugar and carbs than most people would want to eat
regularly, which makes it more suitable as a _temporary_ food replacement or a
snack than a lunch staple.
~~~
scdlbx
Try something like Glucerna. It's like Ensure but for diabetics, so it has a
lot less sugar and carbs.
------
hammock
_> Algal flour is a fairly novel ingredient that serves as a vegan replacement
for butter and eggs. Derived from algae grown in fermentation tanks and then
dried_
Reminds me of fungal protein, aka quorn aka mycoprotein. They were advertising
it as the next big thing in protein sources. Its also grown by fermentation.
If you google it, there are safety concerns.
~~~
Cerium
There are safety concerns, but I think there are differences in product
maturity. Quorn products have been available since the 80's, and early 2000's
in the USA. Over the last ~15 years there have been a couple thousand
complaints over the products, but since these are not incident related I would
characterize them more like complaints about specific ingredients. Some people
get reactions to peanuts, red wine, etc, but we do not consider that the
manufacturer is at fault.
Thanks for getting me to take a look at Quorn safety. I've been eating it for
years, and continue to. Even though I am no longer really a vegetarian I enjoy
Quorn products more than chicken based products since Quorn has better product
consistency (not fat or gristle bits) than animal sources.
------
hacker_9
Clearly there is a market for this 'super convenience' food/drink if people
are still willing to buy this product after it made them sick. Even when their
own stomach is the guinea pig. The company could do with better marketing
though, reading things like this:
_In 2013, he raised capital to turn his full attention to Soylent, which he
named after the science fiction novel that served as the basis for the 1973
movie featuring Charlton Heston as a detective who discovers that a new type
of food called Soylent Green is made of people._
..certainly doesn't help.
~~~
dictum
I'm more aggrieved by the marketing (from day one) being a variation of
"techies too busy to cook for themselves"
It's not even a suggestion to drink it once in a while, when you're indeed
unable to eat something else. It's an invitation to replace all meals with a
prepared drink.
It feeds on, and enables, the perpetually-busy/all-nighter culture of SV.
~~~
dimino
s/busy/lazy/g
At least, that's how the marketing is hitting me.
------
briHass
Part of the issue is their desire to keep the product vegan. Instead of using
known-safe, health-promoting sources of polyunsaturated (O3/O6) fats like fish
oil, they use algal sources, which have very little data supporting them as
safe/effective sources of O3.
~~~
atomical
[http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fish-oil-friend-or-
foe-20...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/fish-oil-friend-or-
foe-201307126467)
There are other safe sources of omega 3's.
~~~
briHass
The sources mentioned in that article are ALA, which have conversion rates to
the desired DHA/EPA that vary greatly between individuals [1]. Typically,
something like 5% of ALA is converted to EPA and even less is converted to
DHA. It's better to eat the preformed DHA/EPA rather than relying on the
conversion.
edit: Harvard health seems to even disagree with themselves:
[http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-not-
flaxse...](http://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/why-not-flaxseed-oil)
[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947)
------
bdcravens
Blue Bell in Texas shut down for months due to listeria. Would that put some
companies out of business? Maybe, that's ok. This is public health we're
talking about.
Disrupt. Move fast and break things. Iterate iterate iterate. Fail fast. This
may be okay when you're making a better spreadsheet, but not everything can be
a startup.
~~~
gohrt
Spreadsheets are used to make real decisions. Spreadsheet bugs kill too.
------
sevensor
Is this unrelated to the mold contamination people were reporting?
~~~
scotu
yeah, different issues
------
jorblumesea
The fact that Soylent is classified as a "Nutritional supplement" is absurd.
No inspections, no accountability.
~~~
sowhatquestion
This is false. Soylent is classified as a food, and has to follow the same FDA
requirements as any other food.
"Soylent is not in violation of any product-safety standards or requirements,
and is manufactured in FDA-approved facilities that follow federally regulated
current Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMP)."
Source: [https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-
us/articles/204197379-Californ...](https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-
us/articles/204197379-California-Proposition-65)
~~~
jorblumesea
You just proved my point: cGMP relates to drug safety, not to food
consumption. It is not regulated as a food.
[http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/Manufact...](http://www.fda.gov/Drugs/DevelopmentApprovalProcess/Manufacturing/ucm169105.htm)
------
jdavis703
Well one of the reasons I liked their products was because of the "algal oil"
(no word on if they're going to remove that also). This is basically vegan
fish oil, which as a vegetarian is one of the things I've missed.
~~~
rosser
As a long-time vegetarian, I've been buying algae-sourced EPA/DHA capsules for
years from a company called Vegetology. They actually, you know, _test their
product_ for safety.
------
mathattack
Here's what I don't get... There is all this bad hype about Soylent. Why not
just get one of the dozens of other meal replacement shakes in your average
health food store?
~~~
jpindar
Wrong subculture. Health foods are marketed for hippies and athletes and
dieters. Soylent is for nerds!
/s
~~~
mathattack
So it's strictly a Marketing game? There's nothing behind the product? I would
have thought nerds would be smarter. Or is it something like a hipster beard
and hats when it's warm?
------
jasonwilk
I'm a fan of Soylent but I wouldn't say things like 'Soylent prides itself on
rapid product development—an ideal popularized by Google and Facebook Inc.'
Things that are going into my body should not be rapidly developed and
released. It's slightly different than Facebook launching a new feature that
may or may not break.
~~~
ClassyJacket
Things that go into your body get rapidly developed and released all the time.
Ever been to a restaurant with a new item on the menu?
------
SuicidebyStar
I think I found a better alternative to Soylent called "Bertrand"
([https://bertrand.bio/](https://bertrand.bio/)). It is made out of organic
ingredients, tastes solid (just order the one with no flavor, it actually
tastes better) and is hopefully more healthy since it is made from "real"
natural powderized ingredients. So even if there are nutrition components
(e.g. other micro-nutrients) which weren't researched properly till today
(quite likely imho), they should still be in the drink since it's not made
from artificial components.
I'm drinking it for two months now and I'm happy with it. Very convenient,
fair price, available in a vegan & gluten-free version and it tastes okay-ish
(like oatmeal).
P.S.: I'm not affiliated with this company in any way, just a happy customer.
~~~
miranda_rights
Interesting. I like the idea but the macronutrients are heavily weighted
towards carbohydrates. For reference, normally 30-35% of your daily calories
should be protein, while only 11% of the calories of Bertrand come from
protein.
~~~
SuicidebyStar
That is true, especially the vegan version lacks protein (in comparison to the
"active" version). That's why I add rice protein to the drink to get up to
120-150g protein/day. Besides that I add also Acerola powder for more
(natural) vitamin C.
------
caogecym
We always get latest version of soylent instead of having a way to subscribe a
specific version. This is like cloud based service, the upgrade is
transparent, you benefits from ingredient upgrade, and you suffer from it. The
key here is how fast Soylent can identify and address customer's concerns.
------
shepardrtc
I enjoyed Soylent when it first came out, but then they started trying to be
clever. It was already a complex product and they went crazy trying to replace
the fish oil they were using. Around v1.4 it started to taste absolutely
disgusting and the consistency was that of slime.
------
grondilu
I've not often eaten algae, but I do remember it to have the weirdest taste I
have ever experienced.
~~~
mrob
Seaweed is a type of algae, and I eat rehydrated dried seaweeds every so
often. I wouldn't call any seaweed delicious but they're no worse than the
average vegetable. If you eat other seafood you'll probably find the taste of
seaweed acceptable.
------
NoGravitas
I'm not surprised. Spirulina is sold as a miracle health food, but it makes me
toss my cookies.
------
lnanek2
That's too bad. I love the algae based DHA-3 fortified milk at the super
market. The other option is fish based DHA-3 fortified and I can't stand the
taste. It's strange to blame something sold in supermarkets like that.
------
jzd131
I get sick every time I eat fake eggs made from Algae- this makes a lot of
senseto me.
------
010a
Please fix it and get these products back on the market so I can get my order
in.
------
st3v3r
Move fast and make people vomit
~~~
tectec
Sounds like a fun roller-coaster
------
zelias
Wasn't Soylent Green also made of "algae-based ingredients"?
Perhaps the name of the product is more on-point than we realize...
------
rosser
No, I'm pretty sure it was hubris. Proximal cause versus ultimate cause, and
all that.
------
muad
Does it really make a difference for Soylent at this point?
I would imagine their brand is already trashed.
------
print_r
I was sure it was going to be "People"
------
aj_n
Way to casually ruin Soylent Green, Bloomberg!
------
homulilly
someone should inform the author of this article that algae aren't plants
~~~
kjbflsudfb
Would you prefer they complicate the discussion by trying to explain what they
are? My understanding has always been that they have many plant-like
characteristics, but not all. In fact, they are even a part of the plant
kingdom.
[https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070619182508.h...](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/06/070619182508.htm)
~~~
homulilly
Some are, some aren't. Upon further research it does appear the type used in
this algal flour are related to plants but many algae species aren't closely
related to plants at all.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viridiplantae](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viridiplantae)
------
Balgair
Oh boy, another Soylent discussion.
Here is what all the off topic discussion will be:
Person1) "What is so hard to understand sheeple?! Soylent isn't for all your
meals, just ones that you are too busy to eat. Also, it has all the vitamins
you need not like all those thousand other bars/drinks!?"
Person2) "I'd rather move to the bottom of the ocean than buy Soylent. Why
would you ever skip a meal?! Capitalism is the root of all evil including
making me miss my dinner!"
Folks, we all come at food differently, it's a very personal thing. Just
because _you_ feel this way about food, does not mean we all do. It's like
people that stand or sit when they are wiping after going #2. We all coexist
just fine and none of us know that there is really any other way and are
astounded when other people are different.
Chill, people, chill, it's food.
~~~
akamaka
You could also say some people like Trump and other people like Clinton, and
it's just an opinion. However, one opinion is highly correlated with being
more educated.
I suspect that the same is true here. The population at large has a very poor
level of education about food, and Soylent seeks to exploit that very large
business opportunity.
I would prefer to see more people with an understanding of healthy eating and
cooking.
~~~
pveierland
> The population at large has a very poor level of education about food, and
> Soylent seeks to exploit that very large business opportunity.
Conceptually, the advantages of a product such as Soylent includes long shelf-
life, reducing the frequency and time needed to shop food, offering healthy
fast-food meals, having a lower carbon footprint and being more sustainable
than regular food, reducing the time spent preparing food, being cheaper than
other sources of ready-made food (with basis in my own budget). These are not
trivial advantages if fully realized, and it seems reductive to reduce the
advantages of Soylent to just being a product for people poorly educated about
food.
> I would prefer to see more people with an understanding of healthy eating
> and cooking.
I believe most people who eat healthy basically just follow hand-wavy norms
and guidelines about what is considered healthy, e.g. include fish and
vegetables in your diet (simplified). Once someone actually tries to engineer
a complete diet such as Soylent it becomes apparent how hard it is to
guarantee rich completeness. However, in the long run I believe the
engineering approach, based on scientific input, is more likely to result in a
proper diet. Especially when in the long run a "Soylent version X" can be
based on a closed loop with personal body telemetry and customized food mixes
based on these sensor readings.
~~~
akamaka
I agree with you overall, but my different viewpoint comes from witnessing
other companies addressing the advantages you've mentioned.
Just as trends in the computer industry have been largely led by power users,
there are also food "power users". These are people who save time cooking with
new equipment (powerful blenders, sous vide, etc), have high quality, freshly-
picked food delivered in weekly boxes, have convenient herb gardens, etc.
There are more innovations on the horizon (Farmbot, Cinder, etc).
Of course, Soylent is still much faster, but I think these "power users" will
close the gap in convenience faster than Soylent can close the gap in quality.
~~~
daveFNbuck
I do not and will not prepare my own food, so it usually takes me at least 30
minutes and $10 to go out and get a meal. When I don't feel like doing that, a
bottle of Soylent saves most of that time and money.
------
mmaunder
Such an unfortunate name. The 1973 film was set in 2022, so not far off the
mark.
~~~
freehunter
But then again the 1973 movie was made in 1973, so there are tens of millions
of people who have never heard of it.
------
WalterSear
People have been warning us about the green soylent since the 70s.
------
AndyKelley
I flagged it because the site started playing audio while I was trying to
read. Had to close the tab to make my phone shut up. It was embarrassing and I
was unable to read the content.
------
conjectures
Algae? Yeah right. Soylent green is made of people.
Seriously though, how can a food supplement (sorry, meal replacement) company
expect to prosper with a brand based on a sci-fi movie about cannibalism?
~~~
freehunter
You feel that way because you're on the Internet. I've never seen the movie,
it was way before my time, and it exists in the tiniest amount of public
consciousness today. The only reason I know what Soylent Green even means is
because people on the Internet reference it occasionally.
I've talked to quite a few people about Soylent and I've said "you know, like
the movie" and most of the time they have no idea what I'm talking about.
~~~
ConceptJunkie
Besides, it's not called "Soylent Green". Green was the cause of the shock
twist in the movie, but there was also Soylent Red and Soylent Yellow in the
movie, which were pretty much what Soylent, the product, is trying to become.
The name is appropriate in the context of the movie, although I would have
never chosen it.
~~~
conjectures
> The name is appropriate in the context of the movie
Only if you don't see a problem with buying from a company whose other product
lines include ground up paupers.
The name is like a stupid teenage joke which somehow managed to survive onto
packaging.
Also it's objectively ironic that the problem is related to algae, which is
commonly _green_.
~~~
joesb
And what are people who hate a product simply because its name resembles some
movie 40 years ago? A stupid teenager? Or a stupid adult?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: YC & other programs - is this data correct? - jedc
As part of my master's dissertation (which I'm writing on YC & similar programs) I'm trying to collect data on all of the startup incubators/programs that exist and all of the companies that have been funded through them. I hope this is at least interesting, if not helpful.<p>Here is the link to the list of programs:
http://docs.google.com/View?id=dmqzzmg_12fcp7g7c8<p>Here is the link to the list of funded companies (different sheet for each program):
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=t_toYuVyy6fci0MAiIaZ30A<p>While I've done my best to make these accurate, I know there are still errors. (And the acquisition prices are just guesses.) I'd appreciate it if you could let me know where I screwed up (either here or at jed [dot] christiansen [at] gmail).<p>Once it's more accurate I'll post some additional statistics/analysis.
======
emmett
From personal experience:
Kiko had a website at <http://kiko.com>, although apparently it's been
recently taken down by the acquirer. We sold it on eBay for $258,000 in the
summer of 06. We took follow-on funding from two angels (of a very very small
amount) before selling it.
Justin.tv was actually started in October of 2006, in between the 6/1/2006
cohort and the 1/1/2007 cohort.
~~~
jedc
For justin.tv, which cohort were you a part of? The summer 06 or winter 07?
(I'm going by that, since the actual founding dates don't always correlate to
YC cohort.)
Thank you very much for the corrections.
~~~
emmett
Neither - we were a special case; we'd already done Kiko Calendar as part of
the Summer 05 cohort, and this was our second company.
------
il
It would be interesting to see more data such as traffic(Alexa/quantcast?),
number of employees/founders and so on. This sounds rather silly, but if you
collect enough data, you may be able to approximate something of a "formula"
for startup success, or at least increasing your chance of success by a few
percent. I know PG always says it's the people and not the idea that matter,
but looking at your spreadsheet, and assuming PG only picks equally smart
people to fund, some ideas/verticals are clearly more likely to succeed than
others. I know there's obviously no statistically significant data to back
this up, but my hunch is that, given the talents and abilities of founders
chosen for YC are roughly equal, it may be the niche or market you choose to
enter that can make or break your startup.
At the very least, a comprehensive list like this should give YC applicants a
rough idea of what types of companies are likely to get accepted.
------
c3o
Programs:
<http://www.iventures10.com> in Champaign, IL
<http://iaccelerator.org> in Ahmenabad, India
YEurope did provide office space.
Seedcamp: Basekit (Eden Ventures, NESTA), Toksta (TAG) and UberVu (Eden
Ventures) have received follow-on funding.
------
emmett
The most striking thing about this list is just how many _more_ startups have
been funded by YC than by any competitor. There are almost as many YC
companies as the rest put together (especially considering all the unlaunched
YC companies missing from the list).
------
Savil
I believe you might have left out the Lightspeed Ventures program:
<http://lightspeedvp.com/summergrants.aspx>
~~~
jedc
Thanks. Will look into it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Who is using Kubernetes or Docker in production and how has it been? - chirau
======
penguinlinux
I worked at a company where they started using kubernetes very early on. It
was a mess, we configured it and provisioned with CoreOS and Ansible. it was
suck a Mess.
Then I moved to another company and we used ECS and it worked and did the job
but 3 months ago i started learning kubernetes on my own. From provisioning a
cluster to deploying workloads and i can tell you that Kubernetes is great. It
is not that complicated to install and to extend and support. The kubernetes
documentation is really all you need. I am using kubernetes and find that
things are easier to manage than when we had to provision instances with
puppet or chef . Everything is a container and we can deploy containers or
roll them back with ease.
The problem with Kubernetes is not kubernetes itself, I think the problem is
that developers should spend time learning docker and how to create and
package docker containers with their applications and setup CI/CD pipelines to
deploy such containers into kubernetes. the challenge is . that many
developers are not using docker for local development and don't know best
practices on how to develop containers. but it would take a couple of more
years to resolve these issues. Kubernetes is great . Also i got to preview EKS
and their setup is a bit of a mess and pricy
Learn to provision your own clusters . Would be my advice.
------
caymanjim
Docker is two things: there are Docker images, which are like deployable
virtual machine images that contain a system bundled up with a minimal
environment. It's a powerful tool that is indispensable in a microservices
architecture.
Then there's Docker Swarm, which is a system for deploying, distributing,
running, and connecting Docker images into a cohesive system. It's
conceptually awesome, but in usage it's horrible. The commands are
unintuitive, the configuration is difficult and poorly documented, the logging
sucks, the networking is confusing, and it does evil unexpected things that
punch holes in your firewall without the slightest warning or safety net. It
frequently implodes for no obvious reason, is difficult to debug due to the
horrible logging, fills up your filesystem because it doesn't clean up after
itself, and is a complete nightmare to maintain.
I haven't used Kubernetes yet, but by all accounts it's a superior container
environment. We're about to switch to it at work. We'll still create Docker
images, because that part is great. But we'll deploy those Docker images in
Kubernetes. Despite not having used it yet, it can't possibly be worse than
Docker swarm.
------
tonymke
We've been in a self-hosted mesos/marathon cluster since mid/late 2014.
Today it's an absolute pleasure to use in a dev team of 5.
We had to address quite a few things over the years to make it that way,
particularly in the early days - docker, mesos, and marathon's tooling in
particular were quite weak at the time. Some of the big ones: How do you
centralize configuration properly across DCs and environments? How do you
properly CI/CD? Log and metric at scale? How do we proxy traffic from the edge
to containers in a way that doesn't involve bothering an ops guy every time we
shuffle things about, pre-k8s? What if we need to churn faster than what
marathon is built for?
Once we worked through those, it became pretty changing as a developer. I
don't think I would enjoy going back to the pre-container life - things just
take so much longer to get done.
We're just doing our first k8s project now. Our existing solutions handle a
lot of the big bang it would bring into any other team's lives, but certain
things (managed persistent volumes, making stateful containers practical) mean
I will be writing less chef recipes. I definitely appreciate that.
------
lacion
I was a very early kubernetes adopter and moved to production very very fast,
as of now I been using k8s in prod for about 3 years. it was not easy, we
needed to create some tooling around it to have a decent workflow for all of
engineering for it.
but now is a total delight the amount of automation and guesswork for
engineers is minimal they have everything at reach either from a ui or a CLI
tool.
I would say the biggest downside to kubernetes is that at first there appears
to be a lot of magic to deploy it, official docs recommend tools that hide all
of the details about how k8s work and what each component actually do. so it
took a while to figure it all out. k8s is still missing some things for high
available production deployments like Multi DC and Multiple regions, you will
have to do a lot on your own for deployments like that.
------
rschoultz
We had to move one end-user facing service from a proprietary (distributed)
on-premise data centers solution running rented/hosted. We set up a number of
criteria for evaluating cloud vendors as well as on-premise and semi-hybrid
solutions. We had been following Kubernetes since some time back, and the
platform had matured considerably, so we decided to continue our further cloud
vendor evaluations by using Kubernetes.
At the end, the Kubernetes solution neutralized the choice of cloud vendor, at
least from a software release and management point of view. From a security,
availability, latency and a few other aspects the choice of cloud provider
became less of an issue/equal challenge.
We have faced a few minor challenges when using Kubernetes. The knowledge
barrier; The problem, as well as the beauty of Kubernetes, is that it takes on
quite a comprehensive view of network management, service discovery, DNS
management, deployments, container orchestrations, secrets management, system
administration and much more. We use this as an opportunity for learning more
than we see problems. But several roles (in the enterprise) need to come
together on a pull request for a change, rather than having tickets and side
projects. Switching to new features, like RBAC, TLS policy for AWS ELBs and
generally keeping up with new features is another. The mostly excellent
documentation has helped a lot.
Using Kubernetes, we noticed that latency of using the service was slashed to
50-80%, depending on the location of the end-user. This, however, we
attributed more to the ability to roll out in more regions and auto-scaling.
Of course k8s is not alone in supporting this, but it really comes out of the
box.
A second effect we noticed was that by integrating the releases via
Kubernetes, we reduced the time from the point of being ready in system test,
to be passing our Release Readiness Check (yes we are an enterprise), and have
user acceptance test environments and production environments being
provisioned using about 15% of the manpower of our previous processes, and
having releases being available in minutes and not in days (weeks), with
enhanced visibility and maintainability. As an example, having the possibility
to easy tear down or upgrade projects, with the right security and scale at
all times (and no lingering volumes, load balancer pools or firewall rules)
For us, Kubernetes has brought a higher predictability of releases, and
monitorability of the total solution. We did also switch a solution from one
cloud provider to another, and might switch back. For the move we needed some
labeling of services and management (referencing) of certificates.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Acquires Wildfire Interactive and Zuckerberg's Sister - benblodgett
http://www.forbes.com/sites/davidthier/2012/08/01/mark-zuckerbergs-sister-now-works-for-google/
======
brk
No, this was Mark's long con to get more moles inside Google.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's your favorite monitor for dev work? - whitepoplar
I use a 2016 13" MacBook Pro and I've been looking at the 21.5" 4k LG and 27" 5k LG Ultrafine displays that Apple sells, along with a Dell 27" Ultrasharp U2715H. I'm unsure what screen size/resolution would be best for dev work, as I've never used anything apart from laptop screens until now. What displays do y'all use?
