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Approaching the CEO question - VSRE
I've cofounded a company, and I do more work than the other guy i'm working with. Currently we have it as a 50/50 split. I'm wondering how you approach asking the other partner to be CEO.
======
btilly
Would the other guy agree that you do more?
If so, be direct. Say, "I feel like I'm doing the work, I would like the
title."
If not, there is a communication gap. Address that. (The communication gap is
a prior as likely to be that you do not see/recognize/appreciate what your
partner is doing as vice versa. In fact start with the assumption that that
that is the case, because it is easier for you to fix yourself than to change
someone else.)
~~~
VSRE
Apparently he felt the same way, just didn't want to bring it up. I said "you
know, I think we're going to need one CEO instead of a two person system" and
he flat out said "You're CEO". Cool.
------
t0
Get him to sign a document reincorporating the company without his knowledge.
Dilute his shares in the company. Kick him out of the building.
~~~
VSRE
I still want to work with him :P
~~~
t0
I'd say just be straightforward and direct. If he doesn't agree to some sort
of compromise, you don't want to work with him.
------
dear
How much are you doing more than the other guy? Can you have a co-CEO?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Internet Service Plans, upload = download? - cmdlinerambo
Why do ISPs offer internet service plans that don't offer equal uploads and downloads?
======
centdev
Because it's easier to regulate knowing more people download / stream than
upload. Only people in general uploading significant data are business or file
sharing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Thorium-Salt Reactor Has Fired Up for the First Time in Four Decades - jseliger
http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/news/finally-worlds-first-tmsr-experiment-in-over-40-years-started
======
philipkglass
Better explanation here (linked from Technology Review):
[http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/news/finally-worlds-
first-...](http://www.thoriumenergyworld.com/news/finally-worlds-first-tmsr-
experiment-in-over-40-years-started)
More details on the experiment sequence:
[https://public.ornl.gov/conferences/MSR2016/docs/Presentatio...](https://public.ornl.gov/conferences/MSR2016/docs/Presentations/MSR2016-day1-17-Ralph-
Hania-The-SALIENT-Fluoride-Fuel-Salt-Irradiations.pdf)
This is not actually a reactor test because the thorium-bearing salt does not
attain criticality. It's a sequence of materials tests using thorium-
containing salt mixtures in small crucibles inside the conventionally fueled
High Flux Reactor ([https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/research-facility/high-flux-
reac...](https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/research-facility/high-flux-reactor)).
The experiments rely on neutrons from the High Flux Reactor to induce nuclear
reactions in the thorium-bearing salt mixtures. However, the experiments will
be useful in validating materials behavior for possible future molten salt
reactors because it combines realistic thermal, chemical, and radiation
stresses.
~~~
didgeoridoo
Comments like this are why I don't bother getting my tech & science news from
anywhere but HN.
~~~
bduerst
I've seen an increase in the number of NLP bots that give snippets, but
they're far from consistently being accurate. Are there any services that can
give you summations like this, kind of like the WSJ's _What 's News_ section?
~~~
wtallis
Sometimes, the best summary is "this article is bunk". You won't get that from
a bot. The fatal flaws in bad journalism are too often subtle and require
careful parsing or outside knowledge to identify.
~~~
pas
I think it's easily quantifiable what's a good article. Clear statement at the
top that refers to big things, not a storytelling bullshit opening, then the
body of the article provides support for that top statement, and later
portions are basically just more of the same gradually unfolding sub-articles.
If this structure is lacking, it'll be obvious to sentiment analysis, that
there are too much free floating statement, and the article either requires
too much outside knowledge (in field expertise), or it's just gossip.
And of course it can be "easily" estimated how novel the statement is, what
quality the sources and support are, and so on.
------
Sukotto
I think we're making a serious PR mistake calling these "Thorium Reactors"
even though the term is accurate.
"Reactor" evokes "Nuclear Reactor". For many people, "nuclear reactor" is a
deeply loaded term. Likewise "Thorium" (and other words that end in "-ium")
sounds dangerously like "plutonium" and "uranium".
It doesn't _matter_ how much better/safer this technology is. Don't expect the
public to respond positively when we use those words. There's too much knee
jerk, "no nukes!" baggage.
We should start calling these "salt power stations" or something else
_accurate, yet non-threatening_. Otherwise, IMHO, it will be a steep uphill
battle getting public and legislative support for building these things,
_regardless_ of their many benefits.
~~~
acidburnNSA
A bunch of people have tried to rebrand our most energy-dense fuels (uranium
and thorium). "Terrestrial Energy" comes to mind. And the unofficial Thorium
PR lead, Kirk Sorensen, rebranded the Thorium-Molten Salt Reactor (T-MSR) as
the LFTR (Liquid Fluoride Thorium Reactor) because "lifter" sounds better. As
an engineer I'm a stickler on accurate naming so this suggestion bothers me,
and I think the opposing forces will easily be able to point out that it's
just a rebranding of advanced nuclear reactors and hurt proponents'
credibility. I wish we could just teach people to weigh risks of things like
nuclear reactors versus their real benefits (clean air that has saved 1.8
million people already, 24/7 reliability, tiny land/fuel/waste/transportation
footprints, etc.) but on the other hand people are more emotional than not.
I'm sure you're right that a sweet new name on a nuclear reactor would be a
help.
Honestly I consider focus on Thorium fuel itself to be an attempt to rebrand
the much broader but equally capable advanced nuclear industry.
~~~
snarfy
Unfortunately regardless of what you wish, people do not weigh the risks. They
have knee jerk reactions to terms like 'nuclear reactor'. It's human nature
and shouldn't be ignored. Is it more important that it have an accurate name
or that it's accepted by the public?
~~~
acidburnNSA
Definitely the latter. I just hope to find other ways to influence people's
feelings about things like nuclear reactors. If some epic rebranding is what
it takes, then that's great. I feel that it will take more than that.
~~~
philipkglass
Any such rebranding would probably last about as long as it takes people to
learn that the facilities are built by nuclear contractors, regulated by the
NRC, and employing nuclear operators.
~~~
bonesss
More importantly: any such rebranding would ignore how we got into the current
predicament to begin with...
Oil, gas, and coal companies have known about climate change for decades, and
it represents a threat to untold megabillions worth of profits and business.
It is no coincidence they have been pushing anti-nuclear FUD, sponsoring hack
research, pushing "green" blogs, NIMBY campaigns, and such for decades.
Coordinated, professional, smear campaigns masquerading as environmental
issues.
Leaked presentations and marketing materials have shown those companies have
triangulated the issue quite simply: They cannot win on facts. They cannot
convince everyone to keep fossil fueling it up on the merits of their
argument. They can, however, cause enough confusion and knee-jerking to keep
the "debate" about climate change open to paralyze political action. They have
also pushed pie-in-the-sky green solutions which are superficially satisfying
but fundamentally entrench their interests until we're past the point of no
return. Push the starting line so far forward that we just have to give up.
That the "environmentalists" on the left have spent 20+ years pushing the
strategic interests of Big Coal and Big Oil using their resources and bad
science is the result of willful manipulation. That manipulation is a response
to the threat of atomic energy and climate change legislation in light of our
global infrastructure cycles.
That is to say: if you call fission "grandmas apple pie" it will be a very
short time before we're all convinced that grandmas apple pie is dangerous,
impractical, too expensive, poorly thought out, not scalable, not feasible,
and impossible to do right. Forget what the stats say. Do not look at Ontario.
Pretend France is not real. There will be blogs. There will be glossy signs.
There will be "grassroots activism", tweet campaigns, and coordinated
messaging about Big Grandma and the cancerous properties of Pie. The anti-GMO
people will now be anti-grandma, too.
We are playing a game against well-connected oligopolists... We only get to
win if we win. They get to win if they win, or if the clock runs out. So guess
what the strategy is?
~~~
mathw
It's all quite baffling, because they could instead of invested some of those
megabillions in extending their reach into low-carbon energy sources,
embracing the new world and continuing to exist.
~~~
vertex-four
The thing is, the _reason_ they have those megabillions and continue to make
money is the institutional knowledge they have of how to run a mature business
in the industry they're in. Parts of that will translate over to nuclear power
or whatever comes next, but for a very significant chunk of it, they're
competing with every other business in the new industry, many of which will
have a lot less baggage - which is incredibly risky.
------
ChuckMcM
A couple of comments;
First it is really awesome to see actual research experiments being done on
the materials. This is a critical first step in understanding the underlying
complexity of the problems and as the article points out it is really helpful
to have a regulatory agency that is open to trying new things.
The second is this isn't a 'Thorium-Salt Reactor' it is 'parts that would go
into parts that would make up such a reactor if the experiments indicate they
will work.' A much less clickbaitey headline but such is 21st century
journalism.
~~~
xaldir
The second is very important, there is still a lot of research and engineering
to have:
* a (ideally several) functioning research reactor
* an industrial prototype
* and finally a fully functional commercial plant
It's a step in the right direction, but the road is very long.
------
PaulHoule
I am surprised they are using stainless steel instead of Hastelloy-N
[http://www.haynesintl.com/alloys/alloy-
portfolio_/Corrosion-...](http://www.haynesintl.com/alloys/alloy-
portfolio_/Corrosion-Resistant-Alloys/hastelloy-n-alloy/principle-features)
The Hastelloy family of super alloys is basically stainless steel without the
steel and was proven in the Oak Ridge MSR experiment.
~~~
topspin
Oak Ridge MSRE found unexpected cracking throughout the reactor anywhere
Hastelloy came into contact with the salt fuel. Experiments produced various
means of reducing the cracking, but it is not exactly true to characterize
this system as "proven."
In 1977 Oak Ridge concluded [1]:
Controlling the oxidation potential of the salt coupled with the
presence of chromium ions in the salt appears to be an effective means
of limiting tellurium embrittlement of Hastelloy N. However, further
studies are needed to assess the effects of longer exposure times and
to measure the interaction parameters for chromium and tellurium under
varying salt oxidation potentials.
We know that without very precise control of the salt fuel chemistry Hastalloy
N. will become brittle. It's an open question what happens with longer
exposure. And that is where it was left by MSRE.
[1] [http://moltensalt.org.s3-website-us-
east-1.amazonaws.com/ref...](http://moltensalt.org.s3-website-us-
east-1.amazonaws.com/references/static/downloads/pdf/ORNL-TM-6002.pdf)
~~~
PaulHoule
To be fair, the same is true of the LWR.
------
velodrome
This technology, if viable, could help solve our current nuclear waste
problem. Valuable materials could be recycled (by separation) for additional
use.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#Pyroproce...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_reprocessing#Pyroprocessing)
[https://youtu.be/oAVCaUonrbE?t=12m7s](https://youtu.be/oAVCaUonrbE?t=12m7s)
~~~
NinoScript
I wasn't expecting to see George Lucas on that video, I kinda got distracted
because of him.
------
skybrian
This was apparently at the High Flux Reactor in Petten, Netherlands.
[https://articles.thmsr.nl/petten-has-started-world-s-
first-t...](https://articles.thmsr.nl/petten-has-started-world-s-first-
thorium-msr-specific-irradiation-experiments-in-45-years-ff8351fce5d2)
------
ece
India has the most thorium reserves, according to USGS:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occurrence_of_thorium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occurrence_of_thorium)
And they have had the plans and motivation to build domestic reactors for the
past two decades: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-
stage_nuclear_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/India%27s_three-
stage_nuclear_power_programme#Stage_III_.E2.80.93_Thorium_Based_Reactors)
NSG membership keeps getting held up by someone or the other and would provide
more energy security for India.
[http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/nuclear-reactor-
at-...](http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/nuclear-reactor-at-kalpakkam-
worlds-envy-indias-pride/articleshow/59407602.cms)
~~~
knowThySelfx
India's Thorium rich sands are being mined and exported. Not many people are
aware though. Hope it isn't too late. Scandals have throttled many efforts to
grow indigenous techs. The ridiculous ISRO spy case is one such example. Cui
bono?
~~~
ece
Cui bono indeed. Corruption benefits. I don't think the spy case affected much
of anything.
~~~
knowThySelfx
It did affect our Cryogenic initiatives. Nambi Narayanan was the main brain
behind it. It was a setback from scientific point of view for ISRO.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nambi_Narayanan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nambi_Narayanan)
Looking at the wiki, it seems likely that outside forces might've been
involved in the scandal.
------
dabockster
> charged particles traveling faster than the speed of light in water
What did I just read?
~~~
toufka
Cherenkov Radiation [1]. It's not because the particles are going faster than
300M m/s, but because light _in the medium_ is going less than 300M m/s. The
unbreakable "speed of light" is actually, the "speed of light (in a vacuum)".
Outside of a vacuum, the light is slowed by the materials it travels through
(see prisms, angles of refraction, Snell's Law [2] etc.). But it's still a
very special condition when the medium slows light to some large fraction of
C, while particles are going _faster_ than that (but still less than C).
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_law)
~~~
Florin_Andrei
Yup. Whenever you see that blue glow surrounding a reactor core submerged in
water, that's the Cherenkov radiation.
If the blue glow happens in your own eyeballs, you've probably just witnessed
your own death sentence.
~~~
pitaj
It is dangerous? Nuclear subs have cherenkov radiation outside the hull which
implies they have it inside the hull as well, but you don't hear about sailors
getting radiation poisoning all the time.
------
jhallenworld
So there was a meltdown at a liquid sodium cooled reactor due to a materials
problem:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_Reactor_Experiment)
I don't see a pump seal test in this experiment... does anyone know if a
solution to the SRE meltdown problem is known at this point? Perhaps the LFT
chemistry would not have the issue.
~~~
foxyv
This isn't a sodium cooled reactor, in this case the molten salt is the fuel
itself, not the coolant. Plus there is probably no sodium involved but instead
a fluoridated nuclear fuel such as thorium or uranium. Also this is a sub-
critical experiment so pretty much all they have to do is turn it off if it
overheats.
The best part of a molten salt fueled reactor is that in case of heat runaway
the fuel would melt plugs and drain into separate containers. Essentially a
meltdown would only require replacement of the plugs and refueling of the
reactor to make it operational again.
------
bhhaskin
Really happy to finally see some movement with Thorium. It might not be the
magic silver bullet that some people hype it up to be, but it needs to be
explored.
------
acidburnNSA
Glad to see some thorium-bearing salt being irradiated in a conventionally-
fueled test reactor. That's a big step to getting back on the road to fluid-
fueled reactors.
Here are some reminders for everyone on the technical info about Thorium.
First of all, Thorium is found in nature as a single isotope, Th-232, which is
__fertile __like Uranium-238 (not __fissile __like U-235 or Plutonium-239).
This means that you have to irradiate it first (using conventional fuel).
Th-232 absorbs a neutron and becomes Protactinium-233, which naturally decays
to Uranium-233, a fissile nuclide and good nuclear fuel. This is called
breeding. Thorium is unique in that it can breed more fuel than it consumes
using slow neutrons, whereas the Uranium-Plutonium breeder cycles require fast
neutrons (which in turn require highly radiation-resistant materials, higher
fissile inventory, and moderately exotic coolants like sodium metal or high-
pressure gas). Any kind of breeder reactor (Th-U or U-Pu) can provide world-
scale energy for hundreds of thousands of years using known resources and
billions of years using uranium dissolved in seawater (not yet economical).
Great, so Thorium can do thermal breeding, so what? Well to actually breed in
slow neutrons, you have to continuously remove neutron-absorbing fission
products as they're created (lest they spoil the chain reaction), so you
really can only do this with __fluid fuel __. This leads to an interesting
reactor design called the Molten Salt Reactor (MSR). Fun facts about this kind
of reactor are that it can run at high temperatures (for process heat /thermal
efficiency), can run continuously (high capacity factor), is passively safe
(can shut down and cool itself without external power or human intervention in
accident scenarios), and doesn't require precision fuel fabrication. Downsides
are that the radionuclides (including radioactive volatiles) are not contained
in little pins and cans like in solid fueled reactors so you get radiation all
over your pumps, your heat exchangers, and your reactor vessel. This is a
solvable radiological containment issue (use good seals and double-walled
vessels) but is a challenge (the MSRE in the 1960s lost almost half of its
iodine; no one knows where it went!!)
U-Pu fuel can work in MSRs as well, getting those nice safety benefits, but it
can't breed unless you have fast neutrons.
People on the internet may tell you that Thorium can't be used to make bombs
and that it's extremely cheap, etc. These are not necessarily true. You can
make bombs with a Th-U fuel cycle (just separate the Pa-233 before it decays),
and nuclear system costs are unknown until you build and operate a few. There
are reasons to hope it could be cheaper due to simplicity, but there are major
additional complexities over traditional plants or other advanced reactors in
the chemistry department that add a lot of uncertainty. Fluid fueled reactors
are probably ~100x or more safer than traditional water-cooled reactors, on
par with sodium-cooled fast reactors and other Gen-IV concepts with passive
decay heat removal capabilities.
------
zython
I was under the impression that thorium-salt reactors have been tried in the
past and not deemed "worth" from security and profitability point of view.
What has changed about that ?
~~~
ChuckMcM
They have different problems that pressured water reactors and are not as
applicable to applications that the military would like to use them for. So
the government sponsored research labs that were running and experimenting
with them stopped doing so when research funds ran out.
Add to the insane risk of investing in anything 'nuclear' and you don't have a
lot of available capital. That said, the Chinese who invest in research for
other reasons seem to have been working on a number of MSRs which could
conceivably advance the state of the art significantly.
Oddly enough, as an American, I am looking forward to the first thing that
China builds that "we" American's cannot because we lack expertise and/or
technology to do so.
~~~
phkahler
>> Oddly enough, as an American, I am looking forward to the first thing that
China builds that "we" American's cannot because we lack expertise and/or
technology to do so.
Or too much regulation or politics to allow.
~~~
ChuckMcM
Exactly right. The one that came in conversation waiting for the eclipse was
genetic editing of fetuses to eliminate inherited disease. Setting aside the
whole 'designer babies' as a distraction imagine a company that give free
genetic treatment for couples seeking to avoid passing on known bad genes.
When you walk that forward and look at the cost associated with treating,
diagnosing, and supporting people that later get the disease, you begin to see
a huge economic 'win' by giving them free genetic help early.
~~~
troygoode
Why would you expect that treatment to be free?
~~~
theptip
If the cost of editing is not exorbitant (i.e. is lower than the average per-
capita cost of paying for the condition being edited away), healthcare
providers would be incentivized to pay for the editing to reduce their costs.
The incentives are obviously stronger in single-payer countries, but even in
the US you could imagine an insurance company that competed on lower premiums
conditional upon certain gene edits being applied to covered children.
~~~
chrisallenlane
> in the US you could imagine an insurance company that competed on lower
> premiums conditional upon certain gene edits being applied to covered
> children.
On one hand, this sounds entirely economically reasonable (and even
humanitarian).
On the other hand, I fear this would inevitably produce unintended
consequences that would shape our society in distopian, sci-fi/horror-flavored
ways.
I have no idea how it would actually shake out. Maybe I'm just being anti-
intellectual here.
~~~
candiodari
Given the economics, I feel pretty confident predicting that these edits will
be mandatory before most people on this site die.
~~~
adrianN
At least you'd probably have to pay a lot more of the bills if you chose not
to have genetic problems corrected before birth.
------
tfy11aro
Support the exciting development:
[https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fw...](https://www.patreon.com/bePatron?redirect_uri=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thoriumenergyworld.com%2Fnews%2Ffinally-
worlds-first-tmsr-experiment-in-over-40-years-
started&u=5771623&utm_medium=widget)
~~~
AndreasFling
I'm already a Thorium Patron, proud to be part of this!
------
xupybd
"The inside of the Petten test reactor where the thorium salt is being tested
is shining due to charged particles traveling faster than the speed of light
in water."
What I thought that wasn't possible? Or is this just the speed of light in
water, so the particles are still moving slower than the speed of light in a
vacuum?
~~~
tomr_stargazer
> What I thought that wasn't possible? Or is this just the speed of light in
> water, so the particles are still moving slower than the speed of light in a
> vacuum?
Good question! It's the latter - the shining is due to Cherenkov radiation
[0], "electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle (such as an
electron) passes through a dielectric medium at a speed greater than the phase
velocity of light in that medium."
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation)
------
tim333
Glad to see they are resuming research even though there remain problems with
it as a commercial technology.
~~~
mdekkers
_even though there remain problems with it as a commercial technology_
Such as...?
~~~
tim333
There are quite a few issues which this site goes into quite well
[https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium.html](https://whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium.html)
Basically you can make reactors using it but it would probably work out more
expensive than conventional ones.
------
nate908
What's up with this image caption?
"The inside of the Petten test reactor where the thorium salt is being tested
is shining due to charged particles traveling faster than the speed of light
in water."
As I understand it, nothing travels faster than the speed of light. The author
is mistaken, right?
~~~
lutorm
No, it's correct. The key is the "... in water" part.
~~~
mikeash
For details, see:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation)
------
novalis78
Great that they are mentioning ThorCon's project in Indonesia. Too bad that
they had to leave the US after trying really hard to find a way to build it
here.
------
zmix
As far as I know the Chinese are also putting much effort into this type of
reactor.
~~~
rosege
Thats what I heard too a couple of years ago - they were putting huge amounts
of money into Thorium research - does anyone know how far they are away from
something similar?
------
genzoman
very excited about this tech, but i think it will be regulated to death.
~~~
tossandturn
You are aware of the current U.S. President and the current EPA Administrator,
right?
~~~
davrosthedalek
Not so sure about that. Might risk these billions of coal jobs he created...
~~~
PaulHoule
Also those two do not believe in global warming. (One thing nuclear does not
cause)
It make take a long time for thorium reactors to come online but it is hard to
believe anybody is going to fund the construction of a new large LWR anywhere
outside China.
~~~
mschuster91
> (One thing nuclear does not cause)
However, two problems remain:
1) where to get the raw material? African mines are not exactly known for
adhering to human or environmental rights, also African mines, by nature of
being in Africa, don't create American jobs. Same is valid for the other major
sources of nuclear fuel, all of which aren't the USA.
2) where to dump all the nuclear waste? I mean, people have debated to put in
the most long-living and nasty stuff into special reactors to get it split up
to less harmful stuff, but to my knowledge this has never been realized - and
NIMBYs are highly afraid of a rad-waste dump near their houses, across the
world. Also, no one has shown how to build something that can last over ten
thousands of years while still protecting the rad waste.
~~~
PaulHoule
The use of thorium in the MSR is perhaps 30x more fuel efficient than the
current light water reactor. Large amounts of thorium have been buried in the
desert by the U.S. government. Also, sufficient deposits exist in the U.S. to
support centuries of use.
As for nuclear waste, the real reason why the problem appears intractable is
that nuclear waste is not waste.
The LWR gets only 2% or so of the energy in uranium, the same fuel could be
reprocessed and used in fast breeder reactors to release the other 98%. In
fact, it is the presence of plutonium and other actinides in spent fuel that
requires environmental isolation beyond 500 years or so. If we use those
actinides as fuel, they do not need to be buried, and if we do that, the
volume of waste is vastly reduced along with the half-life.
The fast breeder/reprocessing route has not been commercialized as of yet for
a number of reasons. Probably the most discussed is that plutonium, neptunium
and other actinides useful for nuclear weaponry could be nicked from the
reprocessing plant.
The thorium MSR is an alternate path to a breeder, aka a "thermal breeder". In
the case of the MSR, the reprocessing is done online or nearline to the
reactor. It is also possible to do thermal breeding with thorium with a
modified version of the light water reactor. Reprocessing that is a bitch
though...
The most immediate problem facing the industry is an inability to say "it is
going to take X years and Y dollars to build a reactor" and then finish it
somewhere near on schedule and on budget. Being over 10% would be no scandal,
but it is still looking more like 10x than 10%.