======
chrisbennet
I use a 27" apple Thunderbolt monitor for graphics or the application and a
34" curved Samsung wide screen (3440x1440) for my IDE. The 34" is perfect for
displaying 2 code pages side by side or a GUI and the source for it.
------
iamdave
DevOps Engineer, I have two 27" Cinema displays.
Is it a bit much? Probably. Do I _need_ it? Absolutely not.
Nobody was using the second monitor and my team lead didn't care.
So here I am. 17" MBP, and 2 27" displays.
It's glorious and excessive. But mostly glorious.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WePay (YC S09) Launches WePay Stores For Easy, Embeddable Storefronts - revorad
http://techcrunch.com/2011/07/20/wepay-launches-wepay-stores-for-easy-embeddable-storefronts/
======
ChuckFrank
Congratulations WePay. Having carefully watched WePay's slow and methodical
exploitation of their much bigger, and better funded competitors, I think that
currently they are my absolutely favorite YC Alum. With tenacity and focus,
they've taken each part of the pay equation and they've re-engineered it with
an aim to make the process better, more accessible, and almost more equitable.
Taking a chunk out of Shopify is a great way to stay connected with their main
mission, but to also realize that in answer to the question "Who are your
competitors?" The best answer must be "Whoever's inefficiencies we can exploit
in achieving our goal."
------
addandsubtract
> Expand Geographic Functionality. Any Application that expands WePay's
> functionality or available currencies beyond that which is allowed by WePay
> in the User Agreement.
I take it WePay is only available in the US? I couldn't find a "User
Agreement" and the Terms didn't state the obvious, but if they're only
accepting US Dollars, then using this (exclusively) in Europe isn't going to
work. Sigh. Someone let me know when a reasonable priced payment gateway pops
up in Europe.
------
suhail
Go WePay--get that 1-to-many distribution!
------
kapilkale
These guys are probably going to take over the world.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Does programming make you more creative in other artistic pursuits? - piyushahuja
======
eesmith
No. The artistic pursuit I have done in most depth is dancing - primarily pair
dancing - and nothing from my programming experience has ever contributed to
my creativity in that field, other than funding.
------
blastbeat
No, to the contrary. It rather drains my ability to paint a picture or to play
music. After staring on a screen full of compiler errors for 8 hours, there
isn't much left to be joyful or creative.
------
TomLisankie
Yes, actually. I tend to mix the thought process involved with programming
into other artistic pursuits. I feel it gives me different perspective.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft files patent for augmented reality smart glasses - nealabq
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20462840
======
nealabq
What I really want to know: What is Apple planning for this space?
Of course were this 1990 I'd ask What Would Sony Do.
~~~
meaty
Apple are planning: [http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sec...](http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-
Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsearch-
adv.htm&r=17&p=1&f=G&l=50&d=PTXT&S1=%2820120703.PD.+AND+Apple.ASNM.%29&OS=ISD/07/03/2012+AND+AN/Apple&RS=%28ISD/20120703+AND+AN/Apple%29)
Sony made the following literally YEARS ago:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasstron>
~~~
alanctgardner2
That Wikipedia page was simulateously hilarious (for the terrible advertising
copy at the bottom), and enlightening. Sony could probably have created many
new markets, if they hadn't gotten so hung up on options. The page lists a
completely opaque set, mechanical shutters and LCD shutters. Didn't anyone
think about how these would be used? What is the target audience? It's like
they just threw things at the wall, and then rapidly iterated.
------
rasur
Prior Art: Basically the life work of Professor Steve Mann ("EyeTap").
------
GlennS
Wait, have they just patented a HUD?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ex-Google engineer describing the company's role in China censorship - seapunk
https://threader.app/thread/1051725524064591872
======
mocae
> 6/ The other thing I find disturbing, after all these years, is the
> willingness of my former colleagues to not only comply with the censorship
> but their enthusiasm in rationalizing it. It is not a coincidence that the
> rationale they give was the same one management had given them
This is the really disgusting thing. Are they "just" sucking up to management
or are they maybe the only ones who buy the propaganda?
Or is this some kind of self-justification process that protects them from
their dying sense of guilt?
~~~
Fricken
I really don't understand what people are upset about. Whether or not Google
rolls out a censored search engine in China has no influence at all whatsoever
in any way shape or form over whether or not the communist party will continue
to enforce censorship. If Google backs out for political reasons, it's not
like the party is going to suddenly see the error of their ways and do an
about face on censorship.
It's just business. Americans has been doing business with China, and the
Chinese people for decades. In spite of the fact that the west and China are
beholden to very different identities, we can still cooperate on things to the
benefit of everyone.
People are 99% the same everywhere, but the 1% that makes us different are
matters of identity, and that's what we gripe about and go to war over. It's
kind of stupid if you ask me, but then again, no one in the history of the
world has ever come up with a reliable solution for human nature.
~~~
ardy42
> I really don't understand what people are upset about. Whether or not Google
> rolls out a censored search engine in China has no influence at all
> whatsoever in any way shape or form over whether or not the communist party
> will continue to enforce censorship.
I'll list out _some_ of the issues:
1\. The view the censorship is immoral. The argument that "we should help them
because we can profit and they'll do it with or without us" has some _very
serious flaws_ that can be easily shown by a few thought experiments.
For instance: your colleague is going to rob a bank and there's nothing you
can do to stop him, is it right for you to volunteer to drive the getaway car
since he'll pay you handsomely if you do? If you don't drive, someone else
will, and you'll be leaving money on the table.
> It's just business. Americans has been doing business with China, and the
> Chinese people for decades. In spite of the fact that the west and China are
> beholden to very different identities, we can still cooperate on things to
> the benefit of everyone.
2\. Doing business with China gives the Communist Party leverage to influence
corporate operations elsewhere for ideological reasons. They've shown
increasing willingness to use that influence to push their political views
(for a recent example, see the recent situation with how foreign airlines
represent Taiwan on their foreign-language websites).
Imagine, ten years from now, Google because popular and profitable in mainland
China. The Communist Party wants to manage Western perceptions of an issue
(say Tibet) and gives Google an ultimatum: derank all pro-Tibet independence
websites from the top 20 results of certain Tibet-related searches, or they'll
shutdown their Chinese operations. What choice do you think the shareholder-
value maximizing corporation is going to make?
This article tackles the topic from a different angle:
[https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/11/if-the-u-s-doesnt-
contr...](https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/11/if-the-u-s-doesnt-control-
corporate-power-china-will/)
~~~
Fricken
It's funny, we get upset that China censors the free and open exchange of
ideas until the subject of intellectual property comes up, and then we get
upset because China doesn't respect the fact that we like to keep ideas under
lock and key. Once you get under all the bullshit it's as simple as America
believing that it should win and China should lose. The problem is, that by
merit of demographics, and China's stable political and economic system,
they're on track to become the dominant and economic power in the world, and
there's not a lot you can do about it.
You can worry that China could have too much leverage over Google if they
become dependent on profits earned in China. It's corroborated in the article
you provided:
>a deeply conservative Pence sounded like liberal stalwart Sen. Elizabeth
Warren in arguing the Chinese are using America’s own short-term-oriented
financial system against it.
Our shareholder value short-term oriented financial system is a problem in our
own backyard, something we can do something about rather than fearmongering
against China. It remains a strict hypothetical that that Google would kowtow
to China's demands and censor it's domestic search engine. I don't think
they'll do that, but even if they did, we can cross that bridge when we get to
it, until then it's just a hypothetical worst case scenario. If Google has a
dangerous amount of control over the flow of information, that's because it's
the service that most Americans choose to use, which is kind of the shitty
thing about a free and open society. In China if they decide something is a
net negative, they can stop it.
------
mikejb
> 13/ I encourage employees of Google who have been asked to work on censored
> products to stand up against these requests, as I did in 2006, and make it
> known that Google's willingness to censor is immoral.
I'd rather formulate it this way:
_I encourage employees of Google who have been asked to work on censored
products to take a look from different perspectives, apply their values and
morale, make an informed decision on whether they want to support what they
're asked to work on - and have the spine to follow through with their
decision._
The reason why I disagree with the original statement is that it feels like
people are forcing their own moral decisions on others. "I'm convinced it's
bad, so you have to agree and act like it".
~~~
pimmen
I would try to simplify it like this: "would you be able to look the people
China will suppress with your technology in the eye and tell them 'I built the
tools China use'?"
edit: reformulated it to something less loaded
~~~
mikejb
That's pretty loaded. Try to reformulate it with less of your own bias.
------
Yetanfou
It is an odd thing that a company can on the one hand become known as the one
firing an engineer who tried to open an honest discussion on a hot subject
like 'gender discrimination' because that engineer was deemed to lack a moral
compass, while on the other hand bending over backwards to assist an
oppressive - but lucrative - dictatorship in implementing a real-life version
of Oceania's Ingsoc [1] [2]. As if these people are so blind-sided by their
own ideology that they do not recognise their own moral compasses twirling as
if they're in the Bermuda triangle and the 'no' being struck from their
previous motto of 'do no evil'.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingsoc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingsoc)
[2] [https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-
credit-a...](https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-18/china-social-credit-a-
model-citizen-in-a-digital-dictatorship/10200278)
~~~
topmonk
It's not about a moral compass, it's about attracting top talent. The
universities push this ideology, so if you want to get the alumni from the
universities to work for you, you have to abide by the tenets.
~~~
nradov
Except that the notion of "top talent" appears to be a myth.
[https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-
myt...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2002/07/22/the-talent-myth)
~~~
vertline3
Interesting link, I just skimmed it but I don't think it quite showed top
talent is a myth, but rather that our ways of measuring that talent is flawed,
this syncs up with ideas from Moneyball as well. We know that pitching is a
talent, but we struggle to project who will be the future star due to our
preconcieved biases.
So in the story they found a stronger correlation between tacit knowledge than
simply IQ for instance.
------
lvoudour
_9 / For many people there is little difference between what is legal and what
is moral. This mindset is especially dangerous when it is held by people in
power, such as Google's executives. The mindset is: if it's a legal
requirement to censor, then we should do it. _
Except when standing on a moral pedestal does not hurt your bottom line. Then
apparently it's ok to dictate what is moral and what is not, what is good and
what is evil and use your power to force your agenda. It's not google's (or
any company's) version of morality that gets me, it's always the hypocrisy
~~~
seanmcdirmid
The free market does have a tendency of weeding out those companies that act
morally beyond legality, because less moral competitors can outcompete them.
So as a survival bias, less moral companies are just more likely to be left
standing. Likewise, morality beyond legality is much more likely if it doesn’t
yield any ground to competitors (ie effect the bottom line), so what you see
as hypocrisy might again just be survival bias in a free market.
~~~
humanrebar
Don't know why you single out free markets there. A lack of scruples can be
advantageous in economically closed environments as well.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
Survival bias applies to a lot of situations. For example, in a system where
corruption is endemic, non-corrupt officials won’t get promoted (because they
have no dirt higher ups can use against them and/or don’t bribe the right
people), leaving only corrupt officials. Do non-corrupt officials exist? Yes,
but they are not likely to survive to he noticed.
------
flamedoge
Honest question: Should a company like google take the lesser evil route and
still provide neutered service simply because target audience is huge? Google
could still bring a lot of good to the people. Sure it doesn't exactly
subscribe to the Western ideals, but is distancing from China throwing baby
out with the bathwater?
~~~
ArchD
It's not simply about the first-order effects. Making a large investment in
the Chinese market controlled by the CPC means putting up great value at risk
that the CPC can leverage to assert influence. Evil influence spreads into the
company and it becomes even more evil.
Considering the history of their actions against even their own people, and
the words they say, 'evil' is not an understatement.
Yes, other states are also evil, but their evil is deeper and more
fundamental. For example, they actively censor the history of their own
misdeeds, including massacre of their own people from a few decades ago in
1989, and because of the strong censorship, who knows what else they are doing
nowadays that's hidden?
A concrete example of what may happen is that after making a huge investment
in China, Google gets a request to do more than just censor, an offer it
cannot refuse. It is asked to spread malware to dissidents, or extend the
censorship to other countries like Taiwan, or something nefarious like that.
If it refuses, it'll be kicked out of China for some bullshit reason. Getting
kicked out means incurring a big loss because of the huge investment. What
will it do then? If it can't say 'no' now, it will not be able to say 'no'
then. This country does not have "rule of law", but it has "rule by law".
There is no independent judiciary. The state can say F U and there's nothing
you can do about it.
~~~
oconnor663
> A concrete example of what may happen is that after making a huge investment
> in China, Google gets a request to do more than just censor, an offer it
> cannot refuse.
It's possible that the opposite could happen too. China's leverage over Google
is that they can pull the plug on google.com, but I don't know (correct me) if
there are a lot of employees that they can throw in jail. So if Google builds
up a lot of brand capital over 5 or 10 years, and pulling the plug becomes an
unpopular move for the government, it could be that Google ends up with some
leverage of its own about what to do with search results.
This isn't my area, so I'm just making all this up, but I notice that the tone
of the thread is "something something I thought they said don't be evil," and
I'm imagining that the reality is more complicated.
------
dandare
I don't get Google. The cost of switching to competitor's products are near-
zero, Google's public image is its most valuable asset. Is the Chinese search
market - and other evil products - really worth the risk?
I have switched to DDGG 3 weeks ago and I am seriously testing Firefox.
~~~
JeremyBanks
The cost of switching from Google was low when Search was their only product.
They have their hooks a lot deeeper in users these days. Android, Gmail, Docs,
and others are harder to switch away from.
~~~
yborg
It's more pervasive than that, they have hooks in the entire contemporary
Internet ecosystem (DoubleClick, Google Analytics, etc.) So they don't care if
you never touch a Google-branded site, they can collect and sell data on you.
And Mozilla is largely funded by Google.
------
thecatspaw
why do people write whole blogposts on twitter?
~~~
Brotkrumen
You go where your customers are, or audience iin this case
~~~
pdkl95
Reaching a large audience can be useful, but it might not be worth the cost of
using an established medium. From the forward - which was probably written by
Marshall McLuhan - to Edmund Snow Carpenter's book "They became what they
beheld":
> If you address yourself to an audience, you accept at the outset the basic
> premises that unite the audience. You put on the audience, repeating cliches
> familiar to it.
> Utilizing existing channels can wipe out a statement. There is a widely
> accepted misconception that media merely serve as neutral packages for the
> dissemination of raw facts. Photographers once thought that by getting their
> photographs published in _Life_ , they wo9uld thereby reach large audiences.
> Gradually they discovered that the only message that came through was _Life_
> magazine itself and that their pictures had become but bits & pieces of that
> message. Unwittingly they contributed to a message far removed from the one
> they intended.
Twitter may actually be a useful tool for reaching large audiences for _some_
messages, but "the medium is the message" and using Twitter as your medium
clearly involves diluting your message with the "Twitter style".
------
majia
There are many Google mirror sites, most of which are blocked in China. If the
Chinese government decides to work with some of the mirror sites to deliver
Google search results in China, on the condition that the mirror sites must
censor the search results, what would happen? I could think of three reactions
from Google:
1\. Block those mirror sites from accessing Google search results, but this
may be technically difficult.
2\. Do nothing. Effectively a censored Google becomes available in China but
people can hardly blame google for not blocking the mirror sites.
3\. Work with the mirror sites (e.g. require them to display Google ads). This
is pretty much dragonfly.
It seems that Dragonfly doesn't really change anything about China's
censorship after all?
~~~
aembleton
4\. Feed the mirror sites mis-leading information that causes them to be less
effective than Baidu and/or works past their filter and informs Chinese users.
~~~
majia
How? Google may accidentally feed misleading information to some real users,
and this may cause a huge backfire like what happened to FB.
------
lovemenot
If Dragonfly should be launched yet fail to fly, whether for political or for
business reasons, Google may perhaps fall back on Sergey Brin.
Just as Twitter has cycled through its founders as CEO, after their serious
mis-steps and failed initiatives.
------
jancsika
> As I previously tweeted, Sergey Brin is a notable exception to this
> temptation, and he is reported to be the reason that Google left China in
> 2010
Dear digital spin doctors of HN,
What are the likely online tactics that will be used to neutralize Brin's on-
the-record statements and previous action regarding China?
It must be a drag to practice those dark arts of digital public manipulation
in secret all the time. So c'mon, make some public predictions with a
throwaway and let us follow along at home!
Edit: wording
------
baybal2
On the other note: Google's new 'research centre' in Beijing looks to be much
more than it should be, much more like a smallish campus.
------
mikejb
The person posting this left Google in 2007 [1]. The screenshot indicates the
emails took place in February 2016 and October 2018 [2]. The conversation
seems focused around events before 2008 (e.g. the selection of holding the
Olympic games in Beijing). (Other people pointed it out as well [3]).
Were the dates in the emails faked? What's going on?
[1]
[https://www.linkedin.com/in/vijayboyapati](https://www.linkedin.com/in/vijayboyapati)
[2]
[https://twitter.com/real_vijay/status/1051725529512964096](https://twitter.com/real_vijay/status/1051725529512964096)
[3]
[https://twitter.com/wiretapped/status/1051739819121016832](https://twitter.com/wiretapped/status/1051739819121016832)
------
agumonkey
Time to flood this
[https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=google%20tell%20me%20h...](https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=google%20tell%20me%20how%20to%20stop%20using%20google)
------
est
> because in the digital era, the suppression of information acessibilty is
> incompatible with free-market productivity
LOL. This video is not available in your country.
China is just a giant corp intranet with a huge ass firewall.
------
iamleppert
Google is a creatively and morally bankrupt company. The original spark is
long gone and it’s just another soul-less big company now.
------
JustSomeNobody
What happens to Google in 10 years if they don't move into the China market?
Can Google survive without moving into China? Will some upstart move in there
and dominate the market? Will the stock market punish Google for not moving
into China?
Why is it OK to have all our devices, etc. manufactured in China, but it's not
OK for Google to offer services there?
~~~
undreren
> Why is it OK to have all our devices, etc. manufactured in China, but it's
> not OK for Google to offer services there?
This is a great angle. I have no idea, why there is such a huge disparity
there, but I have three possible explanations:
1\. People do not understand supply chain management (myself included). There
is nothing inherently evil about employing people in a foreign country, and
not many people are aware that cost of production is lower in China because of
(sometimes) horrible working conditions.
2\. Google branded itself on "Don't be evil". More or less everyone in western
countries would agree that facilitating censorship on a massive scale for the
benefit of government officials is "bad".
3\. Hypocrisy. Our way of life depends on low wage labour (read: explotiation
of the poor) in foreign countries. Our morals follow our wallet.
~~~
eeZah7Ux
4\. Global consumerism is built on global labor arbitrage (read: exploitation
of the poor). People are somewhat aware it but politicians only care about
large companies making big profits.
~~~
undreren
How is this the fault of government?
~~~
eeZah7Ux
Of out 5 countries described as "communist", the US government flattened N.
Korea, invaded Vietnam, embargoed Cuba and developed China into one of the
biggest world economies and a techno-dictatorship.
Clearly the US government has the power to decide the destiny of less powerful
countries.
Compared to that, setting up trade agreements with China to ensure human
rights, worker safety, environment protection and so on is pretty doable.
------
qubax
So china wanted google news and google search censored. Honestly, what's the
big deal?
Google news and google search is also censored in the US, Europe, Middle East
and everywhere.
Why is it that so many vocal ex-employees are against censorship in china, but
demand censorship in the US?
I'm against censorship everywhere but the self-righteousness of these people
when it comes to china is getting to be unbearable.
These ex-employees are saying google has to censor news and search because the
internet is "too toxic" and causing too much division. This is precisely what
the chinese authorities say to justify censorship.
And with the recent revelations of how politically driven and manipulative
google is ( and has been ), I highly doubt the chinese or any country would
allow google in without certain restrictions.
~~~
humanrebar
China is doing something different entirely here. Denying facts to keep the
population under control, for instance. That is different entirely from what
the typical Western country censors: advertising illegal drugs, child porn,
hate speech, etc.
[https://www.businessinsider.com/words-china-banned-from-
sear...](https://www.businessinsider.com/words-china-banned-from-search-
engines-after-tiananmen-square-2014-6)
~~~
qubax
> Denying facts to keep the population under control, for instance.
This is different from us how?
> That is different entirely from what the typical Western country censors:
> advertising illegal drugs, child porn, hate speech, etc.
China also censors illegal drugs, child porn, "hate speech", etc.
You are right. China censors for the good of their own citizens and our
censors do so for the good of us. Oh wait, that sounds exactly the same.
I love people who conflate "hate speech" with child porn and illegal drugs. Is
physics "hate speech" to flat earthers? Should we censor physics? What's next?
Hate thought? Should we monitor people's brain for hate thought. Science
itself is hate speech to religious people. Should we censor science?
There are lots of facts that people on both sides consider "hate speech". For
example, I consider your support of censorship hate speech. Should you be
censored?
Just as I said, these people love censorship in the US but hate censorship in
china. Makes me wonder who and what is pushing and funding such anti-liberal
and anti-western "hate speech" in the US. In all my time on the internet, I
haven't come across such openly fascistic and anti-liberal "hate speech" until
fairly recently.
~~~
lucozade
> Is physics "hate speech"
If it's somehow an incitement to an immediate illegal action then it may be.
Otherwise it's not.
In the US, hate speech isn't like being offended, it's not in the eye of the
beholder. It's been covered a number of times by the Supreme Court.
And China is quite different from the US wrt free speech. US courts take a
very dim view of restrictions to political free speech. It's quite a stretch
to say the same about China. In fact, I'd argue that there are plenty of
Western democracies who are less lenient in that regard than the US.
~~~
qubax
> If it's somehow an incitement to an immediate illegal action then it may be.
> Otherwise it's not.
So it's not.
> In the US, hate speech isn't like being offended, it's not in the eye of the
> beholder. It's been covered a number of times by the Supreme Court.
I know. The point is that these people want hate speech to be illegal like it
is in many other western nations. They want more censorship for the US, less
in china.
------
lewisflude
Aside: I found the final sentence of the article (injected by Threader)
interesting. "Enjoy Threader? Tell @jack."
I wonder if Twitter will eventually branch out into more long form content
like this.
------
comesee
Google is clearly evil now. Will anyone do anything about it?
~~~
Cthulhu_
Like what? Will anyone do anything about China? How about the US?
"Will anyone do anything about it" is classic bystander effect by the way -
what are you doing about it?
~~~
Doctor_Fegg
To be fair, HN is probably the biggest single forum of people building
alternatives to Google products (aside from internal MS/Apple etc. forums, one
presumes).
------
cromwellian
The real risk of Google entering China, and possibly succeeding, is the a
reverse-effect happening with regard to censorship globally. The theory is, by
Google operating in China, it will help liberalize and open things up, that
may have worked in the Deng Xiaoping era when, but after the hardliners took
power, and especially with Xi, things are going in the opposite direction of
the "End of History" folks predictions. Economic well being did not bring an
appetite for Democracy, it brought an appetite for not "rocking the
boat"/"don't mess with a good thing"
By reverse-effect, I mean, let's say Google is hugely successful in China. It
proves a censored search engine works and is good business, first of all. So
economic arguments about the harm will be delegitimatized. Other states will
ask for more censorship, and Google can't reply 'this is too costly or harmful
to our business' because China would be an example of how to make it work. So
the end result might be that Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, and Indonesia, Brazil,
Zimbabwe, etc will all of a sudden be asking for their own forks of Dragonfly.
(I just picked those countries at random, with no specific example of
censorship in mind)
Secondly, if they become hugely successful in China, it compromises them just
like Apple. The revenue stream will become a golden goose and too valuable to
risk the anger of the government. So you'll have Google executives having to
embarrass themselves like Tim Cook by praising China's "open" internet
([https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/12/04...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/12/04/apple-
ceo-backs-chinas-vision-of-an-open-internet-as-censorship-reaches-new-
heights/?utm_term=.5cabb9e90812))
Third, Google made one of the few brave moral decisions leaving China. Perhaps
you don't believe Brin did it for the reasons claimed, but your belief isn't
important, what is important is what many people believe this, especially
politically repressed people who need to believe in heroic actions. This
undercuts that decision. If the world's most popular company for organizing
information not only fails to fight censorship, but actively helps regimes
that wants to implement state level censorship, it will be a big loss of a
beacon in the constant struggle between censorship and anti-censorship forces.
Having the world's largest companies, even if they're only doing it for
economic reasons, on the side of anti-censorship is better than having the
world's largest companies on the side of censorship (for economic reasons)
And fourth, Google can't change China. The idea that a SV tech company can
trigger improvements in the politics and openness of a powerful country like
China is quite simply hubris. We're not smart enough to do this, and
intelligence isn't even the factor. China's future will be written by its
people and internal events.
If they want an uncensored search engine, then one day, the political winds
will change, and they will demand it. But until they do so powerfully enough
for the current government to change its behavior, the actions of foreign
firms won't do anything. I'm not sure we should involve ourselves in this
fight other than through NGOs that already fight these things (e.g. Amnesty
International) or offering anti-firewall/anti-censorship tools.
There's only one argument for doing business in China as a search engine, and
it is a legitimate one, just not a moral one: the shareholder argument.
------
mirap
Do we have any valuable resources like this, but from 2018?
------
titzer
The only morality of the global economy is growth.
------
mwj
Not sure about the conditions of employment with Google, but if he has
archives of emails long after he's left the company, could a lawsuit be
forthcoming?
------
stef25
Is authoritarianism in China getting better or worse? If it's getting better
than what it used to be under actual communist rule then perhaps there's still
some hope for economic prosperity bringing democracy to China.
~~~
sverige
It's still actual communist rule -- by the Communist Party of China, no less.
~~~
int_19h
It's rule by people who use the brand "communist", but they aren't actually
communists in any meaningful sense, not even as in what the word meant to the
Soviets. China is very authoritarian, but it is not communist or even
socialist. Fascism would be an accurate description, though, as Mussolini
himself defined it ("Everything within the state, nothing outside the state,
nothing against the state.")
~~~
sverige
> It's rule by people who use the brand "communist", but they aren't actually
> communists in any meaningful sense, not even as in what the word meant to
> the Soviets. China is very authoritarian, but it is not communist or even
> socialist.
What does this even mean? The government and the people who run it are the
direct political descendants of Mao and the Communists who overthrew the
Chinese government in the '40s. They are Communists. Full stop. If the people
who call themselves "Communist" and have run the most populous nation in the
world for the last 75 years can't be the very definition of "communist," then
words have no meaning.
~~~
gyaru
>If the people who call themselves "Communist"
North Korea confirmed to be a democracy?
~~~
sverige
Clearly not. They are ruled by the Workers' Party of Korea, and it is a self-
described revolutionary and socialist state.
And since we were originally talking about Chinese communists, it's
interesting to note that they have been the chief supporters of North Korea's
government.
------
baybal2
... on the other note: Madurai - a city where Sundar was born, is known to be
a communist enclave in otherwise nationalist dominated state of Tamil Nadu.
_Check out his father 's background and 'the labour activism'..._
------
thelastidiot
Google was doing no evil till Sundar Pichai happened.
------
ElBarto
This is the real world.
Google and the US are better off being present in China that being left out.
~~~
trendia
Why?
~~~
myself248
Thought experiment: If Google doesn't move in, someone else will eventually
fill the vacuum. Who?
Suppose that Chinese-born-and-bred search-engine-and-advertising-company,
through virtue of having access to a massive economic resource, succeeds
broadly and then enters the western markets. What then?
Not trying to justify any of this, but it's worth discussing.
~~~
int_19h
> If Google doesn't move in, someone else will eventually fill the vacuum.
> Who?
Someone with less skills and expertise, who will hopefully make more mistakes
implementing censorship? Or maybe someone with more skin in the game (e.g.
locals) who might actually be more motivated to sabotage it?
But, conversely, Google implementing such a thing in China - and justifying it
as moral there by these arguments - would also give them skills and expertise
to do it US in the future, and a canned excuse as to why it's okay.
> Suppose that Chinese-born-and-bred search-engine-and-advertising-company,
> through virtue of having access to a massive economic resource, succeeds
> broadly and then enters the western markets. What then?
Then we engage in protectionism ourselves.
------
lallysingh
The CEO is not a founder. He's beholden to the shareholders without any
leverage for pushback.
~~~
simion314
I am not familiar how this things work, is there some kind of a vote where
shareholders debate if this(censorship) is a good idea or not? Or there are
only a few people that can decide it.
~~~
sleepychu
It's implicit, the CEO must deliver value to the shareholders or be replaced.
Capitalism doesn't leave a lot of room for moral standing.
~~~
tikkabhuna
Large shareholders have corporate values (ethical, etc) that they will push
onto companies they own shares in.
Blackrock[1] has said social responsibility is important to them.
Companies looking for investment need to operate with principles aligned with
investors or investors will look for alternatives.
[1] - [https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/23/blackrocks-push-for-
social-r...](https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/23/blackrocks-push-for-social-
responsibility-shows-shift-in-companies.html)
------
tinkerteller
I get the hoopla but what’s the alternative? It’s not that Chinese customers
are clamoring for any of the Google services. Without Google, China will
continue to develop their home grown services with far more surveillance than
Google would put in. There are zero nations in the world which will stand up
against China and dare to ask them do things differently. Some scholars even
believe that Chinese culture is predisposed to this kind of government and
westerners are simply not “getting it”. I personally don’t get either
Britain’s tendencies to put person in charge of declaring wars and face on
their currency because of no other reason than that person being born in
certain family.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The end of Nvidia proprietary Drivers on Linux - webaholic
https://forum.manjaro.org/t/the-end-of-nvidia-proprietary-drivers-on-linux/15325
======
ldng
Hum this has implications beyond Nvidia I suppose. Some WiFi driver will be
affected I guess. Not necessarily a bad move though. Might give a boost of
interest to the Nouveau driver. Let's see what happen.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Pandemic Shows What Cars Have Done to Cities - jgwil2
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/pandemic-shows-what-cities-have-surrendered-cars/610423/
======
jgwil2
Even the most pedestrian-friendly cities in the US (New York, DC, Boston) are
really fundamentally designed for cars. I would love to have something like La
Rambla[0] in Barcelona, a major thoroughfare given over completely to
pedestrian traffic. There are many shopping/nightlife districts that could
benefit from such a situation. Glad to see places like DC experimenting with
widening sidewalks to help with social distancing[1] and hopeful that such
changes become permanent!
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Rambla,_Barcelona](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Rambla,_Barcelona)
[1]
[https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2020/04/23/dc-...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2020/04/23/dc-
widens-sidewalks-five-locations-allow-better-social-distancing-during-
pandemic/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Have developers become a commoditised resource? - bdv500
======
greenyoda
It depends a lot on what you're hiring developers for. If you need a developer
to add some new UI features to a web app, there will be thousands of junior
developers you can hire. On the other hand, if you need to reduce the time it
takes to execute a stock trade by 0.25 microseconds, there may many fewer
developers in the world with the domain knowledge (high frequency trading) and
programming skills (high performance C++ programming) to do that. Even fewer
developers will have the skills needed to write the flight control software
for a new spacecraft.
------
Foober223
Yes and no. Being a computer programmer covers a wide range of skills and
roles. It's like construction. There's a huge range. Some people cut and nail
up dry wall. They do their work without having to invent things, using skills
that can be executed rote. Other builders have to design a custom bridge for a
unique mountain range that must handle stress not normally found in cookie
cutter bridge designs.
A big part of the market is making CRUD apps. The skills to develop these
kinds of apps can be reliably learned. But even still, it's not quite as rote
a skill as being a cog on an assembly line. There's still a lot of
variability, and lots of parts to master (front end, databases, etc),
interpretation of requirements. It's hard to just hire an army of peons and
expect them to participate in CRUD.
If the development is exploring out new territory, then the workers will never
be a commodity. Making new things never done before. Facial recognition, OCR
with high reliability for crumby hand writing, etc. For these workers to be a
commodity, you will have to create an AI with human level creativity to do
exploratory creation. That will likely not happen in our great great great
grand children's lifetimes.
~~~
paulcole
> Other builders have to design a custom bridge for a unique mountain range
> that must handle stress not normally found in cookie cutter bridge designs.
Aren’t you confusing builders and engineers?
~~~
Foober223
No, that's actually the point of the post. That programmers, developers, or
what have you are all clumped together. When in reality there are many
distinct kinds of programmers with different skills, just like in the world of
physical structures.
The term "computer programmer" gets assigned to everyone who makes software.
Some programmers invent little like a dry wall worker. All average people
could become this kind of programmer.
Other programmers invent with skills out of reach of most common people.
~~~
paulcole
Actually I don’t think it is. Nobody thinks the guy that installs my fence
designed the Golden Gate Bridge.
~~~
Foober223
It seems you are arguing agianst a point that you are trying to make yourself.
~~~
paulcole
> Other builders have to design a custom bridge for a unique mountain range
These are not builders and nobody would ever call them builders.
Well one person would, I guess.
~~~
jarjarbinks455
To me it is clear he is saying dry wall work and bridge design are separate
skill sets. Contrasting that with the general term "developers" where
different skill sets fall under one umbrella term.
------
notjustanymike
No, but the most common problems become commoditised. 15 years ago I could
make money building a restaurant website, now it's just squarespace or Wix. I
could build a CMS or set up an ecommerce site. There was enough demand that
companies like Shopify grew into existence.
But while the baseline expectation is higher, so is the complexity of new
problems. Being a developer is to constantly be learning and adapting,
changing direction and always trying new things.
------
danny_sf45
Not really. Sure, programmers that only know HTML, CSS and JS and that
were/are making money by building restaurant websites are having a hard time
because there exists Wix and the like. But the IT world evolves: Docker,
Kubernetes, Go, Terraform, React etc., and developers are hired if and only if
they know the new stuff. In 20 years probably all the stuff we usually do now
(manually) will be automated, but again in 20 years we will probably program
in $NEW_FRAMEWORK and $NEW_LANGUAGE, so Docker, Go, Kubernetes, VueJS will all
look like plain HTML + CSS + JS today.
------
wprapido
There's a huge stratification going on, between developers as commodities and
developers as assets.
~~~
k1t
Absolutely.
If you're a tech company, looking to grow by building new products or
significantly expanding existing ones, then your developers are assets and you
treasure them.
If you're looking to grow in other ways (e.g. by acquisition) then you can put
all your products in maintenance mode, and your developers are a cost that you
want to cut as much as possible.
Developers as a whole are not a commoditised resource, but certainly can be
treated that way depending on the company and its business plan.
------
ilaksh
The reality is that there are different markets and different market segments.
There is actually a large segment of the online marketplace where I would say
"commoditized" is almost accurate especially when compared with some Silicon
Valley rates. And this does in fact include a significant percentage of highly
skilled programmers.
Of course, when you are in the commodity rate range, finding the highly
skilled programmers is a challenge. But as I said, they do exist.
But there is a limit to how far that goes. You will see massive discounts when
comparing some markets, but the less common knowledge still is at a premium
rate.
One caveat is that there will often be a minor concession in terms of
something like English language proficiency for example.
But I think that us programmers actually should try to take proactive steps to
slow the race to the bottom in terms of compensation. Especially as remote
becomes mainstream and markets open up to online and overseas programmers even
more.
My own personal belief, which is really just pure speculation, is that
ordinary types of programming will be automated by artificial general
intelligence within one or two decades. So I personally think that the wage
labor paradigm and other core aspects of our economic system will be
completely obsoleted.
------
seibelj
Certain businesses see developers as a commodity and work to further
commoditize them by using cookie-cutter tooling that turns programming as
closely as possible into plugging cords into outlets. However this can only
take you so far.
If you have developers that use ever-more-simplified-tools and languages,
there are companies that make those tools, and cloud companies that make the
infrastructure and build all the things that make life easier for other
companies. They still need strong programmers.
There will always be the need for extremely good programmers. If you are an
extremely good programmer then you should be able to earn outsized monetary
rewards and find intellectually stimulating projects if you are able to move
to the right location (SF, Boston) and interview well.
------
sushshshsh
I don't think so. For large corporations, the hiring process is still very
qualitative and selective and the pay is high and variable based on how good
of a fit the developer is for the specific project needs.
If you compare this to the average McDonald's worker who is just expected to
fulfill the same generic duties for the same generic pay, you can see most
devs don't fit this definition.
------
mettamage
Partial answer:
Hmm... given in the interviews I've been as a web developer... No.
If I could redo my whole thing again, I'd focus much more at making people
laugh and like me. That might get some "you passed the coding challenge but
you don't have enough experience" out of the way.
------
wolco
Agile did it. Developers became resources to be pluged into existing projects
sprints.
Want it quickier just add more resources.
~~~
afarrell
Huh? How does that even work?
~~~
wolco
Usually adding one new resource subtracts a resource overall because they take
other resources time. In the best case it may give you half a resource boost
but it puts pressure on supporting units.
~~~
afarrell
Especially if you only think of them as ‘units’ rather than individuals with
strengths and weaknesses.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple Now Worth More Than Google - sant0sk1
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/08/13/apple-now-worth-more-than-google/
======
martythemaniak
That's rather meaningless, but its interesting to compare the competitors
there: Apple, RIM and Nokia.
Apple and RIM seem to be on par - Apple is valued at ~2x compared to RIM, but
then its also much bigger company (in terms of revenues, employees, products,
operations etc).
Nokia seems a bit weak in this light - they're a behemoth in the cell phone
market and yet they operate on much thinner margins and aren't valued that
high.
Anyway, I am still kicking myself for not buying RIM stock when I was beta
testing the original Pearl. Back then I had a hunch they were undervalued and
a septupling of the stock price would have done me well ;)
~~~
ajross
Company valuations are growth bets. Nokia is already holds a huge share of an
almost-saturated industry. There isn't much room for growth in their core
business area, and they don't have a history of growing into new areas of
revenue like some of the other companies on the list (Google and Apple
especially).
FWIW, Apple and Google are both overvalued. :)
[edit: I should say _technology_ company valuations are growth bets.
Corporations in stable industries are more often valued by earnings, unless
something weird is going on (acquisition talk, etc...).]
~~~
netcan
FWIW, Apple and Google are both overvalued. :)
Well as you said: 'growth bets'.
Google are a long bet, I reckon. So far they're proven for putting out good
products. But to be worth the money they need to monetise at least some of
these. Up to now we have one success in that department: Adwords, which is
extremely well thought out. But it's still just one point. They may not get
another multi-$b cow. Adwords even if they manage to fix content ads, would be
pressed to find that much growth (but 100%-200% is not out of the question)
Apple may be justified. There is the old mantra of 'be very good at 2 things'
instead of 'be the best at 1 thing.' Apple can do:
1- Software
2- Hardware
3- Marketing / Product Launches
4- Creating Markets & doing deals that put a nice chunk of it in their pockets
(Itunes, App store)
Take any 2 and you have a potential player in a lot of markets theat may grow
very big.
\- TVish markets (some future apple TV?)
\- bookish markets (Kindle?)
\- thin clients (If the free with internet accesss PCs happen, who better then
apple to make them? Nokia?)
\- gaming (could happen?)
\- GPSish markets (you never know where this might go)
\- In-Vehicle stuff (Ipod type thing for music & aircon & stuff in your new
BMW?)
You almost expect apple to grab a piece of any consumer electronics that come
up. Problem is they seem to be running on momentum. Not sure that'll last
forever.
~~~
netcan
To add to that: How many of <http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html> could be
cracked by Apple?
I think 1, 2, 17, 27, they do, probably will do or are uniquely positioned to
do.
They could have as good a crack as any another half dozen.
Come to think of it: "17. New payment methods" might be one for Google. I
mean, the key(s) seem like they might be around millions of users with
accounts & easy, frictionless interface. Google checkout's not really changing
the word though.
~~~
aneesh
It'll take a lot to beat eBay (who owns PayPal) in this space.
> "key(s) seem like they might be around millions of users with accounts &
> easy, frictionless interface"
Fwiw, Yahoo & Microsoft both have way more users than Google. But Google
probably has most of the early-adopter crowd.
~~~
netcan
Users was probably the wrong term. I meant 'accounts'.
~~~
aneesh
That's what I meant. There are actually more Yahoo! accounts and Live accounts
than GMail accounts.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This Car Runs on Code (100 million lines of it) - timf
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/feb09/7649
======
timf
From the article, kind of amazing:
\- "The avionics system in the F-22 Raptor, the current U.S. Air Force
frontline jet fighter, consists of about 1.7 million lines of software code."
\- "The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, scheduled to become operational in 2010,
will require about 5.7 million lines of code to operate its onboard systems."
\- "And Boeing’s new 787 Dreamliner, scheduled to be delivered to customers in
2010, requires about 6.5 million lines of software code to operate its
avionics and onboard support systems."
\- "These are impressive amounts of software, yet if you bought a premium-
class automobile recently, 'it probably contains close to 100 million lines of
software code'"
------
jacquesm
After reading this I'm going to be so much more happy that my car starts in
the morning... I wonder how much of that code is 'critical', in other words,
if it should fail that it would lead to loss of a vehicle or plane (including
the occupants and/or bystanders).
I do wonder about those line counts though, that seems suspiciously high,
especially given the fact that automotive processors are usually not very
powerful. The majority is in the 'pic/atmel/name your flavour of embedded cpu'
range.
~~~
parbo
The ECU I'm developing now uses a Freescale PPC-5516 running at 66 MHz. That's
kind of a mid-range processor for automotive now. I would estimate that it
will run ~ 1 million LOC at start of production. C and C++, some small startup
code in assembly.
~~~
jacquesm
what on earth do you need a million lines for ? That's a fair bit of code by
any standard, and from where I'm sitting an ECU is a control system with a
relatively limited number of input channels controlling an even more limited
number of outputs.
Where does all that code go to ?
------
timf
I like this part, regarding "100 million lines of code":
_"Such complexity brings with it reliability issues."_
I can't even imagine.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dringend – iOS and Mac development on your iPad - davidbarker
http://www.dringend.cc/
======
MarcScott
I'd like to point out that the developer of this application is 17 years old.
He's a student at the school I work at and a fantastic programmer.
I don't know whether he'd be annoyed at me for mentioning this or not, but
given some of the negativity in the comments, I think it's worth noting. I
can't imagine the type of applications he'll be developing in a few years
time.
~~~
scott_karana
Holy crap. I know plenty of 20-somethings who haven't accomplished anything
close to this.
~~~
jason_slack
I know plenty of 30-40 somethings that call themselves programmers that
wouldn't know how to even prototype this.
------
objectiveariel
It's a clever system: the app is really a text editor which sends the code you
write to your Mac. Your Mac builds the app and sends the binary back to your
iPad.
Pros:
* Code when you're on the move because... laptops haven't been invented yet?
Cons:
* You need an internet connection all the time. * No support for any version control system??? "Import your project from Dropbox and Dringend will handle syncing any changes you make in the app back to Dropbox." Dropbox for version control??? Are you joking? * No support for unit tests, asset catalog, breakpoints, interface builder...
I really don't get the point of this app, it's a cool hack but it's not an
IDE. Developing for iOS involves a complex and large set of essential tools,
no decent IDE for iOS can omit a single one of these tools.
~~~
jgarnham
Hi there, I'm the developer of this app so just thought I'd reply to some of
the cons you made.
You don't need an internet connection all the time, just simply for building
or running the application as Dringend needs to connect to the build server.