~~~
ornel
Doesn't reprocessing produce a lot of high level waste as a byproduct, thereby
worsening the waste problem?
And I understand the Japanese had an experimental breeder reactor for a long
time and never achieved actually producing any commercially viable
electricity. They did get lots of plutonium, though, which may be turned into
bombs any moment.
~~~
PaulHoule
Early on the fission products were stored in acid solutions in tanks. Circa
1980 the technology was developed to evaporate the solution and trap the
fission products inside glass.
Plutonium from either a LWR or FBR fuel cycle is heavily contaminated with
isotopes that will cause a bomb to predetonate or get really hot. Somebody
with advanced technology (say Japan's government) could probably use
electromagnetic separation to remove the unwanted isotopes, but you wouldn't
expect ISIS to be able to do it.
The real thing terrorists would want to nick from a reprocessing plant is
Neptunium 237; it has a large critical mass compared to plutonium, but it can
be separated by chemical means and will not predetonate.
In the 1970s people wrote hang-wringing papers wondering if inventory control
could be made good enough to detect diversion, a 2000s accident at
Sellafield's THORP plant showed that it probably can't. They lost an Olymptic
size swimming pool worth of fluid containing upwards of 50kg of Pu and around
1000kg of U and did not notice for months.
To be fair, it drained into a containment area and did not threaten anyone.
They were able to clean it up. But obviously the inventory control was
nonexistent.
THORP has been successful at producing plutonium oxide powder but the UK was
unable to fabricate it into fuel elements and had to ship it to France.
------
MentallyRetired
How'd you like to be the guy pressing the button for 40 years?
------
unlmtd1
I have a better idea: horsecarts and sailships.
------
SubiculumCode
Anyone with insight on this I read years ago:
[http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a11907/is-
the...](http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a11907/is-the-
superfuel-thorium-riskier-than-we-thought-14821644/)
I worry that that if Thorium reactors become very very common because they are
thought to be very safe (e.g. behind your house common, as some have bragged),
but they turn out to be dangerous...we will have a real problem.
~~~
jopsen
I think it's unlikely that we'll want to have people playing with radio active
waste in their backyard..
We have decent electricity grids, if reactors become financially viable, first
goal will be to power the grid.
I don't see any profit margin in decentralizing the grid.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Looking for a HN that's not tech-focused - JDiculous
I'm looking for a site like Hacker News, except without the tech focus. Basically a HN/Reddit-like forum focused on current events, important societal issues, etc. where the quality of content/discussion is high.<p>8 years ago Reddit was amazing, but now it's an absolute joke (outside a few specialized subreddits). Quality of content is generally terrible (eg. memes), political correctness (ie. the "hivemind") is rampant, upvotes are based on wittiness/terseness/political correctness while anyone with a dissenting opinion is downvoted, and the demograph of the site - at least in the default subreddits - seems to consist primarily of 12 year olds.<p>Anybody know of any alternatives?
======
ldd
I think that the internet, by its own nature, self-segregates people. I might
not have data to back this up, but it is apparent that people go online to
ratify their own views, rather than to listen to others.
I have also left reddit, mostly because the discussion around any
controversial topic is toxic. Toxic. At least here you get the occasional
moderates who are willing to actually have a discussion, where they try to
check their assumptions and the logical leaps that they make to justify a
point.
But to answer your question, I simply say that perhaps HN is the best place to
have this type of discussions. Simply because politics, important societal
issues, etc permeate our lives, including the technology that we use. In that
sense, a good way to ponder about these issues is not to face them directly,
but to deal with them as they arise within the confines of our daily lives.
By the way, I have made plenty of weird assumptions and assertions in this
post, and so have you, and the weird thing is that instead of focusing on
those issues, it is likely that I would feel personally attacked if I were
shown to be wrong. That is part of being human, but it is also ultimately why
talking about any issue is hard:
critical thinking is hard, and uncomfortable, and a concept that everyone
talks about but that nobody is really willing to utilize.
------
cb21
metafilter.com
~~~
panic
Seconded. Metafilter is one of the best-moderated communities out there.
------
joefarish
What are your subreddit recommendations?
------
mirap
Just improve your Twitter feed - follow the right people and you got it. ;)
------
jarcane
I'm baffled by the notion that a site with such a powerful and motivated
faction of actual white supremacists and open misogynists is apparently too
"politically correct" for you.
I consider myself fortunate that I can't even imagine what level of mentality
one would need to be too extreme for a site that once allowed rape jokes about
its own CEO on the front page, and once mass trolled itself in great number
because someone dared shut down a sub devoted to discussing the murder of
black people.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to launch Pied Piper - christinang89
https://medium.com/@christinang89/how-to-launch-pied-piper-part-1-17c9071f6850
======
skidoo
I remember when Twitter launched, thinking how much better a name Pied Piper
would've been. "Following" would make more sense, but also I like the concept
of piping messages into the pipeworks, instead of tweeting tweets.
On topic, this looks fun though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
EFF asks appeals court to “shut down the Eastern District of Texas” - mmastrac
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/10/eff-asks-appeals-court-to-shut-down-the-eastern-district-of-texas/
======
grendelt
Hello from the "Eastern District of Texas" (I live 27 miles from the US
Courthouse in Marshall). The lack of educated citizens with critical thinking
skills is overwhelming. This is why juries hand down absurd findings in patent
troll cases. "All this technical mumbo jumbo just makes my head spin".
I've sat on mock juries for corporate law firms before (IP/patent law is
interesting and easy money to sit for mock jury) and more than once I've
skewed their findings because of my technical/electronics background. During
the breaks the folks that are participating are total block heads that don't
understand even the most elementary explanations given.
I now often wonder if patent cases should be trial by jury or trial by subject
matter expert panels. The lack of technical literacy shows that the populace
is woefully unprepared to serve as jurors in these cases.
~~~
WildUtah
The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is the specialized patent appeals
court. It was created in 1982. Before that the regular appeals courts heard
patent appeals. The idea was that subject matter experts and scientist-judges
would be better able to adjudicate complicated patent appeals.
What we got from the CAFC was the explosion of software patents, regular
messes of abusive patent rules, an overwhelming bias against small companies
accused of infringement by monster corps with patent portfolios, legalization
of patents based on abstract ideas, and regular rebukes by the Supreme Court
that has to try to rein them in with regular 9-0 decisions that the CAFC then
finds ways to ignore.
The problem is that anyone who could get appointed to such a court is probably
personally invested in the power of the patent system. His history is probably
in mega corps with thousands of patents to block innovative disruptors. Such a
judge's future prestige and professional respect is determined by how much he
supports omnipotent and unlimited patents with little review of validity.
So these judges are inevitably judging their own careers in every case. They
are as biased and corrupt as you might expect anyone to be when asked to judge
the limits of his own power and influence.
No. Cases should not be tried by juries of subject matter experts. That just
leads to more corruption. We do need better rules that make it harder to abuse
the system, but we're better off with ordinary judges and juries making the
decisions, even though they sometimes screw it up through ignorance. At least
they aren't screwing it up by malice like certain federal judges.
~~~
nitrogen
What about having juries composed of actual peers? That is, randomly selected
experts, half from industry and half from academia? The lack of prolonged
engagement and predictable assignment to cases should make it harder to end up
with another CAFC.
~~~
JupiterMoon
The point is that this leads to corruption. A jury-of-peers reflects and
represents wider society. A jury-of-some-selected-close-peers as you are
suggesting would not reflect the needs of wider society.
Other other hand the broadly selected jury won't be able to understand
technical cases.
Its 6 one half-a-dozen the other. (UK English expression that means both ways
have major flaws and neither is ideal.)
~~~
ownagefool
Scottish here. I'd say that saying actually means both are ultimatly the same,
as in they might be difference but they're both equally negative. In this
case, it would indeed be refering your assessment that both ways have major
flaws and neither is ideal. But the point is, it has a wider meaning that
could be invoked when comparing two good outcomes, for example.
------
WildUtah
28 USC §1400 (b), the patent venue statute is designed to prevent places like
East Texas from running national tech policy and to protect small companies
from predation by troll megacorps.
"Any civil action for patent infringement may be brought in the judicial
district where the defendant resides, or where the defendant has committed
acts of infringement and has a regular and established place of business."
The CAFC (the patent appeals court) judicially abolished the statute in its VE
Holdings decision so that patent lawyers would get richer and more powerful.
That's the motive behind many CAFC decisions since patents are the root of the
judges' power and power -- as is predictable -- has corrupted. Now the new
case asks them to revise that decision and follow the law as written.
Let's see if the new Obama judges are more honest than their predecessors.
(The verdict so far: maybe.)
~~~
monochromatic
It's not anywhere near that simple. The issue is that Congress amended §1391
to _broaden_ the definition of a defendant's residence. The CAFC then
interpreted the two statutory provisions together according to their plain
wording.
Decent discussion here:
[http://patentlyo.com/patent/2007/04/patent_jurisdic.html](http://patentlyo.com/patent/2007/04/patent_jurisdic.html)
edit: I _thought_ your name looked familiar. We discussed this a couple of
months ago, and you're still spouting the same incorrect nonsense.
~~~
wtallis
Your willingness to ignore the crucial fact of how the CAFC and Eastern
District of Texas rely on the _judicially_ broadened concept of _personal
jurisdiction_ does not give you excuse to take that tone with your
accusations.
The CAFC is decidedly _not_ interpreting statute according to its plain
wording when it interprets a clause intended to limit judicial powers as
having no limiting effect. There's definitely room for reasonable disagreement
with your position.
~~~
monochromatic
Read the blog post I linked, then read VE Holdings, then get back to me.
Or maybe you've read them, and your position is that Congress just _didnt
know_ what personal jurisdiction meant when it rewrote 1391.
~~~
wtallis
Let's turn this around: are you asserting that Congress _did_ anticipate in
1990 that personal jurisdiction would extend to almost anybody with a website
without requiring specific evidence of any actual commerce with the district
or state in question? Because the case law on that was certainly a mess in the
subsequent years, and it doesn't look like it's even been taken up by the
Supreme Court.
What is necessary under Federal Circuit law for an e-commerce business, for
example, to avoid falling under the personal jurisdiction of Eastern Texas for
a software patent suit? And do you believe that such measures—if they exist—do
"not offend traditional notions of fair play and substantial justice"?
~~~
dhimes
Well, I've included in my TOS that the product is not for use there. Maybe
that will help (not released yet).
------
afarrell
I am curious how much money would it cost to run an advertising campaign in
this district and how likely it would be to influence jurors. I suspect that
the jury selection process would prevent it from having much effect.
~~~
jules
Companies spend lots of money there, so they believe it does work. Samsung
built an ice skating facility directly in front of the courthouse.
[http://mix931fm.com/yes-you-can-ice-skate-in-east-
texas/](http://mix931fm.com/yes-you-can-ice-skate-in-east-texas/)
~~~
toomuchtodo
So what you're saying is frackers need to find oil in the area, ruin the water
table, thereby driving citizens of East Texas out of the venue...
We're all one event away from being supervillains.
~~~
bitJericho
That's what's happened in western north Dakota! lol
------
chris_wot
So let me get this straight - if you do business in East Texas, you are more
likely to be sued for spurious patent violations, and more likely to lose when
this occurs. But if you don't do any business in East Texas, then you will get
sued in a less biased court.
So is it feasible to not do any business in East Texas?
~~~
WildUtah
Google and Apple won't let you block your app from app store requests in
Texas. Fixed internet connections can be traced by IPGeo databases so you can
block connections from Texas, but mobile carriers obfuscate the IP with NAT so
you can't block mobile web access.
So you can try but probably not.
~~~
cmaggard
Couldn't you simply stipulate in your ToS that if you reside in that area that
you are not allowed to use said service?
~~~
TeMPOraL
Or something along the way that's already done? When I buy software I
sometimes see a message like this: "This software costs X (+Y of some tax if
you're from Texas).".
------
jokoon
How is that possible to have that important part of patent litigation happen
only in this part of the US?
------
whyIndeed
I don't understand why this is an EFF fight.
From what I gather the line of reasoning is something like:
> eff cares about technology, in particular
electronics and communication.
> sometimes electronic systems, and the software these
systems employ, may be patented.
> patents in general may foster innovation, but
when misused, they may also stifle innovation.
> technological innovation, generally speaking, is
something the EFF cares about.
> in texas, there exists a group of political
activists colluding together to willfully
stifle technological innovation through
the careful misuse of U.S. patent law.
> although the manner in which these political
malefactors operate may be subtle and
convoluted, there is an obvious sense of the
goals behind their actions, and those goals
threaten to harm, not just a select group of
actors mired in interpersonal grudge matches,
but every participant in the American civil
justice system, by establishing dangerous
precedents with long reach and odd side
effects that may be weaponized to create
widespread strife and conflict amongst anyone
coming up against an opponent with the time,
money, and the awareness of said precedents.
> how the EFF is so certain of such intent
among these political actors remains
unclear, but because of this, the EFF is
willing to invest not-insignificant
resources in confronting and disrupting
their malignant behaviors.
> strategically speaking, should certain
specific legal decisions come to pass
in an American jurisdiction, it could
spell disaster for technological
innovation as a whole (really?), based
on the implicit logical corollaries
established by carefully chosen
legal battles won by this group.
> for this reason the EFF seeks to
challenge the validity of their
actions and their authority to operate
in general.
Is that about right?
~~~
wtallis
It's simpler than that, and doesn't rely on any far-fetched conspiracy
theories.
Nobody's actually trying or colluding to stifle innovation, they're just
trying to abuse patent law to _make money_ , with gross disregard for the
purposes of patent law or the broader consequences of their actions. Perverse
incentives can produce much of the same harms as a broad conspiracy, without
the impracticality and implausibility of collusion.
The Eastern District of Texas and the Federal Circuit have both undergone
regulatory capture, which can be incredibly damaging to the public interest
even when the regulators' intentions are quite innocent.
~~~
whyIndeed
Okay, but I'm trying to figure out why the EFF is getting involved. It doesn't
sound like their usual sort of kerfuffle.
Sure, greed, corruption, and low-brow abuse of power is repugnant in and of
itself, but where does this start to become a _Electronic_ issue?
How do the shenanigans of court district in Texas endanger an entire frontier
of all things electronic?
~~~
danparsonson
Software patents.
See also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Frontier_Foundation)
\- the introductory paragraph nicely sums up their remit.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cuba opts Linux for technological independence - socratees
http://www.juventudrebelde.co.cu/cuba/2008-11-11/cuba-opts-for-linux-to-guarantee-technological-independence/
======
gaius
Not unless they're fabbing their own processors they're not.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Downside of Bitcoin: A Ledger That Can’t Be Corrected - petethomas
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/10/business/dealbook/downside-of-virtual-currencies-a-ledger-that-cant-be-corrected.html
======
twblalock
This is a pretty big downside if you want to use the blockchain in commercial
banking, where laws require that the ledger be redacted in certain situations,
but I think it exemplifies a more general problem with blockchain-based
concepts like Bitcoin and Ethereum -- they make assumptions about ledgers and
contracts that are too "pure" to mesh with real-life financial regulations and
contract law.
Examples of such assumptions: Bitcoin transactions in the blockchain can never
be annulled, removed, or hidden from view; Ethereum contracts cannot be
modified or voided by third parties (e.g. a judge).
Unfortunately, removing immutability from the blockchain turns it into
something that isn't more trustworthy than any other kind of ledger -- so
what's the point of using it? So, I don't expect this kind of technology to be
viable for mainstream banking, or any other use case where the real-life legal
system gets involved.
~~~
CyberDildonics
Typically banks already use immutable ledgers. If they need to change
something they put append that correction onto the ledger too.
> removing immutability from the blockchain turns it into something that isn't
> more trustworthy than any other kind of ledger
How is that in any way true? Immutability means you have a record of the real
data and when it occurred. Other applications can be layered on top.
------
abrkn
An amendable distributed ledger is called a database
~~~
eiriklv
Downside of Secure Crypto: No Backdoors /s
------
VOYD
haha.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Security vulnerability in deployment – what to do? - erlehmann_
Around 1.5 months ago, I found a security vulnerability in a web page I developed, which was deployed by another person: A GET to an easily-guessable URL gives away a file containing a password with which one can login and modify content.<p>I reported that vulnerability immediately to the person deploying it and he answered he would look into it and reply. He did not. I sent two followup emails regarding the issue and did not get any reply.<p>What should I do to get the issue fixed? My first idea would be to notify the customer, but I am certain the customer can not fix it.
======
blackflame7000
Its hard to say what your best course of action is without seeing the
development agreement. In mainly comes down to whether or not you guaranteed
any warranties on your product.
If you did make such assurances, Your best course of action is to start a
paper trail to document your corrective actions(looks like you have already
started). Additionally, if the vulnerability is likely to cause damage to the
consumer if exploited, you should notify both the customer and the deployment
developer in an email. That will at least make the client aware of the problem
so they won't be blindsided if it is exploited.
Its much better to come clean and fix a small problem now, than it is to
ignore it and have the small problem turn into a huge problem. Patches happen
all the time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rure – A C API for the Rust regex library - yberreby
https://github.com/rust-lang-nursery/regex/tree/master/regex-capi
======
gpm
Also go bindings with some impressive benchmark results:
[https://github.com/BurntSushi/rure-go](https://github.com/BurntSushi/rure-go)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AT&T Phones Adding Unknown Recipients from Different Area Code to Group Texts - dwringer
https://forums.att.com/t5/Apple/Unknown-number-added-itself-to-my-group-text/td-p/5293588
======
pavel_lishin
It's marked as "solved", but the solution is just an AT&T rep apologizing and
asking users to report more information if they experience the problem again.
~~~
valuearb
It's solved because AT&T knows what's causing it. Not that they'll tell you.
~~~
rgbrenner
where did you get that idea? the "solution" says:
_We are investigating this issue and are looking for more information to get
down to the bottom of this. If you do experience this issue, please send us a
private message. ... We thank you for your help and patience as we work on
this issue._
So they dont know what's causing it, and they have not solved it.
~~~
dawnerd
A classic case of moving something that's bad PR to private communications.
Happens on twitter all the time.
~~~
UnfalseDesign
Though many companies do move bad PR to private communications, in this case a
private message makes sense since AT&T is asking for personal information such
as the customer's phone number.
------
aaronsnoswell
Possibly related anecdote; A few years ago I purchased a new sim card for my
phone with a large Australian mobile carrier. After popping the new card in, I
discovered ~10 real human being contacts on the sim that I had never heard of
before (not tech support or business, carrier numbers etc.). They had names
and everything. Contacted a few of them and couldn't figure out what the
common factor was. I lodged a complaint with the carrier and got a
personalized letter and call back from their state manager. No explanation why
though. Still baffles me today. Do sim cards get re-used?
------
knodi
GroupText is via MMS, so these group text are routed via ATT MMSC. Which is
shit.
------
bhaile
Happened to a co worker. Got added to a group text and has no idea how. The
people in the group text were surprised as well.
~~~
ashark
Yeah, this solves (sort of) the mystery of someone none of us knew being added
to a large group text about a year ago.
------
tuxxy
This happened to my brother and girlfriend at the same time.
Both iPhone users. We thought it was someone fucking with us, so I got the
CNAM of the phone number and creeped the guy out by telling him his name (lol)
and then we both came to the conclusion that something fishy is going on.
------
otakucode
Sounds like a good way to make new friends! Statistically, you'll probably
meet someone interesting...
------
5ilv3r
I've seen it and I'm pretty sure this is an android bug. I noticed that in
lollipop, contacts with the same number but different area codes are not
treated differently in the messaging UI.
Tmobile with an old cyanogen build.
~~~
dwringer
This looks like it was posted in an Apple subforum, and anecdotally this came
to my attention because of someone I know with an iPhone, so I think that
might be a separate issue (or possibly a different incarnation of the same
issue). Also, in this instance, I think the entire phone number is
unrecognized, not just the area code.
~~~
5ilv3r
Hard to tell where the problems are between the carrier and handset are
nowadays. Thanks for pointing that out. I missed it.
------
Aloha
I was more amused that poster only has one kevin in his contact list.
~~~
thaumasiotes
I'd bet a large majority of people have between zero and one. Name collisions
aren't rare, but collisions on any particular name, even names much more
common than Kevin, are.
~~~
Aloha
I have six.
~~~
kayfox
You also have 100s of people in your contact list.
~~~
Aloha
Yeah, about 500 or so.
------
apple4ever
Happened to myself and a group of friends too! Some random person replied “who
is this?”
------
cgb223
Anyone with telecom knowledge have any idea what this could be?
~~~
josh2600
If it's a group message I believe it's carried over the mms channels so it
could be a bug in the mmsc.
There are so many layers involved that it's hard to know but I'd guess it's a
caching bug somewhere along the line.
Source: telecom PM for years.
~~~
richardwhiuk
There's two ways to do multi party messaging - Broadcast SMS, or Group MMS.
The later is more likely here, given it's a regular group message.
It's most likely to be a bug on one of the MMSCs, but could be a problem
elsewhere if the message is getting corrupted in flight. Alternatively, it
could be routing issue in a certain set of numbers.
------
CodeWriter23
I know in iMessage, you can tap the (i) info icon then + Add Contact. And so
can a friend add someone unknown to you. But Occam’s Razor be damned...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: First "Move your Body" game on iOS (face recognition) - myprasanna
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIq47P97fpI
======
benmlang
Very impressive, about time someone invented a game controlled by head
movement.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why CPUs aren't getting any faster (2010) - michael_nielsen
http://www.technologyreview.com/view/421186/why-cpus-arent-getting-any-faster/
======
delroth
CPUs are getting faster. Sandy Bridge is a 15-20% IPC improvement on Nehalem
for some heavily integer and memory access based workloads. On the same
workloads, Haswell is another 15-20% IPC improvement on Sandy Bridge.
I work on the Dolphin Emulator ([https://dolphin-emu.org/](https://dolphin-
emu.org/)) which is a very CPU intensive program (emulates a 730MHz PowerPC
core, plus a GPU, plus a DSP, all of that in realtime). We try and track CPU
improvements to provide our users with proper recommandations on what hardware
to go for. Here are the results of a CPU benchmark based on our software:
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AunYlOAfGABxdFQ...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AunYlOAfGABxdFQ0UzJyTFAxbzZhYWtGcGwySlRFa1E#gid=0)
~~~
twoodfin
Given that we seem to be hitting the practical limit on CPU frequencies, it's
interesting to speculate on what kind of (single thread) IPC headroom is still
available. You can model those IPC limitations by assuming a CPU with
unlimited registers, unlimited functional units, a perfect branch predictor,
etc. and seeing how much ILP you can extract from benchmark code. Tighten the
CPU's constraints and you get a sense of which capabilities are most valuable.
Wall 1991[1] is the classic paper, AFAIK, and saw a limit with "quite
ambitious" (for 1991) imagined future hardware at around 5-7 IPC in a 'median'
benchmark. I'd be interested to hear how close Intel is getting and whether
anyone's updated that result.
[1]
[http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~dbrooks/cs146-spring2004/wall-i...](http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~dbrooks/cs146-spring2004/wall-
ilp.pdf)
------
trustfundbaby
The article doesn't go into it in depth, but I think the answer is that chip
makers hit a wall somewhere over 3Ghz range where it became difficult to ramp
up cpu frequency without spending ridiculous sums on cooling the processor so
it could operate properly (you'll notice that even now, the fastest intel
chips come in at the 3.1-3.2 Ghz range ... theres a reason for that)
I was big into building computers during the cpu race between AMD/Intel back
in the late 90's early 2000's and the Intel Pentium 4 processor line is
notable for pushing the envelope from the the high 2Ghz range all the way up
to the 3.4Ghz and 3.6ghz (I still have a 3.4Ghz chip sitting in my home office
... those were the days!)