Support for git is coming up in version 1.2 and is going to be in the hands of
beta testers very soon.
Features such as support for asset catalogs and XIBs/Storyboards are also in
the pipeline.
~~~
je42
Glad to hear git support is on the way. This roadmap would a good addition to
your website.
~~~
jgarnham
Thanks. Took your advice and added a small section to the homepage detailing
features that are planned for the future.
------
colbyh
Not trying to be rude because this obviously took a ton of effort, but why on
earth would I ever want to build iOS/Mac apps on an iPad? My fingers hurt just
thinking about it.
~~~
robterrell
Just to present a contrary viewpoint, I've wanted something like this for a
long time. So, kudos to the team behind it.
Why would I want it? I take my iPad everywhere, that's why. My iPad is my go-
to device.
I'm not at all certain it will work for me, or the workflow will be to my
linking, but I'm glad someone did it. And they'll get my ten bucks.
Curious to see how they handle provisioning & loading builds onto the same
device. Hopefully it's really seamless.
~~~
Jare
As I understand it, Dringend commands your remote xcode on your mac to build
your app. If the built ipa is placed in dropbox along with the install XML (or
was it html?), the ipa can then be installed from a dropbox url, works just
like Testflight.
------
dep_b
Any particular reason why this app has the Dutch word for urgent as it's name?
~~~
jgarnham
It started out as a code name for the app and was chosen in particular because
it meant urgent in Dutch/German. The idea was something I had wanted to work
on for quite a while but I initially got sidetracked with other things and as
it was something I wanted to get working on as soon as possible I picked the
code name 'urgent' (Dringend).
------
umsm
A little off topic: The video is almost pointless.
You cant clearly see the screen because of the horrible reflection. Maybe a
video of the app on the mac in the ipad simulator would be better.
~~~
happyscrappy
[http://www.airsquirrels.com/reflector/](http://www.airsquirrels.com/reflector/)
------
druidsbane
Where has this been all these years? No idea if this project works (depends on
a local Mac so that ruins it for me), but it kills me that we can AirPlay to
TV's and run high resolution with bluetooth keyboard/mouse hookup and still we
can't develop on our iPhone/iPad?
~~~
seba_dos1
That's what you get when using a platform that's not developer, but app store
customer friendly. Without breaking into your own device you can't do much
with it, so it's hardly a surprise.
------
AlfieHopkin
I, myself believe that what this guy has achieved is brilliant. Just 2 years
ago when I was 14 I released my first iOS game and there was an overwhelming
show support for me which encouraged me to do more, I think this guy deserves
the same! If he doesn't receive the support he needs he may never see an
interest in it again, give him a break, I doubt most people get past 'Hello
World' anyway.
The app is a brilliant idea and the possibilities are endless for what it
could potentially be, well done and continue doing what you're doing! - Alfie
------
thekylemontag
Very impressive. Doesn’t seem like the easiest setup to actually do day-to-day
coding on. However seems like an awesome tool to do code reviews and small
touch ups / demoes on the go.
Really awesome work guys.
------
jasonjei
I wonder if they'll have the Clang static analyzer running in the iPad or
they'll parse the syntax through a server. In the former case would be really
awesome, and possibly doable given the static analyzer is open source. Wonder
how much work is required to parse XIB and storyboards... I'd love to use this
on an airplane.
~~~
jgarnham
At the moment the app doesn't employ the use of the Clang static analyzer but
I am looking into using libClang both for live issues as you code and also for
auto complete. Also, XIB/Storyboard support is one that will be worked on just
as soon as git support is out of the door and in the hands of the users.
(I'm the dev by the way)
~~~
wingerlang
You could maybe look into the jailbreak community. It is possible to compile
(etc) on the device itself and they previously had an IDE in the works which
was never finished. I am sure they'd love to have a look at this.
------
neals
So now that we are on the subject of IDE's for ipads. What are some other nice
apps to edit other languages on the go?
~~~
speg
I use [https://panic.com/prompt/](https://panic.com/prompt/) on my iPhone &
iPad to SSH into a machine and then just use VIM from there.
~~~
elithrar
I use Prompt + vim as well. I don't always travel with my personal laptop and
it's nice for prototyping or quick fixes.
------
ansimionescu
I'm on a 13" MBAir and this happens when I play the embedded video and go
fullscreen (using Chrome stable).
[http://i.imgur.com/cr44bL6.png](http://i.imgur.com/cr44bL6.png)
I've never seen something like this before
------
wellboy
Taking from the comments, it could be "useless", but the technology could be
very interesting and the start of something bigger. I can imagine that Apple
would be interesting in acquiring this technology and developing it further.
------
JamesBaxter
But by requiring a remote build server I can't work without a network.
If I wanted to quick code reviews or checks I could just look at the
repository on my iPad.
Still very nice implentation. It must be scary writing a product that squeaks
past Apple's rules.
------
chrisBob
The biggest thing I see missing is debugging. I am not sure how much
development I can do with out my NSLog statements. It shouldn't be hard to add
writing the debugging statements to a text file for your to check on the iPad.
~~~
jgarnham
This is something I've been look into, unfortunately whilst you can log to a
file rather than to the console it wouldn't be possible for Dringend to access
the file due to sandboxing. However, my current idea is overriding NSLog when
installing projects and funneling any logs into a custom pasteboard which
Dringend can then read from when it becomes the open app again.
Definitely consider this to be something I'm looking to include in a future
version, sooner rather than later.
~~~
chrisBob
I imagined that it would all be done through remote debugging with the file
accessed over dropbox, but I guess it makes sense that you would have to do it
locally.
------
keehun
This is neat. Is it acting most as a GUI to xcode CLI tools that's running on
OSX?
Would be a little nicer if they made it clear in the video demo that you need
a Mac as a build server and Dropbox for storage.
------
iamwithnail
I think that's pretty awesome - I've been wanting something like that for
Python django for a while, so I will be waiting still, but things are going in
the right direction, top work.
------
yconst
Some functionality for working with XIBs in an intuitive way would be a great
feature. Same for Core Data models.
------
United857
"Run" on the iPad? How do they get around the App Store prohibition on
downloaded binary code?
~~~
United857
Answering my own question -- looks like it just builds the IPA on the Mac,
uploads it to Dropbox, and installs it on the device.
------
jason_slack
Does it work with existing C++ XCode projects?
------
je42
i would have expected fully integrated with git... not having any git support
for dev box is a show stopper.
------
hendzen
Seems pretty similar to [http://thebinaryapp.com/](http://thebinaryapp.com/)
~~~
pat2man
Except it is for native iOS apps. Ends up being completely different.
------
phrasz
\+ Developing on iOS directly.
\-
[https://www.google.com/search?num=30&q=define+integrated+dev...](https://www.google.com/search?num=30&q=define+integrated+development+environment)
==> IDE usually means it is standalone. This project is a wrapper for remote
Xcode.
Kudos on the work. I was TOTALLY misled thinking I could dev right on the
device (see Terminal IDE on Android...). $10 for a remote wrapper is too rich
for my blood.
~~~
phrasz
Also: "Dringend lets you build and run your application wherever you are in
the world" should be starred: "Dringend lets you build and run your
application wherever you are in the world * " * Network connectivity required.
I'm pretty sure a jerk would jump in a Faraday cage and cite how they couldn't
use the app.
------
ekr
I've never been interested in Apple stuff, but if you already have a keyboard,
why not go keyboard-only, in a way similar to Vim. That should certainly be
way more efficient.
And thinking about it, do people realize how much effort is being replicated
with these "app stores". There are already plenty of free(as in freedom)
editors and IDE's out there, that would need no adaptations(in the case of
Vim) whatsoever to run on mobile devices, if only the devices themselves were
just a little bit more free.
~~~
robotresearcher
Vim on the Apple app store:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vim/id492668168?mt=8](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/vim/id492668168?mt=8)
~~~
HeshamA
Thanks for the link. Didn't know I could hack on VIM on my iDevice. Balance
restored to the universe.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
OASIS -- Building 1000 citizen-sensors for the globe - a5huynh
http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/oasis-building-1000-citizen-sensors-for-the-globe
======
wesvetter
Not one of the engineers here, but I hang out with them a lot. Exciting work
being done in the fields of machine-learning, hardware (potentiostats), and
all open-source. It's a small core-team that definitely has the hacker
mindset.
------
a5huynh
I'm one of the engineers involved in the data science behind the project, so
if anyone has any questions, shoot away!
------
patnos
One of the engineers here, just saying hi, thanks for posting
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Uilicious Snippet – Catch, replicate and share website bugs - eugeneqin
http://snippet.uilicious.com
======
eugeneqin
Hi Everyone, creator here.
The idea behind this, is to allow users to write clear test scripts, and bug
reports that can be easily understood, repeatable, and most importantly
publicly sharable!
Normally, writing bug report could be tedious or inaccurate. Sometimes the
developers maybe unable to replicate the bug even with the steps provided!
Now, users can simply attach the shareable link that contains the test results
where the developers would be able to view it immediately. And rerun the test
after fixing it.
Some notable examples,
youtube downtime -
[https://snippet.uilicious.com/test/public/RuGwPjbwFX1QU5EVhv...](https://snippet.uilicious.com/test/public/RuGwPjbwFX1QU5EVhvNHZu)
product hunt title bug
-[https://twitter.com/picocreator/status/1056148538411769856](https://twitter.com/picocreator/status/1056148538411769856)
Feel free to ask / clarify anything here =)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Getting started with Solar Energy? - randuser34
I was looking into the solar technologies that stand out today that have the capability of being deployed and there is so much information out there that it is mind boggling.<p>For large scale deployment there are two companies that piqued my interest: eSolar[1] and First Solar[2].<p>I am based outside the US and was looking into getting into the clean tech space as a turnkey player(in the next couple of decades), and I understood that the basic component to get started would be to get a factory up and running that would produce polycrystalline silicon which are the building blocks to get started manufacturing wafers, but they are very cost prohibitive and so I was looking into getting started with power plants that can be more easily financed (in comparison) and have a shorter turnaround.<p>I was wondering whether there are folks here that have/are currently working in the solar energy generation space as researchers or manufacturing companies / or if you have worked at them in the past and if so could you point me in the right direction / provide any words of advice or any thoughts on the matter if you were getting started in this space today in the MENA region?<p>I am mainly approaching this problem by leveraging existing technology rather than 'researching' new innovation ways inhouse, atleast that is what works for us now.<p>Thanks.<p>[1]http://www.esolar.com/<p>[2]http://www.firstsolar.com/
======
phlux
I have contacts in solar but you dont have email listed in profile.
Also, your post is vague, what are you looking to do? Create a solar tech
manufacturer, installer, researcher?
There are other opportunities in solar other than the cells themselves, like
power monitoring, so what type of solar contacts are yiu seeking?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dear Apple, We Need an Affordable and Upgradable Mac - sinatra
https://namityadav.com/post/177983417975/dear-apple-we-need-an-affordable-and-upgradable
======
berbec
I hate to play the devil's advocate here, but why would Apple make an
upgradeable machine? Having everything built in drives sales and they've
obviously done the math and come up with the right numbers. They believe they
won't get enough new purchases due to upgradability to offset the loss in
sales.
The people who are most in favor of this either go PC, Linux or Hackintosh.
~~~
sonnyblarney
There will be a price to pay that's hard to be felt in the early numbers.
I am for the first time considering switching away from Mac simply because
getting a relatively powerful machine on mac is how prohibitively expensive.
Remember that Mac/OSX get it's underlying impetus from a vast number of
individuals who are not working for big tech etc..
------
mosselman
Dear Apple, please change your economic models that made you the biggest
company in the world on account of my blog post.
~~~
charlesism
One component of what made Apple the richest company in the world was a
willingness to uphold their reputation, even if it meant leaving money on the
table. They've now spent over five years burning through that capital.
For developers, Apple has turned in Comcast. Developers used to evangelize
Apple. Now it's "I wish I could switch, but I need MacOS, so they're the only
game in town."
~~~
wilsonnb3
Developers tend to overstate how much their love or hatred of apple matters to
both Apple themselves and the general public.
~~~
charlesism
It isn't possible to overstate the importance of developers to the health of
Apple. There are so many reasons. Maybe the most significant: without love
from the developer community, Apple can't hire and retain "A players"
~~~
mosselman
It seems as if in this thread 'developers' means multiple things: 1.
developers who make apps? 2. developers who work for Apple.
------
bdcravens
Been looking at a cheap alternative to my MacBook when traveling. Bought a 2
year old Thinkpad for under $400. Replacing keyboard - pleasantly surprised at
how serviceable this machine is. Upgrading RAM and storage is actually doable,
and took about 10 minutes. Dual batteries, up to 32gb of ram (2 years ago!),
and supported LTE more nice touches.
~~~
nobleach
That sounds like a sweetheart of a deal! I managed to get a 2014 Dell for
about that price (after RAM upgrade to 16gb). One SSD and one spinning disk.
But the thing was great for popping off the back and plugging and unplugging
things. I'd have killed for a Thinkpad though!
------
george_perez
It seems like tomorrow is only going to be about iPhone and Apple Watch. iPad
Pro and Macs are going to be announced at a later October event.
[[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-10/apple-
to-...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-10/apple-to-kick-off-
product-blitz-with-iphone-xs-line-new-
watches\]\(https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-10/apple-to-kick-
off-product-blitz-with-iphone-xs-line-new-watches\))
------
ozten
Dear Louis Vuitton, I want a sustainable and inexpensive handbag.
------
itomato
I would love to see Apple embark on an OEM program similar to the old clone
license of yore.
As an OEM partner (Clevo, Asrock or the like), I can purchase T3 chips (or
whatever they'll be called) or whatever silicon IP it takes to bless OEMs to
help the Mac platform flourish.
The whole widget philosophy has arguably worked well for macOS, but not so
much for the user.
Keep the standards high, but jeez Tim, enable partners to serve the market if
you don't care to.
Enthusiasm helps sustain platforms. Ask any Windows user whether they have
'voided their warranty'.
These customers don't buy Apple Care and they don't need the slick retail
experience. What they will do is breathe fresh life into a fading platform and
bring more people under the tent.
------
rstupek
Dear Apple, I want the machine you already said you were working on that will
come next year
~~~
bdcravens
They haven't even released the charger they announced last year
------
salex89
So in the last 5 years I went from full time Linux at work, over full time
Windows (Linux on servers), to full time OSX (and again, Linux on servers). I
have dual boot Windows and Linux on my personal rig. I see the pros and cons
of all, but to be honest, I can't find something that really makes me
dependant on any of them (especially on OSX). I just find it a bit sad to have
to beg vendors (hardware and software) for anything. Don't buy their gear for
a generation or two and look at them listen for the next ten.
~~~
pjmlp
The days we needed to buy hardware every three years are gone.
------
darth_mastah
> Switching to Linux isn’t an option due to all the design, legal, and other
> such documents I need to work with frequently for my startup. I can’t risk
> using alternative open source tools to edit such important documents because
> the professionals in those areas, are set in their ways and are not going
> change just for me.
Excuse me, what? Since when editing such important documents can be done only
on Mac? That's the dumbest thing I've read all day.
~~~
pjmlp
When the software doesn't exist on Linux?
~~~
Doxin
Name one filetype you can open on OSX that you can't open on linux. I'll wait.
------
P_I_Staker
LMFAO, have you met Apple before? I'm not holding out for them to change their
ways anytime soon. They seem to have made every effort to avoid having a
general mac box.
> "The smallness or thinness of the machine is absolutely irrelevant for me
> because it’ll sit under the desk."
It's relevant to apple and a top design consideration. Practicality almost
always takes a back seat to shininess and size at Apple.
> If I can get a good Windows desktop for $600 ... I can maybe angrily even
> pay $1000. But, I can’t justify paying $3000 for it
This is why I can't imagine anyone buying a desktop from these people. Is that
something people are still doing? I guess some industries are very apple
centric. Baffling to me.
> Why should Apple care?
Let me stop you there, they don't. They never have. There's nothing they care
less about than what the user _thinks_ they want. Sometimes this leads to good
designs, other times it just adds cost or inconvenience to the customer. This
is Apple's MO. Don't like it, buy a Windows or Linux box.
------
whynotminot
Honestly the best situation for someone like this is to buy a nice $800
Windows machine and do your development in a Linux VM. For years now
developers not in the Mac ecosystem have used this approach.
I prefer developing on Mac myself, but have used the other approach too with
good success. It works, just maybe not as seamlessly.
~~~
dmcginty
In the post they specifically say they can't use Linux due to legal reasons. I
imagine this would apply to a VM, also.
~~~
whynotminot
They were talking about editing documents that require licensed / non-open
source software, no? Not the actual development?
Edit your docs in windows, write your code on the Linux VM.
~~~
justwalt
Why not run Linux with Windows in the VM? Is there a reason?
~~~
whynotminot
Potato potato.
For instance for my current dev station I have a Mac and whenever I need
Windows for something I use a Windows VM. It works pretty well for me.
The bottom line is that the guy needs cheap hardware that allows for a modern
dev environment and also access to windows. Some flavor of linux + windows
will check the boxes.
------
GeekyBear
Dear Blogger, The thing you want is called a Hackintosh. (MacOS running on
standard PC hardware)
The trick is to select hardware that is known to have valid Mac drivers.
[https://www.tonymacx86.com](https://www.tonymacx86.com)
~~~
stefanfisk
It seems to suck if you are a professional though? Losing a days work over a
broken upgrade is hundreds of dollars in lost income.
~~~
GeekyBear
Why would you apply an update on day one with an OS that still gives the user
total control over update behavior?
On a productive machine, waiting a few days to see if a new update causes
problems for others is standard advice for any platform.
If you choose to run MacOS in a virtual machine on standard PC hardware,
backing up the machine state before applying an update is as simple as
duplicating your virtual system disk before applying the update.
~~~
stefanfisk
A hackintosh is quite different from running macOS in a VM. And even if you
wait “a few days” you are part of such a small group of users that you know
very little about how you might be affected.
~~~
GeekyBear
The blogger in question wanted to be able to run MacOS on cheap standard
hardware.
A Hackintosh on bare metal and running in a virtual machine both allow them to
do exactly that.
If you visit the link to the Hackintosh community provided above you will find
plenty of information from Hackintosh users who have already installed the
various system updates and even beta OS releases.
~~~
stefanfisk
I’ve done the hackintosh thing, and I might do it again someday, but as far as
I can tell it is nowhere near as smooth as running officially sanctioned
hardware.
And regarding running macOS in a VM, so you mean with PCI passthrough? Because
AFAIK there are no drivers for virtualized graphics.
~~~
GeekyBear
If you build a machine using components that leverage the drivers built into
the OS you can bypass those problems.
That's why sites like the one given above are so helpful in the process.
They list the specific components that are known for worry free operation.
It's like building a Windows NT machine back in the day. You have to stick
with components that are known to work with Apple's drivers, likely because
Apple has used that same component in one of it's own computers.
------
ezoe
Don't buy Apple products. Problem solved.
------
through
You could go ala John Draper and buy a computer with coincidentally similar
hardware...
[https://www.scan.co.uk](https://www.scan.co.uk)
------
thewizardofaus
An affordable and upgradable Mac is known as a ThinkPad.
------
powerapple
Dear Apple, we need a pear. Why?
~~~
izacus
Because "we" want it. It's free market capitalism, people have the right to
express their opinions and push companies to build products they want to
purchase.
------
wemdyjreichert
Sorry, not gonna happen. Pick two.
------
newnewpdro
Dear Apple, I want a PC.
~~~
mosselman
Dear Apple, I want a cross-platform Macos is probably nearer in what the
author wants.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Bibliographic Miracle - benbreen
http://www.abaa.org/blog/post/a-bibliophilic-miracle
======
mrec
Why scramble the title? The article has "Bibliophilic", not "Bibliographic"; I
was curious to see whether people really get that excited about a good list of
references.
------
walterbell
> _" Charles Ralph Boxer was born in 1904 to a distinguished British family of
> considerable means... His scholarship, both specialist and
> interdisciplinary, was gained by research and reading - he owned a library
> of institutional proportions - as well as by experience in his extensive
> travels.”_
How many future scholars will be educated by comparable books at the free and
larger-than-institutional archive.org and international variants? No longer
does one need to be born into a "family of considerable means" to gain the
scholarly skills that come from curiosity and access to a quality library.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A working video player built in Factario - synthecypher
https://forums.factorio.com/viewtopic.php?t=37490
======
detaro
(small typo in title: Fact o rio)
Is this using a mod, or are those newer vanilla elements? Even earlier
versions had lots of ways to do crazy logic if you wanted, but this seems a
lot more streamlined and featureful)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An opinionated anthropology of the embedded programmer, its habits and habitat - eaguyhn
https://labs.spotify.com/2019/04/09/an-opinionated-anthropology-of-the-embedded-programmer-its-habits-and-habitat/
======
NikkiA
> In short, the bar is set rather high and C is already awesome.
Haha. no, just no.
I can't speak for other embedded developers, but I _hate_ C, it's just usually
the only option for small devices.
The 'maker' movement and it's relentless movement towards bigger and bigger
ARM based systems has opened that up a little, thankfully; you can now find
plenty of SBCs that offer 1GB+, and that means _any_ language is an option (at
least if it has a pausable gc).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
#pretzel2018 – Bootstrapping my first SaaS from 0 to 50$ MRR - pretzelhands
http://www.blechi.at/
======
jay888
Best of luck with TaskZen.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Representing Trees in PostgreSQL - mathie
http://woss.name/articles/representing-trees-in-postgresql/
======
Todd
A good book on the subject is Joe Celko's Trees and Hierarchies in SQL for
Smarties.
[http://www.amazon.com/Hierarchies-Smarties-Edition-
Kaufmann-...](http://www.amazon.com/Hierarchies-Smarties-Edition-Kaufmann-
Management/dp/0123877334)
He spends a chapter on each of the models outlined in this post: adjacency,
path, and nested set models.