Wikipedia does a great job of chronicling what happened with the Pentium 4
line here
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_4)
with hints to what I've just alluded to above
"Overclocking early stepping Northwood cores yielded a startling phenomenon.
While core voltage approaching 1.7 V and above would often allow substantial
additional gains in overclocking headroom, the processor would slowly (over
several months or even weeks) become more unstable over time with a
degradation in maximum stable clock speed before dying and becoming totally
unusable"
It was after their failures with the brute force attempt at higher cpu cycles
that Intel finally went a different way with initially the Pentium M line
(code named Dothan and Banias)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentium_M)
and eventually the Core duo/Core series that they've since built on.
~~~
sliverstorm
_the processor would slowly (over several months or even weeks) become more
unstable over time with a degradation in maximum stable clock speed before
dying and becoming totally unusable_
This is an electromigration[0] and/or hot carrier injection[1] problem. Both
are exacerbated by temperature and voltage, but are not the reason chips are
stuck at 3-4GHz.
One actual limiter is pipeline depth. Deeper pipelines is an easy way to
enable an increase in frequency. The problem in a nutshell- the longer the
pipeline, the greater the overhead & the larger the penalty of branch misses.
[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electromigration)
[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-
carrier_injection](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hot-carrier_injection)
------
higherpurpose
Interesting that the article mentions SNB, because since then the gains in
performance have been much smaller. SNB was the last "significant" gain in
performance for Intel CPU's I'd say (+35 percent over previous generation).
All of the new generations since then have gotten like 10 percent increase in
IPC, at best, and Broadwell will probably get a max gain of +5 percent.
To "hide" this, Intel has refocused its marketing on power consumption, where
gains seem easier to achieve (for now), as well as other pure marketing tricks
such as calling what used to be "Turbo Boost speed", the "normal speed". I've
noticed for example recently a Bay Trail laptop being marketed at "2 Ghz",
even though Bay Trail's base speed is much lower than that.
~~~
zwegner
Depends on the application, of course. Haswell introduced some really cool new
instructions (both the Bit Manipulation set as well as the Software
Transactional Memory set). Don't have any numbers off-hand, but these can
definitely speed up certain workloads.
~~~
supergauntlet
Apparently in specific workloads the move from AVX -> AVX2 was very
substantial, though I can't seem to find the article that showed this.
~~~
vardump
The transition is more like from SSE2 -> AVX2, in integer workloads. AVX2 adds
256-bit wide integer instructions and gather-instruction. Gather does multiple
loads in one instruction.
AVX was just about floating point.
------
Spittie
I personally have my own idea for that: Sure, we have hit many walls, but I
don't think that's the main reason for the slow down in CPU development. I
think it's mostly because the R&D moved from making the CPU faster for making
the CPU consume less, to follow the Laptop/Mobile market (as everyone
loves/hates to say, every year is the year of the death of the PC).
Also we're at the point where most of the very-requesting software isn't
bottlenecked by the CPU, or where you can just throw more cores at the problem
and solve it. And also software is starting to leverage GPU acceleration,
which gives an huge boost when usable. And GPUs are getting a lot faster every
new generation.
------
logicallee
This is why CPUs aren't getting any faster:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=c+%2F+5+ghz](https://www.google.com/search?q=c+%2F+5+ghz)
~~~
morenoh149
care to explain? I'm curious what you mean by that google search
~~~
michael_nielsen
It means signals can only propagate about 6 centimeters during a single CPU
clock cycle. That makes accessing information off-chip difficult in a single
cycle, since 6 centimeters is on the same order as the linear scale of most
motherboards.
This limit doesn't immediately impact computations that are carried out
entirely on-chip. I expect that's the great majority of computations on
today's CPUs, which typically have large caches. So I'm not sure the GP's
explanation is correct, although it's certainly interesting.
~~~
lotsofmangos
As an explanation for why you cant get clock speed increases of the same order
of magnitude as you could previously, without changing the entire technology,
it would seem correct.
6cm now means that you only need to double twice to get to less than the die
width.
Also, electricity does not propagate through copper at c, but at between 40%
and 90% of it, depending on the inductance and capacitance of the circuit, so
you are looking at even less of an increase before you start running into some
really thorny problems as not only are you running up against relativistic
limitations, but different bits of your chip can be doing it at noticeably
different times.
------
zokier
The power wall theory is bit odd though. Why are modern Intel desktop CPUs
limited to so low power budgets? Ivy bridges were just 77W (TDP), and now
Haswells are apparently 65-84W. Desktop platforms should be able to handle far
more power, at least in the 100-150 watt range. Meanwhile desktop GPUs are
hitting 200-300 watt TDPs regularly, with far more limited cooling systems.
Why isn't Intel able (or willing) to push the power envelope higher in
desktops?
~~~
wmf
Maybe because Intel "desktop" processors are just laptop processors in
slightly different packaging. Or maybe they want to push more customers into
the more expensive -E segment.
~~~
wtallis
But even the enterprise parts only have higher TDPs due to higher core counts
- the cores themselves are the same as the consumer desktop parts, with a bit
more cache thrown in and some transceivers to help scalability to even higher
core counts that we don't want. Nobody is trying to design the fastest quad-
core processor, let alone dual-core or single-core. No one is willing to
commercialize a chip that is 10% faster at single-threaded tasks when it will
be a fourth the speed at highly-threaded tasks, especially when the processor
can self-overclock one core when it's the only one in use, thereby offsetting
some of the core-count tradeoff.
------
bluedino
Additions to the instruction set can help out where raw GHz don't get things
done.
Another big improvement has been moving certain functions to hardware -
Intel's Quicksync is a great example of this.
~~~
carsongross
The problem is that these advancements are one-offs and are increasingly
difficult to both create and adopt. There was a great paper I read on compiler
optimizations (I was a language guy in college) that pointed out that compiler
optimizations were responsible for maybe a 2x improvement in program speeds,
whereas CPU improvements were responsible for 1000x.
Almost all the singularity-type techno-optimism was based on a curve drawn
during the amazingly magical part of CPU development: shrink the die, double
the speed.
We are now past that, although many techno-optimists are casting around for a
reason it will continue.
~~~
Guvante
Honestly if we can get multi-core programming working we can probably keep it
going.
Although that is an enormous if.
~~~
carsongross
Most problems are not trivially parallelizable and, in any event, Amdahl
curves look a _lot_ different than the exponential curves used to argue for
The Singularity.
We may have to make due with what we've got.
Which, thankfully, is quite a lot.
~~~
im3w1l
>Most problems are not trivially parallelizable Numeric optimization can
benefit from parallel line search, and threads using different initial points.
Matrix algebra benefits from more cores. Sorting benefits from more cores.
Encryption benefits from more cores (De)compression benefits from more cores.
A server handling simultaneous requests benefits from more cores. Cracking
hashes benefits from more cores Computing merkle trees benefits from more
cores Flash banners in 20 tabs "benefits" from more cores
------
neona
I hope we see an increase in real software parallelism, since that's the only
real way out of this for the foreseeable future. Tacking on more cores is
still an option we have, we're just having trouble using them right now in
many contexts.
In the longer term, we'll hopefully see advancements that let us fundamentally
change how logic processors are constructed, such as possibly photonic logic
chips. Only a major shift will let us break through the current single-thread
performance wall.
~~~
AshleysBrain
New architectures like the Mill
([http://millcomputing.com/](http://millcomputing.com/)) could provide
alternative ways to a breakthrough increase in performance.
On the software side, I've always understood browsers are pretty good at
parallelism, which is a pretty major platform that gets performance benefits.
That could also extend even further with projects like Mozilla's Servo
([https://github.com/mozilla/servo](https://github.com/mozilla/servo)), a
browser engine built from the ground up with parallelism in mind.
~~~
willvarfar
Yet JavaScript is fundamentally single threaded by design...
~~~
AshleysBrain
I don't think that's actually true. The way it use asynchronous callbacks
allows for lots of parallelism. For example creating a new image will cause it
to download the image off the network and decompress it in parallel to
executing Javascript, and then when done it fires the 'onload' handler. That's
much more parallel-by-design than something like C++.
~~~
pcwalton
Unfortunately you can't actually run those callbacks in parallel, because of
JavaScript's run to completion model.
The work we're doing with PJs, however, attempts to fix this problem :)
------
th3iedkid
Weren't there walls back in the 90s?I would rather bet on a new tech leap than
to go by federated designs at this stage.
~~~
tedsanders
Yes, there were walls back in the 90s and yes, we managed to break through
them. However, the walls we face today look much nastier. I concede that
there's no way to know the future, but nonetheless I'd put my money on a
sharply slower rate of improvement for CPUs.
In the short term, it would be great if we had a breakthrough in x-ray power
sources (for cheaper EUV lithography), a breakthrough in etch control (for
vertical transistors), or a breakthrough in III-V materials (for a one-time
mobility improvement).
But long term, we need to find an alternative to the transistor. Perhaps
spintronics, perhaps non-von Neumann architectures, who knows. But there is no
way that a paradigm-changing redesign will be competitive with silicon in the
next 10 years. Silicon has a humongous advantage in manufacturing, supply
chain, know-how, scaled production, etc. Even if we find a better technology
(and we haven't) it may still take decades to get there.
------
zwegner
The article doesn't really seem to answer the question the title says it does.
Of course there's the well-known reasons, nonlinearity of power vs frequency
scaling, diminishing returns in hardware design, etc. But there are others
that we don't hear so much about.
Hardware design is still in pretty nascent stage, technology-wise. The
languages used (say SystemC or Verilog) offer very little high-level
abstraction, and the simulation tools suck. Sections of the CPU are still
typically designed in isolation in an ad-hoc way, using barely any
measurements, and rarely on anything more than a few small kernels. Excel is
about the most statistically advanced tool used in this. Of course, CPUs are
hugely intertwined and complicated beasts, and the optimal values of
parameters such as register file sizes, number of reservation stations, cache
latency, decode width, whatever, are all interconnected. As long as design
teams only focus on their one little portion of the chip, without any
overarching goal of global optimization, we're leaving a ton of performance on
the table.
And for that matter, so is software/compiler design. The software people have
just been treating hardware as a fixed target they have no control over,
trusting that it will keep improving. That makes us lazy, and our software
becomes more and more slow, by design (The Great Moore's Law Compensator if
you will, also known as
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirth%27s_law)).
The same problems we see in hardware design, huge numbers of deeply
intertwined parameters, also applies to software/compiler design. We're still
writing in C++ for performance code, for chrissakes. And even beyond that, the
parameters in software and hardware are deeply intertwined with each other. To
optimize hardware parameters, you need to make lots of measurements of
representative software workloads. But where do those come from, and how are
they compiled? Compiler writers have the liberty to change the way code is
compiled to optimize performance on a specific chip (even if this isn't done
so much in practice). To get an actually representative measurement of
hardware, these compiler changes need to be taken into account. Ideally, you'd
be able to tune parameters at all layers of the stack, and design software and
hardware together as one entity. That is, make a hardware change, then do lots
of compiler changes to optimize for that particular hardware instantiation.
This needs to be automated, easy to extend, and super-duper fast, to try all
of the zillions of possibilities we're not touching at the moment. There's
even "crazy" possibilities like moving functionality across the
hardware/software barrier. Of course it's a difficult problem, but we've made
almost zero progress on it.
Backwards compatibility is another reason. New instructions get added
regularly, but those are only for cases where big gains are achieved in
important workloads. For the most part, CPU designers want improvements that
work without a recompile, because that's what most businesses/consumers want.
One can envision a software ecosystem that this wouldn't be such a problem
for, but instead we have people still running IE6/WinXP/etc. Software can move
at a glacial pace, and hardware needs to accommodate it. But this of course
also enables this awfully slow pace of software progress.
~~~
weland
As an EE working as a, and with other programmers, I hear a lot of these
arguments whenever the matter of "why CPUs aren't evolving" comes up. There's
a lot of misconception here.
> Hardware design is still in pretty nascent stage, technology-wise. The
> languages used (say SystemC or Verilog) offer very little high-level
> abstraction
There are a lot of things people outside microelectronics miss in this:
* Much (most?) of the research invested into HDLs is _not related to the languages themselves_. Verilog and VHDL and SystemC are really good enough for the things they describe. Really, they are; they may not look like much in terms of "high-level abstraction", but when you need to understand the relation between what you write and what gets done on silicon, that's actually a feature. It's _turning Verilog code into silicon_ that's actually challenging and where a lot of effort goes. The benefits of being able to describe something in a functional manner and 10% fewer lines of "code" are belittled by the benefits of getting better output from a Verilog compiler.
* Some (not all, but some) ASIC design is actually done without HDLs. I don't know if Intel still does it. AMD stopped at one point and the results were tragic.
* There are, seriously, realistically, very few actual obstacles that stem from HDLs. Physical obstacles -- not just the laws of physics, but the difficult technological processes -- are considerably bigger obstacles. And then there's market presure:
> Sections of the CPU are still typically designed in isolation in an ad-hoc
> way, using barely any measurements, and rarely on anything more than a few
> small kernels.
"Barely any measurements" is not an accurate description of the ASIC design
process IMHO. Yes, simulation/model extraction tools are used a lot more than
in other fields of electronics, but that's somewhat hard to avoid when a)
you're designing for a barely tested technological process (because it's brand
new!) and b) prototypes are kind of expensive.
> Excel is about the most statistically advanced tool used in this.
I haven't done CPU design but I've seen some IC design being done (and wrote
tools for people who did it). Maybe it's true for some CPU manufacturers, but
I doubt it. I'm pretty sure that it _especially_ won't cut it for mixed-signal
designs like microcontrollers.
> As long as design teams only focus on their one little portion of the chip,
> without any overarching goal of global optimization, we're leaving a ton of
> performance on the table.
I'm not sure what you understand by "global optimization" but there's a lot of
research done on topics like power-efficient caches, which is at least a form
of optimization of more than one trait.
> The software people have just been treating hardware as a fixed target they
> have no control over, trusting that it will keep improving.
This is, unfortunately, an accurate description. There has been a time when
software people weren't treating hardware as such, due to lack of abstraction-
level tools, and I'm quite sure not even Wirth wishes to go back in time to
then.
> To optimize hardware parameters, you need to make lots of measurements of
> representative software workloads. But where do those come from, and how are
> they compiled? Compiler writers have the liberty to change the way code is
> compiled to optimize performance on a specific chip (even if this isn't done
> so much in practice).
This is actually done quite a lot in practice, even within a single CPU
family, like on x86, although granted not as much as it could be done.
However, optimizing hardware parameters is somewhat meaningless as long as you
need a general-purpose CPU. You can only go so far when considering potential
workloads -- but that is being done, too. IBM's POWER cores, for instance,
still try to improve sequential performance, because many of them still run
single-threaded batch jobs for much of their functioning time.
> To get an actually representative measurement of hardware, these compiler
> changes need to be taken into account. Ideally, you'd be able to tune
> parameters at all layers of the stack, and design software and hardware
> together as one entity.
This has actually been attempted since the first reconfigurable logic arrays
emerged in the late 70s/ early 80s. Unfortunately, it's plagued by the problem
that the infrastructure required to dynamically reconfigure logic circuits is
a drag. That's actually what makes FPGAs so slow.
I don't think FPGAs are the end of it, but "almost zero progress" is many
light-years away from being an accurate description of the progress that has
been made since MMI's PAL.
> Backwards compatibility is another reason. New instructions get added
> regularly, but those are only for cases where big gains are achieved in
> important workloads.
It's also done because practical experience has shown that, barring extreme
stuff like OISC or perverted register-starved architecture design, instruction
sets literally have negligible gain in terms of performance. Given enough time
on the market, compilers that efficiently exploit any architecture will be
designed. I mean shit it worked for the 80386!
_However_ , not adding new instructions != not adding new features, not since
microcoded architectures appeared. Granted, manual optimization is
(sometimes?) still needed for extended sets (e.g. SSE), but their applications
are niched enough that those applications that can't make use of them based on
compiler inference alone are bound to be hand-optimized anyway.
Edit: compulsory disclaimer. I didn't do industrial level IC design, but I
used to do research directly related to it and write software for that. This
does mean I never actually did anything significantly more complex than a
couple of current mirrors and logic circuits, but I did work with people who
did. _However_ , my experience is more on the analog IC side. I'm only
casually familiar with logic IC design, so I may be unintentionally
bullshitting you :-).
~~~
zwegner
Hey, thanks for the critiques, a lot of them I don't really have a good answer
for. A lot of these issues are not fully clear in my head (I haven't really
CPU design either besides very basic college level VHDL stuff), and I'm not
familiar with all of the current (or even past) research. A lot of my opinions
come from my somewhat nebulous experience in the industry, and a lot of that
is just what I've picked up from talking with people that would know (and that
I'd rather not get too into on a public forum). There's definitely some hand-
waving in there too, trying to be provocative and idealist :)
I'm mostly a software/compiler guy, where I know there can be a whole lot of
improvement (especially in mainstream tools, not just toy/research projects),
but my impression is that hardware isn't much better off. You've given me some
good pointers for further topics to research, though. My email is in my
profile if you want to chat more about this stuff!
~~~
weland
> My email is in my profile if you want to chat more about this stuff!
Coming up :-). Cheers!
------
ufmace
I'm curious if anyone here has any perspective on how close we are to absolute
physical limits in CPU design. Last I heard, we're getting pretty close to
dealing with quantum issues due to how small the transistor and connection
size is getting, the frequency of light we need to do the etching, etc. I
wonder if anybody knows how close we are to hitting hard limits in various
categories. Surely, we'll hit some eventually, and I wonder what happens then.
~~~
marcosdumay
Charge carriers tunneling through the insulating barrier of MOS-FETs are a
problem for a few years already. The good news is that it reduces exponentialy
with tension and insulator thikness, thus it can be worked around.
Dopped areas on silicon transistors have a minimum diameter around 10nm,
that's the uncertainty about the position of charge carriers. Features a bit
smaller than that will probably work, but much smaller ones won't.
That said, we are still far from the ultimate limits on CPU design. Those
limits above apply to CMOS CPUs made of silicon what, despite describing all
of the currently produced ones, is only one among many possibilities.
------
snarfy
Grace Harper explains it best:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEpsKnWZrJ8)
------
akuma73
The end of Dennard scaling is the root-cause. This is causing power density to
stop scaling with smaller transistors and will ultimately be the end of
Moore's law.
[http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/events/fs2013/doug-
burge...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/events/fs2013/doug-
burger_beastfrombelow.pdf)
~~~
tedsanders
Hmm, I don't think so.
I'd say the end of Dennard scaling is why frequencies stopped going up around
2003.
What's killing Moore's law now is not Dennard's law ending, but the increasing
price of lithography technologies. Right now we face the unpalatable choice
between quadruple patterning (very expensive) and EUV (also very expensive).
The industry is between a rock and hard place.
------
exelius
IMO CPUs aren't getting any faster because we don't really need them to be
much faster.
Now before the flames begin, let me caveat that as "We don't really need them
to be much faster at single-threaded workloads." The article round-aboutly
mentions this in the context of specialized CPUs, specifically GPUs: GPUs are
basically hyper-concentrated thread runners. They're not very fast at running
any single thread, but they have efficient shared memory and can run thousands
of individual threads at once.
For larger workloads, we've gotten a lot more efficient through cloud
computing. An individual CPU in the cloud is really not any faster than it was
5 years ago; but the advances made in energy efficiency (aka heat) and
miniaturization mean you can fit a lot more of them in a smaller space.
While the technical hurdles to going faster are very real, I think we've built
a technical infrastructure that's just not as reliant on the performance of
any single piece of the system as it used to be. Therefore there is less
demand for faster CPUs, when for many of the traditional "hard" computational
workloads, more CPUs works almost as well and is a lot easier to scale than
faster CPUs.
~~~
shittyanalogy
CPU power is a finite resource. To increase that resource in a usable way
would certainly benefit "we".
~~~
exelius
I agree; and we've been doing that. But the article was about "why aren't
CPU's getting any faster?" CPUs aren't really getting much faster and haven't
for a while; we've just got access to a lot more of them at a lower cost than
ever, so the collective "we" still get the benefit of that.
------
philosophus
I realize this article is from 2010, but it could have mentioned AMD, which
does have a 5 GHz chip available now. It requires liquid cooling however.
~~~
zurn
IBM beat that by a hair or two, 5 GHz POWER6 processors came out in in 2007.
And the newer, faster POWER7 chips are clocked lower. Clock frequency !=
performance.
------
jokoon
or "why it's more and more relevant to code with performance in mind, and
consider minimalist designs"
~~~
josho
In my experience a minimalist design often requires more effort behind the
scenes. So, I don't see the two having any relationship.
Just one of many possible examples, the minimalist ios7 interface has an
embedded physics engine so that all the springy/sliding views feel natural to
the user.
~~~
jokoon
I think this feature is not minimalist at all. Smooth scrolling consumes a lot
of battery and processing power.
> In my experience a minimalist design often requires more effort behind the
> scenes.
Why ? When I say minimalist I essentially means less useless fancy features.
Minimalist focuses on the useful, not on the feeling, so it can leave more
room for other new features. The iPhone has a power of a 1995-2000 full
fledged desktop PC or maybe more, yet it's using a lithium battery and it's
1cm thick.
This applies to all hardware: it's not worth it anymore to invest into new
hardware if you're unable to exploit current hardware to their full potential.
You can throw money at chip technology, but at some point you also have to try
throwing money at software and OS developers. Computers have always been about
software, not hardware.
~~~
josho
We have two different definitions of minimal here.
My take on a minimalist design means that life is made easier for the user.
E.g. process data so the user has conclusions to interpret instead of raw data
(that fits a minimalist design, but takes more processing).
I see now that your take on minimalist design is to remove unnecessary
features from software. I'd argue that nobody wants "useless fancy features",
unfortunately, what may be useless for me is necessary for you (otherwise why
build those features anyway). So, it's all good to say let's keep to minimal
designs (by whichever definition you mean), but in the end I don't see how
that solves the problem that returns on hardware improvements is slowing, and
frankly you haven't made the case that minimalist design solves the problem
either.
~~~
jokoon
> unfortunately, what may be useless for me is necessary for you
I don't understand that, I think I meant the opposite.
> and frankly you haven't made the case that minimalist design solves the
> problem either
You gave the example of the iPhone. The apple platform is one of the least
flexible platform. In many places it requires to learn an unpopular language,
objc, which is not used on existing, non-apple platform for many reasons,
first one being that nextstep is owned by apple. Then it requires approval
from the apple store.
John Carmack talked about those "layers of crap", they're present in most OS.
And what do you mean by "solving the problem" ? Having a minimalist designs
allows you to leave more resources for other things, it doesn't "solve the
problem", it just leaves room for more improvement.
> life is made easier for the user
So basically you're forcing everyone to walk on paths, and forbidding everyone
to explore forests. I understand that it's better for the mainstream customers
because they're not able to learn how to walk in forests, but flexibility is
good too: you should still enable it.
In the end, when you buy hardware, most of the time you use the default
feature set of the OS, nothing else. Web apps just use a sluggish, unreliable
networking protocol which was designed to view static webpages.
So to sum up, people buy hardware to use facebook and twitter, listen to
music, play a game, and that's what it is, a fancy, expensive gameboy color
with chat. Except the hardware is 1000 or 100000 time faster and batteries
last just as long.
I'm not making the case of solving a problem here, I'm just talking about the
absence of improvement.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
VigNAT: A Formally Verified Performant NAT - signa11
https://vignat.github.io/
======
runeks
> Our proof applies directly to the C code of a network function, and it
> demonstrates the absence of implementation bugs.
Isn’t this just like a type system? You specify what you want in types, and
the type checker complains if there are implementation bugs (the inferred type
doesn’t match the specified type).
Of course, this just means that the hard part is now correctly expressing all
the invariants (and combinations hereof) of your program as a
type/proposition.
~~~
SolalPirelli
(2nd author of the paper here)
By "implementation bugs" we mean _any_ bug that could cause the NAT to not
satisfy its spec, which is a formalized version of RFC 3022.
This includes bugs that a type system would catch, such as improper use of
void pointers, as well as lack of crashes (e.g. Out-of-bounds indexing,
division by zero...); but most importantly, it includes _semantic_ bugs, such
as forwarding a packet to the wrong port, incorrectly modifying a packet, not
updating the internal state properly (so that future packets are handled
correctly), etc.
The main contribution here is that only the data structures (which are
reusable) need to be proven by hand; for a new NF, you only need a
specification - which is, as you point out, not always easy to do.
~~~
drsopp
IMO this kind of work is very important, and is necessary to be able to
categorize computer science as engineering. How do you see the future of this
kind of programming? Will it become much easier/semi automated? Even
mainstream? Could we see operating systems made with these methods?
~~~
pvg
Do you mean 'programming'? Because 'Computer Science' doesn't really need to
be categorized as engineering, being a science and all.
~~~
diroussel
Yeah. It's the other way around. Science is about learning. Engineering is
build things based on knowledge gained from using the scientific method.
Building things without using scientific knowledge is not engineering. It's
hacking.
~~~
drsopp
Yes. Mainstream programming is more art than engineering, like how we built
buildings before statics.
~~~
pvg
Buildings before statics were not built by 'art'. That entire 'programming is
not like engineering' analogy is just terrible in almost every conceivable
dimension, despite its enduring popularity.
------
travbrack
Why choose this problem to solve in 2018? NAT is a hacky solution to an old
problem which is fixed by IPv6.
~~~
beagle3
It was not a design feature, but IPv4 NAT provides some anonymity that IPv6
will take away in the future (if it hasn't already).
ISPs in my area assign a prefix per customer; If you know the ISP, you know
the length of the prefix, and can thus pinpoint the exact ISP customer with
every connection.
On ISPv4+CGNAT, the common deployment, they can't do that.
~~~
travbrack
The IPv4 equivalent of that is giving each customer their own IP which happens
all the time now. Individual devices within a customer network can be uniquely
identified with IPv6 though which is new.
~~~
beagle3
The IPv4 equiv cannot and does not happen because of address pool size.
Most ISPs charge extra for a fixed IPv4; and many default to CGNAT which makes
it impossible to correlate even within a 10 minute period.
------
signa11
code is also available here:
[https://github.com/vignat/vignat](https://github.com/vignat/vignat)
yay !
------
devxpy
Don't leave out NAT PCP (RFC6887)!
It's a must for p2p communication
[https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6887](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6887)
------
candiodari
I wish they tested a few adversarial conditions as well, like for instance
having MANY open nat connections. At some point the memory runs out, right ?
~~~
SolalPirelli
The size of the flow table is configurable, and the NAT drops connections once
the table is full. (Of course, the NAT also expires old connections)
~~~
candiodari
Interesting. Does it keep actively used connections open so as to maintain as
much functionality as possible if it's under attack ?
~~~
SolalPirelli
Yes, existing connections are kept as long as there is traffic often enough
(in either direction) - the timeout is configurable.
~~~
loxias
This is truly amazing work, I'm glad you chose Nat as your NF example. One
minor question I haven't seen answered anywhere: For vignat, in the git
repository and the paper, I see no mention of software license.
May I assume that it is in the public domain, or if not, BSD licensed?
~~~
SolalPirelli
Good point. Will talk about it with the other authors. Thanks.
------
zurn
How does symbolic execution w KLEE work to formally verify programs, are there
tradeoffs in coverage? For complete coverage you'd have to get it to cover the
whole possible spaces of states and execution paths of the analyzed system.
~~~
cvwright
The way they work around state space explosion is pretty cool. They push all
the state off into another module, whose correctness they verify using other
methods. Then they tell the symbolic execution engine that the state-holding
module does not misbehave. So it's a hybrid -- use each verification technique
where it's strong, to shore up the weaknesses/shortcomings in the other one.
------
andrewchambers
Anyone know if there is anyone working on an equivalent of ascl or verifast
for golang?
------
geggam
How does this work with IPV6 ?
~~~
xxpor
It's easy to prove correctness for IPv6 NAT: if you're doing it, it's wrong.
~~~
DanielDent
Let's imagine a small business with two IPv6-capable ISPs & a router. They
want to make effective use of their two links for load balancing & failover.
There's not a chance that BGP is going to get set up or that their own IP
allocation is going to happen.
How do you propose they implement multi-homing for their entire network? How
do you propose they balance their link utilization?
~~~
xxpor
>There's not a chance that BGP is going to get set up or that their own IP
allocation is going to happen.
Why not? There's no restrictions on V6, unlike V4 where a small biz might not
be able to afford even a /24.
~~~
DanielDent
Here are the three most significant problems from my perspective:
(1) Cost - IP allocation isn't close to free, either in $ or in
time/administrative overhead.
(2) Technical Complexity - Using routing protocols like BGP is not currently a
process with enough automated tooling to make it realistic
Those problems could likely be overcome with concerted effort.
But the biggest problem of all may be what this would do to the size of global
routing tables. We've already got a problem with routing table size exploding
with more and more people advertising smaller and smaller prefixes. All of
that high-performance ram is expensive. That routing table is globally
replicated.
If it were affordable for everyone to announce their own prefixes, routing
tables would be prohibitively large. I don't think we yet have any good
answers to this problem, and I am genuinely interested if you are aware of
any.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Where do you, personally, go to learn mathematics online? - trcollinson
I am an engineer and entrepreneur with a fairly broad but not terribly deep understanding of mathematics, mostly in the are of number theory. Deep down I really enjoy learning about and discovering more about mathematics. It's such a fun topic with so many facets and, heck, I can do with with not much more than a pencil, a note card, and my brain.<p>It seems like engineers and developers are always asking great questions about where to find information on algorithms to improve their coding skills or to prepare for an interview or test. There is a lot of information online from basic algebra and geometry to single and multi-variant calculus and beyond. With that I am curious to see is what others do to learn "higher" levels of mathematics outside of a University setting. By higher I mean topics at or above first year, single variable calculus.<p>What sorts of mathematics knowledge goals do you have? To know more generally, to know more mathematical application, to keep up on your skills from college, or just to get by with an algorithm in an interview?<p>Do you feel like the information you get online is useful? What kind of learning experience do you wish you could have with math online?<p>How committed to learning more higher levels of mathematics do you think you would be outside of a University setting?<p>Obviously anything else you would like to share would be great!
======
Bahamut
Learning mathematics outside of a mathematics curriculum at a university is
difficult, largely due to the fact that in higher level math classes, the
professors become more like mentors - their aim is to guide you to approach
problem solving with the right intuitions, and to prevent the all too easy
rabbit hole of getting caught up in one approach to oblivion.
No text can provide you with this sort of benefit.
I came into software engineering after leaving research level mathematics.
What I have found is that there are no shortcuts around investing a massive
amount of time reading textbooks and trying to solve problems/figure out
proofs. The time investment itself is what bakes the knowledge into your head.
This probably isn't what you wanted to hear, but at least do weigh these
thoughts in.
~~~
trcollinson
Actually that's a brilliant answer! I absolutely believe that in order to
really succeed in mathematics one must pay their dues in time. You put it
exceptionally well.
My thoughts of the day is, would it be possible to mentor people through this
process online. I quite often tutor my university age son, his friends, my
neighborhood kids, and colleagues in single variable calculus level math. I
was looking around and couldn't find a lot of resources online to really teach
math. Sure there is text and simple explanation, even some courses like MIT
opencourseware and such. But nothing that really replicates the experience of
learning math, if that makes sense.
And now, in fact, it does make sense. Because it lacks the mentorship of a
university professor. Now the question is, does: is a good University
classroom the only way to get that level of mentorship?
------
smnplk
This path might be of interest to you
[http://hbpms.blogspot.com.es/search/label/stage%201](http://hbpms.blogspot.com.es/search/label/stage%201)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Silicon Milkroundabout: Forget the banks, come and join a London startup - lucraft
http://siliconmilkroundabout.com/
======
ladon86
Yes, this is what's needed. I like the line about the banks. My biggest peeve
with the UK scene is that we lose so much talent to banks and consultancies,
especially among graduates; anything to turn that around is a step in the
right direction.
~~~
gaius
The truth is in the UK the _only_ industry paying a decent wage for technical
work (not just CS grads, but engineering, physics, maths, etc) is banking.
I am a Mech Eng graduate and my CV has been floating around in various
databases for years, and I still get recruiters calling me and offering less
than half of my current salary (and I'm no rockstar, just an ordinary worker)
to go and work on something mechanical for a big engineering company. It
really is a joke.
This is all tied up in the vestiges of the class system, technical people are
still thought of as "blue collar" (despite being better educated than most
white collar workers) and the management class will never pay us fairly -
except in banking where they are quite clear about what is worth what. I
gather in the US it's different, they don't have all that baggage holding them
back.
~~~
lucraft
Not sure about class, perhaps developers just are more valuable to banks than
startups. Otherwise it sounds right.
However I'm sure I would have gone stir crazy with boredom by now if I worked
in a bank :) (I have low boredom tolerance)
~~~
rbanffy
> developers just are more valuable to banks than startups.
That makes me wonder about the implications. What kind of tech startups you
find in the UK?
~~~
metabrew
take a look at the logos on the link for this very submission, that's kinda
the point.
------
fsipie
I'd like to present a different perspective. I've worked at 3 startups in the
past, including one of my own. None of which had much financial success and 1
of which cheated me out of several thousand pounds.
Though it's been interesting, in the sense of the chinese proverb, I sometimes
wish that I'd just worked at a bank for the past 15 years.
~~~
swombat
_Though it's been interesting, in the sense of the chinese provert, I
sometimes wish that I'd just worked at a bank for the past 15 years._
I can understand that. I worked at a big consulting company, at a global bank
client, for 4 years. From personal experience, however, I'd like to correct
your perception a little.
1) Yes, the money is better and more regular, but you end up spending a lot
more as well. So you won't make as much as you think you will.
2) While you constantly hear about people making astounding sums of money in
banking, the reality is that unless you work your socks off and are lucky to
be in the right place at the right time (hey, that sounds like startups!) you
will stagnate at a decent but not particularly amazing salary. And if you work
your socks off, you won't have that much time to enjoy the money anyway.
3) This extra money comes with a cost: your soul. I'm not kidding. If you're
the kind of person who derives great satisfaction from loving your work and
making a difference, working at a large corporation for a long period will
slowly but surely strangle and kill something very precious inside of you.
Money is a commodity. Enjoying your life, doing something you love, feeling
like you make a difference - you can't buy those things, no matter your
salary.
~~~
rapind
I'm going to take issue with #3. There's this falsely accepted wisdom that
large companies are evil and small companies are good.
There are plenty of startups out there run by sharks (or sometimes idiots)
looking to drain your talent dry for little or no reward. Working at a few of
those can be just as soul sucking.
Also I'd like to add that if changing the world and leaving a legacy is your
main desire, then yes working at a startup is probably your thing.
If you really just want to enjoy your family or extracurricular lifestyle
without worrying about your paycheck then maybe something with a little more
security is ok. I have friends who work blue collar non-technical jobs and
enjoy the casual atmosphere and complete lack of stress.
~~~
swombat
Point #3 has nothing to do with large companies being evil - I don't think
they are intrinsically evil or good, much like startups, as you point out.
What is certainly true about work in large corporations is that there is a
_lot_ of waste and politics, so much so that I think it's fair to say that a
large percentage of the average job in a corporation is basically waste. If
you're particularly unlucky (as I was on some of my projects), you can even
end up doing a project which is a complete waste of time, where everyone knows
that it's a complete waste of time, but it needs to be done in order to score
someone somewhere some political points that will advance their career.
To me, that is soul-destroying. I can't work unless I care, and forcing myself
to care when there is no reason to grinds away at an important part of who I
am.
------
earnubs
Hi, I've worked in a couple of startups & agencies around the British Isles
and one investment bank in London. My experience would convince me to advise
that you should work were you want to work, but in general my experience is:
1) if money is the prime motivator, work for investment banks, preferably as a
contractor; 2) if you want a breadth of experience, work in a good web design
agency; 3) if deep domain knowledge is what you want, work in a startup.
(Of course, you can't do the contracting without a few years experience in any
of the above.)
The points are all a generalisation but this final one is not, it's not what
you are doing, how much you are getting paid or where you are doing it, it's
who you are doing it with. The human factor is, in the long run, the most
important thing. Are they smart? Good, you'll get smart too. Are the decent
human beings? Good, you'll live a long life.
Humans: the cause of, and solution to, all life's problems :)
~~~
raarky
Just wanted to back this comment up.
I'm in the same boat - I've contracted at various companies(financial, media,
etc etc) and currently working at a startup.
Contract at large companies if you want money. Join a startup if you want
lifestyle & scene.
Remember tho, if you work at bank you can still go to some of the many events
the scene puts on :)
------
flondon
The interesting discourse here is why graduates find the big IBs/Consultancies
so appealing, more so that joining a startup. In my opinion, this is due to
the perception that a high flying blue-chip career gives - 99.9% of graduates
would prefer to say ‘I work for Goldmans’ rather than ‘I’m going to work for
an unknown technology startup around Shoreditch’ - this impresses grandma and
the parents who have subbed the £30-40 university costs for their kids.
I think the counter to this is that within the UK, there is a dearth of
success stories involving young tech entrepreneurs - the big one that sticks
in my mind is the million-dollar-pixel guy, who as the name suggests made a
million! (There are of course others, but I've not seen them as widely covered
in the media)
Looking at the example of silicon valley, there are so many examples of tech
entrepreneurs making it big at a young age - maybe once the London scene has a
healthier number of well known (i.e. the Daily Mail writes about it) exits,
the perception will improve and we will see a higher number of bright
graduates preferring to join a startup.
~~~
timthorn
Don't know about IBs, but consultancies offer the chance to work across a real
range of clients and industries, and in a variety of roles. The ability to do
something fresh on a fairly regular basis but without changing employers is
appealing to certain minds.
~~~
mattmanser
Haha, yeah, they'll be photocopying at a wide range of different companies.
Reality check, ask people who have actually done this stuff, all the ones I
knew the work was dull but partying continued like it was uni because they're
with a bunch of other graduates.
Most large companies don't let the noobs anywhere near the clients. They're
pyramids, the longer you stay the more interesting work you get to do. This
competes with the better the job you can get elsewhere, which causes gradual
attrition in the ranks. It's all about who can stick it out the longest.
Ground zero is very, very dull work. Like photocopying while being charged out
at hundreds of pounds an hour.
Remember, these are graduates, they're totally useless in the real world at
the start.
~~~
timthorn
I don't need to ask people what the work is like because I've first hand
experience. I joined a top tier consultancy after several years in "proper"
tech, and whilst I didn't come in as a grad, I've seen enough to know that at
least here, photocopying roles are rare.
On the other hand, I've had a fantastic breadth of experiece - technical,
commercial, in great teams and on my own. I work with really interesting and
significant clients across sectors, and have the pleasure of seeing my
contributions making a real difference. I have done work here that has quite
literally resulted in lives being saved.
Not dull at all.
------
djhworld
This sounds like a good afternoon. I'm going to a gig in the evening too.
I've been looking for something like this for a while, I've always wondered
how people get recruited into startups without 'being in the know' as it were.
When you look at job aggregators 99% of the jobs are for huge corporates,
usually through the proxy of a recruitment agency.
My only concern about this event, for me personally anwyay, is I graduated 3
years ago and I've been working professionally as a developer as soon as I
left University. I'm not sure if this event is aimed at people like me or
fresh out of uni grads or not.
~~~
intranation
At a senior employee at one of the companies hosting (Smarkets), I can say
that we would welcome any and all interested developers to the event. Being
fresh out of uni is certainly not a requirement!
~~~
joeconway
I'm thinking of going even though I'm not graduating until next year. Would
you be interested in meeting people who aren't immediately available but are
looking to get familiar with the scene?
~~~
JonnieCache
Whether they're interested in meeting you or not, if you turn up and start
talking to them they won't have much of a choice in the matter.
------
samengland
For an event appealing to those "fresh out of uni" it's very badly timed. Most
of us are still in exams, but only until the end of May. It should have been
scheduled at least a couple of weeks later.
~~~
rbanffy
Did banks book up all good venues in that period? ;-)
------
upthedale
Great idea. Will there be later events? I ask because the exam season is
currently in full swing for some students who may be otherwise interested.
~~~
beck5
This is true, I live in Sheffield so attending means at minimum 1 valuable day
lost in crunch time at uni so not sure if it is worth the risk.......
booking train ticket tonight then.
------
deathwarmedover
I was going to pass this discussion onto my friend who is doing dev contract
work at a bank, but then I remembered he's not allowed onto anything on the
internet while he's at work, LOL.
------
joeconway
I've just registered. I'm on one of the better CS courses I get the impression
from my peers that most of them want to go work for big organisations and
consider the idea of working for a startup as unthinkable. I think thats such
a shame
~~~
wyclif
What's also a shame is that these UK companies don't allow remote work. I
think lots of US devs would be interested, and since visas are capped anyway
remote seems rather obvious.
------
will_critchlow
Is there any way for other companies hiring devs in London to throw our weight
behind this?
------
kierank
This event shouldn't just be about _joining_ a startup in my opinion. It
should also be about how graduates should _start_ a startup.
Also the location in Shoreditch may put off some of the hardcore tech people.
It would have also been nice to see some more hardware startups but you're
probably going to have to go to Cambridge or Berkshire for those.
~~~
njs12345
What's in Berkshire of relevance to hardware companies?
~~~
kierank
Along the M4 corridor there are quite a lot of hardware companies.
------
stuartd
Websense has categorised your site as 'Potentially Damaging Content' - you
might want to get that changed.
~~~
deathwarmedover
Thanks for the report btw, we got it recategorised to "Job Search". :)
~~~
stuartd
Really? It's now categorized under 'Malicious Web Sites'..
------
rorohello
Hi All,
I hope the Milkroundabout Folks don't mind me piggybacking on this post (I
applied to come to their event, but didn't get in :(
I'd like to let everyone interested in mobile apps know about another
networking event OPEN TO ALL on May 31st (Tuesday Night, 7-10pm) at El Paso
EC1V 9NQ, just across the street from Bar Music Hall. The event is an official
PechaKucha <http://www.pecha-kucha.org/events/pknapp> and we have some great
presenters lined up so far from INQ Mobile, TurnedOnDigital (makers of The
Situationist), Quipper and more.
You can register to attend here: <http://www.amiando.com/WZJZCJU.html>
Ryan Sommer Director, MaintainPR [email protected]
------
ig1
The problem is that it's too late, most of the banks and consultancies finish
hiring in Jan-Feb, many of the big tech firms will have finished by now as
well. Most of the good undergraduates will have already accepted offers, so
this is actually coming too late for them.
------
cfelde
If you want to go into "banking" (and have the skills needed), but would
prefer a startup then maybe opengamma would be interesting:
<http://www.opengamma.com/>
------
wyclif
I'm in the US and would love to go to this, because if I had an offer and help
with visa issues I'd move to the UK in a heartbeat. Unfortunately I can't
afford the airfare.
~~~
hcho
I doubt any startup will be able to arrange you a work visa at the moment. Non
EU worker visas are severly capped these days and the available is taken up by
bigger companies.
~~~
pyrhho
I'm curious how the Non-EU Worker Visas impact things like telecommuting...
~~~
hcho
It doesn't. The parent worker was talking about moving to the UK.
~~~
wyclif
Do any of these UK companies allow remote work?
------
adaml_623
Since there is no contact info on the website. Can I just ask why you want a
URL for me?? :-) You say you won't share my email address but what are you
doing with my other private info?
I mean this only because I'm actually curious and I'm trying to work out which
URL to give... Hackernews profile page??
------
ropiku
I think payment is still an issue with startups. Hopefully that changed but
last year I interviewed with a couple of startups (some of them on this list)
for summer internships and possibly remote work and was offered £1k/month in
London.
------
andytwigg
Hi all, Acunu (<http://www.acunu.com/jobs>) will be here - if you're
interested in algorithms and file systems or just a great hacker, come and
find us! Say hello at [email protected]
------
ayers
Just a quick question on attire, am I correct in presuming this is a casual
event and therefore we should not dress up like we would for an interview?
------
adaml_623
That's an awesome list of companies. There are a few missing from that front
page who I hope are still around on the day.
------
tomstuart
Is there any indication of what kind of event this will be? Is it a
conventional recruitment fair? A party?
~~~
robfitz
It's at a nice big pub with fancy beer and a stage for live music, so I'd
guess it's a social event plus the companies introducing themselves from the
stage so you know who to focus your mingling on.
~~~
calpaterson
Hmmm...as a graduate I really don't know how to equip myself at these kind of
events. I wonder how I should go about fixing that
~~~
JonWood
There's not a huge amount you need to do. It might be worth having a look at
the sites of some of the companies listed so that you know vaguely who you
want to talk to, but other then that, just turn up and make sure you have some
way of taking down contact details for people - a pen and a notepad are
probably your best option, unless you're particularly good at typing on a
mobile phone keyboard.
The important bit is to talk to people once you get there, since it's unlikely
that people are going to come and seek you out in the corner.
------
softbuilder
What's with the milk?
~~~
thomson
Milk used to be home-delivered in Britain--the act of companies touring
universities to attract recent grads to apply is known informally as a
milkround.
~~~
dogonwheels
Used to be? Don't tell that to my milkman! :)
I still get milk and eggs (and sometimes some pretty bad knock-off Irn Bru)
from ours. We're in the semi-countryside just outside of Leeds, and it's not
at all unusual around here. Wonderful service!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NYC Fire Department Forcible Entry Manual (2006) [pdf] - dfc
http://www.brothersinbattlellc.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/fdny_fe.pdf
======
ludicast
Interesting seeing this posted here.
I've spent the past decade+ as a firefighter with the FDNY and this is always
a go-to book (at least for monday-morning-quarterbacking how somebody did
something). It's one of the few times a book does a good job at mirroring
actual practice. We have a lot of other books on tools and procedures, but
this one is more interesting to a hacker's mindset.
Some notes:
\- trying the doorknob is indeed important advice. I think the ones I've
forced have always been locked, but there are plenty of times I can't
guarantee 100% that I checked the doorknob first.
\- always good to jiggle the door before you attack it to see just where the
locks are locked on the inside.
\- the halligan tool is perfectly made, but the different ways of increasing
leverage are always useful (like marrying it to another, or chocking the door
with an axe (or wooden chocks) to maintain progress and you "work your way
up").
\- breaching a wall is sometimes an option. Sometimes a $1000 door has a $10
sheet of drywall right next to it. Only needed to do this a few times but
makes you look like an animal when you do it.
\- no matter how hard a door is, the hydra-ram is almost always guaranteed to
open it. but we usually use this as a last resort or for emergencies where you
can't waste time "d&$*ing around".
\- never give up your tool. basically, if you are working to force a door, but
it's taking some time and someone says "let me give a try", don't take the
bait. If someone else pops your door for you, you will never live it down.
\- on my first run ever, a gentleman from my company showed me how to twist
off padlocks like in the example on the bottom of p.122. An obvious trick, but
worked well though my career and I got to show it to a bunch of people.
Trivial example but I only mention it because he died last year of WTC-
related-illness.