~~~
platz
I've done nested set before; it's interesting - very fast for queries, but
requires a lengthy insert/update cost. Also, team members were absolutely
clueless as to what was really going on. I'm not sure nested sets are really
much faster than what modern rdbms's can provide today.
~~~
tempVariable
In addition to expensive insert/update, it is necessary to keep the left and
right boundaries across _ALL_ of your entries in perfect order. If the
boundaries get out of whack, fixing the tree is a nightmare scenario.
I worked on a multi-tenant application with distinct trees present in one
table and with one tree per table and so on. Fun fun fun!
~~~
alistairbayley
I think the nested intervals model, a refinement of nested sets, solves this
slow update problem: [http://www.rampant-
books.com/art_vadim_nested_sets_sql_trees...](http://www.rampant-
books.com/art_vadim_nested_sets_sql_trees.htm)
But I've never had to use it, so I am just guessing.
Same article, different site:
[https://communities.bmc.com/docs/DOC-9902](https://communities.bmc.com/docs/DOC-9902)
And a paper: [http://www.sigmod.org/publications/sigmod-
record/0506/p47-ar...](http://www.sigmod.org/publications/sigmod-
record/0506/p47-article-tropashko.pdf)
Here's a comparison of the different approaches in a matrix:
[http://vadimtropashko.wordpress.com/2008/08/09/one-more-
nest...](http://vadimtropashko.wordpress.com/2008/08/09/one-more-nested-
intervals-vs-adjacency-list-comparison/)
------
kpmah
There is also ltree
[http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/ltree.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.3/static/ltree.html)
Adjacency lists also don't perform that badly with recursive queries in my
experience.
~~~
rickmode
This.
The project I'm on used materialized paths, which lead to great pain. I
investigated nested intervals ... and they could't achieve the tree depths we
needed (we were modeling a file system tree).
We are back to adjacency lists (using a parent ID) but redesigned to avoid the
need for recursive ancestor and descendant queries.
_But_ the RDBMS doesn't support recursive queries and I've been curious about
PostgreSQL's recursive query support. I played with it, but not on a fully
loaded database with deep trees of data.
Does PostgreSQL recursive query support work well with deep trees (> 100
levels) on tables with tens of millions or more rows?
~~~
andrewflnr
Can you elaborate on how materialized path caused pain? Was it more
performance or maintenance? I would have expected MP to be a good fit for
modeling a file system.
~~~
rickmode
First, renames and moves require updating all descendants.
Second, the materialized path's length exceeded the database's indexable
length limit. (MySQL, the DB in question, has a default index limit of 767
bytes, so only first 767 bytes are indexed.)
There are ways around these issues (like using "UPDATE ... WHERE" rather than
using an ORM to walk the tree and update... _sigh_ ). We also had other app-
specific / design-specific issues too that swamped these issues performance
wise.
I'm hopefully we won't need ancestor and descendant queries again in our re-
design. But I'm keeping PostgreSQL with its Common Table Expression stuff--the
thing that facilities recursive queries--in my back pocket. It's that or use a
stored procedure to build the capability by hand.
------
coleifer
Another option for storing tree structures is the closure table [1]. It acts
as a sort of "many-to-many" junction table between the tree nodes, storing the
relationships between each.
[1] [https://coderwall.com/p/lixing/closure-tables-for-
browsing-t...](https://coderwall.com/p/lixing/closure-tables-for-browsing-
trees-in-sql)
~~~
chdir
+1, Related reading (all from Bill Karwin of SQL Antipatterns fame):
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192220/what-is-the-
most-e...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/192220/what-is-the-most-
efficient-elegant-way-to-parse-a-flat-table-into-a-tree/192462#192462)
[http://www.slideshare.net/billkarwin/models-for-
hierarchical...](http://www.slideshare.net/billkarwin/models-for-hierarchical-
data)
[http://karwin.blogspot.in/2010/03/rendering-trees-with-
closu...](http://karwin.blogspot.in/2010/03/rendering-trees-with-closure-
tables.html)
------
rosser
Other comments have mentioned this as well, but recursive CTEs are a very
effective technique for representing trees, and they work very well in
PostgreSQL.
~~~
gtaylor
We have used these for our discussion features on Pathwright. With ltree, you
don't have as much flexibility when sorting by multiple values. With the
Recursive CTE, you can go nuts and still end up very efficient.
I believe Disqus uses this, as well: [http://cramer.io/2010/05/30/scaling-
threaded-comments-on-dja...](http://cramer.io/2010/05/30/scaling-threaded-
comments-on-django-at-disqus/)
------
techtalsky
There's a great Ruby on Rails gem called acts_as_sane_tree (after the non-
recursive acts_as_tree) that uses postgresql's recursive queries. I'm using it
on a project and have found it useful with good performance:
[https://github.com/chrisroberts/acts_as_sane_tree](https://github.com/chrisroberts/acts_as_sane_tree)
~~~
btown
Looks like the main fork hasn't been updated since 2012. Is there an updated
version you recommend for Rails 4 compatibility?
~~~
techtalsky
Hm, I didn't realize that. I'm using it on a Rails 4 project and haven't had
any problems.
------
savagej
I've used django-mptt to represent a tree of human phenotypes before. It was
fast and quite an easy api to use. I was using PostgreSQL as the backend.
[https://www.djangopackages.com/packages/p/django-
mptt/](https://www.djangopackages.com/packages/p/django-mptt/)
~~~
robertfw
I've also used django-mptt and just wanted to throw another vote behind it in
case anyone is considering using it. Our data structure was a good fit for
MPTT (many reads, few writes) so I can't comment on how it would behave in the
opposite scenario. Nice API, very easy to use from a developer standpoint. We
were using MySQL.
~~~
jhgg
Likewise. I've done some heavy modification ontop of django-mptt to support
limiting tree depth when querying, calculating total children, querying
siblings, etc...
[https://gist.github.com/jhgg/32a379e34c8a56303295](https://gist.github.com/jhgg/32a379e34c8a56303295)
------
batbomb
First off: The first example is exactly what a relational database is for.
It's a "tree" structure only because it's several 1:many joins. It is true
that ORMs aren't that amenable to composition and lots of dynamic joins, but
that's not the fault of the database, it's the fault of the ORMs.
That being said, I've tried all these methods before across a few different
DBMS.
IMO a good way to go about this all is to actually just reimplement a file
system; You have a caching virtual file system in your application, and store
data as key:parentKey:name (equivalent-ish dentry:parentDentry:fileName) in
every table which contains child nodes. It's fast, often more predictable, and
definitely more portable (as you aren't relying on DMBS-specific constructs).
It's also amenable to partitioning/sharding by parent key. You can drastically
reduce the amount of queries that are being sent. Also, if you use a b+tree as
an index for your paths, you can invalidate cache/subtrees pretty fast in your
application.
Of course, you end up duplicating functionality of the database, and if there
is a lot of latency between you and the DB, this might not be the best method
(or it might, depending).
It would be nice if MySQL finally supported CTEs.
------
dharbin
There's also the ltree module which is built-in to postgres:
[http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/ltree.html](http://www.postgresql.org/docs/9.1/static/ltree.html)
------
barosl
Does anyone remember how Drupal handles the hierarchical comments? It
maintains a "sort key" field for each comment, which consists of multiple
index numbers for all levels, much like the section numbers in Wikipedia.
1
1.1
1.2
2
2.1
2.1.1
2.1.2
2.1.2.1
In this way, displaying comments in a tree form is trivial. Just ORDER BY the
sort key. I find it brilliant for applying to such an application.
~~~
twerquie
This pattern is commonly called "materialized path", if anyone is trying to
search for it.
~~~
benjohnson
A similar system is also heavily used in the construction world in their "Work
Breakdown Structure" \- a borrowing on how they document airplane parts that
are part of an assembly, that are part of a module, that part of a structure.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Work_breakdown_structure)
------
m0ppers
with recursive is actually VERY quick in postgresql (adjacency model).
currently using that and thoroughly tested it. simple, very quick and no
hassle to update it (as the other options).
Compared to a mysql with nested set postgres using with recursive is a life
changer :D
------
netghost
There are some more tricks you can do using postgres' arrays to efficiently
query the data:
[http://monkeyandcrow.com/blog/hierarchies_with_rails/](http://monkeyandcrow.com/blog/hierarchies_with_rails/)
Namely using the && operator let's you make use of indices on the materialized
paths. We've been using it in production for years to great effect.
------
joesmo
> We could have retrieved all the appropriate data with a single query, but
> that means reconstructing the tree from a flat set of rows we got back from
> PostgreSQL. Doing that sort of thing in the view would be hienous.
Implement a view helper to take the flat data and return a hierarchical
structure that you can render.
~~~
smoyer
And store the data in PostgreSQL as a modified-preordered list so that the
data is already in the order you need to efficiently recreate the object graph
(note that this implies many reads for each write, since tree modifications
become the costly operation).
------
jimbokun
If it's a small tree, you could encode it as a single JSON object and query on
it using PostgreSQL's JSON support.
[http://schinckel.net/2014/05/25/querying-json-in-
postgres/](http://schinckel.net/2014/05/25/querying-json-in-postgres/)
------
mappu
Random data point: I have a hierarchal authentication system under MySQL (no
recursive query support). My schema does the most obvious thing of having
user.parent as a user_id (adjacency model).
My most common query is to find whether user X is a child of user Y.
My solution was to use application-level triggers to maintain a separate
lookup table, so i can simply do `user_id IN (SELECT child_id FROM
lookup_table WHERE parent_id = Y)` as an additional search clause. With
appropriate indexes it's very fast to query, and i can do partial updates to
maintain the lookup table.
If my most common tree query was something else (e.g. enumerate children in
sorted order) then i'd need some other data structure.
------
Walkman
I don't know if ActiveRecord is capable of doing this, but here is how to do
it with Django ORM:
in models.py:
class Node(models.Model):
parent = models.ForeignKey('self', related_name='children')
in the view:
nodes = Node.objects.prefetch_related('children')
in template:
{% for node in nodes %}
{% for subnode in node.children.all %}
...
{% endfor %}
{% endfor %}
This will make exactly two queries; one for all the parent nodes, and one for
the children nodes. Django will make the pairing automagically, so you don't
have to do it in view code.
~~~
caust1c
Unfortunately, this still only gets the children of the root. If you want to
be able to recursively get all the children and grandchildren of a root,
you're going to be doing (N - leaves) queries where N is the number of Nodes
in the tree.
However, there is of course a django package to help with this and gathers all
the nodes you care about into one query:
[https://github.com/django-mptt/django-mptt](https://github.com/django-
mptt/django-mptt)
------
mattdeboard
What are the upsides to this vice using a graph database like Neo4j?
~~~
mikesname
You get all the benefits of a mature and very full-featured RMDBS.
Neo4j is a great database, and I use it myself for a project that involves
lots of deep hierarchies. But it has a fairly sparse feature-set where schema
enforcement and data integrity checking are concerned; you basically have to
add all that stuff yourself at the application level which can amount to a lot
of work.
~~~
btown
To second this, if you're using multiple languages to write to your database,
you almost certainly want that schema enforcement at the DB level. We decided
not to go with Neo as our canonical database for exactly that reason. Its main
strength is probably as a follower or slave to a RDBMS or log file, which is
how it seems to be used in enterprise - when you want to do graph-based
analytics, you bulk-load a snapshot of your non-graph-stored DB into Neo, then
run read-only workloads.
------
ashmud
I used to use code based on Kendall Willets' code. His original site is
offline. Archive here:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20110928135313/http://willets.or...](https://web.archive.org/web/20110928135313/http://willets.org/sqlgraphs.html)
Line from the page: "I just picked up a copy and it looks great! You are right
about the whole approach and my stuff stinks." \- Joe Celko, author of SQL for
Smarties.
------
jeremyevans
Not sure about ActiveRecord, but Sequel has supported using recursive common
table expressions for loading all descendants in a given branch (or branches)
of a tree for over 4 years using the rcte_tree plugin:
[http://sequel.jeremyevans.net/rdoc-
plugins/classes/Sequel/Pl...](http://sequel.jeremyevans.net/rdoc-
plugins/classes/Sequel/Plugins/RcteTree.html)
------
maaku
> There’s also a twist on the Nested Sets model, called the nested interval
> model, where the nodes are given two numbers that represent the numerator
> and denominator of a fraction, but it doesn’t seem so popular, and was too
> complex to wrap my head around!
...and the author just wrote-off the best performing generic tree solution,
because "it was too complex to wrap my head around!"
:facepalm:
------
chx
Bojan Živanović and I have a writeup on this whole tree storage business
[https://bojanz.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/storing-
hierarchical...](https://bojanz.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/storing-hierarchical-
data-materialized-path/) here.
------
quipo
Covered this and several other techniques here:
[http://www.slideshare.net/quipo/trees-in-the-database-
advanc...](http://www.slideshare.net/quipo/trees-in-the-database-advanced-
data-structures)
------
jaunkst
A graph database comes to mind. It's a different design problem when dealing
with deep relationships vs top level relationships. Sometimes you need more
deep inherent relational mappings for alogithms to be effecient.
------
glibgil
Should be titled representing paths. Trees are easy: id, parent_id. Paths are
tricky.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Piece of ethernet equipped art perpetually sells itself online - whalesalad
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190367275705#ht_2488wt_1167
======
RiderOfGiraffes
Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1068575>
Many comments there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
QuakeCon 2011 - John Carmack Keynote - 6ren
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zgYG-_ha28&feature=player_detailpage#t=54m00s
======
there
just make sure you don't do stupid things to quiet static code analyzers or
compiler warnings.
<http://digitaloffense.net/tools/debian-openssl/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
World Master List of Resources on How to Dismantle Systemic Racism - cookingoils
http://pfw.guide/
======
kthejoker2
Someone didn't get the memo
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23500093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23500093)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
This must be a Conspiracy - bane
http://datunnel.blogspot.com/2016/04/this-must-be-conspiracy.html?m=1
======
gus_massa
This is the original title, but it deserves something more explanatory. I
couldn't find a version that use the subtitle or the first sentence of the
article following the extended guidelines, so I give up an I propose this:
"This must be a Conspiracy: How a demogroup made their 64ks"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Getting a Grip on GNU grep - obsaysditto
http://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/317617:getting-a-grip-on-gnu-grep
======
bnoordhuis
From TFA:
grep '[[:punct:]]$' files
I suspect the author has grep aliased to `egrep` or `grep -E` because
[:punct:] is an extended regular expression and GNU grep defaults to basic RE
mode.
------
davnola
Before you invest time in grep, take a look at ack-grep
<http://betterthangrep.com/>.
ack-grep --thppt
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Clang reaches funding target - bjnortier_hn
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260688528/clang?foo=bar
======
pubby
I'm nitpicking, but it's CLANG, not Clang. One's a video game swords thing,
the other is a compiler.
~~~
batista
Thought the exact same thing! I clicked to read about new developments funded
for Clang the compiler and was wondering why I haven't heard of the
fundraising effort...
~~~
pooriaazimi
Well, I honestly don't think Clang needs fundraising through KickStarter :)
Apple's $100B+ should be enough. GCC is now deprecated on Apple platforms and
will be completely replaced by LLVM family in a year's time, so their whole
ecosystem (OS X, iOS, cloud infrastructures) depends on LLVM and certainly
they would spend as much as necessary on it.
------
Simucal
I pledged for this Kickstarter even though I'm not overly interested in
realistic sword fighting video games. I really just wanted to give something
back to Neal Stephenson for all the enjoyment I've gotten out of his books
aside from his cut of their purchase price. Helping a pet project of his
succeed seemed like a cool way to do that.
However, this Kickstarter really struggled to get funded which surprised me,
especially given Neal's "nerd fame" as he calls it. Maybe this is why the AAA
title companies haven't taken a stab at something like this, because the
interest just isn't there?
~~~
bjnortier_hn
I pledged for pretty much the same reasons, even though I'm not overly keen on
a sword fighting console game. Perhaps you're right and that there's just not
enough interest.
------
esbwhat
800k for linux? that seems a bit excessive considering the engine already
supports it
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Observations from a 4 year old's first interaction with MS Surface - nebula
http://blogs.conchango.com/richardwand/archive/2008/11/19/breaking-down-traditional-barriers.aspx
======
decode
I thought this was interesting: "She found selecting, moving and orientating
the photos very intuitive using natural gestures. She took a little guidance
to get a handle on photo resizing but by the time she’d played for 15 minutes
she had got to grips with it and could shrink and enlarge the photos with
relative ease."
So moving images was easy and resizing them was hard. 15 minutes seems like a
long time for a 4 year-old to learn a skill like that relatively well.
I think the conclusion you can draw from this, and the rest of the article, is
that she could quickly do things that behaved exactly as they do in the real
world (e.g. pushing a picture across a table), but things fell apart as soon
as a new action had to be learned. That's why some of the actions seemed
"intuitive," because they fit exactly into previous experience. I wonder if it
would have been easier for her if they had played the "stretch a newspaper
comic with silly putty" game a few days before.
~~~
tomerico
After watching the video, I think the problem she had in resizing is not
because it isn't intuitive, but because it required more delicate movement.
The same reason it would be harder for her to twist a screw driver than to hit
a hammer.
~~~
ben_straub
Having played with one of these, and knowing how it works under the hood, it's
more likely that she just didn't have the technique right. Surface prefers you
use single fingertips as points of control; Isobel was using her entire hand.
------
crocowhile
I remember when the multi-touch first came out and everybody was excited. Few
years and thousands of iphones have passed and the only "revolutionary" thing
we can do with it is still zoom-in and zoom-out pinching pictures.
I am quite amazed by the resistance people have when thinking about HDI: take
the multitouch pad on the new mac, for instance. I love it, but why there
isn't even a way to do something like middle mouse button?
~~~
nudded
middle mouse button isn't relevant in the context of a trackpad imho. I also
don't see the need for it (except closing FF tabs).
~~~
crocowhile
It's not just for browsing (FF let you close tabs and open new ones too when
you middle click on a link). For instance it is instrumental if you want unix-
like copy and paste, to which I am addicted by now.
~~~
rfunduk
Don't you just have your other hand on the keyboard all the time anyway? Set
FF to open everything in tabs, so that's solved, and then use cmd+: w to close
windows, q to quit, c to copy, v to paste, etc etc... they're all right there
under your non-trackpad fingers.
I didn't even use middle-click back before wheel mice (when they literally had
3 _buttons_ ).
------
jbronn
I was at TNRIS, a Texas GIS conference, and MS had a Surface there. I admit it
was really cool to fly through Virtual Earth imagery with it, but it was
pretty buggy. After a few minutes of light use I managed to freeze the
interface, crashing the surface service, subsequently sending the machine back
to the Vista desktop.
Unfortunately, this is my typical experience with most Microsoft software
products.
~~~
rfunduk
It didn't look very smooth either, the pictures jumped around a lot and...
wait did you say _Vista desktop_!? Nevermind :)
------
baddox
Alternate title: "World's smallest person plays with an iPhone."
------
cgs
This is somewhat tangential to the story, but I think virtual painting, while
novel, deprives a young child of the sensory experience necessary at that age.
~~~
mbrubeck
Paints and paper are also an abstract technology, and time spend working on
paper takes kids away from walking and other physical, outdoor experiences.
Obviously it can go too far, but most of us feel that painting and drawing and
writing and reading have become part of the appropriate mix of experiences for
children in our culture.
Computers are no different. I do make sure my toddler spends almost all her
time away from glowing screens, but I also remember that I first really got
into computers over twenty years ago by spending hours with MacPaint. My
daughter is growing up in a world where her parents work all day on computers,
play on computers, and talk to friends and family through computers. She's
going to be influenced by that, and I'd like it to be as an active participant
and not just an observer.
~~~
frossie
Also in my experience, kids are less interested in computers than we were
precisely because they are so ubiquitous.
Back to the original artice: We ruined my 2 year old by letting her play with
an iPhone (which she can handle perfectly well - find videos, look at photos
as she pleases). Now she expects every screen to be multi-touch. I haven't
tried her on the mouse - I figure technology will soon catch up with her
expectations :-)
------
danbmil99
When our kid was 2 and a few months we set him up with an old-school
touchscreen. He had no problem playing games that would be hard for a 3.5 yr
old with a mouse. May not sound like much, but a year at that age is huge, and
even at 4, as the article states, kids are just barely getting the hang of a
mouse. By 4, our kid was a mouse jockey. Transitioning from touchscreen to
mouse was trivial.
------
dave_au
Nice article, although this bit seemed a bit of a stretch:
> This highlights how the direct manipulation and natural gestures of
> Microsoft Surface can blur the real and virtual world.
I can imagine that results may vary for people older than 4 years old.
------
pohl
Imagine that in the future, after enough Moore cycles, this amazing technology
is shrunk down to a multi-touch device that can fit in your pocket!
~~~
riffic
yeah I can't wait
------
jseifer
The future is a big-ass table: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CZrr7AZ9nCY>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Setting the Record Straight on Jedi - caution
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/publicsector/setting-the-record-straight-on-jedi/
======
ENOTTY
Its been kind of entertaining watching random VPs in Microsoft and Amazon duke
it out in passive aggressive blog posts. Undoubtedly, many of the same VPs'
jobs are on the line. For previous episodes in this drama, see:
2020-05-07: [https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-
issues/2020/05/07/amazon-...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-
issues/2020/05/07/amazon-jedi-re-do-dod/)
2020-04-15: [https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/04/15/dod-
ama...](https://blogs.microsoft.com/on-the-issues/2020/04/15/dod-amazon-jedi-
contract/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MongoDB will not prevent NoSQL injections in your Node.js app - ecares
https://blog.sqreen.io/mongodb-will-not-prevent-nosql-injections-in-your-node-js-app/?utm_content=buffer25729&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer
======
starptech
"NoSQL means Not-injectable, right?" makes no sense for me. It doesnt matter
which type of database technology you are using. As any other database there
are security roles. No mongodb query should be executed as an admin. You can
restrict that up to document level. You can even create read-only views. You
should always validate you payload. Use e.g Joi
[https://github.com/hapijs/joi](https://github.com/hapijs/joi). Someone who
doesn't validate his payload and pass it up to the driver should not be
surprised.