\- I always had a tool like this: [http://www.homedepot.com/p/Estwing-10-in-
Pro-Claw-Moulding-P...](http://www.homedepot.com/p/Estwing-10-in-Pro-Claw-
Moulding-Puller-MP250G/202033612) in my coat pocket (a little better model
though). Worked great for lighter doors with minimal locks (staircases,
internal offices, closets etc.)
~~~
gist
> \- never give up your tool. basically, if you are working to force a door,
> but it's taking some time and someone says "let me give a try", don't take
> the bait. If someone else pops your door for you, you will never live it
> down.
So macho! I wonder if you could expand on that as far as the culture in being
a firefighter a bit. The only thing I know about this is obviously what I see
on TV and in movies. I suspect that it's actually beneficial rather than
detrimental to the necessary camaraderie in the group.
~~~
monkmartinez
Firefighter culture/behaviour, at least on my department, is very complicated.
It often resembles toddlers fighting for toys in a sandbox and I mean it...
calling us Toddlers is being nice. Literally 2 minutes later it can resemble
team-work that would make General Patton proud. I do not watch firefighter
shows or movies as a general rule, so I can not comment if they mirror
reality.
I don't think I could write about fire service culture in a comment on HN that
would satisfy myself or my brothers and sisters in the service. It is just too
complicated, at least from my perspective.
The example he gave is day one stuff. Never give up washing the dishes, never
give up the nozzle, never give up rolling hose, never give up tools, and so
on... _especially_ if you are the junior guy/gal. Seniority plays a big role
in my department.
~~~
giardini
"...never give up rolling hose, never give up tools, ..."
This certainly provides insight into the deaths of 27 wildland firefighters
who died disregarding orders to drop their heavy tools (so they could outrun a
wildfire):
"Drop Your Tools: An Allegory for Organizational Studies" by Karl Weick at
[http://www19.homepage.villanova.edu/gregory.gull/MBA8510.htm...](http://www19.homepage.villanova.edu/gregory.gull/MBA8510.html/DropTools_Weick.htm)
~~~
ludicast
That is fascinating, thanks. There definitely is point where the primary life
hazard is us and we fail to realize it sometimes.
Reminds me of the speech from The Edge. "Most people in the wilderness die of
shame ... instead of thinking".
That said, all fatal fire reports have one thing in common. All the people who
read them think "I have no clue what I would have done if that was me".
~~~
JshWright
That's what intelligent, self-aware people think (on good days).
------
honyock
"Prior to forcing a door: The Forcible Entry Team should: TRY THE DOOR to
determine 'IS THE DOOR LOCKED?'"
Nice.
~~~
JshWright
When my sister was in the fire academy, there was a nearby hotel slated to be
demolished, so they used it for training. On one particular evolution, the
task was "Search this whole floor for victims". The first door was locked, so
they forced it (not an easy task with hotel doors designed to be reasonably
secure), and then proceeded to break down every other door on the floor (20
minutes later, they're completely spent...).
Turns out, the instructors had only locked the first door, and they hadn't
bothered to check any of the others, just assuming they were also locked.
Always, always, always try before you pry.
------
apeconmyth
I got to see the FDNY in action in my East Village apartment building a decade
back after a neighbor's boyfriend set her place on fire. We locked our door
and got it popped and it was amazing how quickly and efficiently they took out
doors, windows, ceilings and floors as needed to control the fire and get the
smoke out. They definitely knew their business and we were back in our 300 sq
ft 6-floor walk-up in no time!
Thanks once again, FDNY!
------
dbarlett
I enjoy reading
[http://www.vententersearch.com/](http://www.vententersearch.com/) for this
sort of stuff.
~~~
monkmartinez
Great site thanks.
------
protomyth
"Remember that when we leave the fire scene, the doors we destroy leave the
occupants vulnerable to further loss from vandalism. The people we are sworn
to serve rely on our good judgement."
A healthy reminder for a lot of professions.
------
monkmartinez
Am a firefighter...
Always Try before you Pry. Have the Halligan and Axe in standby.
------
mindcrime
Haven't read this yet, but here's the thing about forcible entry that might
surprise a lot of people. _Many_ doors are much easier to force than you might
naively expect. Even with a deadbolt.
Think about it like this... say the bolt extends into the jamb by a full inch.
That means you only need to move the door frame by half an inch, and the door
by half an inch, or some equivalent combo. But here's the rub... many doors
aren't well installed or the frame has warped, etc. and the bolt does _not_
extend into the frame by an inch. It might be half an inch or less.
So, insert a decent sized prybar (halligan bar, or flat pry bar, whatever.
Sometimes a big screwdriver will do) and pry... it doesn't take that much
effort to get the door to flex a quarter of an inch and the frame a quarter an
inch, and bob's yer uncle.
This is really true on wooden doors/frames on residential construction. It's a
little less true for something like a steel door set into a steel frame in
some kind of commercial building, but there still tends to be a little bit of
give which can be exploited.
------
Theodores
In the UK we do not have people walking about with guns and security is not as
invincible as New York doors of 1980's vintage. Hence the UK police can gain
entry to everywhere and anywhere with a warrant and the 'BIG KEY':
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforcer_(battering_ram)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enforcer_\(battering_ram\))
I am sure UK firefighters have all of the other tools (including the equally
nicely named 'Jaws of Life') for when their friends in the other emergency
services need some help.
------
aredington
One thing I really appreciated as an non-practicing observer was the frequent
reminders to consider safety concerns, e.g. try a door knob before forcing it,
take care with how padlocks may turn into projectiles, taking care that
operating a chainsaw doesn't pose a threat to people inside a warehoused
window, etc.
------
code4tee
Interesting read. The few times I've seen the FDNY I always wondered what that
strange modified crowbar thing they carry around was (since I didn't see other
Fire Departments using it). Now I know!
~~~
JshWright
Are you referring to the halligan bar? I'd be very surprised to see a fire
department that didn't carry them. The "set of irons" (the halligan plus a
flat head axe) is about as standard a set of tools as you can get in the fire
service.
While there is some variation (I like to carry a Denver Tool[1] instead of the
axe, as it's a slightly more effective striking tool), pretty much everyone
carries the halligan. There really isn't a more versatile tool.
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_tool](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_tool)
~~~
ludicast
The Halligan is vim. Has weird modes of usage, and takes some explaining. But
it is stable, ever-present, and all-powerful.
~~~
JshWright
We need to start some sort of hacker/firefighter community. It seems there are
more than a couple of us here.
~~~
mindcrime
Add one more, although my firefighting days are behind me now. I was a
volunteer with Civietown and Supply VFD's in Brunswick County NC for basically
the decade of the 90's. For a while I was an NCFRC certified Instructor II and
could teach FFI/II, Incident Command and LP Gas Firefighting.
Then I moved to the Triangle region and started my "real" career and found
that I didn't have time for firefighting anymore. I miss it sometimes, but my
life is complicated enough as it is, without trying to do that now. But still,
I remember a few things and I still enjoy discussing fire safety issues.
------
jld89
And finally, you should always TRY THE DOOR KNOB \- “is the door open?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple Should Buy Hollywood - senjamin
http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/26/apple-100-billion-buy-hollywood/
======
oldstrangers
If Apple buying Hollywood means I can look forward to more interaction with
iTunes, then no thanks.
The last thing we need Hollywood to turn into is an even more walled garden.
The best answer for Hollywood is an open approach from end to end, from
funding to distribution to better bandwidth.
Fund independent movies and television shows. Continuously. Encourage the
death of dvd and bluray. Encourage the death of all hard copies of media, even
thumb drives. Give NetFlix and Hulu more money. Lobby the FCC to regulate
broadband speeds. Everyone should have 10+Mbps by now. These are the right
steps towards defeating Hollywood.
~~~
cbs
>Encourage the death of all hard copies of media, even thumb drives
This is a pipe dream that doesn't think more than 5 years into the future or
understand the realities of distribution.
The properties inherent to physical media are some of the most consumer
friendly aspects of distribution. Some can be approximated with a software-
only approach, provided that the content provider wants to not only take the
time to implement, but also wants consumers to continue to have those
benefits. There are also properties of physical media that are impossible to
duplicate with the internet, and what they do provide relies on them never
going offline and never stop serving any each and every piece of content.
I have NES cartridges in my closet that are much more versatile than games on
steam. I have a netflix streaming account that I _can not_ use when I visit my
father because he doesn't have an internet connection and I can't cache
netflix movies on my laptop. I have a friend, who because of hardware failure,
can only use xbox dlc if he is connected to the internet (I don't really know
the DRM specifics, but on the original hardware he didn't need to be
connected).
I put up with some of these limitations because I hope they are temporary and
digital distribution companies will eventually get their act together, but
they're still a "last resort" option when I buy media.
~~~
slowpoke
_> The properties inherent to physical media are some of the most consumer
friendly aspects of distribution._
I don't think so. What's consumer friendly about plastic garbage that takes up
space, is ridden with unskipable ads, DRM to boot, and is a pain to handle?
The true "problem" (for those relying on this business model) still remains
the reality that you ultimately cannot force people to pay for virtually cost-
free distribution of content. You cannot stop free sharing either. All efforts
to do so will eventually result in heavy censorship (actually, copyright and
free speech are fundamentally at odds).
Pretty much all problems with digital media you describe are caused by this
failure to accept reality on the side of distributors. It's not a problem with
digital media, it's a problem created by trying to make digital media like
physical media (-> being able to control distribution), when the former is so
much more powerful, versatile and plain better than the latter. Distributions
as a business model is _dead_. The future of digital media is one that doesn't
rely on it, and embraces cost-free distribution and free sharing.
~~~
ctdonath
What's consumer friendly about physical media is simplicity & independence. My
2-year-old can climb onto the bookshelf, dig out whatever disc he wants, open
the Bluray player, insert disc, close it, and watch it - THAT is "consumer
friendly". Sure there are things to complain about with discs, but those are
way into the "first world problems" realm.
When you buy a disc, it's yours. No remote server can deny you access to it on
a whim.
There was an old saw "don't underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon
stuffed with magnetic tapes." Until we get consistent >25Mb/s streaming cheap,
you're not going to see Bluray-quality video from Netflix et al ... but a
2-year-old can deliver it in seconds.
~~~
slowpoke
If you're seriously basing consumer-friendliness on the ability of a two-year
old to operate it, then I'm sorry, but I fundamentally disagree with your idea
of consumer-friendly.
Also, if you can teach a 2-year-old to put a disc into a player, you can most
likely teach him to click on (or touch) an icon in a digital media library.
There's no difference. None at all.
_> When you buy a disc, it's yours. No remote server can deny you access to
it on a whim._
Again, that is not a problem with digital media, that's a problem of people
trying to control digital distribution, which is impossible. I have loads of
nice .mkv (and some older .avi and .mp4) files here, in addition to a huge
music library, and short of a double harddrive fault, _nothing_ can deny me
access to them.
Many physicals disks have copy-protection schemes, too, by the way. What if
the industry for disk players decides to not make any players anymore that can
play disks with a certain copy-protection scheme. Or switch to a new format of
storing media, as they did quite a lot of time in the past. It's the very same
thing as a "remote server denying you access". There's no guarantee you'll be
able to play these disks you own in 5, 10 or 20 years. I have that guarantee,
because short of the complete replacement of the general purpose computer, I
will be able to play my aforementioned media collection.
_> There was an old saw "don't underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon
stuffed with magnetic tapes." Until we get consistent >25Mb/s streaming cheap,
you're not going to see Bluray-quality video from Netflix et al ... but a
2-year-old can deliver it in seconds._
Netflix (and other streaming services) are as much part of the problem as
physical media are. Streaming is DRM, no matter how you turn or twist it. You
pay per watch, and you don't own what you watch. And again, I'm not paying for
something that's cost-free to begin with (distribution). Distribution-based
business models are dead, and trying to save them will only lead towards more
shit like SOPA, ACTA and the DMCA, which hurt the internet and Free Speech.
------
nl
No.
Apple (and Google, and Netflix and anyone else..) should campaign to have
statutory music licensing[1] extended to video/film.
That originally came about when the music industry couldn't agree to
reasonable licensing terms for radio, so the government intervened to impose a
licensing regime that allowed the new industry to build audiences while still
making a return for artists.
Sound familiar?
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license#United_State...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_license#United_States)
------
jonnathanson
This makes no sense whatsoever. Sorry.
What upside is there for Apple in owning the expensive, unwieldy, production-
side apparatus of Hollywood? Why should Apple be devoting resources, human and
economic, to developing content when its hardware and software businesses are
so much more profitable?
All this talk in recent weeks about "destroying Hollywood," and now, "buying
Hollywood," focuses too much on Hollywood as it currently exists. If we're so
confident that Hollywood-of-today is a ripe for disruption, then let's focus
on _disrupting_ it. The way to do that isn't to fight Hollywood on its own
terms. It's to make the creation, distribution, and marketing of non-Hollywood
films and shows easier for those outside of Hollywood to do. You don't kill
Hollywood with a management change. You kill Hollywood by building -- or,
really, supporting the growth of -- an alternative to Hollywood.
Apple already has the means to do this. Its software makes filmmaking and
editing cheap, easy, clean, and powerful. And, at least in theory, there's
nothing stopping Apple from placing independent films right alongside
mainstream Hollywood films on the iTunes movie page. Or serving them up
through Genius-powered collaborative filtering algorithms. Etc.
Apple already _owns_ the future of Hollywood in a very meaningful way. To
suggest that Apple needs to "buy" anymore of Hollywood is to miss the forest
for the trees.
~~~
aptwebapps
Well, that's what you might guess from the title and from the first half of
the article where he posits that Apple _could_ buy Hollywood if it wanted to.
But then he goes on to say that what they _should_ do is to buy a bunch of
distribution rights so that they can offer true a la carte TV programming.
~~~
jonnathanson
Where strategic acquisition of distribution _would_ make some sense is as a
competitive advantage over Amazon and Netflix (and over any similar
competitors who might emerge). But to secure exclusive rights on key pieces of
content, Apple would need to pay an exhorbitant amount of cash -- essentially,
protection money to Hollywood to keep content out of competitive hands.
This also forces Apple into the game of picking hits, by betting on which
pieces of content are going to be worth buying exclusive rights for. Hit-
picking is a notoriously tricky business. (Even Hollywood gets it right only
about 10% of the time).
Strategic, overall partnerships with key content providers -- HBO, for
instance -- might make a great deal of sense. But to do so would be to place
Apple's fate in the hands of HBO's development arm, i.e., to bet that HBO will
keep turning out hits at the rate it currently is.
Perhaps a hybrid approach here is best: prime the pump with some exclusive,
big-studio content, but over time, focus on developing a content ecosystem
that is attractive to content developers the way the App Store is to software
developers. Hollywood is a very pricey middle-man for content development; the
long-term goal should be to build up the independent development system. If
nothing else, this forces Hollywood's costs down by introducing legitimate
competition.
------
stellar678
Seems to me that Apple has already locked down a distribution and promotion
model that is significantly less expensive than Hollywood. The only thing left
is to replace Hollywood's role as "VC for TV/music/movie ideas".
I would imagine with their huge cost advantages, Apple could offer much more
attractive deals to the creative people in the industries. Why not just start
funding productions?
Hell, content is just Apple's carrot to get people to buy hardware. They don't
even need to make a profit from it.
------
jessedhillon
_Imagine any show or movie on demand on your TV, way beyond what is available
in iTunes now. There is no program guide, no schedule. Everything is there,
organized according to your taste..._
This is what I want. Despite paying for Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon Prime, and
being willing to pay for other such services I still can't get it. I have the
Plex client installed on my Google TV, streaming shows that I torrent (even
when they are on Hulu) and I rip Netflix movies. Not because I'm cheap and
won't pay -- I would if they sold all this to me.
I can watch any content, on any device, anywhere but only because I'm a thief.
------
dave_sullivan
I'm starting to wonder if all these SV guys talking about fixing Hollywood is
kind of like Hollywood saying they're going to fix SV (or revolutionize it
with a poorly conceived product, poorly conceived because they have no domain
experience there). Hubris?
I tend to agree there's likely a better model, but I suspect there's a bit
more to it than the tech industry seems to think. Something to consider.
------
notatoad
as the article says, the concept of actually buying hollywood is a little
ridiculous and a little pointless, but they don't need to.
putting up billions to license first-run shows is a terrible idea though. it
validates all hollywood's reluctance to change any of their old business
practices, and encourages then to keep being stick-in-the-muds. Hollywood
needs to be disrupted, and a huge pile of cash is exactly what is needed for
that to happen. If apple wants access to high-quality content for their TVs,
they need to do something drastically different to scare hollywood into
playing with them.
------
arturadib
What they should really do is distribute some of those billions to their
employees, and set a precedent for fair/social capitalism. Because yeah Steve
Jobs was a genius, but any engineer who uses their devices knows that the
folks who _executed_ his ideas were just as critical for Apple's success.
------
jey
Apple has tremendous proven ability to create/ride new markets, but no
demonstrated ability to rescue doomed businesses with (soon-to-be-)failed
business models. Why should they start now? Sure, that's only a backwards-
looking argument against Apple buying Hollywood, but the burden is on those
arguing in favor to explain why this makes sense for Apple. Seems like it'd be
better for Apple to just milk the distributors while they can and at the same
time make it easy for the next generation of content to be distributed via
Apple... which is exactly what they're doing with iTunes.
Hm, what are some new business models (or more generally, pivots) that would
make the dying distributors continue to be relevant?
~~~
buu700
> _Apple has ... no demonstrated ability to rescue doomed businesses_
Uh... Really?
~~~
jey
The rest of the quote is relevant too: "no demonstrated ability to rescue
doomed businesses with (soon-to-be-)failed business models".
If you're referring to Macs, the Macintosh line is more like a luxury clothing
brand than a horse-drawn buggy manufacturer. Macs sell because they're
_commodities_ that have been dressed up with a luxury veneer[1], like a
boutique clothing brand or "luxury"-class car. The perceived (and monetary)
value of "luxury" commodities comes from the cachet of owning it more than any
increase in value from better quality. Sure, luxury goods do usually have
better craftsmanship too, but the high profit margins of luxury brands is
pretty good evidence that consumers are paying for more than just the increase
in quality.
There isn't really any analogue to luxury commodities in the media
distribution space. The closest I can think of is HBO, and that's a pretty
good model of the future: it's a service you subscribe to if you want it, and
it's delivered over a generic pipe. More pure HBO-like entities are the
future, except without the artifacts of having to be shoehorned into a cable
and satellite distribution system.
1\. Some would argue that they're also better from a functional perspective
too.
------
raarky
how about completely ignoring Hollywood and instead, focus on creating a
better production/marketing/distribution chain for film makers?
------
saturdaysaint
Apple is where it is because they see "where the puck is going" and high risk,
blockbuster-driven Hollywood is not that. If anything, they should be looking
to the far more complementary game industry. Exclusive games would translate
directly into iPhone and iPad sales (ie their main profit centers!) in a way
that's hard to imagine with movies. An acquisition or exclusivity deal with
the increasingly desperate Nintendo would be money well spent.
I'll be surprised if there aren't a round of game company acquisitions to this
effect in the next few years for exactly this purpose, as blue chip game
makers struggle to compete with increasingly rich $3 smartphone apps, and as
games are the main beneficiary of increasing smartphone power. Microsoft
understands the value of a well timed acquisition (buying Bungie basically
made the XBox an instant success), so I wouldn't be surprise if they initiate.
~~~
slowpoke
_> An acquisition or exclusivity deal with the increasingly desperate Nintendo
would be money well spent._
Please elaborate, in what way is Nintendo "desperate"? I'm not really
following the console market anymore, but last I checked was Nintendo being
the only of the big three console manufactures pushing innovative new concepts
and making a killing with the Wii and DS. I know they are worrying about the
mobile market, but is that really true competition for them right now?
~~~
Someone
Google their recent financial report. It says something like "revenue down
30%, net loss half a billion $".
I would not call it desperate, but they likely are more than a bit worried.
------
nicktelford
I honestly can't think of anything worse for consumers.
By purchasing the content producers they would own the entire supply chain
(from production to delivery), purchasing (nearly) every content producer
would make them a monopoly both horizontally (owning every player in a single
stage of the supply chain) and vertically (having interests at each stage of
the supply chain).
I doubt (I'd hope at least) the US government would ever allow this to happen
due to anti-competition laws. Honestly I'd be surprised if they weren't
already investigating Apple over their current music/movie (and future book)
distribution businesses.
I'm pretty disappointed that Erick (the author) could think this would ever be
good for consumers.
The big problem with both the music and movie industry, from a consumer
perspective, is that they operate a lot like a cartel. They should be
competing with each other, not their customers.
------
raheemm
Louis CK has shown one way to bypass hollywood. If more artists replicate the
CK model; if there are more online distributors that can reach any device
(youtube, netflix); and if there are angels, VCs and more crowdfunding
platforms for content creators, we can move closer to killing hollywood. What
this does validate is that content is king. It needs better/alternate funding
and distribution systems.
------
alabut
Sony made this same mistake in the 80's by buying a movie studio. I can't see
Apple going down this road of diversification through acquisition.
Then again, Sony's terrible product divisions are propped up by their massive
sales in life insurance and the company wouldn't exist without it:
<http://www.splatf.com/2011/11/sony-profits/>
------
ChrisNorstrom
I wish Silicon Valley knew who they were talking about before coming up with
this "kill hollywood" nonsense. As if Hollywood is 7 guys with rich parents
sitting around waiting to be bought.
Hollywood BOUGHT congress, I doubt Apple or MS can buy Hollywood. I really
need to write a piece on this.
~~~
jedbrown
Remarkably, Hollywood bought Congress while being a remarkably small part of
the economy, both in terms of revenue
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_revenue>) and jobs
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_by_employees>). These are
global lists, but you'll notice that not even Disney makes either one. As an
economic matter, why should Congress be more responsive to Disney, Time
Warner, and Viacom than to, say, Kroger, which has more employees and revenue
than the others combined? The MPAA is visible far more than it is important.
As far as being for sale, publicly owned companies are always for sale.
~~~
ChrisNorstrom
Hollywood does not report profits on many of their films.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_accounting>
[http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/07/08/hollywood-applies-
cre...](http://www.dailyfinance.com/2010/07/08/hollywood-applies-creative-
accounting-to-harry-potter-movie/)
Google around and you'll find tons of articles on famous successful films that
"never turned a profit".
Star Wars, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings do this as well. They use VERY
creative accounting to mark up overhead costs and hide profits.
~~~
jedbrown
Look at revenue, not profit. The economy doesn't care how much the company
profits, it cares how much the company is spending (on employees and other
services).
------
anamax
Apple doesn't have $100B, or even $90B, that it can use to buy Hollywood, pay
dividends, give more money to employees, etc.
A huge fraction of Apple's cash is outside the US. Bringing that money into
the US would require paying 35% (US corporate tax rate).
------
radley
Why buy the cow...
------
hessenwolf
They say they have 96 billion in cash, yet their financial statements only
list 54 billion. Where is the rest? Is it in a subsidiary? If so, aren't there
also liabilities in the subsidiary? I don't get it.
~~~
MarkMc
I assume you are looking at the 'Total current assets' in the balance sheet of
their latest 10Q [1]. Instead, add together 'Cash and cash equivalents',
'Short-term marketable securities' and 'Long-term marketable securities' to
get $97,601 million.
[1]
[http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/1659381773x0x536...](http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AAPL/1659381773x0x536523/381559d7-04a1-40d5-8e2a-236e3f867158/AAPL%20Q1FY12%2010Q%2001.25.12.pdf)
~~~
hessenwolf
Hey, thanks millions.
Interestingly, the third google result for 'Long-term marketable securities'
is the following. Do you personally agree with adding this to cash?