------
asher_
This isn't injection at all. No commands other than the find are being
performed. Little Bobby Tables (Little Bobby Collections?) will not have any
luck here.
In addition to the fact that you can't execute arbitrary commands with this
example, the example itself is flawed. If the programmer's intention was to
exclude "secret projects" from all searches, then they should have written the
query to do that. They didn't, and allowed multiple other ways of accessing
those records.
Writing some code that does something different to what you intended it to do
is not a NoSQL injection, it's just bad code.
~~~
asher_
To expand on this..
You could use $exists, $gt, $eq, $ne, $in, $nin, regex, and all kinds of other
ways to query what you want.
If the programmer wanted to exclude "secret projects" the query should have
had a form similar to
{ $and: [{ type: { $ne: 'secret projects' }}, <rest of query>] }
------
overcast
Every time I read these MongoDB articles, I question why RethinkDB didn't rise
up.
~~~
hashkb
We all ran back to Postgres and realized life wasn't so bad?
~~~
overcast
Meh, MySQL is by far the dominant in that sector. RethinkDB is exactly what I
need for most of my projects, relational, real time, document storage.
~~~
untog
By "that sector" you mean SQL databases as opposed to NoSQL? I'm finding
Postgres' JSON column types to be very useful in working with NoSQL-y document
structures.
~~~
overcast
I mean free "open source", SQL databases.
~~~
untog
I'd argue that Postgres doesn't belong just in that sector, then, given that
it can be used for many of the roles Mongo/Rethink are used in.
------
taylorwc
Noob question. I get that this is a problem and what it could do, but wouldn't
doing simple checks and validations of any client input solve this problem?
~~~
wcarron
As another poster replied: Yes, validation is one method to reduce the methods
of attacking. Client side is essentially useless in these cases, since they
can just bypass the gui by sending HTTP requests (which can then contain the
db methods) from the command line.
What is needed is server side validation. Pretty much the same as client side,
but most of the time a bit more robust. The problem is validating ALL the
input. Like, creating this comment. Validation is really easy for this
comment.
But what about something where you upload images? PDFs are well known attack
vectors. So are SVGs. How can you be sure there's nothing hiding in those?
It's possible. It just becomes increasingly difficult to cover each case.
~~~
virmundi
I find it odd that in 2016 we don't have a better way of centralizing that
type of logic better. I don't know of a single framework that will generate
front end logic from annotations on a class and then run the logic against the
same annotations on the server. Spring gets you half way. Not the rest.
\-- edit grammer --
------
mnarayan01
If you're letting users query against a collection using a fairly arbitrary
filter, then not having something to ensure they are authorized to view (or
update, etc.) the results is almost certainly a mistake. Also describing $gte
as a "command" seems misleading; if you could use $where in embedded queries
it would maybe be a different story, but since I don't think you can, this
seems hyperbolic.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Convincing someone that constraints are useful? - staunch
Some people don't believe in the idea that putting pressure/constraints on yourself can be helpful.<p>That raising $500k can be better for you than raising $2 million.<p>Or that paying yourself $75k can be better for you than paying yourself $150k (even assuming the money came out of thin air).<p>Or that having a bare-bones office can be better for you than a luxurious one.<p>I think it's a rare kind of person that doesn't benefit from these (and other similar) constraints. I know I'm not one of them. I think I do my best work when I'm really excited and a little bit uncomfortable.<p>How can I make this argument as effectively as possible? Are there any good texts on the subject?<p>How can I convince someone that thinks "maybe some people are like that, but not me"?
======
ibejoeb
I wonder if there's a correlation. If you don't get a good response here,
check out a pysch forum. Sounds like something that would have been
researched.
Anecdotally (which may be better than research for convincing someone): I
agree. I feel smarter and more energetic when there's something at risk. When
I had a couch, a beautiful view, and bottle of whiskey in the office, nothing
seemed too important.
------
fezzl
Strangely, most of the time, I find that I need to place the opposite type on
constraints on myself, e.g. don't be so cheap with food and endanger my
health, don't be too hardworking and sacrifice sleep, etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Using the Unix Chainsaw: Named Pipes and Process Substitution - jlkinsel
http://vincebuffalo.org/2013/08/08/the-mighty-named-pipe.html
======
turnersd
Awesome - I never new about process substitution. I wanted to convince myself
I knew what it was doing, so I started kicking this around a bit. I expected
the first command to output "test." I'm not sure I can explain these results:
$ echo <(echo test)
/dev/fd/63
$ cat <(echo test)
test
~~~
vsbuffalo
<(blah) runs the command blah, and pipes its standard output to a file
descriptor (/dev/fd/63) above. You shell replaces the <(blah) with a path to
the this file descriptor, so here, echo is just printing the file descriptor
name.
Since echo test prints "test" to standard out, in your second example this is
piped to the file descriptor, which cat then reads from (printing "test").
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google is changing the rules of email. Here’s what you can do - dhruvkaran
http://blog.outbound.io/post/56850779286/so-google-pulled-a-panda-on-email-heres-what-you-can
======
tbrownaw
If you're sending emails that most recipients aren't interested in, don't you
have bigger problems than whether they had to waste ten seconds opening the
email before they noticed its worthless?
------
TeMPOraL
> _Instead of forcing your way into their inbox, you’re confirming and
> affirming an action they took—and you can always add a dose of cross-sell
> /up-sell into those messages._
Be very careful with that. It could be an easy way to make users hate you. If
I'm on your site, I don't need to get an e-mail for every other click I make.
I've already established a communication channel - namely, your website. It
would be like you were texting stuff to me during a face-to-face conversation
between us.
> _But if the primary message is related to a user action, users will be less
> likely to drag that message over to the promotions tab._
If the message is about something you could have just displayed to me when I
was performing that action, then be damn well sure I'll skip the "promotions"
tab. I'll drag it straight to the spam. On principle.
------
lowmagnet
Make sure the user wants emails from you. Don't be a dick and check the
checkbox to 3-4 mailing lists on sign-up. Maybe add a link when they confirm
email to opt into messaging.
The present default to on for most mailing lists on sites is a smell. Fix that
first.
------
drjacobs
So basically nothing?
good
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
D.C. court rules tracking phones without a warrant is unconstitutional - DINKDINK
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/d-c-court-rules-warrant-is-required-for-stingray-cell-phone-tracking/
======
bhhaskin
This is a big win, but it is going to be a long road ahead to gain back basic
personal privacy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best uptime monitor? - evertonfuller
Looking around for uptime monitoring systems. What do you guys use? Thanks!
======
mariocesar
I made my own service with a free Google App Engine instance, using this
script as a base → <https://github.com/danawoodman/python-uptime-monitor>
mainly to use the SMS gateway api from my provider.
Simple enough, write the views and use the cron service from GAE, for myself
2secods it's more than efficient.
I will never hit any cost on GAE just monitoring 12 servers every 2 seconds.
You will get more capabilities, writing your own uptime script and personally
I will add: it's more fun :-)
------
antonioe
Uptrends has a pretty good service. Probes that run every 10 minutes.
<http://uptrends.com>
------
sc68cal
How many systems are you planning to monitor?
Are you looking for alerts? Performance graphs? Managed vs. In house?
~~~
evertonfuller
Just 1 server.
Email (and SMS) alerts and graphs yup.
~~~
sc68cal
Clicky: <http://www.pingdom.com>
~~~
evertonfuller
That's perfect, thank you!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tesla owner almost crashes on video trying to recreate fatal Autopilot accident - evo_9
https://electrek.co/2018/04/02/tesla-fatal-autopilot-crash-recreation/
======
eddyg
Previous discussion from a few hours ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16732436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16732436)
Also worth noting that this video is from a highway in Illinois, not
California.
------
TallGuyShort
Note that I'm not saying Tesla Autopilot is ready to bet lives on, etc, etc
etc... but I think we also need to address the problem of bad lane lines for
humans too. The right side of the divider was virtually invisible. Anyone
fully paying attention should also see the right-side lane markers continuing
straight and stay with them, and see the barrier very early (although I
usually see those with a lot more reflective markings and barrels to absorb
energy), but - bad lane line markings can definitely throw off imperfect
humans plenty too. The I-15 in Utah is notorious for this. Areas that have
been under constant construction for years have layers of previous temporary
lane markings that are badly removed and weren't clear to begin with, and you
can be driving along with several lanes of traffic who suddenly get confused
about which lane they should be following and start converging into the same
lanes.
Clear lane markings are not a requirement just for autopilot.
~~~
orev
I agree that lines should be fixed, however humans rely on things other than
lane lines, and autopilots should too. When you can't see you get cues from
other cars, estimated distance from both sides of the road, sign placement
above your head or on the side of the road, etc...
If we need to repaint all roads to make them work for auto-driving cars, we
might as well just move to one of those simple systems like where a robot
follows a pre-drawn line on a piece of paper. Maybe throw some bar codes in
there so the car knows where it is.
If the cars can't deal with environments that even humans can, I'm not sure
what the point is anymore. I expect a self-driving car can see through things
like fog and darkness better than a human.
~~~
TallGuyShort
>> If we need to repaint all roads to make them work for auto-driving cars
No I'm saying the section in the video is in need of repainting even for
humans.
~~~
orev
And I did not disagree, however if auto driving cars can’t deal with that
situation at least as good a humans, then we have a problem. Obviously we’re
at 1.0, so things will get better.
------
jonheller
This is pretty shocking, more so than any other autopilot related news or
videos I've seen. It's something that no normal driver paying attention would
ever do.
This further confirms for me the feeling that autopilot in cars won't become
even remotely common for another decade, especially in any parts of the
country with poor weather.
~~~
loceng
From my understanding the driver who died in the crash had previously reported
problems in this area. I wonder if it was this specific crash site or not, I
wonder why too if the person was aware of it why they didn't pay more
attention during it - and to stop trusting it. I can understand how easy it is
to be uncertain of something and have enough trust or rather a thread of hope
that "nothing bad will happen to me."
I wonder too, if it's true that the person who died in the crash reported the
area, what process Tesla followed and .. Any area reported with a problem IMHO
should immediately start warning other drivers going in the same area until
the issue is resolved, even disabling auto-pilot completely until Tesla's
resolved it. I'm sure that would make people safer than the temporary
inconveniences they would cause - I'd hope people would take that attitude
anyway.
~~~
floatingatoll
If the driver previously reported problems on a section of roadway and was
then inattentive when driving that section of roadway, that’s a perfect setup
for a reckless driving ticket. They knew a problem existed and recklessly
ignored it. Autopilot does not excuse this in any way whatsoever.
------
amluto
> Then it seems like Autopilot’s Autosteer stayed locked on the left line even
> though it became the right line of the ramp. The system most likely got
> confused because the line was more clearly marked than the actual left line
> of the lane.
This doesn’t surprise me at all. I test drove an “autopilot 2” car once on a
local road at 30-ish MPH. It appeared to try to drive centered between the
lane line and the curb, totally ignoring the fact that the right half of the
“lane” was parking. It then tried to drive me into a parked car and later into
a trash can. Unless they’ve improved dramatically, this is the same thing.
Autopilot seems to be a mediocre adaptive cruise with mediocre steering
assistance that pretends it can actually drive.
~~~
neo4sure
Autopilot should only be used in free ways...
~~~
amluto
Then the software shouldn’t allow it to be enabled off of freeways. And it
should be able to dodge big concrete and metal dividers.
~~~
neo4sure
Then read the user manual and use only accordingly.
------
martinald
Tesls have made out that the driver ignored the warning; but it didn't
actually say that. It said previously in the drive he ignored that warning,
but phrased it cleverly that makes it sounds like during the accident he
ignored the warning.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong; but I'm 99% sure that Tesla managed some
pretty spectacular weasel wording there.
~~~
stiGGG
Yes, their statement included definitely a lot of room for interpretation. I
was surprised that most media turned it into a story that took Tesla at least
a little out of the line of fire. Especially here in Germany, were media (and
most car enthusiasts) generally wants to see Tesla going bankruptcy asap.
~~~
lsaferite
> Especially here in Germany, were media (and most car enthusiasts) generally
> wants to see Tesla going bankruptcy asap.
Why?
~~~
stiGGG
Actually there are multiple reasons.
First of all a lot of people here believe that our cars are the best in the
world and no one could even compete close. A lot of this is based on
tradition, think about that gas and diesel engines were both invented by
germans. A foreign company getting so much hype just doesn't fit to their
ideology. Especially an american one, there is no general bad reputation for
american products here (rather the opposite), except for cars though. American
cars are considered generally as poor made and technological far behind here.
A Tesla (who is this anyway?) more innovative than a Mercedes, BMW, Audi or
even Porsche??? It cannot be, what must not be.
Then there is still a general rejection of electric cars by most people, it's
ridiculous how many fake news gets widespread around that topic here in media,
always to worship the diesel engine as the holy grail.
The only reasonable point ist that there is a big fear that electric cars will
cause a lot of people to lose their jobs, because they are much easier to
build. Keep in mind, that the automotive industry is the heart of germanys
economy. But instead of accepting that technologies change over time and
supporting and pushing our industry to make a good transition to keep their
world wide market share, they still hope this could be prevented at all in
some kind.
------
notheguyouthink
Man, I panicked just _watching_ that. I can only imagine how I'd react if an
"autopilot" started beeping, forcing me to take over in an already bad
situation.
I'd love to own a car with all these sensors, but currently all I'd want to
use them for is keeping distance to cars in front of me, and stopping if
needed/etc - ie, advanced cruise control.
~~~
DKnoll
I'm terrified to drive a car that could decide to fully apply the brakes if it
deems necessary. Imagine if it falsely detects a human in the middle of the
highway when you have a car following closely. Very unlikely scenario, some
would say impossible... but I'd rather just pay attention to the road myself
instead of getting my car to do it for me.
~~~
actsasbuffoon
Though eventually that hypothetical car behind you will also have autonomous
breaking, so it'd be fine. It's just a matter of getting adoption rates high
enough.
------
lebski88
Unrelated to the autopilot stuff - this junction seems like an absolute menace
to me. The lines are confusing and that crash barrier seems purpose designed
to kill people. I've only driven a bit on US roads but I don't remember seeing
junctions as bad as this. Is this common or an outlier?
~~~
rurounijones
I had to watch the video twice because I thought the driver had messed up and
dropped the camera before the important bit. Only on my second viewing did I
realise that the white line was no longer the divider for the lane.
You can _Just_ make out the white lines of the lane going to the right and
chevrons between them and the offramp but I agree that, forgetting all the
autopilot stuff. I could easily see a tired driver going straight into that
barrier or even a non-tired one in bad visibilty taking cues from the white
lines.
------
EADGBE
FWIW, this article is worded as if it's the same exit. It's not; the video
attached is in Chicago.
Ramps like this are ubiquitous across the US, a self-driving computer unable
to parse faded lane markings is alarming, to say the least.
------
gapo
If this is a reproducible 'bug' \- then Tesla's stance of Autopilot is ...
certified by US Govt to reduce accidents by 40% ... . "That does not mean that
it perfectly prevents all accidents — such a standard would be impossible — it
simply makes them less likely to occur." is going to severely discourage a lot
of people from not using Autopilot.
Tesla's expectation that a driver keep their hands on the steering wheel
within 6 seconds or they can die - is not going to bode well.
Also, "Internal data confirms that recent updates to Autopilot have improved
system reliability." [2] is going to come under a lot of questions. What
standards/tests do Autopilots even go under ?
[2] [https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-
week%E2%80%99s-accide...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/update-last-
week%E2%80%99s-accident) [1] [https://www.tesla.com/blog/what-we-know-about-
last-weeks-acc...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/what-we-know-about-last-weeks-
accident)
~~~
loceng
The types of collisions will shift to different concentrations as well, so
there could be a "500%" increase in one type of collision, while a "20,000%"
decrease in another area.
------
jonawesomegreen
Shouldn't autopilot at least stop the car because of the barrier in front of
it? Even if it can't figure out the lane configuration?
~~~
markstos
Stationary objects are less likely to be recognized than moving ones:
[https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-
radar/](https://www.wired.com/story/tesla-autopilot-why-crash-radar/)
~~~
loceng
I wonder why these systems aren't linked to GPS and maps, surely you'd be able
to calculate that going right into the middle of two fork options isn't going
to end well.
~~~
danbtl
GPS by itself isn't accurate enough to determine what lane you're in.
Even WAAS GPS [1] (used by autopilots for airplanes) is specified to be
accurate only up to 25 ft, although the measured accuracy is usually around 3
ft.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Augmentation_System](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wide_Area_Augmentation_System)
------
TYPE_FASTER
You can see the left lane line stay blue on the dash.
That's a really dangerous exit. The dark color on the end of the divider
blends in with the background.
I would have thought their radar would see the lane divider. Either it didn't,
or their software elected to follow the lane, or that car does not have radar
hardware, or is running an older version of Autopilot
([https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-
world-...](https://www.tesla.com/blog/upgrading-autopilot-seeing-world-
radar)).
Or this is proof that their software doesn't use the output of the radar.
Without code and data, it's all just conjecture.
------
millzlane
It was reported that the other fellow that died a few days ago also knew of
this bug before he was killed. I wonder if he too died while trying to
reproduce this bug, and if so, could you really hold Tesla at fault?
You know there is a deadly flaw in a product, (Imagine a car without Anti lock
brakes.) But you continue to try to reproduce a deadly bug in the software. Is
the maker of the car at fault?
~~~
EADGBE
Could absolutely be true.
The problem I see in this software issue is that the Production environment
isn't fully-reproducible for testing/debugging.
We're debugging on live code on; with the ability to completely ruin lives
with the wrong logic.
In comparison; Anti-lock brakes tests can be done on an abandoned airstrip.
------
EADGBE
As someone not familiar with autopilot or the programming required to "self-
drive" it appears rather confusing to the car, that the left most solid-white
line in the right-most non-exit lane is throwing this off. It's as if it
follows it entirely.
------
dustinmoorenet
First off, I want to say, Tesla looks bad in this case. But at what point can
we start blaming the cities and states for not properly marking roads. That
crash suppressor was already compressed before the accident, so did some human
do the same as the Tesla?
------
shofu
This scares me because this looks like it would be a pretty common edge case/
something you would easily think of. How could a bug like that in such a high
stakes scenario not be tested/be missed??
------
senectus1
jeepers it seems so obvious doesn't it.
its following that white line and at a guess the profile of that stationary
sudden stop at the end just seems to not fit within its target detection
range.
------
arcaster
Leave it to shitty Boston roads to nearly kill occupants and confuse Tesla's
auto-pilot!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Inside Microsoft’s surprise decision to work with Google on its Edge browser - dfabulich
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/6/18527550/microsoft-chromium-edge-google-history-collaboration
======
dfabulich
These interviews with MS executives are quite revealing. I was especially
shocked to see them on the record bad-mouthing UWP.
> _Edge is also built on Microsoft’s Universal Windows Platform (UWP), the
> company’s previous big push in Windows 8 and Windows 10 to get single
> universal apps that run across desktops, tablets, phones, Xbox consoles, and
> devices like the HoloLens. “Our third headwind was UWP. And it’s not that
> UWP is bad, but UWP is not a 35-year-old mature platform that a ridiculously
> huge amount of apps have been written to,” explains Belfiore. That meant
> things like multiple monitor support weren’t always solid for UWP, and the
> Edge team would have to wait for general UWP improvements. Microsoft had to
> get Edge back to a real desktop app, available across Windows 7, Mac, and
> Windows 10._
I agree with every word of that, but you could have imagined somebody saying,
"let's spend into this; port UWP to Win 7 and Mac and fix the bugs."
Instead, Win32 has defeated yet another desktop competitor, as it always does.
~~~
dman
If you work for a few large companies you start to notice the pattern of Win32
like code. It should be dead, but it cannot be dead and it will not be dead
until the company is dead. Network effects and political power of entrenched
players means that they can freeze out any new replacements because the new
replacements have to interface with the older entrenched solution.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Responsive design puzzle game - shacharz
http://resize.thatsh.it/game.html
======
shacharz
sigh, level 2 is broken
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
F-35 hit with damning reports as Pentagon eyes full rate production - clouddrover
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/28488/f-35-hit-with-cluster-bomb-of-damning-reports-as-dod-eyes-full-rate-production
======
dang
Comments moved to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20169191](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20169191),
which was posted earlier and is also the original report.
------
Rafuino
This is the actual report from Defense News. Why not link directly to it?
[https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/06/12/the-pentagon-
is-b...](https://www.defensenews.com/air/2019/06/12/the-pentagon-is-battling-
the-clock-to-fix-serious-unreported-f-35-problems/)
~~~
malux85
Because there's like 674 ads on the linked page (if you're not running ad
blocker)
~~~
Rafuino
The article OP linked to has 24 trackers blocked by uBlock Origin, where the
original source has 8 trackers blocked. Either way, get an ad blocker, I
suppose, but we should read the original source wherever possible to support
the actual journalism
~~~
malux85
I have an ad blocker, I turned it off to see the predicted mess underneath.
And yes, 674 was an exaggeration, it's called hyperbole
~~~
randcraw
Using Perfect Web Browser on iPad (the best ad blocker I know for iOS), the
site blocks my access completely. So the number of web-malignancies on the
site may as well be infinite.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Flash will be EOL by 2020 - Manishearth
https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-update.html
======
dang
Comments moved to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848786](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14848786),
which has the original source and was submitted a bit earlier.
------
scott_karana
Can we link to the actual announcement instead of Techcrunch's regurgitation?
[https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-
up...](https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-update.html)
~~~
dang
OK, we changed to that from [https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/get-ready-to-
say-goodbye-t...](https://techcrunch.com/2017/07/25/get-ready-to-say-goodbye-
to-flash-in-2020). Thanks, all.
------
campuscodi
Here's the real announcement, not this regarbled blog spam with no technical
details: [https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-
up...](https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-update.html)
------
symmetricsaurus
Announcement on Adobes blog:
[https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-
up...](https://blogs.adobe.com/conversations/2017/07/adobe-flash-update.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Monitoring and Architecting for Failure - mmcclure
https://mux.com/blog/monitoring-and-architecting-for-failure-at-mux/
======
therealwardo
I'm the author of this post.