[http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/columnist/krantz/2011-08...](http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/columnist/krantz/2011-08-09-apple-
cash_n.htm)
~~~
MarkMc
I expect that the marketable securities owned Apple are highly liquid, so yeah
I'm happy to call it 'cash'.
~~~
hessenwolf
From reading a bit more about it, I agree. It's not quite 'cash', but it's not
the worst nickname for liquid assets.
------
robomartin
Nah. Apple should turbocharge education.
~~~
bwarp
Apple should stay out of education.
The last thing education needs is lock in (content and application walled
gardens) and a high entry cost (expensive hardware requirements).
Education should be free and open.
~~~
robomartin
Education is not free and it certainly isn't open. You pay for it with your
taxes; the government decides what goes in the books and curriculum and unions
don't let us create a competitive marketplace where bad teachers evaporate
from the radar and truly good teachers compete and make two or three times the
money they make today while providing a better education. Much like anything
that government touches, the system is a mess and our competitors are eating
us alive.
------
beerglass
Is this the one who replaced Arrington as chief-editor of Techcrunch? Duh!
------
a_a_r_o_n
Then we can look forward to patent lawsuits over aspect ratios.
No thanks.
------
jiggy2011
Please god no.
Apple is great and all but there seems to be almost a call from some people
that the world would be best run by an international dictatorship with the
half eaten fruit as it's flag.
------
twiceaday
Apple should buy a telco?
------
ColdAsIce
One wall garden to buy another walled garden? Whats the point? We need to
disrupt the movie, tv and music business. We need to tear down the wall.
~~~
ugh
Apple’s music business is in no way a walled garden.
~~~
bwarp
The store front for it is however.
~~~
ugh
Are you serious?! Really?!
That’s not what a walled garden is. You can walk out at any time and keep
everything you bought. There is nothing forcing you to stay there. Getting in
is a bit harder than opening a web browser – but that’s getting in, not
getting out. It doesn’t matter. It’s not like you have a right to buy
something there.
~~~
bwarp
No you can't just walk away. You need to authorise a machine to play DRM
infected media from iTunes and you cannot play DRM infected media on devices
which do not support FairPlay.
I am referring to music purchased pre-2009 (which is a large volume of sales),
current movies, books, and television shows.
I don't have a right to purchase but the majority have a reasonable
expectation to be able to take their purchases away in the future in the same
manor as they expect their purchased DVDs to be usable on every DVD vendor's
equipment.
~~~
ugh
This is getting more idiotic every time. Are you for real?
First, I was explicitly talking about music. Second, DRM is no more. That’s
it. The music store was a walled garden. It is no more. To call it a walled
garden is stupid.
------
jeffdechambeau
"One thing they could do is buy their way into Hollywood. Think about it for a
second."
If only the author did, then maybe he wouldn't have written this post.
Why would anyone want to buy an industry in self-imposed decline when they can
sit on their hands, wait for them to wither, then push them around with
whatever terms they like.
People need to stop reading TechCrunch.
------
zeroboy
I've always taken "kill Hollywood" as a call to reinvent entertainment and
come up with fresh alternatives to the current garbage.
And oldstrangers nailed it with his iTunes comment. Ugh. Can't stand that
software.
------
rnadna
Apple should fix the iphone-4S battery problem.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wikileaks Website, Pummeled by Attacks, Loses Home - hornokplease
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40455720
======
trotsky
They're now sitting on bahnhof.net in Stockholm. If they were really getting
10Gb/s inboud DOS on AWS perhaps they just grew tired of paying the AWS fees -
0.10/GB - so $450/hr just in inbound traffic. Maybe now that the biggest media
exposure is over they figure they can live with a little worse performance.
------
mquander
That is truly a godawful AP article.
Here's the prior discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1956981>
------
fauigerzigerk
Senators calling hosting companies to have websites shut down? Um, wasn't
there something called the rule of law?
~~~
tptacek
Don't hyperventilate. Anybody, from a Senator to a high school janitor, can
"call a hosting company to have a website shut down". Nobody made Amazon
comply.
~~~
fauigerzigerk
It would be great if you could keep the debate civil. Mr. Lieberman is not
just anybody. He is an official of the state with the power to hurt Amazon's
business interests in many ways that are not available to a school janitor.
But instead of using the great legal and legislative powers and resources he
has, he chose to use his personal influence to suppress information he doesn't
like.
~~~
tptacek
That's my point. Exactly which "legal" or "legislative" powers has Lieberman
wielded against Amazon? None. As far as I can tell, he's just bloviating.
Senators don't lose the right to bloviate when they're elected.
Rupert Murdoch can harm Amazon's business interests in far worse ways than Joe
Lieberman, and with far less accountability.
~~~
fauigerzigerk
Use the courts or the legislative process is exactly what he should have tried
to do. In that case, all the safeguards put in place by the constitution would
have been properly applied. People would have looked into whether or not
shutting down a media outlet that is critical of the government violates the
first ammendment. That's how it should work.
Things should not happen on the personal say so of populist politicians, much
less things like shutting down critics of the government. That undermines the
rule of law and the separation of powers.
That's my opinion, but judging by the votes you get here, Russia style
politics is rather popular in the US as well.
~~~
tptacek
You think that it's better for Lieberman to have tried to _legislate away
hosting of Wikileaks_ \--- legislation that very well might have passed in
this climate --- than for him to have used his "influence" as one of America's
least-beloved Senators to shame a multi-billion dollar company that probably
planned to jettison Wikileaks anyways?
------
lhnz
Pardon my ignorance but is there really nothing that can be done to escape
DDOS attacks other than simply buying more bandwidth? What stops a criminal
entity or government with enough resources from upping the size of the attack
even more and prolonging it for months or even years?
~~~
nkassis
Nothing... that I can think off. DDOS attacks are horrible for exactly this
reason, if you can find the source and kill it as close to home as possible
than you have a chance but other than that, wikileaks is in a really bad
position right now.
------
dstein
You gotta hand it to Wikileaks, they've got balls. But I'm afraid it's all
going to be for naught. Nobody likes to be told, let alone admit, their
government/banks/military is corrupt. No good will come from any of this
because the average person really doesn't give a damn.
~~~
ergo98
_Nobody likes to be told, let alone admit, their government/banks/military is
corrupt. No good will come from any of this because the average person really
doesn't give a damn._
Then....why is this wikileaks business a front-page headlining story pretty
much _everywhere_? Doesn't that completely counter your claim?
Further, the only reason people might not want to be told is that they already
long knew it. Wikileaks hopefully has something pretty salacious to keep the
interest, because thus far the response has been "Wow....is that it? I
suspected much worse."
~~~
dstein
_Then....why is this wikileaks business a front-page headlining story pretty
much everywhere? Doesn't that completely counter your claim?_
Just because "its on the news" doesn't prove that anybody gives damn. I don't
see citizens rallying in favor of Wikileaks and calling for the overthrow of
the US government.
~~~
ergo98
The news prints what people want to read about. It's a supply/demand industry.
However what in the leaks demand that people call for the overthrow of the US
government? Thus far it has been entirely predictable, tame, boring cables
from individual offices and subjective interpretations. BFD. Seriously, BFD.
It's like reading a diary, and that's what's interesting, but there has been
nothing that is unexpected.
~~~
hnal943
Except when the world reads _this_ diary, spies will be discovered, people
will die and other countries will refuse to cooperate with the United States.
------
adamfeldman
Companies like Arbor Networks have products like Peakflow[1] that are supposed
to mitigate DDoS attacks by filtering the traffic. How are they not using
tools such as those?
[1] [http://www.arbornetworks.com/en/delivering-in-cloud-ddos-
pro...](http://www.arbornetworks.com/en/delivering-in-cloud-ddos-protection-
services.html)
Disclaimer: I will be interning at Arbor this summer.
~~~
pinksoda
Most of them can't handle really large attacks. Wikileaks was supposedly
getting hit with more than 10Gbps, which is right around the maximum Peakflow
can handle.
When an attack this big targets a small business, they usually just null route
the servers, essentially sending all data into a blackhole. The downside is
that their website will be inaccessible by legitimate users. The upside is
that they don't have to pay for the used bandwidth, which is pricey at 10Gbps.
------
tybris
Hmz, there are a lot of reasons why Amazon could have given them the boot
(hitting usage limits due to DoS, payment problems, attacks on the whole
Amazon infrastructure). I'd like to hear their story.
------
aneth
Seems like hosting with a US company was a bad idea to begin with as any
informant on the US would worry about Amazon being subpoenaed.
~~~
nkassis
I don't think that wikileaks really worries about someone taking their servers
at Amazon. The data on them isn't secret at all.
They have copies of the data and gave copies away as encrypted volumes on
bittorent.
~~~
aneth
The identity of informants would be pretty secret. (Still waiting for
wikileaksleaks.org).
~~~
nkassis
I'd be surprised if this was held on the server hosting the data.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Strong passwords fine, but not necessarily necessary - j_baker
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/tzink/archive/2010/09/13/strong-passwords-fine-but-not-necessarily-necessary.aspx
======
pwg
One solution to have both different and strong passwords for all your sites is
to utilize Password Gorilla (<http://github.com/zdia/gorilla/wiki>). That way
you get the benefits of strong and different passwords, without the mental
effort of remembering all of those strong, different passwords.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Metamon – A Vagrant/Ansible toolkit for kickstarting Django apps - eudox
http://blog.tryolabs.com/2015/01/20/introducing-metamon-for-kickstarting-django-development/
======
WestCoastJustin
Not related to Metamon, but in support of it. If you are looking for intros to
Vagrant, or Ansible, I have a couple screencasts on them [1, 2]. Both are
amazingly awesome tools that I just cannot promote enough. Looks like these
Metamon files create a virtual environment using Vagrant, then stand up an
application stack, from top to bottom, using Ansible.
[1] [https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/42-crash-course-on-
vagran...](https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/42-crash-course-on-vagrant-
revised)
[2] [https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/43-19-minutes-with-
ansibl...](https://sysadmincasts.com/episodes/43-19-minutes-with-ansible-
part-1-4)
------
jtreminio
Cool!
> Metamon has hitherto been an internal tool that provides a reusable set of
> Ansible Playbooks that help us quickly start new projects by skipping
> environment configuration and automation.
Having built your tool for a specific purpose means it can avoid scope creep.
I built something somewhat similar [0], but use Puppet, added a GUI and keep
adding more and more features. Right now you can set up a VM with PHP, HHVM,
Ruby, Python, Node.js or a mix of all these. High on my to-do list is to allow
setting up Python/Ruby/Node.js apps using Apache/Nginx.
[0] - [https://puphpet.com](https://puphpet.com)
------
maurodec
I'm here to answer any questions and take feedback.
~~~
shawn-furyan
Without a good counterindication, I'll probably end up forking this and adding
VirtualEnvWrapper because I like the workflow better than plain VirtualEnv. Is
there any particular reason you don't include it? Perhaps the deployment
automation mostly moots the VirtualEnvWrapper wins, making it not worth the
increased complexity?
P.S. This is a very timely release for me. I've done a few manual deploys of
almost this exact stack, and have a major project for my company that I need
to port to Django. However, I wanted to learn and use Ansible before attacking
the job to lower maintenance costs. This looks like it will be a tremendous
leg up on that task.
~~~
maurodec
Shawn,
There isn't really a reason not to use Virtualenv wrapper, but there is also
not really a reason to use it. Activating it is rather simple, so I just
didn't really want to add something else to the installation (that would make
it slightly more complex and slower). However, take a look at the development
role[0], it actually activates the Virtualenv on login.
If you're going to be logging into the production machines (where the
development role does not make (total) sense to have) you may want to install
it, or turn off everything in the development role[1] except virtualenv
activation and add it to those machines.
In short, I'm not against it, I just think it's not needed since the
development role makes it redundant to have.
[0]
[https://github.com/tryolabs/metamon/blob/master/deploy/roles...](https://github.com/tryolabs/metamon/blob/master/deploy/roles/development/tasks/venv.yml)
[1]
[https://github.com/tryolabs/metamon/blob/master/deploy/roles...](https://github.com/tryolabs/metamon/blob/master/deploy/roles/development/tasks/main.yml)
~~~
shawn-furyan
That's in the ballpark of the reasoning I expected. Thanks for the reply and
the specific pointers. I tend to develop from the command line and have
heretofore deployed manually, so I've found the subtle streamlining offered by
VirtualEnvWrapper to be worthwhile. However, I think I'll try to go without it
initially to reexamine its value under more automated deployment.
Also, this change would mostly serve as an incentive to ssh onto production
servers, which is usually not going to be the optimal solution to issues that
arise. I hadn't really thought about it this way until your comment.
------
bjacobel
Very cool, my org uses something similar internally as well. It's been adapted
for our own specific purposes but was originally based on
[https://github.com/jcalazan/ansible-django-
stack](https://github.com/jcalazan/ansible-django-stack), a similar project to
yours.
------
collyw
Question here. Assuming I am developing something in pure Python, is there any
advantage to using Vagrant if I already have a Virtualenv setup? They are the
same principle of isolated environments, but implemented at different levels.
~~~
maurodec
It really depends on what you're doing. If you're working on multiple projects
that depend on other services to be running then it probably helps to use
Vagrant. If you just need libs virtualenv is enough.
------
mindcruzer
Very nice! I have been using something similar, but mine is only for setting
up a dev environment in vagrant, not deployment. I will definitely use this as
a reference for when I extend my provisioning to include deployment.
------
jessaustin
It's not surprising to see something like this for Django, is it? If anyone
were still using Zope, there would be similar needs.
------
chhantyal
Thanks for releasing it.
Was thinking about using Ansible for some time, but haven't. Now this is easy
to get started.
------
avinassh
link to the actual Github repo:
[https://github.com/tryolabs/metamon](https://github.com/tryolabs/metamon)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Rewards of Creating a Programming Language - StylifyYourBlog
http://mikedrivendevelopment.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-incredible-rewards-of-creating.html
======
t1m
I was hired (a long time ago) to write a language for a Very Large Telco
Equipment Supplier in Canada in order to support their automated regression
testing effort for their digital telephone switches.
It was called, ingeniously enough, "T" (no, not _that_ "T"). As far as I (and
cursory Google searches) know, it was never released to the adoring public.
I used lex and yacc (half jokingly referred to as 'ick' and 'yuck') and K&R C
for the compiler and VM.
The particular type of testing we were targeting involved writing test cases
that would read/write over serial lines to a telephone switch's console
program. Therefore, the language needed to have good serial/terminal I/O, and
it needed to have amazing string/pattern matching.
I wrote two features that I am still particularly fond of:
\- regexps were a built in type. Strings were written like 'hi there' and
regexps were written like `hi ..ere` - supported standard unix regexps
\- associative arrays. Lots of languages have these now, like python's dict
The cool thing about it was how we tried to allow strings and regexps have a
polymorphic relationship at the language level. The statements:
x == 'some string' or x == `some [^t]ring`
would be valid for strings in x, though the regexp had other operators that
didn't make much sense with strings. It got really interesting when we
combined the regexps with the associative array:
dict['hello'] = 4
dict['help'] = 2
dict[`he.*`] == [2, 4] # true
~~~
TheLoneWolfling
I wonder how one would go about efficiently implementing such an associative
array.
I suppose a trie + glue logic (regexp -> NFA -> DFA) could work, for classic
(read: actually regular expressions) regexps at least.
~~~
t1m
I have wondered the same thing, but wasn't extremely concerned about getting
it super-fast at the time. We had an existing, older language that was much
loathed and quite slow, and we just had to beat it. And awk.
------
evincarofautumn
If you’re thinking of writing a language in earnest, you will create something
much more valuable if you start from a novel semantics, and only then come up
with a syntax to express those semantics, than if you were to start from
syntax.
The world does not need yet another reskin of Java, but it could use new
programming paradigms and new ways of solving problems.
As a learning exercise, implementing a language is worthwhile simply to gain
the understanding that languages are _not magic_. To boot, you’ll pick up
loads of useful techniques in the realms of parsing, data flow analysis, error
reporting, and optimisation.
~~~
nostrademons
If you're looking to build something that people will actually use, you're
better off not doing anything novel at all, but rather combining novel ideas
that have shown promise in research languages into a package that people might
actually want to use for everyday programming.
There's a rule of thumb among language designers that your language should
either focus on proving out one big _language feature_ , or it should
introduce zero new language features but combine new language features from a
number of other languages. So for example:
Erlang introduced lightweight CSP-based concurrency. Go popularized it.
Haskell introduced typeclasses. Go and Rust popularize them (as interfaces and
traits, respectively, the latter also influenced by C++ STL's concepts).
Cyclone introduced linear types. Rust popularizes them.
Smalltalk introduced object-orientation. (More precisely, Simula did and
Smalltalk took it to its logical conclusion.) Java, C++, and Objective-C
popularized it.
Self introduced prototype-based programming. Javascript popularized it.
CLOS (Common Lisp) introduced the meta-object protocol. Python and Ruby
popularized it, particularly in their Django and Rails web frameworks
respectively.
Usually popularizing a language involves a good deal of work that's not sexy,
notably building up a large standard library, developer tools, a package
manager, and a whole ecosystem around the language.
~~~
felixgallo
erlang's concurrency is actors, which is different from go's CSP. And I nearly
spat out my tea when you said that Go popularized something Haskell did; and I
haven't even had any tea today.
~~~
codygman
But didn't Go effectively popularize typeclasses through interfaces?
~~~
felixgallo
no?
~~~
codygman
Can you explain how? Obviously at least two people either disagree or aren't
privy to the knowledge you hold!
~~~
peteretep
I suspect a reasonable person might expect you to explain how you came to the
conclusion that a language with a smaller or comparative user base /
popularity to Haskell "popularised" type classes.
~~~
sanderjd
Huh, I interpreted it differently, as in questioning whether Go's interfaces
have much in common with Haskell's typeclasses. But now I'm intrigued — does
Haskell really have a larger or comparative popularity as Go? That would
surprise me, but I don't have any data, do you?
~~~
peteretep
It's remarkably difficult to find anything approaching hard numbers :-)
However, I am going off:
* [http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2015/01/14/language-rankings-1-15...](http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2015/01/14/language-rankings-1-15/) (Haskell slightly ahead in their numeric ranking) * [http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index....](http://www.tiobe.com/index.php/content/paperinfo/tpci/index.html) (Golang slightly ahead in their ranking) * Slightly more published books on Haskell that I can find (although obviously it's been around a lot longer)
I have no doubt that Go will eventually surpass Haskell in terms of
popularity, and may even have a slight edge, but suggesting that Go
popularized typeclasses smacks of fanboyism, and reminds me - in no small
measure - of:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzkRVzciAZg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzkRVzciAZg)
~~~
codygman
> suggesting that Go popularized typeclasses smacks of fanboyism
I'm not exactly a fan of Go nor am I a fanboy, quite the opposite these days.
I don't have to like go to mention that the way interfaces are used kind of
accomplish the same thing as typeclasses.
I also feel that (sadly) Go is more popular than Haskell. Partially because of
the number of Haskell programmers I've encountered in real life is much lower
than the number of Go programmers I've encountered.
------
nemesisrobot
The author says he turned to Coursera, but doesn't mention the course(s) he
took, but I'm going to guess it's the the 'Compilers' class from Stanford[0].
I've heard good things about the course and the lecturer (Alex Aiken) so I
really wanted to take the course while it was being offered but was too busy
last year. I hope they offer it again this year.
[https://www.coursera.org/course/compilers](https://www.coursera.org/course/compilers)
~~~
zellyn
This is excellent: I recently worked through this class (at my own pace: you
can register for past offerings). I made things a little harder than necessary
by eschewing the provided framework code and writing everything myself, in go.
I found SPIM super-annoying, but managed to resist the temptation to build a
better MIPS emulator. :-)
Highly recommend: writing a (very simple) compiler is no longer a black-art-
seeming thing to me.
~~~
zellyn
Oh, [http://github.com/zellyn/gocool](http://github.com/zellyn/gocool): I
recommend you steal my tests (bash, sorry!) but avoid cheating too much on the
actual meat of the exercises :-)
~~~
nemesisrobot
Thank you for this; cloning it now
------
austinz
Another interesting thing to try (and maybe complementary as well) is building
an interpreter or compiler for a language you like, trying to match the spec
and feature set as closely as possible, and (hopefully) gaining more insight
into the tradeoffs the language designers made when deciding why things are
the way they are.
~~~
SloopJon
Yes, I've written tools for existing languages, and found just getting the
parser right to be a challenge, be it with Emacs highlighting, flex/bison,
what have you. Real languages aren't as tidy as the textbook examples.
~~~
seanmcdirmid
When I do PL these days, I always start with the editor; e.g. see:
[http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/people/smcdirm/managedti...](http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/people/smcdirm/managedtime.aspx)
Co-designing your editor with your language allows for a better experience.
You are right in that all of this is basically undocumented in textbooks. Even
their presentation on on parsing is mostly unhelpful (if you want an error
tolerant incremental parser for your editor, recursive descent works very
well).
~~~
handojin
That is really cool. This focus on time is what draws me into the whole
clojure/datomic world. We're ill equipped to handle it. Tools help.
Does time itself reveal itself as the horizon of being?
~~~
seanmcdirmid
We can manage time one way or the other. Clojure does it with a focus on
immutability, I'm doing it with a focus on mutability :)
One thing that is cool is how time is related to observation, the same thing
that happens in quantum entanglement. If you don't observe the state of an
object, time doesn't really exist.
------
WalterBright
I wrote this a while back on creating your own language:
[http://digitalmars.com/articles/b89.html](http://digitalmars.com/articles/b89.html)
~~~
Toenex
_As an aside, I 'll note that working on stuff that I needed has fared quite a
bit better than working on stuff that I was told others need._
Someone once told me something similar, "always be customer number one".
------
zak_mc_kracken
If you are a developer and you have never written a language, you owe it to
yourself to do this at least once.
Writing a language (lexical, syntactic, semantic phase and then code
generation) will teach you an incredible amount of things in much less time it
would take you to read about these things.
What your language looks like is completely irrelevant, this is strictly about
learning from the journey.
And once you've done that, make sure to mention it in your resume: I, for one,
will instantly give you brownie points if you mention in your resume that you
wrote a language.
~~~
tjradcliffe
I view writing a language as either a creative epiphany or evidence of
psychosis, so when I see someone with a language on their CV I'm always
careful to explore why they wrote it. Surprisingly often they think it's going
to Solve All The Problems rather than allowing them to explore one of the
deepest and most important parts of the programming art.
I've written little languages (mostly for generating code in other languages,
which proved to be an interesting way to explore certain design patterns) but
always shied away from going all in on a bigger language. Maybe when I
retire...
------
bsurmanski
I've been working on a programming language in my spare time, also. I call it
OWL. Its not quite ready, but here's a link anyways:
[https://github.com/bsurmanski/wlc](https://github.com/bsurmanski/wlc)
OWL aims to be a low level object-oriented language without a garbage
collector (albeit with reference counting).
The best 'example' program using OWL right now is a game I made for the 48
hour game jam, Global Game Jam 2015:
[https://github.com/bsurmanski/ggj2015](https://github.com/bsurmanski/ggj2015)
I agree with the poster that making a programming language from scratch is a
great way to explore programming. On top of that, its a great experience
seeing able to implement all of those features you wish were in your favorite
language (or find out why they aren't).
------
nilliams
> Notice how not a single variable in this code has a name. They all only have
> types.
Pretty cool, never even thought about this being possible.
~~~
evincarofautumn
It’s not a novel idea, but Wake does it quite well. Most variable names aren’t
that useful—they’re just one of many possible syntactic ways to plumb values
around.
~~~
chipsy
The canonical example is how it's done in Forth: Ask for a number and it's
already on the stack. Ask for three numbers and you push onto the stack three
times. Upside: Terse code. Downside: Stack juggling can be a big maintenance
burden.