Here are a few things I highlight in this post as things to consider when
architecting for failure: Retry, Backoff and Rate Limit. Use a Cache. Add
Redundancy. Build a Buffer. Reconsider Dependencies. Introduce Isolation.
Improve Test and Release Practices.
Click the post for more about how I think about each of these. I think that
considering cost tradeoffs when doing evaluating each of these approaches is
what makes architecting systems so challenging (and interesting).
What else do you do in your systems to handle failures gracefully? Any
questions about what we are doing or how we are doing it?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to awaken a generation of lost mathematicians (Exploding Dots) - fjmubeen
https://medium.com/@fjmubeen/how-to-awaken-a-generation-of-lost-mathematicians-44c267e3e4ca
======
schoen
I just learned about the Exploding Dots thing for the first time from this
article.
It's an approach to representing and playing with place value number systems
visually, which also leads to generalizing them to show things like algebraic
structure. It looks like fun.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do I meet a co-founder? - thenerduk
TL;DR I'm 18 and I need a co-founder but have no connections or knowledge<p>Let's ignore the fact that I have no real experience, startups are hard etc. but I really need a co-founder. Problem is, I'm a fairly good programmer, I can happily sit down and code pretty much constantly for months. But I need some help with my idea, I need a co-founder to help me out with some of the business stuff I don't understand, getting designers/other staff, helping with the pitches to investors and all that sort of stuff.
I have no real connections locally (All the work I've done has been with people from the US, I live in the UK), it'd need to be someone prepared to fully commit to the project and be enthusiastic.<p>What do you suggest? I've looked around, there are no "hackathons" near where I live, and even if I was to go to London they're not very often or as popular as the ones in the US. I don't really want to just start going round telling everyone my idea but I'm not going to get anyone on board looking for someone who want's to take part in "a secret project".<p>I'd be interested to hear your thoughts
-Sam
======
swampthing
My two cents -
I could be wildly wrong, but it sounds like you want to start a company more
because you know you want to be an entrepreneur than because (a) you have some
idea that you are convinced will revolutionize the world and (b) you are
convinced it is your destiny to bring this innovation to humankind.
If this is correct, given your age, I'd recommend either going to a school or
working in an environment where you will be surrounded by really smart and
ambitious people. This may not be the best way to find a co-founder _right
now_ but in my opinion, it will yield the best results in the long run. You
are young enough that you can afford to invest in the future a little.
One point in favor of going to a really good school for college would be that
it's the one option you have that you can't do when you're older (or at least
it's a lot harder).
------
maxdemarzi
You didn't mention where in the UK you are. If you are near Birmingham, you
can contact <http://oxygenaccelerator.com> and see if they can help you find a
co-founder for your idea.
At your age you have going to university as an option and meeting people there
who you may want to team up with. In the mean time I would suggest looking at
the lean start-up movement to help you with the business side of things.
Good luck.
~~~
thenerduk
Haha, yeah I'm from Birmingham, I'm actually applying to Oxygen this month but
they say on the website "While we don’t screen applications just because they
have a single founder, it does make things more difficult" (Hence this post).
I did look around the Oxygen website but couldn't find anything like that, do
I just use the contact form?
~~~
maxdemarzi
Contact them and ask about any meet and greet or co-founder matching events
they are hosting. If they aren't, then you may want to suggest they do (that
should win you some brownie points for when you do apply).
Also check your local meet-ups:
[http://www.meetup.com/Birmingham-Open-
Coffee/events/20668251...](http://www.meetup.com/Birmingham-Open-
Coffee/events/20668251/)
[http://www.meetup.com/The-Birmingham-Entrepreneur-Meetup-
Gro...](http://www.meetup.com/The-Birmingham-Entrepreneur-Meetup-
Group/events/17576403/)
[http://www.meetup.com/Warwickshire-
Entrepreneurs/events/2005...](http://www.meetup.com/Warwickshire-
Entrepreneurs/events/20057911/)
------
snikolic
"I don't really want to just start going round telling everyone my idea..."
Ideas are cheap, start building something. It'll help you recruit people and
you'll almost certainly need something tangible to get funding.
If events are that lacking in the place you live, chances are that you need to
move. If your hometown doesn't already have a lively ecosystem, it's probably
going to be very difficult to recruit employees or make sales from there.
------
iworkforthem
I think you should work and develop a working prototype of your idea. Having
an idea and bring it to prototype stage is just the beginning. Even when you
are have a working prototype, you have no idea whether users will buy in the
product or not, and actually pay for it. Without a working prototype, it is
tough to any traction or mention on it.
With all these ground work undone, dun think you want to bringing in a
business person to help.
------
obeone
I'm not a good cofounder candidate for geographic and other reasons, but I'd
be happy to step you through some idea options and potential business models.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Carmack's Armadillo Aerospace Rocket Crashes and Burns - nickb
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn12522-crash-destroys-rocket-ahead-of-x-prize-contest.html
======
pfedor
And to spice things up a bit, it seems that the reason for this crash was a
bug in the vehicle's software: "Post-crash analysis has revealed what went
wrong -- the automatic shutdown that should have triggered when Texel first
touched down did not occur. That's because the computer was mistakenly told to
expect a stronger signal from the touchdown sensor, beyond what it is actually
capable of producing."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Over 80% of online ad effect is on offline sales - manojr
http://sciencebulletin.org/archives/10024.html
======
MikeGale
The study isn't published yet so I withold my judgement. Given that the
results are beneficial to people selling adverts caution should be exercised.
(Two of their big problems are that click through rates are abysmal and many
people dislike ads. They benefit if advertisers believe they achieve
"additional sales".)
EDIT: FOLLOW UP. I had a deeper look. The article is dated, "Posted in
Business on February 3, 2017". I found one copy of the paper published
December 29, 2015 and another July 26, 2016. Both same I think, but one author
had moved from Google to Pandora.
The article text seems off beam. The paper describes a method to better
estimate advertising impact, not directly what that impact is. Odd.
------
normalperson123
if i am not mistaken, ads used to pay a lot more. for example, a friend of
mine used to run a website and was able to pay for the hosting costs with a
few adsense ads and modest traffic. apparently that is not possible anymore.
there are problems with ad blockers and malicious ads. i simply dont
understand why these things are a problem. why do we not see simple ads,
static images with no java script, implemented in such a way that ad blockers
cant really block them? i mean, if your ad is some image inserted somewhere in
one or all of your web pages, how could an ad blocker know which image it was
out of the many which are probably going to be present on any given page? and
why are people not willing to pay for such an advertising vector? people visit
the website, they will see the ad like a billboard or any other traditional
ad, so why is it not possible to charge traditional rates? its very confusing
to me so if anyone with experience in the matter could weigh in that would be
very nice.
~~~
wvenable
> why do we not see simple ads, static images with no java script, implemented
> in such a way that ad blockers cant really block them?
I've posted about this before as I've actually been involved in a site that
does just this. It has basic text ads, side graphical ads, and banner ads.
There is no JavaScript used for any of it, all the site images including the
ads are served exactly the same way. The text ads are completely embedded in
the page text. No 3rd party ad services are used at all.
Ad blockers have no problem blocking every one of them.
~~~
princeb
> Ad blockers have no problem blocking every one of them.
that's interesting. how would they block a comment like this: This post was
made possible by McDonald's (I'm lovin' it), if it were embedded this deeply
in post content?
I'm interested only because i have briefly entertained the idea of ad content
embeded directly into a db query via a sproc, for example, so that the ad and
the post content are basically one and the same... if the entire content is
blocked, maybe that's the desired outcome? never bothered to try it though.
~~~
jay-saint
If all you wanted to do is embed " This post was made possible by xyz co."
Most blockers would miss this. However most advertisers want to have a link
provided to track results . It's trivial to block the links to
xyz.co/partner=123 . With the above knowledge and some trust a retailer could
gain customers and bypass adblockers by bypassing links in their ads and
focusing on views.
------
diminish
monetization hungry websites made the sites unusable with extra and extra ads.
users responded with ad blockers.
Instagram , snapchat and other app silos will come up as winners as you can't
block their ads and open web will turn into a paid web slowly.
PS: I m using ad blockers
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Proposed Chromium policy on JavaScript dialogs - r721
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2017/03/dialogs-policy
======
kalleboo
The proposal says that Safari "dismisses dialogs when a tab is switched away
from" which clashes with what "dismissing a dialog" means to me. To me,
"dismiss a dialog" means hitting cancel/esc so the dialog is gone forever.
What Safari does these days is has replaced the OS modal dialog with an in-tab
custom modal dialog (that basically looks like your typical custom "javascript
dialog" rounded-corner white DIV with a drop shadow and dimmed page cover),
and when you switch tabs, the dialog is still there on the old page, it's just
not blocking anything else. In practice this works beautifully.
~~~
JoshTriplett
Firefox has done that for the last several versions as well.
------
amluto
The main proposal ([https://crbug.com/629964](https://crbug.com/629964))
doesn't remove the old features; it just makes them per-tab, as they always
should have been. This is IMO better in essentially all respects. Your code
will keep working.
------
px1999
They're suggesting avoiding long-standing useful functionality because some
people abuse it. There's no viable simple alternative to each of these
methods, which is _why_ they're in common use. They provide a reliable way to
stop the user from interacting with the page until they've received a
notification / provided a piece of data. onbeforeunload provides a way for a
page to have the user ensure that data is saved before they navigate away.
More importantly, they're one-liners.
No proposed alternative achieves these goals, and they definitely don't
achieve them as simply or as elegantly. I understand switching alerts from
app- to tab-modal, but when did the web become such a clusterf __k of
complexity? Not every page needs (or should need) to bring in their own dialog
library, to save changes incrementally, or be concerned about users not
accepting notifications before being able to provide important information to
them.
This policy makes no sense because it recommends using ~10 lines of code which
probably won't work for all your users in place of the 1 that definitely will.
Telling people to avoid alert etc (by threatening to break the functionality
in the future) just avoids actually solving the problem (which they could do)
by taking away an incredibly useful and important piece of functionality.
------
jontro
Funny how google calendar abuses alert to steal focus right before an event is
scheduled. They're not really following their own best practices
------
mschuster91
Great. Really great. /s
Let me explain the /s:
alert/prompt/confirm have one very huge advantage: they're native. Which
means: screenreaders, tab, escape and everything I expect from the OS are
working consistently across sites.
Now people will have to implement the wheel all over again - everyone will do
it a bit different, 90% won't give a sh.t if tab works and 99% won't care if
Esc works. It will be the fake-scrollbar-styling once again.
Stop messing around and replacing OS-native stuff with lowest-grade JS
bullsh.t. Thanks!
~~~
comex
Esc is handled automatically by the suggested replacement <dialog>, although
only Chrome has implemented <dialog> so far.
With respect to Tab, doesn't that problem already exist in all other (non-
dialog) web content? If a webpage's dialogs are accessible but everything else
is broken, I feel like you're going to have a bad time regardless… Though I
suppose that if you're not impaired and typically use the mouse to click
buttons, but are used to using the keyboard for dialogs, this could be an
annoyance.
~~~
mschuster91
The problem is most people will skip over the "make it feel really native"
part, except when they're forced by law (ADA comes to my mind). It costs a lot
to implement right across browsers and even more to properly test.
To make it worse: Windoes has different native UI than OS X, and on linux it
entirely depends on the desktop environment and window manager - there is no
way to "get it native" there, so it is a loss of consistency.
Oh, and JS cr.p also does not know about stuff like OS color schemes, DPI
settings, OS-level-set hotkeys etc., so all this will be lost.
------
notamy
One thing I don't get. They recommend using <dialog> instead, but the MDN page
they link to[0] explicitly says
> This is an experimental technology
> Because this technology's specification has not stabilized, check the
> compatibility table for usage in various browsers. Also note that the syntax
> and behavior of an experimental technology is subject to change in future
> versions of browsers as the specification changes.
Which makes me wonder about backwards-compatibility-handling etc.
[0] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/di...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/HTML/Element/dialog)
~~~
niftich
Up until 2016-08-23, Service Workers were marked in MDN as experimental [1],
despite the concentrated push by various parties to get people to stop using
stuff like AppCache and use Service Workers instead.
That being said, at least Dialog is part of both the WHATWG HTML5 "Living
Standard" (a fancy name for snapshot), and the W3C HTML 5.1 Recommendation,
making it approved and finalized by both the practical body of rapidly-
evolving browser makers and the political body that historically set web
standards. In contrast, Service Workers are still a draft, despite having been
pushed for years, and its predecessor technologies having largely been
deprecated.
In other words, this is quite normal in the world of the Web Platform today,
for better and for worse.
[1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Service_Wor...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/docs/Web/API/Service_Worker_API$history)
~~~
TheAceOfHearts
I'd argue that any serious production app should still be using both AppCache
and Service Worker. Heck, if you have AppCache setup and working already, why
would you remove it? Service Worker isn't supported by Internet Explorer,
Safari, or Firefox ESR. Those browsers can account for a large portion of the
market, depending on your target demographic.
The <dialog> element is supported in even fewer browsers [0]! You can sorta
polyfill it, but not perfectly.
[0] [http://caniuse.com/#feat=dialog](http://caniuse.com/#feat=dialog)
------
gruez
>For XSS proofs-of-concept, devtool’s console.log(document.origin) can be
used.
meanwhile, in blink-dev:
[https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink...](https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/forum/#!topic/blink-
dev/CO52Bt15cuc)
------
aidos
Interesting tidbit:
"What is Site Engagement? Site Engagement is a measure of how much the user
interacts with a site. The more that a user visits/uses a site, the higher the
engagement score is. If you want to see engagement scores on your Chrome,
check out chrome://site-engagement."
------
carlosdp
" Alexander Nestorov 51 minutes ago - Shared publicly
Does this mean that you'll finally stop using alert() on Google Calendar? :)
"
Very good point =P
------
Pxtl
Wait, onbeforeunload is going away too? So no more "you have unsaved changes
are you sure you want to close the tab?"
And yes, just make the popups modal to the tab instead of modal to the browser
and stop breaking the web with standards churn.
------
jasonkostempski
Darn, though this was going to be about JS requiring a user prompt to run.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Age of Empires Definitive Edition Announcement Trailer - Ralfp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JyPlECHiXcM
======
dakevster
wololo, the sound of my childhood
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bitbucket Down - Major Outage - Jake232
https://status.bitbucket.org/
======
ericfrederich
I've said it before and I'll say it again... It makes zero sense to centralize
something that was meant to be decentralized.
We need issues, pull requests, comments, milestones, wiki, etc... all to be
decentralized. No reason this stuff cannot be modeled using existing Git
objects.
GitHub, GitLab and BitBucket are extremely similar. Almost 100% overlap, you
could use the lowest common denominator between the 3 and you'd still have 95%
of the features.
~~~
rightos
> We need issues, pull requests, comments, milestones, wiki, etc... all to be
> decentralized. No reason this stuff cannot be modeled using existing Git
> objects.
[https://www.fossil-scm.org/](https://www.fossil-scm.org/) pretty much does
this.
~~~
tyingq
That is pretty interesting and does model those things in the same data store.
But the data store isn't git objects, as far as I can tell...
_" Fossil stores its objects in a relational (SQLite) database file"_
~~~
rightos
Yeah, it fully replaces the whole version control tool.
------
gurelkaynak
Now that sysadmin guy who told me: "what happens when bitbucket goes down?"
when I asked him to move our repos to the cloud, he is smiling. Sometimes it's
best to keep stuff in your own servers, if you have any...
~~~
ajbetteridge
We have Bitbucket on our own servers, and we're moving it back to either
Atlassian's hosting or to Github. The reason being that we spend far too much
time per month hand holding the server when it goes mental and takes all of
the RAM and then decides not to server any pages. And it's not for a lack of
resources on the server either, 16Gb RAM and 4 core virtual machine, running
Linux. So we have more downtime than either Github and Bitbucket combined.
~~~
gurelkaynak
Any guesses why that happens? It's weird that a git server goes mental just to
serve a repo. We had gitlab on my previous job and git server on my
preprevious job and never ever had server down problems. This period is like 5
years total.
------
taesu
Oh boy, any git down on a Monday is bad. Imagine being in their office right
now.
~~~
AlfeG
Its holiday today in Ukraine. Yet I am at work... Trying to push some code...
------
rsp1984
Great. I need to push some stuff real soon now. In the last 12 months
Bitbucket had an uncomfortably high number of issues. But whenever I think
about moving our company code to GitLab or GitHub I envision going into a
world of pain with my eng. team.
Has anyone got some advice for pain-free migration to GitLab or GitHub?
~~~
jazoom
GitLab is way better than Bitbucket IMO but also has way too much downtime.
~~~
fapjacks
Why not both?
------
exikyut
Often there's no preservation of past failure states so people can see (for
whatever reason) what the failure looked like. Here's what
[https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef/](https://bitbucket.org/chromiumembedded/cef/)
(a totally random repository that was in my history) looks right now:
[http://archive.is/g0I6O](http://archive.is/g0I6O)
------
qualitytime
First, my HDMI port blows up and have to work on a small laptop screen.
And now I can't access my repositories..
Not happy.
~~~
quuquuquu
This is why it is important to keep backups of backups ^.^
EDIT: I upvoted you twice, HN just loves to downvote anything ;)
~~~
yebyen
When you have to painstakingly earn the right to downvote, you just can't feel
bad about using it once in a while.
~~~
exikyut
Hi, I've always been curious what the quota/threshold is. My last account
(i336_) got to 1000+ (before I accidentally locked it...) and I never saw the
downvote button. Is it like 10,000 or something?
~~~
smudgymcscmudge
Your user page shows you how much karma you need to hit the next level. In
your case, you need 172 to downvote comments.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=exikyut](https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=exikyut)
~~~
sevensor
I had no idea! Thanks for the pointer. There are more levels?
~~~
smudgymcscmudge
I don't know. Maybe at 1,000,000,000 you become CEO of ycombinator.
------
Jake232
Investigating - Following reports from customers starting at 12:45 UTC,
Bitbucket Cloud became unavailable. Our engineering team is currently
investigating this issue. We will provide an update as soon as we have further
information. Oct 16, 12:56 UTC
------
tyingq
_" Our engineering team has identified the root cause of the issue and a fix
has been applied. We are currently verifying that the incident is fully
resolved. Oct 16, 13:48 UTC"_
------
toyg
The page shows that git over https is still up, so hopefully it's just a
peripheral problem rather than a fundamental one.
------
zitterbewegung
If you have one of these services you should probably invest in a backup
system. Either a self hosted Gitlab or even just a clone of your repositories
on a server or like AWS CodeConnect .
------
fazilakhtar
It's back for me.
~~~
exikyut
Wow, that was FAST. It's back for me too!
~~~
fazilakhtar
Spoke too soon, it's down again.
------
rjralgar
"Minor*"
~~~
exikyut
I can't access bitbucket.org, so...
Edit: / works, repos don't
~~~
LeifCarrotson
What does work is
git clone https://[email protected]/organization/repo.git
so you can probably still get by. Just the website is down.
~~~
yebyen
This doesn't work for me. (Edit: and, it's moot now, because it seems to be
coming back up!)
I also have 2fa enabled (it's a private team) and my repo is private... I do
seem to reach the repo, and it tells me I'll need an app-specific password to
proceed.
Too bad the interface to create one is down.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
For those that build web applications, do you use a framework - skcin7
I build PHP applications and have yet to use a framework. However, I am greatly considering to start. I was wondering what the general opinions here about using an existing framework.
======
kingofspain
I never used to but I tend to for all but the simplest of things these days. I
personally use CodeIgniter because I like how it stays out of my way.
Be aware though that CI tends to be looked down upon in a similar way to how
PHP itself is. I like it (and it has good docs), but if you use it be prepared
to be the lowest of the low :)
------
brandoncordell
We CakePHP on our flagship product, which is a government level enterprise
application.
I used to use codeigniter, but there are too many things that (in my opinion)
should be done for you, that you have to do yourself.
Codeigniter is a great first framework also. Much easier to pick up than
CakePHP, or Zend.
------
MattBearman
I'd definitely recommend CodeIgniter with the Data Mapper ORM, I've tried
others (Cake, Zend, etc) and CI seems to be the only one that never over-
complicates things.
For me it's about getting shit done, I'm too busy to worry about being looked
down on by Zend users :)
------
adamjleonard
Existing frameworks remove a lot of the problems that come with attempting to
roll your own code all the time. From security to just making things simpler.
I would suggest usually using a framework when you can.
------
michaeldhopkins
I always use either a framework or a CMS that's a framework, like Wordpress
with Thematic. Every time I get involved in a project that has no framework
(and too low of a budget) I regret it.
------
skcin7
So far we have 1 recommendation to use a framework, and 1 recommendation to
use KohanaPHP IF you choose to use a framework. Any other recommendations or
thoughts?
------
ecommando
For PHP, I recommend KohanaPHP. I've played with it, and it appears to be the
most complete framework I've examined.
~~~
icebraining
Same here.
It does have an issue I find significant, which is the Views being a mix of
logic and templating. I find this messy and contrary to the original MVC
pattern, since it pushes too much presentation code to the controller (it has
to decide what formats to present the data in, for example).
But with KOstache[1], a Kohana module, you get your real Views again, along
with logicless maintainable Mustache templates. Win/win.
[1]: <https://github.com/zombor/KOstache>
~~~
skcin7
Great, thanks. I have downloaded and am messing around with Kohana now.
------
NickABusey
CakePHP is really quite nice. I've used CodeIgniter, Zend and several others,
Cake is still my favorite.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PHP introduces "goto" - zain
http://www.php.net/manual/en/control-structures.goto.php
======
dflock
The first user contributed note on that page:
<?php
wtf:
echo 'For real!?';
echo 'Srsly!?';
goto wtf;
?>
Heh.