FWIW I've realized that in languages that are variable centric, an anonymous
naming convention is often preferable to a human name because it centers one's
concerns around the algorithm. After studying the options for a while I now
flip between descriptive word style and "single letter and number." So I have
a lot of "x0, x1, i0, s0, a0" in my function arguments. Where it's a record
type, I'm deciding between abbreviation and descriptive - which ultimately
depends on how often and densely I expect the data structure to be
accessed(short names imply it gets used in a dense, idiomatic style).
~~~
evincarofautumn
Yep. I am working on a statically typed stack-based language, as I quite like
the Forth style. Stack manipulation sucks, so I mainly use locals for
auxiliary parameters, to get them out of the way of the main data structure or
values that a definition is manipulating implicitly. For example:
define do_the_thing (Foo bool -> Bar):
-> should_log;
if (should_log):
dup log_foo
foo_to_bar
if (should_log):
dup log_bar
------
kolev
I've recently discovered PEG.js [0] and prototyped a small DSL in the browser
[1]. Amazing stuff! I've dealt with ANTLR [2] before, but PEG.js feels so much
nicer although it may not be as powerful!
[0] [http://pegjs.org/](http://pegjs.org/)
[1] [http://pegjs.org/online](http://pegjs.org/online)
[2] [http://www.antlr.org/](http://www.antlr.org/)
~~~
munro
PEG.js is definitely fun to prototype ideas in the browser.
My new love is Parsec [1] + doctest [2]. You start building simple little
parsers, and build on top of them, plus inline testing makes it easy to write
the parsers correctly. Also Haskell's algebraic datatypes and pattern matching
make it nice to build and work with the AST. <3
[1] [https://wiki.haskell.org/Parsec](https://wiki.haskell.org/Parsec) [2]
[https://hackage.haskell.org/package/doctest](https://hackage.haskell.org/package/doctest)
------
element11
I always wonder about the final conversion to assembly. Do you really need to
learn all the instructions, the linking, the binary formats and all that stuff
?
~~~
tlb
My favorite way is to output C, which is conveniently human-readable for
debugging. Many people also like the LLVM back end.
~~~
element11
I new about that possibility but how efficient is it compared to other
techniques ?
~~~
samatman
Nim is competing effectively by using this tactic. It's efficient.
------
emmab
When your top-down parser gets caught in an infinite loop, you'll need to
convert the left recursion to right recursion. See here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_recursion#Removing_left_r...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_recursion#Removing_left_recursion)
Writing a compiler is a significant amount of work and should be pre-
researched to avoid issues like the above.
------
damian2000
I was reading something similar here about creating your own language using
LLVM (and also using the Ruby bindings for LLVM as opposed to C++) ...
[http://macournoyer.com/blog/2008/12/09/orange/](http://macournoyer.com/blog/2008/12/09/orange/)
------
agumonkey
I'm curious how people feel about syntax. I tend to think everything should be
written in sexp (I like [s]ml syntax too though). Much like this
[http://cs.brown.edu/courses/cs173/2012/book/Everything__We_W...](http://cs.brown.edu/courses/cs173/2012/book/Everything__We_Will_Say__About_Parsing.html)
Maybe I'm missing something, how many people felt that syntax made an idea pop
differently and was part of the understanding ? To me it's often the opposite,
it conflates too many things in a few symbols and then you waste time
discussing corner cases.
------
xjia
Inaccurately, programming language = syntax + semantics.
Do not waste your time on syntax, if you are going to create a new language,
rather than a parser.
I'm not saying that syntax is not important. But I feel semantics deserves
much more attention.
~~~
tormeh
I think syntax may actually be more important for adoption than semantics. But
for just learning semantics is king.
------
girvo
Yes! I agree entirely, which is why I've been diving deep into creating (and
playing with) new languages lately. Turns out a lot of problems that I have to
solve at work can be fit into a parsing problem too, so it's not just all
theoretical, but the big part of learning how to build languages is
appreciating how the ones I use every day work; I can extend them, understand
bugs, and push them to their limits. I couldn't do that prior: I always
thought it was just black magic that greying neckbeard wizards did off in some
ivory tower!
------
nubela
"that types are often a great name for variables, which both the programmer
and compiler can use to easily and effectively understand most common code."
This hit me, what if variable names CONTAIN types? int__i = 1
And of course, it can be made optional. I will much prefer to do optional
typing in the var name itself rather than the ugly syntax that guido has
proposed with python.
~~~
WalterBright
It's called Hungarian Notation, famously used by Microsoft.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hungarian_notation)
------
lifeisstillgood
the best happy-accident ... Months and months later, I realized that ...
thanks to this simple idea, I could ...
That sentence is in every act of creation - something new just spawns
something else that was not possible before the original act.
It's marvellous to see and indicates he is on the trail of something good -
all the best.
------
erikb
I scrolled through the article and found some attributes of a language that is
probably created by the author. But where are the rewards? I'm confused.
------
scotty79
I wonder how much fun one could have with OMeta
[http://tinlizzie.org/ometa/](http://tinlizzie.org/ometa/) ?
------
davidw
I had fun doing Hecl. It didn't bring me fame and riches, but it did get used
by a few companies, and it got me some interesting gigs.
------
blt
currently stockpiling semantics ideas until I have enough good ones to justify
the effort...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nobody Wants to Let Google Win the War for Maps All Over Again - rbanffy
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-02-21/nobody-wants-to-let-google-win-the-war-for-maps-all-over-again
======
akouri
lvl5 is a formidable contender in the race too. We're looking for talented
computer vision / 3D reconstruction engineers.
([http://www.lvl5.ai/careers.html](http://www.lvl5.ai/careers.html)) if you're
interested in this industry.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GFacet: A Browser for the Web of Data - wslh
http://www.visualdataweb.org/
======
josephd
Quite surprised there has been no comment yet. Cool project.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Quantum gas goes below absolute zero - rosstex
http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-gas-goes-below-absolute-zero-1.12146
======
gus_massa
The experiment is interesting, but the press article has a misleading title.
The problem is that negative (Kelvin) temperatures are hotter than positive
(Kelvin) temperature.
So the title should be: "Quantum gas goes above infinite to a negative
absolute temperature (nature.com)"
More details:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How To Opt Out of Facebook Ads Based on Your Real-Life Shopping Activity - marioestrada
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/02/howto-opt-out-databrokers-showing-your-targeted-advertisements-facebook?ad
======
clarkm
Even though I use ghostery and provide unique email addresses to websites I
don't trust, I still feel a bit uneasy about voluntarily providing my personal
information to these companies just so I can "opt out". I know these sites are
legitimate, and I trust the EFF; however, it still feels unnecessary.
Maybe I've just been conditioned by the fake unsubscribe links found in email
spam, but I don't want to accidentally give these advertisers more information
than they already have. Even if they already have complete information on me
(which they undoubtedly do), I don't want to provide them with unnecessary
confirmation that the information they have is correct.
~~~
dsl
I never understood the "fake unsubscribe" thing. In a previous life I did
infrastructure consulting for people with ROSKO listings and they collected
and processed every single unsubscribe. They even traded unsubscribe lists.
Back then everyone was using pinks (contracts with an allowed quota of
complaints per day baked in) for mailing. If you scrubbed your lists against
unsubs and bounces, you got less complaints and could negotiate better rates
in the future.
~~~
mcintyre1994
I agree, I've seen a few but not many, and when they Email me again I just
mark it as spam and never see another one. Email is commanded by algorithms
right now, which take a heap of hints from their users, it's seriously stupid
not to unsubscribe people kind enough to unsubscribe instead of marking you as
spam.
~~~
tripzilch
Last year I read an article about someone doing an experiment with unsubscribe
links on a very old email address. It got loads of spam, and he clicked all
the unsub links (or maybe wrote a script to do it). The amount of spam that
address received decreased _significantly_.
So whether or not the "fake unsubscribe" thing was real (my intuition says yes
it was), it appears that times have changed!
------
D9u
There's always the option to delete your FB account. I went nearly 10 months
without logging into FB last year, and doing so made it quite easy to delete
my FB account at the beginning of this year.
Regular removal of cookies, and LSO cookies, as well as clearing the browser
cache, is also recommended.
Then there's the ubiquitous "Connect" buttons which are spammed all across the
web. Prudence dictates that we avoid connecting our logins across the net in
an indiscriminate manner.
Finally, there are "burner" email addresses which I use only to register with
certain websites. Nearly all of the spam that makes it past my filters is from
so-called "legitimate" websites.
Caveat emptor.
~~~
ordinary
Deleting your account does not stop Facebook from tracking you, unfortunately.
~~~
dmoy
Does Facebook actually delete stuff yet? For a long time they wouldn't delete
accounts, photos, etc.
~~~
D9u
That's a good point, regarding whether, or not, FB actually deletes user data
after we "opt out." Another consideration is how, when Facebook started out,
users were supposed to actually know, IRL, the people on their "Friends List."
I adhered to that rule all the way until my account deletion last January, but
now a great number of users have people on their "Friends Lists" who they have
never even spoken to in real life. This point is illustrated by corporate
entities being on people's "Friend Lists."
As for FB allegedly tracking me subsequent to my account deletion, could
someone explain to me how it could be so? I never posted my actual DOB, nor my
cell phone, the email address I used to register hasn't been logged into for
many months, and I'm using a new ISP - which uses dynamic allocation
addressing.
~~~
kaybe
A possibility could be if your email shows up in your friends' contact list
which FB gets from their email accounts.
FB continuesly harrassing me to give them my email password - of all things to
ask for! - is something I will never get. 'We'll check your contact list for
friends! We won't save your password!' My _email password_! You wanna install
a camera in my room while you're at it?
But some people apparently actually use the service, and thus FB can find out
you exist and who you're friends with. They might also mention you etc.
------
darkchasma
Or, just don't use facebook. I'm not trying to be facetious, if you don't
trust the company with your most personal information then you probably
shouldn't be using their service. Because that is what they trade in.
~~~
RexRollman
From what I understand, Facebook builds profiles of non-members as well, so
they are still a threat.
------
Eliezer
I actively prefer ads for things I might actually be interested in purchasing.
If there were an option to tell advertisers "Please show me more ads about..."
I would take that option. whenever I was waffling on some purchase. Most ads
suck even so - they don't actually tell me about a new feature or fact that
could potentially change or spark a buying decision - but at least it's not a
total waste of time.
The only economically productive use-case of marketing is to lead trades to
take place that would not have taken place otherwise, or higher-quality trades
to take place; which can have its roots in consumer gullibility, but ideally
reflects some new company telling me about a relevant product that I didn't
know existed. This happens rarely. Having it happen more often sounds like a
good idea to me.
------
w1ntermute
I highly recommend Ghostery. I've been using it for quite a while now and have
no complaints.
~~~
byoogle
Lifehacker just did a comparison of popular privacy extensions and called
Disconnect the best (over Ghostery and others): [http://lifehacker.com/the-
best-browser-extensions-that-prote...](http://lifehacker.com/the-best-browser-
extensions-that-protect-your-privacy-479408034)
~~~
nnnnni
Yeah... You really should have put a disclaimer in there to let everyone know
that you were advertising your own product.
That makes me never want to try the extension, no matter how good it may be.
~~~
bti
I don't think he wrote the Lifehacker article he linked to.
~~~
nnnnni
He was advertising it on HN, not LifeHacker, with that comment.
------
HunterV
One thing this shows is just how powerful Facebook could become/already is.
When they connect the dots online and offline of billion user's buying
information and habits they essentially can electronically understand who you
are better than you do, and can predict what you'll do even better. Just food
for thought.
~~~
sillysaurus
_When Facebook connects the dots online and offline of billion users' buying
information and habits, they essentially can electronically understand who you
are better than you do, and can predict what you'll do even better._
Why are people disturbed by this?
~~~
keithpeter
Predictions based on partial data could be problematic.
One example: I pay for fresh food and staples in cash, and buy 'grocery' items
on a card. A data collection system that tracked only card purchases would
give the impression of a very unhealthy diet.
~~~
andyking
This is how it is for me, too. I buy fresh vegetables, fresh meat, milk, eggs,
bread at a local farm shop and pay cash. I buy other things like pizza,
coffee, processed foods at a supermarket and pay with card - and also scan my
loyalty card.
I regularly get offers from the supermarket for money off yet more unhealthy
food - they are blissfully unaware that I eat quite well in reality!
------
jpswade
Am I the only person who would actually prefer targeted ads based on things I
might actually be interested in, rather than the crap I've been exposed to
before.
If you're going to use a walled garden like facebook, you expect to see walls
now and again.
~~~
Evbn
Since they have proven that they are awful at targeting, I don't want it.
The fact is, 90% of advertising exists because the product is not worth buying
in its merits. Word of mouth recommendations and independent research studies
are where good jnformarion comes from. Targeting doesn't help that.
~~~
jpswade
I think every effort they make to better target is only a good thing.
Attempting to block their efforts will skew their results which could lead to
worse ads.
------
sdqali
The method I have found to stop tracking is to use /etc/hosts to block all
traffic to sites that I don't want anything to do with including Facebook and
their CDNs. I based it around
[https://github.com/leto/Util/blob/master/config/etc/hosts.bl...](https://github.com/leto/Util/blob/master/config/etc/hosts.block)
and have added more tracker/advertisement domains as I have encountered them.
~~~
ladzoppelin
Large host files really slow down browsing in Windows. Is their a solution for
this besides clearing the DNS cache every hour?
~~~
emillon
You can block it on your router.
------
vidyesh
Using Ghostery over AdBlock is good but I won't recommend using any of such
tracker blocking extensions to anyone until I know they understand what it
does.
At times these extensions do break websites as they block some vital scripts
on the site. You have to manually unblock that to make sure the site runs fine
on your browser.
I used Disconnect long time ago, but that time it literally broke all the tech
blogs, as its blocking was very crude. The site now looks totally different
and so do the screenshots, would give it a shot.
Oh and by the way I use Ghostery now.
~~~
byoogle
Breaking _literally_ every tech blog would be way hard to do. :-)
We've gotten literally two bug reports about broken blogs of any sort in the
last year (I just checked; and both are now fixed, btw), so I assume there
aren't issues anymore. But if you experience any, let me know!
~~~
vidyesh
When the Firefox extension was released ( I remember it was released as a
Chrome only solution at first ), I tried and all the famous tech blogs used
all possible social buttons and TC had just started with Facebook comments, so
for most sites, half the page loaded and other half was stuck.
The new UI looks great, defintely would give it a try. I actually have no
problem with Ghostery but I like how Disconnect categories all the tracking.
~~~
byoogle
Oh yeah, our original Firefox add-on was outsourced ... and I think kind of
sucked. I learned not to do that (even though the devs were and are great).
Thanks a lot for the feedback on the new UI.
------
arindone
I've said this before and I'll say it again -- why the complaints now, when
Google has been doing this for years? Essentially, they can collect your
information from emails, purchasing habits & financial information from Google
Wallet, income, and combine that with Google+ social data, files you put into
Google drive, and you have a complete profile that's ripe for advertising.
~~~
onedev
I don't quite understand this either. Google have been doing this for ages and
no one has said anything, but now all of a sudden its a thing?
I just want people to acknowledge that what Google has been doing and what
everyone else is doing is essentially the SAME THING. No reason one company
should get a pass over others.
Now as for whether privacy is a legitimate concern or not is another matter
entirely and I think comes down to a bit of personal preference too.
I for one, don't care about my privacy -- to an extent. There I said it. I
don't care if Google knows that I eat somewhere or do something because it's
trivial to me as long as my data is SECURE and I have fine grained privacy
CONTROLS. If you give me security and control, then I'll gladly hand over my
data for a useful service such as mail, or chat, or photos or whatever it may
be.
Privacy in 2013 is different, and we must acknowledge that. This is a new
generation, a new era. If you want to stay disconnected, then you don't get to
experience this new world and if that's your preference, that's perfectly
fine. (note: there will always be a subset of vocal technically inclined
people like many of us on the forum that will try to resist, but in the long
run, we won't prevail; I have ghostery installed for the hell of it, but a
large amount of people don't even know what it is).
I think moving forward, every individual is going to have some type of public
web presence that will be as much a part of who they are as anything else.
Some parts of this presence will be private and tucked away behind anonymous
usernames and private content. Other parts will be open for the world to see.
To an extent, all of this is already true, but think about all the kids born
from 2005 onward. They're only 8 years old now and are going to be part of the
new, always connected generation (meaning, they've never known a world
otherwise).
Therefore I think security of data is more important than EVER. Every company
should make security of user data a TOP priority. In addition, every company
should provide FINE GRAINED privacy CONTROL to allow the user to decide what
he/she wants to show and to whom. On the other hand, a user should expect that
a web company pays its bills through targeting via user data, and should
reflect upon his/her expectation of privacy on the web.
The web is the new TV, but different, and more powerful, much more powerful.
------
troymc
Another line of defense it to install an ad-blocker, so even if they somehow
know the perfect ad to show you, you probably won't see it.
~~~
sillysaurus
_Another line of defense it to install an ad-blocker, so even if Facebook
somehow knows the perfect ad to show you, you probably won't see it._
Why wouldn't you want to see it? A perfect ad is a win for the consumer.
~~~
troymc
A perfect ad is one I asked for, when I asked for it, like in Google or Amazon
search results.
I go to Facebook to check on friends. I don't want a fried-chicken billboard
to appear beside the photo of my friend's new baby. It's the wrong context
(even if I'm craving fried chicken).
~~~
chii
what if it was a baby shower gift? What if they managed to connect enough dots
to know that this is what you want, and thus, make the sale via this channel?
~~~
gordaco
I still may not want to make the purchase via that channel. In fact, I find
most important to be able to enter any web to read its content without those
distractions. If I want to buy something, I'll go to any online store, thanks.
------
adityar
if they're using hashed emails for tracking, we're pretty much clucked. There
is an option in gmail that can prevent this.
if your email is [email protected], use [email protected] (gmail will
ignore the stuff after the + ). You can also use . separators.
Now, to keep track of that...
~~~
nitrogen
Since Gmail's account name semantics are well known, the top data collecting
agencies have no doubt adapted by now.
Also, frustratingly, a lot of sites will break, often silently, if you give
them an e-mail address with a plus symbol (e.g. it might end up in a GET
request to an internal API without proper escaping, and be interpreted as a
space).
~~~
Amadou
Yes, the only way to go is your own domain. Use an add-on like Virtual
Identity for Thunderbird to keep track of which From address goes with which
recipient. <https://www.absorb.it/virtual-id> (their cert seems to have
expired over the weekend)
~~~
Evbn
I do wonder when/if trackers collapse all addresses on a small domain into a
glob. They totally could.
------
Evbn
> product warranty cards
Why hasn't the FTC shut this scam down yet?
------
Evbn
> phone number
Holy cow FB uses my private security tokens as a source of ads?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Any software to parse a PDF word by word? (maybe into SVG) - heliodor
I'm looking for a library or software to convert a PDF into SVG where the SVG renders the text grouped word by word.<p>I've seen the software pdf2svg produces an SVG where everything in the PDF is rendered into individual shapes. Each letter becomes a shape! So that's too fine-grained.<p>Inkscape produces groups of words and can't break it down further.<p>Anything else out there that can actually figure out the individual words in my PDF?<p>Actually, I'd be okay with parsing the PDF and getting a list of words and their positions. No need for the SVG.<p>Any suggestions?
======
vram22
I worked on a project for a client some time ago [1] where extraction of text
from PDFs was a big part of it. Researched several products, tried them,
settled on xpdf - the C library, used it from my C code. It worked well for
many PDFs but not for some others [2].
[1] There could be better products by now. Also, had heard good things about
PDFTextStream, which another comment here mentions.
[2] Some data would get corrupted, e.g. characters interchanged, missing
characters, etc, in the extracted text.
There are technical reasons inherent in the nature of the PDF format, due to
which 100% perfect text extraction, including correct character positions, is
not always possible for all PDF files (only for some) - that's one thing I
learned from working on that project. Some of that learning was from a key
person at the company that sells and supports xpdf. His support and knowledge
was very good. They even quickly fixed a bug or two that I found in the
product.
But things do work for many cases. As an aside, I also developed a small
program that used heuristics to identify cases in which the PDF extraction was
incorrect. Was fun.
~~~
hn12
I endorse everything Vasudev has written here. In the abstract a couple of
other libraries of interest are Java-coded PDFBox and Python-based PDFMiner.
------
MaDeuce
Here are a couple of ideas, none of which do exactly what you want. However,
they may give you some ideas...
PDFMiner[1] is a python toolkit for PDF. Among other things, it extracts text
from PDF files. It also has a tool that lets you find objects and their
coordinates in a PDF file. I have not looked at the latter functionality, but
it may get you your words and locations.
I've used Tesseract[2] to convert scanned documents into searchable PDF files.
Since a search of the PDF file will highlight matching words in the scanned
document, it clearly knows where words are and the letters that comprise them.
This might be another approach.
[1] [https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-
ocr/wiki/ReadMe](https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/wiki/ReadMe) [2]
[https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-
ocr/wiki/ReadMe](https://code.google.com/p/tesseract-ocr/wiki/ReadMe)
------
hn12
No.
Well, the correct answer to almost any such technical question is "yes and
no". This one comes as close as any to a bare "no".
It's a good question. PDF->SVG conversions are quite powerful--when they work.
They simply do NOT work, in the general case. I deal with a hundred-thousand
PDFs at a time, and they demonstrably don't behave with enough regularity to
allow for the kind of general transformation I suspect you have in mind.
As it happens, our little company does quite a bit of business extracting
content from specific classes of PDFs
[http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.text.pdf/PDF_content_extracti...](http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.text.pdf/PDF_content_extraction.html)
Coincidentally, I also research and deliver advanced SVG effects
[http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.text.xml/SVG_examples.html](http://phaseit.net/claird/comp.text.xml/SVG_examples.html)
I certainly am sympathetic to your aim. To be successful, you need to specify
your situation more precisely.
------
vmorgulis
May be with PDF.js:
[https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/api/draft/global.html#TextI...](https://mozilla.github.io/pdf.js/api/draft/global.html#TextItem)
Or WeasyPrint:
[http://weasyprint.org/](http://weasyprint.org/)
------
brudgers
Because PDF's can contain typesetting glyphs or even bitmap images, probably
the only universal way to extract text from arbitrary PDF's is OCR. On the
other hand, if you can make assumptions about the data and the data is clean
enough that the assumptions hold, then other methods might work. But if the
data is that clean then OCR probably will too. And OCR is as easy as a $79 all
in one to get started with.
Good luck.
------
loumf
PDFTextStream: [https://www.snowtide.com](https://www.snowtide.com)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Ask HN: Why so much complexity in modern frontend development? - strangeworks
Today I've stucked with a question, am I doing it right in frontend? There a lot of abstractions on top of simple DOM, why do we need them? Why is it getting popular? For example, lets take Angular, it's a world full of abstractions, why it so complex, why not to use some patterns, use perfectly designed native browser API's, and use some patterns for structuring, organization and refactoring? Why javascript is getting much complex than it is?
======
lhorie
In my opinion, the complexity comes from a backwards understanding of design
patterns: a lot of frameworks codify patterns into classes that you as a
developer are supposed to use to write your code in a prescriptive way. I
think this is somewhat arrogant and unfortunate because the framework
basically assumes the responsibility of figuring out what is the best design
pattern for the job, and developers get brain damaged thinking whatever the
framework chose is the one-true-way(tm).
With that being said, non-native APIs do have their place: virtual DOM
templating engines have no browser equivalent and there have been a few
articles here on HN explaining lately explaining how they help with dynamic
UIs without adding a ton of cognitive load. Promises have been shown to be a
powerful tool to handle asynchronous data flows , but the native equivalent
(ES6 Promises) are still in draft stages.