------
jdp
Why is everyone jumping on this as a negative? Goto isn't inherently evil. Of
course in most cases there is a construct that would be a better fit than
goto, but it does have its uses. As far as readability goes, odds are a
programmer isn't going to be jumping to a label 300 lines up, its used mostly
to break out of nested loops and to simulate stuff like state machines. Check
out <http://david.tribble.com/text/goto.html>
~~~
pygy
They already have a break statement to get out of loops of arbitrary depth.
<http://www.php.net/manual/en/control-structures.break.php>
And why, except perhaps for the hack value, would you simulate a state machine
in PHP?
GOTOs are good when used wisely in certain contexts. I don't see where they
could be of any use in the PHP niche (but I'd be glad to hear about such
examples). Seasoned PHP coders don't need it.
Besides, PHP is mostly a beginner's programming language, who learn by example
using code found online. They will be exposed to even worse practices from day
one.
------
noodle
ugh. they caved. too bad. this kind of hurts their movement towards OO. now
we'll probably see see tons of people using goto as bandaid measures instead
of learning better techniques to solve their problems. look out for raptors.
~~~
huhtenberg
Oh, common. Are we talking about the language that allows run-time _renaming_
of the variables ? I mean if you have _that_ then adding a goto hardly
qualifies as "too bad".
~~~
wvenable
How exactly do you rename a variable?
~~~
jrockway
I suppose he means something like:
$foo = 42;
$bar = 69;
$which_one = 'foo';
print eval "\$$which_one";
~~~
huhtenberg
Actually, no. That's not it. This is an equivalent of a pointer to a variable
in C.
What I was referring to is the actual renaming the variables in run-time, i.e.
change variables' key in the table of variables. So the code like this:
for ($i = 0; $i < 8; $i++)
{
..
<rename i to j>
..
}
would throw a run-time error on the second iteration, because $i will become
undefined. It was completely and utterly "out there", that's why I remembered
it. Also showed it to a bunch of people, all of them were equally amazed. But
now I can't seem to find where I saw it and what the exact syntax was.
~~~
randallsquared
I don't know how you'd do that in PHP, but I'm pretty sure that you can do it
fairly easily in Python and Lua, and I've never heard anyone claim that (more
or less) first class environments are a feature of bad languages.
~~~
huhtenberg
You are missing the point. PHP is a very odd and subjectively inconsistent
mixture of language features, so adding a goto support is hardly a _bad
design_ decision.
------
sil3ntmac
Sweet! Hope they implement COMEFROM next.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COMEFROM>
~~~
mynameishere
Most langauges have that. It's called "catch".
------
abyssknight
I feel like I've been trolled by the PHP haters again.
All of this language-ism is killing my chi.
~~~
abyssknight
I feel this is a relevant cross post, at least for my own amusement:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=650328>
------
nir
So what? If you think goto is harmful, don't use it. If you think PHP in
general is harmful, don't use that either. Maybe help build something
comparable to Wordpress or Drupal in your favorite language so other people
can use it instead of PHP. If all you have to offer is empty sarcasm, goto
Reddit.
~~~
tetha
And then you have to maintain spaghetti code in PHP with gotos.
------
raffi
I've thought of adding goto to Sleep. Have you ever looked at the code in the
Linux kernel? It's full of gotos. They use goto's to make sure functions have
one exit point and to cleanly deal with errors in one spot.
~~~
paulgb
Kernel hackers know presumably what they're doing and use goto only when they
have a good reason. Can the same be said of PHP programmers?
I'm all for the "don't protect programmers from themselves" philosophy, until
I'm the guy who has to use or maintain the code.
~~~
ars
Not having goto's is not going to help you in the slightest from bad
programmers.
~~~
zach
I disagree. Goto is the Comic Sans of keywords, a tool which may be used
tastefully but ends up far more commonly abused to horrible effect.
------
ars
Yay! Finally I've been waiting for this for a long time.
I can finally get rid of some spaghetti code: goto emulation via while loops.
Yes, it's not often you need goto, but sometimes you do.
~~~
pbiggar
No way! I do exactly this. Switch statement, while loop, and lots of continue
statements.
Its a lowering of basic blocks that I want to print out to test.
What's yours?
------
apgwoz
Finally! Now PHP really is the web's assembly language.
------
patryn20
So....all the progress PHP has made in recent years has not been
undone.....but has been rendered irrelevant. Never again will anyone be taken
seriously while using PHP. It will once again be purely the domain of amateurs
and script kiddies.
This is being said as someone who has created marvelous applications in PHP
and has dealt with all the PHP language shortcomings up to this point. Makes
me truly, truly sad.
------
robotron
This isn't some kind of surprise. It has been discussed for some time now.
There is also no reason for a developer to use it if it's not wanted.
------
sev
I understand why C and C++ have goto statements (as well as other older
languages). But to actually "introduce" goto's in a language that didn't have
it or need it, making it even possible to write such horrible code is, in my
opinion, pointless and worthless. It promotes illegible and bad code in
general.
------
antirez
Goto is a good idea in C, not only for the obvious low-levelness reasons, but
also because if you can write C you are almost certainly a bit wiser than the
average PHP programmer that may use goto for things I prefer don't think about
before to go to sleep :)
~~~
uriel
"If you want to go somewhere, goto is the best way to get there" \-- Ken
Thompson
------
ahlatimer
I was working for a company doing mostly COBOL programming about a year ago,
and I can honestly say that GOTO can be used neatly and effectively, but it
can also turn code into a horrible mess. For COBOL, it's an absolute must.
There are no while or for loops in COBOL (at least not in the version we were
using), so you had to replicate that with GOTO's and paragraphs. For PHP, I
really don't see this as necessary.
So long as it's not widely publicized in tutorials and the like, I don't
really see a whole lot of novice coders getting their hands on this. I'm not
particularly concerned about experienced programmers using GOTO in PHP,
especially if they've used in another language where it is more necessary.
------
tamersalama
Anyone knows where's the PHP core team blog/site (if there's such team)?
~~~
tamersalama
Someone pointed out the minutes-of-meeting
<http://www.php.net/~derick/meeting-notes.html#adding-goto>
------
drawkbox
This helps quite a bit... It helps people move on from PHP because it is the
'language that later added goto'. A sad day for programmers in PHP.
gotos are a bad programmer's recursive method. Even people that use while
loops like pepper scare me a bit. I have seen many'a'app get stuck in memory
draining death loops with goto and even while(). Flags are dead, long live
events and messages.
------
e4m
I once used that a lot on my C64. Made sense back in 1982 and in limited
cases, makes sense today.
------
look_lookatme
From the page:
"It is not allowed to jump into a loop or switch statement. A fatal error is
issued in such cases."
At least that isn't possible. What a mess it would be if this wasn't the case.
------
travisjeffery
Haha, wow how sad. The kind of sadness created when realizing how disgustingly
pathetic our evolution can often be.
I can't wait to spend minutes of my life when I have to go through another
programmer's PHP code who uses gotos.
~~~
encoderer
I think you left out your _goto CalmDownFirst_ line in your
_DramaQueenPreventor_ class.
------
jnorthrop
This feels like a giant step towards the past.
~~~
kaiuhl
Using PHP is a giant step towards the past.
PHP will never fully be utilized as an OO language by the vast majority of its
user base due to its syntactically terrible standard library and history as a
functional language.
As such, this addition makes plenty of sense.
~~~
ars
PHP will never fully be utilized as an OO language because it's a stupid idea
to write web pages with an OO language.
Web pages are just not suited to OO. Encapsulation can be done via functions -
adding OO to it gets you nothing except longer code.
Making things more complicated does not make them better.
~~~
randallsquared
I almost agree with this. I'm experimenting with Kohana for my latest code,
and even though this is supposed to be the lean, fast OO framework, there's a
LOT of boilerplate associated. Less than a third of my code is actually get-
things-done code, as opposed to more than two thirds last time I was using a
home-grown, not-especially-OO framework.
Maybe some other framework does this better, though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Team Behind Finnish Success Story Supercell Launches Nordic Startup Fund - dirtyaura
http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/04/22/finnish-success-story-supercell-and-investors-launch-nordic-startup-fund/
======
dirtyaura
"... Applifier, which was acquired by a bigger American software tool
developer Unity Technologies for an undisclosed sum in March."
Unity was founded in Denmark and to my understanding it still has the biggest
development team in Denmark. Surely they have offices and likely a corporation
entity in US, but saying that Unity is American software tool developer is
like saying Sony is American device manufacturer.
~~~
_delirium
Yes, to my understanding the SF office is mainly a sales/business office,
while engineering/technical work remains based in Copenhagen, with some bits
outsourced elsewhere (Ukraine, China, etc.). I believe the main rationale for
the SF office is that it's closer to a number of potential clients and
investors (and events like GDC), but operations weren't moved there. If
anything they seem to be doubling down on Copenhagen as the engineering site,
recently moving to a bigger new space in the city center.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Does your company renew option grants after initial ones vest? - equity-q-1212
Just hit four years at a startup and was expecting to receive another options grant to replace my now completed grant, but was disappointed to see it doesn't work that way. What does your company/startup do once your initial option's grant is complete?
======
mtmail
Mine stopped after 4 years. 20 employees, Europe. New hires for senior
positions preferred clear bonus structure while new hires for junior positions
hardly understood stock option legal documents. The company was running
profitable, there was no exponential growing or projects/pivots planed,
company valuation wasn't expected to double and there was no clear exit path.
In my opinion it was a good decision to switch from options to bonus
payments/goals.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
FBI Special Agent Thinks a MAC Address Indicates Apple Hardware - Splendor
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131220/07264325650/fbi-agent-connection-logs-show-suspects-mac-address-so-look-apple-hardware.shtml
======
josephlord
Err, MAC addresses are allocated to manufacturers so certain values indicate
it probably[1] is Apple hardware.
Many of the comments on the op also indicate this information.
[1] Some devices allow you to set a MAC address so it is possible that a non-
Apple device is pretending to be one.
~~~
rainsford
That was my first thought as well reading this. It's hard to tell from the
phrasing whether that's what the agent actually meant, or whether there really
was some Mac/MAC confusion, but it seems far from the clear cut "The FBI is
stupid" case Techdirt is trying to make.
And along those lines, it would be nice if people would stop posting Techdirt
links here. Even for important stories (this is not one of those), the
Techdirt spin on it is always the most juvenile option imaginable.
------
Splendor
_" Prior to executing the search warrant, FBI SA Nicol told me that, during
execution of the warrant, I should look for a Mac computer, because the
network connection logs provided by Jeffrey Savoy showed a Mac address,
indicating some type of Mac/Apple computer or hardware was used."_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Introducing SpotMini, a smaller version of the Spot robot [video] - jonnycowboy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tf7IEVTDjng
======
Rezo
It's all electric, and check out the fancy white armor at
[https://youtu.be/tf7IEVTDjng?t=117](https://youtu.be/tf7IEVTDjng?t=117)
Looks like they've taken the criticism from Google et al. to heart. It was
hard to see how the huge, gas-powered robots louder than lawnmowers were going
to work for anyone except maybe military applications. Put some state of the
art Google AI into this thing and it's not far from a sellable product!
~~~
jandrese
Even the military didn't want them, they were too loud.
------
mac01021
These press releases from BD are certainly impressive and are always great fun
to watch.
But they're mostly silent on the matter of how much autonomy the robots are
operating with. I never know how much of their behavior is human directed, or
how those directions are conveyed to the robots.
~~~
visarga
They say that robots are being remote controlled. So, there is an operator
telling it to duck, grab, and where to go, but the robot does the actual
balancing on itself.
I am a little bit disappointed that they are not using deep learning for
robotics. Instead, they are simulating the robot based off a model, using
Control Theory. It might be easier to get results from Control Theory but it
doesn't offer a path towards more complex behavior, like Deep Learning.
~~~
Animats
Modern control theory is rather close to machine learning. Adaptive model-
based feedforward control _is_ machine learning. The machine learning part
builds a model of the dynamics of the system. Then that model is inverted
(solved for control inputs) to make it a control system.
They're doing this right. They have a very good basic body control system. Now
someone can build higher level strategies to get work done on top of that.
That's how biological brains work, after all. Google/Alphabet could, for
example, reuse much of their automatic driving software as high level control
for this robot.
Google should have BD manufacture a few hundred of those machines, and try to
get the cost down to $25K or less per unit for that production run.
~~~
argonaut
Sure, the brain uses the concept of abstraction, but that is so far away from
supporting the assertion that "that's how the brain works."
~~~
Animats
Mammal brains have multiple functional units. The cerebellum does most of the
motor control. The cortex does most of the planning and deciding. The cortex
acts through the cerebellum, not by driving muscles directly. Most of Boston
Dynamics' control systems are doing cerebellum-level functions. As with the
cerebellum, this involves fast control via feedback loops.
~~~
argonaut
Except for the inconvenient fact that the cerebellum is not explicitly solving
control theory equations.
And also that other inconvenient fact that neuroscientists barely understand
the brain at all.
~~~
Animats
_" Except for the inconvenient fact that the cerebellum is not explicitly
solving control theory equations."_
It might be. You can invert a model by training a neural net to compute its
inverse.
~~~
argonaut
It might be. It might not be. Hardly a compelling argument.
------
gene-h
If it really is using all electric actuators that's pretty big. This would be
one of the first of Boston Dynamics' all electric robots.
What exactly does using electric actuators over hydraulics buy us? Less noise,
greater efficiency, and reliability. Reliability is very important for both
house hold and industrial robots. We typically measure reliability in terms of
Mean Time Between Failures, aka, how long it typically last before breaking.
For industrial robots this is important as the higher the reliability is the
more money it makes. Industrial robots tend to have MTBFs of 100,000 hours or
about 10 years.
Reliability is also important for household robots too, a big expensive robot
that breaks down all the time appeals to few people.
~~~
Animats
The previous Spot robot was also all-electric. Hydraulic power was needed for
the bigger machines. (Also, Raibert liked designing hydraulic systems; he has
a patent on the valve/actuator combo used in BigDog.) Cube/square law - mass
increases with the cube of the size. This is why insects have tiny leg cross
sections in comparison to their length.
Battery life will be a problem, but it's clearly agile enough to plug itself
in for a recharge.
~~~
sharemywin
you could also have some kind of stand by packs waiting.
------
chrisbennet
Watching it wipe out on banana peels cracked me up! Does that make me a bad
person?
~~~
codezero
Nope!
These robots are amazing in their realism of behavior that I find myself
referring to them as creatures rather than robots.
Watching them get kicked makes me feel bad for them, just like I would for an
animal, and watching them fall on a banana makes me laugh, just like I would
if an animal or person did (so long as they weren't seriously injured, unless
I didn't like them :P)
~~~
joezydeco
This might help:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkv-
_LqTeQA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkv-_LqTeQA)
~~~
Erwin
Quite a few parodies around, here's another amusing one:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAmyZP-
qbTE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sAmyZP-qbTE)
------
freshyill
The skull-like face doesn't exactly scream "friendly" to me.
~~~
Leon
It doesn't look like it was designed to be a face but a gripping hand that
they put googly eyes on for fun.
~~~
freshyill
On closer inspection, you're right. I originally watched it on my phone, and
it just screamed "skull" to me.
------
daveguy
Google just said, "Wait! Did we say we are focusing on a 'household robot' and
are therefore going to sell Boston Dynamics? Hehe. Just kidding about selling
BD!" The cleaning up, stair climbing and fall recovery are seriously
impressive.
~~~
jonnycowboy
Easily the most impressive household robot ever built.
------
ccozan
Feels like living in the future.
We could have right now a RoboDog, with some machine guns on it and let them
patrol and secure a perimeter. Fire at anything it moves. I hope they solve
the issue with the banana peel :), though.
~~~
jonnycowboy
You mean Rat Things, right?
[http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Rat_Things_(Snow_Crash)](http://villains.wikia.com/wiki/Rat_Things_\(Snow_Crash\))
~~~
ccozan
Amazing, how the subconscious works. Of course, I re-read that not long ago!
------
Animats
Now that's a nice piece of machinery. Much closer to a salable product than
the big machines they did for DoD. This is more in line with Google's business
model. Maybe this is BD's effort to stay under the Alphabet umbrella. It will
be good if it works.
They really have leg control and balance software figured out now. That
machine is more agile than any of the previous BD machines.
------
mpolichette
Its really amazing to see how functional this robot is. I cant wait for one to
take over for some of the more monotonous tasks around the house...
That said, the way it moves around and can keeps its head steady is both
really cool, but somewhat terrifying... It seems to conjure up scenes from
movies where the antagonist robots are scanning a target before deciding to
kill or not.
------
kevindeasis
It seems like if you also add googly eyes to any robot like the one in BD's
video they begin to appear more friendly.
------
mtw
They forgot to kick it to make it lose its balance !
~~~
daveguy
They have an animated gif of playing tug of war with it! They are definitely
trying to fix that whole "robot abuse" image that so many people got upset
about last time!
[https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hv-
kG4NOcjymzhIBMnzFNFo7Uqc...](https://cdn3.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/hv-
kG4NOcjymzhIBMnzFNFo7Uqc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale\(\)/cdn0.vox-
cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6695725/giphy-_6_.0.gif)
------
uzbit
Personally, I like how it all went downhill very quickly in the last 10s.
------
tambourine_man
I find them both equally fascinating and scary at the same time.
------
dang
Url changed from [http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/23/12014008/boston-
dynamics-s...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/23/12014008/boston-dynamics-
spotmini-alphabet-giraffe-spot-robot), which points to this.
------
chillingeffect
What if one of these gets out of control/hacked/malfunctions? This is one more
reason we need weapons to protect ourselves.
~~~
anonymfus
Then in the worst case you get out of the room and wait until the battery
discharges.
If you are seriously worrying about such situation you should also worry that
robot can pick up the weapon.
~~~
jonnycowboy
I imagine this robot is only a few weeks/months away from being able to plug
itself in to recharge from any household socket.
~~~
anonymfus
Then you go to the distribution board and turn off electricity in household
sockets of that room/apartments/house/block/street/city/country/planet.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GitHub vs. bitbucket - jxr006
Hey folks, what do you guys use for source control in the startup world? Github, bitbucket or something else?
======
SanDimasFootbal
Bitbucket which combines Trello, Pipelines, Deployment Management and Source
Control built in.
------
maephisto
Github. Great integrations, familiar to most people in the company.
------
ArnaudKOPP
You have Gitlab as a viable solution too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
It's Not Capitalism That Causes Poverty, It's the Lack of It - ph0rque
http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/12/19/its-not-capitalism-that-causes-poverty-its-the-lack-of-it/
======
mempko
"We must go and exploit them as the ruthless, red in tooth and claw,
capitalists and free marketeers that we are. Simply because it is the absence
of capitalism and markets that allows poverty, their presence that defeats
it."
I believe the same argument was made for black slavery.
That black slaves were better off than their African counterparts, therefore
slavery is good.
Same logic, different time.
------
transfire
What a load of justifiabullshit.
------
intopieces
Is this article missing a page? It ends without saying anything. It appears to
be built around a single fact and extending that fact outward without
examining its implications or methods of implementation: that is, just because
capitalism doesn't currently exploit the third world in a negative sense says
nothing about the potentiality for it to. Instead, the article seems to use
this one data point as a smug shield against criticism. A more robust and
therefore interesting article would have taken the criticisms (the ways in
which capitalism is said to exploit the poor) point by point and explain how
it would ultimately be avoided in even a baseline, pragmatic capitalist
influence on struggling third world economies.
This article convinces no one and only makes already in-the-tank capitalist
apologists feel validated. Is there a word for that?
------
amai
"In 2013, The Economist described its countries as "stout free-traders who
resist the temptation to intervene even to protect iconic companies" while
also looking for ways to temper capitalism's harsher effects, and declared
that the Nordic countries "are probably the best-governed in the world":
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordic_model)
------
cowardlydragon
... by providing capital to the poor? Right? That's what this article is
about, right? Right?
Oh.
~~~
pen2l
We can do better. My favorite Forbes article is this:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/09/17/give-...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/09/17/give-
back-yes-its-time-for-the-99-to-give-back-to-the-1/)
------
davesque
Forbes is now blocking people with AdBlock?
~~~
nopreserveroot
Yep. This works though:
[https://github.com/Mechazawa/FuckFuckAdblock](https://github.com/Mechazawa/FuckFuckAdblock)
~~~
davesque
Not working for me.
_Update_ : My bad. Working fine.
------
BrainInAJar
Right, because if you have more capitalism, the poor just die off like they're
supposed to. The system works!
~~~
joelbm24
every economy is capitalistic, in that the goal is to produce capital, who
owns that capital is where the differentiation lies, in a purely socialist
society the government would own it, in a free market society those that
produced it would own it and trade it with whomever they saw fit. free being
defined as the absence of coercion. a poor person is by definition someone
without capital. so if when looking at reasons why that person isn't getting
capital through trade or by creating it, one needs to look at the coercive
forces preventing them from obtaining it and seeing how in poor countries and
even in western countries the most coercive force is the government one could
draw the conclusion that the government is causing poverty by preventing
people from creating and trading capital in ways that they themselves see fit.
to gain any kinda of capital through trade in a free market society one has to
convince people that what they have is worth trading, thus any profits are
earned through both parties own volition. it's this voluntary relationship
that is at the heart of the free market and progress, when you have entities
such as the government or institutions that use the coercive nature of the
government that's when this system breaks down.
~~~
1812Overture
In a purely "socialist" society the people who produce the capital (the
workers) would own it, in a purely "free market" the capital is owned by a
"capitalist class" who own the products of their laborers efforts.
I'm generally a free market guy, but words mean stuff. No purely free market
or purely socialist system has ever or will ever exist.
~~~
mcv
And rightly so. Either taken to the extreme leads to terrible situations. But
balance the best parts of both socialism and capitalism, and you get something
really nice. That's pretty much what the Nordic countries are doing, and it
seems to be working very well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Digital Ocean DNS Down for 2nd Time in a Week - exabrial
https://status.digitalocean.com/incidents/c9wspjy7ktzv
======
exabrial
Previous incident:
[https://status.digitalocean.com/incidents/bmh4fb6p4mw6](https://status.digitalocean.com/incidents/bmh4fb6p4mw6)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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