With my own framework Mithril (
[http://lhorie.github.io/mithril](http://lhorie.github.io/mithril) ), I'm
trying to get out of the developer's way as much as possible, by providing
these kinds of tools and allowing them to implement the right design patterns
for the job with just simple and plain javascript.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Try out Stanford's CoreNLP natural language software - apsec112
http://corenlp.run/
======
nl
CoreNLP is a _very_ good baseline for any NLP work. If you can build something
that beats it on a specific benchmark it's a pretty good bet you have
something that's pretty close to the state-of-the-art.
But.. there are problems. As software engineers, the (many) authors make great
researchers.
CoreNLP is wonderful in the _many_ different ways it _almost_ lets you
integrate into it without hacking the code. Changing the config of the various
components is fantastic, because you get a very comprehensive view of many
different ways people can configure almost the same thing. Environment
variables? System properties? Properties files in a specific location? In the
classpath? Json config? YAML? It almost supports them all - or rather
different parts use different ones, and the only way to work out exactly how
it works is to read the code.
Also, the licensing is annoying. Everyone doing commercial stuff with it just
puts it behind a web service anyway, so they should just embrace non-viral
license and get some input from the community.
Also SUTime. Yes, it works mostly, but wow :(
(Sorry for the rantish post. I use parts of CoreNLP a lot, and I'd love to see
it improve.)
~~~
fgimenez
Have you used spacy.io for comparison? The author seems to enjoy trolling
about the faults of CoreNLP, but the license is very agreeable and the results
seem on par.
~~~
nl
I've looked at it, and played with a bit. I think when I last looked at it the
licensing was even less friendly than CoreNLP. I believe this has been fixed
though, so it's probably worth looking at again.
From memory when I was last looking around I cared mostly about named entity
recognition (NER) and Spacy themselves say CoreNLP is better. CoreNLP has more
features too.
WordVector integration in Spacy looks interesting though. That's probably
enough to make me have a play with it.
~~~
lqdc13
I suggest Gensim for Word2Vec.
Spacy is really fast, the author is extremely knowledgeable, and it works well
on the datasets it was trained on. Problem with SpaCy for me was that it was
pre-trained on those texts and it was not possible to train it on new things.
Also their parser wasn't very customizable.
This pre-trained model is borderline useless if you want to obtain good
results on your data, which is probably very different from the data they
trained on.
For NER in the Python world, the best option is pycrfsuite. It works really
quickly and lets you easily define your own features. CRFSuite itself is a
work of art. I only wish Okazaki incorporated 2nd order transitions because
that makes a huge difference on some datasets.
CoreNLP is a lot worse than pyCRFsuite in terms of ease of integration and
performance in my experience. Particularly, if you want to define your own
features.
~~~
nl
Your Word2Vec comments are interesting. I've had pretty good success with that
original trained dataset the original Word2Vec implementation shipped with.
That's a big dataset of course, but one of the strengths of the model is that
if your training dataset is big enough you don't really need a lot of
specialized training.
_CRFSuite_
I've never used this, but it's not really a ready-to-use NLP toolkit is it?
Isn't it more a tool for building NLP tools with?
~~~
lqdc13
Gensim's implemention is better than the original and allows for Python API
access to all the features. Highly recommended. Radim tends to write really
memory efficient code unlike some other Python libs, so you can deal with
large datasets.
If you want to do NER in a way that doesn't suck there is no way around making
your own model on your own training data.
It honestly takes only a few days of labeling things yourself. I found that
outsourcing the work to amazon turk is not a viable option because the graders
there are terrible. And they work about 30x slower than you do. Even if you
pay them $1/hr, that is like paying one person $30/hr. I'm not kidding.
Sure you can do a quick and dirty "send data to these guys and they'll do all
the work", but I haven't come across a model that works well on all datasets.
We're talking going from 30ish percent accuracy for a model not trained on
your dataset to low 90s for something trained on your dataset. Of course,
these are approximate numbers and it is definitely possible that your dataset
is almost exactly like the ones they trained their model on.
It's incredibly simple to make your own model.
1\. Label your data with brat:
[http://brat.nlplab.org/index.html](http://brat.nlplab.org/index.html) # 5
days for 2k one page documents.
2\. Tokenize data with nltk/spaCy. Come up with features and label using
pycrfsuite: [http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/tpeng/python-
crfsuite/blo...](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/tpeng/python-
crfsuite/blob/master/examples/CoNLL%202002.ipynb) # 1 day
3\. Do more labeling, retokenizing, neural embedding from word2vec's similar
words to the tokens you have, tune parameters or come up with better features
such as your own dictionaries of entities, etc. Retrain the model. #2 weeks.
4.Done. Now you have a memory efficient fast model tuned on your data. You can
label anything you want. Not just Person/Company, but things like car vs
bicycle brands, computer parts, obfuscated email addresses, etc.
~~~
syllogism
I'd endorse pretty much all of this.
I want to make "domain adaptation as a service" the key part of spaCy's
business model: you send us text, we send you a good model. Internally this
will probably involve annotating part of the text, but that's a tactical
decision we'll make.
I hope we can make some break-throughs that help NER be much more general than
it is currently. But the current solution you describe works fine; it's just a
pain in the ass for each organization to take on. We want to have the required
infrastructure and expertise set up, and make the process seamless.
------
dacox
I took CoreNLP for a test drive last year during a content driven
recommendation project. Unfortunately we didn't have an opportunity to use it
on the project, but I was very impressed with what I saw. I was made aware of
it's existence after Stanford's online Sentiment
Analysis([http://nlp.stanford.edu/sentiment/](http://nlp.stanford.edu/sentiment/))
demo was released
------
harperlee
Mmhh, I tried with spanish and didn't work.
I see at least that identifies most words as FW, "foreign word", perhaps?
I'm not very familiar with CoreNLP (or NLP, more generally), does it only
support english out of the box? Or is it _nothing_ out of the box and this is
configured in english?
Google translate does a pretty good job of guessing the language of non-
ridiculously-short-and-ambiguous sentences. Also, from what I know about how
it works, it seems quite agnostic to specific languages. Does a less
stochastic approach (as what I assume NLP does) provide such flexibility?
Something akin to the nlp library knowing all languages, and deciding on which
of them a given sentence makes sense. I can't put an example on the table
right now, but surely there are sentences that can work on more than one
language; at least when you accept a couple of misspells.
------
gbrits
Any link/bridge to call python NLP libraries mentioned in this thread from
Node.js?
------
uniformlyrandom
Ha! NLP still does not get 'time flies like an arrow' phrase. It still thinks
'time flies' is a compound noun, apparently some kind of time-travelling
flies.
I remember reading about computers being confused by this phrase in 80s and
90s. Apparently, not much progress here.
~~~
syllogism
[http://spacy.io/displacy/?full=time%20flies%20like%20an%20ar...](http://spacy.io/displacy/?full=time%20flies%20like%20an%20arrow)
You can download the spaCy library for yourself if you suspect I've cooked the
example :)
~~~
imron
Unfortunately it fails with the suggestion provided by wodenokoto below:
[http://spacy.io/displacy/?full=fruit%20flies%20like%20a%20ba...](http://spacy.io/displacy/?full=fruit%20flies%20like%20a%20banana)
------
canjobear
Pretty unfortunate that the default demo sentence gets parsed wrong.
~~~
nl
Looks good to me?
What is it getting wrong?
~~~
canjobear
The dependency parse in the demo for "my dog also likes eating sausage" has
"eating" as an adjective modifying "sausage". It's as if "eating sausage" were
a kind of sausage.
The correct parse has "eating" as an xcomp of "likes", and "sausage" as a dobj
of "eating". You can see the correct parse for this structure if you plug "I
like eating sausage" into the demo.
EDIT: Weirdly, the demo of the same software at
[http://nlp.stanford.edu:8080/parser/](http://nlp.stanford.edu:8080/parser/)
doesn't make this mistake!
~~~
nl
Yes, I missed that. Good pickup.
_Weirdly, the demo of the same software
at[http://nlp.stanford.edu:8080/parser/](http://nlp.stanford.edu:8080/parser/)
doesn't make this mistake!_
See my rant about the config of CoreNLP:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10350090](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10350090)
~~~
gangeli
These are likely using different parsers. Namely, the (faster) neural net
dependency parser running at corenlp.run -- which gets thrown off by the POS
tag error -- versus the constituency parser you linked to.
You're right that the configuration is confusing for new users. But, you have
to remember that this is first and foremost research code intended to be
flexible enough for the Stanford NLP group's research needs. In terms of
particular configuration sources, nearly everything should be configurable
from properties passed in as a properties file. Are there exceptions to this
rule?
~~~
nl
_In terms of particular configuration sources, nearly everything should be
configurable from properties passed in as a properties file. Are there
exceptions to this rule?_
SUTime is documented to accept a property to a file that is read to obtain
other properties. Quote:
_sutime.rules = [path to rules file]_ [1]
I'm unclear if that works - looking at our code it appears the properties
files need to be in the classpath under a _package_ that is defined by the
_sutime.rules_ property.
I don't remember how other packages worked.
[1]
[http://nlp.stanford.edu/software/sutime.shtml](http://nlp.stanford.edu/software/sutime.shtml)
~~~
gangeli
This should be able to read rules from the filesystem as well (if not, it's a
bug and we should fix it!). The reason all of the examples are classpath
examples is just because we distribute our models as a jar by default. The
SUTime rules could be thought of more as a "model" for the rule-based system
rather than a configuration file.
------
linkydinkandyou
Hmmm. I tried "Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo
buffalo."
Didn't get it right.
(See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffal...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo)
)
Did better on "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
~~~
kazinator
But that Buffalo sentence is something on which people also stumble. A machine
can be contrived to pass such a test case, while remaining a lousy parser
compared to people.
The real problem is that the parser comes so swiftly to wrong conclusion and
cheerfully presents it as a valid result.
It would look a lot better if it simply reported "error: cannot parse that".
(Better yet, with reasons: "I cannot parse that because I get stuck on this
specific ambiguity and it's just too much for me.").
Also, what about the possibility of multiple results? Language is ambiguous.
If something has two parses, it's wrong to assert just one.
This thing has made no consideration whatsoever that even a single instance of
"buffalo" in the sentence might conceivably be a verb, which flies in the face
of almost any noun in English being verbable.
~~~
lkjaero
But it won't ever have trouble, because it's not trying to understand the
sentence. It will tell you the most probable parsing of that sentence based on
its model, whether or not it makes sense to a human.
~~~
kazinator
People who manage parse the sentence also aren't trying understand it, except
as far as "Buffalo" is a proper noun denoting a city, which can be used to
form then phrases "Buffalo buffalo" == buffalo of/from/belonging to/related to
Buffalo, and trying various combinations of interpreting "buffalo" as a noun
(in various roles as subject, direct object and so on) or verb, and
determining elided words such as "which" or "that" complementizers heading off
phrases and embedded clauses.
It's almost purely syntactic reasoning. Searching these spaces of
possibilities is something which, you would think, a "natural language parser"
ought to be doing to earn its name.
Nobody actually knows what it means "to buffalo" something; it is not
necessary to know. People solve the parse in spite of knowing that there is
nothing to understand in the sentence.
~~~
dasyatidprime
"buffalo" can mean something like "bother" as an English verb (at least in
American informal use), so the whole sentence as parsed in English does have a
concrete mental image associated with it, in case that makes any difference.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Designing in the Open: My experiences with a transparent design process in Slack - dmalashock
http://duncanmalashock.com/blog/design/designing-in-the-open/
======
neilmack
Great overview! We're just starting to use Slack for content/design work and
beyond the nuts-and-bolts processes the biggest challenge is working in the
open. Will share your experiences with my team.
~~~
dmalashock
Thanks! I think the biggest challenges, for me, were the psychological ones.
This process was helpful and collaborative, but not overwhelming.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Astronomers now doubt there is an undiscovered 9th planet in our solar system - spchampion2
https://phys.org/news/2020-05-astronomers-undiscovered-9th-planet-solar.html
======
Cactus2018
On the other hand, 'If Planet Nine Is a Tiny Black Hole, This Is How to Find
It'
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23132488](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23132488)
> The black hole in this scenario is neither infinitely massive nor infinitely
> small... 10 times more massive than Earth and five cm across.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Blockchain Curated – Listen to the best cryptocurrency articles - zosegal
https://www.blockchaincurated.com/
======
zosegal
Hello HN! Blockchain Curated is a weekly cryptocurrency podcast with a twist.
I curate the top blockchain-related articles and convert them into audio (real
human narration, not text-to-speech). Clear out that Pocket backlog, and
subscribe via email, iTunes/Google Play, or your favorite podcast app.
------
asasidh
Good effort. I have added it to my sub Reddit /r/AllThingsCrypto
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you provide SSH access to developers in your infrastructure - prodicus
I am curious about how do you do it, keeping in mind<p>- different teams having access to only those boxes which belong to that team<p>- providing ssh access without hand smashing the server.<p>- revoking ssh access for someone as and when required.<p>Would also be interested to know of possible ways to do the above.
======
devm0de
Use aws identities and policies to control ssh access to ec2 instances
[https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-
new/2019/06/introduci...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-
new/2019/06/introducing-amazon-ec2-instance-connect/)
Has some quirks but might be useful for companies using ec2 instances.
------
verdverm
"gcloud compute ssh instance-name" and "kubectl exec ..." with IAM
I am still surprised that AWS has not created the same experience as GCP. the
instance connect from the co-comment is an improvement, but requires install
on each server and client, plus an extra step when you want to connect.
------
stephenr
Use ldap as your centralised auth, add a schema extension for ssh public keys,
configure sshd/pam/nss to use ldap (and the keys contained therein) for
users/auth.
Use groups or a host attribute in ldap to manage access to specific servers or
groups of servers.
Bonus: you can manage sudo access from ldap too.
------
vs4vijay
Have you looked at Netflix's BLESS:
[https://github.com/Netflix/bless](https://github.com/Netflix/bless)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Uncoverly - The best stuff on Amazon - brensudol
http://www.uncoverly.com/
======
jason_wang
What's the definition of "the best stuff"? Collaborative filtering with user
click data? Just curious.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Poor New Yorkers Tend to Live Longer Than Other Poor Americans - Amorymeltzer
http://nytimes.com/2016/04/11/upshot/poor-new-yorkers-tend-to-live-longer-than-other-poor-americans.html
======
morgante
In addition to the investments in social services which the government
provides, I suspect there's also a psychological element as well. New Yorkers,
rich and poor, share a common identity which I don't see in a lot of other
communities. There's an understanding that everyone lives in one city (even if
they live in different parts of it), and at least has a modicum of
responsibility to each other.
Contrast this with other cities like Detroit where the rich and poor live
entirely separate existences.
~~~
intsunny
Its interesting you mention this, because the same trains that the run through
some of the poorest areas of the city, also run through the wealthiest area of
the city. (D train, Norwood and UWS. 2/3 trains, Tribeca and East New York.)
The ability for any New Yorker to be just about anywhere regardless of income
is unparalleled.
~~~
morgante
Yup, it was always fun to see the bankers on the UES forced to stand in the
morning while Bronx commuters got to sit down.
Personally, I think the subway is a great force for egalitarianism.
~~~
giaour
During the periods of reduced service, I could always hop on a 6 train at
116th Street, while people who lived in the UES had to wait hours for a spot
on a train. I was pleasantly surprised to see that even the wealthiest and
most powerful New Yorkers respected the unwritten rules of MTA etiquette.
~~~
darkerside
What unwritten rule do you mean? They couldn't fit on the train in the first
place, right?
~~~
giaour
There's strong social pressure enforcing a first-come, first-serve rule on
seats and standing room. Seats are only surrendered for the pregnant or
disabled, and standing room is only surrendered if a child pushed his way onto
a train but his parent or guardian didn't quite make it.
In other cities, I've seen people ask for spots on an otherwise full bus or
train because they were running late. That would be unheard of in a NYC
subway.
~~~
colechristensen
Do people really have to wait _hours_ for a spot on a train?
~~~
bradleyjg
New Yorkers may exaggerate from time to time. But I have been at the 1st
Avenue L stop during the morning rush and had to let 3 trains go by before
getting on to the fourth (probably 20 minutes total waiting). I probably
should have walked at some point but then I would have had to pay again at
Union Square.
~~~
bwilliams18
1st Ave L is probably one of the most crowded stops in the morning for rush
hour in the city, probably competing closely with Lorimer and Bedford L stops.
In PM out of the city Union Square is similarly packed, and the train is
nearly empty once you pass Lorimer
------
peg_leg
It's because they walk.
~~~
morgante
I'd expect that to apply equally to wealthier people too, but the inter-city
gap disappears at higher income levels. Wealthy New Yorkers also walk a lot
more than wealthy people in other countries.
New Yorkers definitely walk a lot more, but I don't think that explains the
full effect.
~~~
songshu
I have no idea what effect the walking is having, but would point out that
wealthy non-new Yorkers have other routes to attain the benefits of walking,
such as gym time and hiking trips. You can't say the same of poor non-new
Yorkers.
------
davidw
Yet another reason to make it easier for the less well-off to live in places
like NY and San Francisco by building more housing.
~~~
Pxtl
There is nothing magical about NYC. It's just density and transit. Not
science-fiction. You can build that stuff anywhere, we just choose not to - to
entertain the conservatives who think transit is a social-program and social
programs are evil, to the NIMBYs who are terrified of buildings that could
cast a shadow in their neighborhood, to car-commuters who refuse to accept
that successful cities don't have free parking and fast traffic.
~~~
massysett
Or maybe people don't like density and transit?
~~~
Pxtl
The law of supply and demand and skyrocketing prices within major cities
implies that far more people _want_ to live in such environments than
currently do. Nothing wrong with the ones that don't, but the people who want
that lifestyle are apparently not being accommodated by current urban policy
in general.
------
guyzero
Surprised the article doesn't try the hypothesis that the issue is access to
high-quality hospitals and medical schools.
Detroit is a nice enough town (in parts) but I'd rather get sick in New York
City.
~~~
Symmetry
No, they excplicitly address the hypothesis and reject it:
_The findings underscore public health research showing that healthy habits
matter. The JAMA paper found that several measures of access to medical care
had no clear relationship with longevity among the poor. But there were
correlations with smoking, exercise and obesity.
“There remains this misconception in our society that health is determined by
health care,” said Dr. Steven Woolf, a professor and director of the Center on
Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, who wrote an editorial
commending the research but offering some methodological criticisms.
“Behaviors have a huge influence on health outcomes.”_
------
davidf18
Mike Bloomberg donated $600 million (with an additional $125 million from Bill
Gates) to combat tobacco in low- and middle-income countries.
Here is the plan used in NYC based on the WHO MPOWER program:
[http://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736(07)60782-X/abstr...](http://www.thelancet.com/article/S0140-6736\(07\)60782-X/abstract)
NYC also placed over 1,000 fruit and vegetable carts in poor parts of the city
where fruits and vegetables had not been readily available.
While the attempts to limit sugar-added beverage consumption failed, the
publicity over the 3 different attempts against Coke and Pepsi ultimately
resulted lower consumption.
An interesting behind-the-scenes story can be read if former NYC Health
Commissioner's new book, "Saving Gotham: A Billionaire Mayor, Activist
Doctors, and the Fight for Eight Million Lives"
~~~
tracker1
Regarding sugar consumption, I do wish that more efforts like Coca-Cola Life
were made... mixing lower-calorie sweeteners... and for that matter, making
things less sweet in general. The effects on gut flora from the artificial
sweeteners (according to recent studies) is scary. As a diabetic, I've leaned
towards far more water, and far less anything else (some tea, arnold palmers,
etc).
I wish that there was more effort to curve the marketing of anything using
refined sugars. Hell, just preventing the advertisement of any product that
has more than 50% of its' calories from refined sugar from shows airing before
8pm and those whose primary demographic is children would be incredibly
impactful.
------
Overtonwindow
I wonder if it's becuase living in a place like New York City requires one to
be a little stronger and resilant to every day things. I don't think it has
anything to do with tax dollars, city services, or even walking. Could be
totally wrong here, but I think living in New York City puts one on a more
defensive, "aware" footing, and builds resilancy.
Too far off the mark?
~~~
saulrh
> I wonder if it's becuase living in a place like New York City requires one
> to be a little stronger and resilant to every day things.
I would expect the opposite to happen - the extra grinding-down every day
would result in people devoting more resources and stress tolerance to "being
a little stronger and resilient", decreasing their ability to do other things
including maintain their health.
~~~
stevenmays
Except, hormesis -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hormesis)
~~~
saulrh
There is a paragraph in there about low levels of stress having an anti-aging
effect. Very interesting, thanks for the link. I guess the question, then, is
where the therapeutic/hormetic level of stress is. I'd have very much guessed
that it'd be well below the level an average dense-inner-city resident
suffers, based on studies regarding IQ loss due to stress and similar. _shrug_
------
Pxtl
Iirc, obesity statistics are about equal between the poorest parts of NYC and
the national average.
Sedentary, isolating suburbia is killing us all.
~~~
tracker1
Obesity is not the only indicator of health. For that matter being skinny
doesn't mean you won't suffer from metabolic syndrome, only that obesity as a
symptom doesn't present itself.
------
dexterdog
Poor New Yorkers are a lot richer than other poor Americans.
And why are the only graphical comparisons given comparing NY to Detroit?
That's a pretty low bar.
~~~
tricolon
On the face of it, your first statement seems to be false. New York's 15th
congressional district is the poorest in the country:
[http://talkpoverty.org/cd-year-report/new-york-cd-
report-15-...](http://talkpoverty.org/cd-year-report/new-york-cd-report-15-2/)
------
brudgers
Related article showing comparisons across the US:
[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/11/upshot/for-
the...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/04/11/upshot/for-the-poor-
geography-is-life-and-death.html?_r=1)
------
yummyfajitas
The original paper is here:
[https://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2513561](https://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2513561)
I'm kind of wondering if the NYT reporter actually read it. From the article:
_differences in life expectancy for individuals in the lowest income quartile
were significantly correlated with health behaviors such as smoking (r =
−0.69, P < .001), but were not significantly correlated with access to medical
care, physical environmental factors, income inequality, or labor market
conditions._
Other factors which had no effect include residential segregation, health
insurance, and unemployment.
Contrast this with the NYT: "New York is a city with some of the worst income
inequality in the country." "We should really be thinking about how do we
build up the public health infrastructure."
------
rbcgerard
Another piece of the puzzle is access to to cheap non-fast food
options...there are not a lot of American cities that have an abundance of
fruit cart vendors as an example...
------
intrasight
Correlation vs causation
~~~
mfringel
....is not some magical incantation. Please state your point, in the context
of the article.
~~~
intrasight
Yes, yes - sometimes my incantations are too brief.
There are a lot of factors that may have correlation to health outcome. The
fact that something is correlated does not, as journalists will often suggest,
imply that there is a causation effect. The fact that the poor in some
locations are more healthy is a good hint that being poor is not the direct
cause of their health issues. But being poor is a root cause of many
adversities in any society that doesn't treat health, education, and other
such things as basic human rights.
~~~
giaour
I didn't get any sense from the article that the authors thought they had
identified the root cause of poverty and/or reduced life expectancy. They're
pointing out a rather chilling correlation.
------
tombert
I have to wonder if this, in part, has to do with the fact that poorer people
here tend to ride the subway, and get exposed to a larger number of viruses,
and building up an more immunities.
I'm no doctor, but it at least seems plausible from a lay-man's perspective.
~~~
drzaiusapelord
> ride the subway
If you take public trans all the time, then you're doing a lot of walking.
Trans takes you close enough but the 'last mile' is always on foot. That's a
decent amount of exercise, at least compared to someone who is always driving.
This is how I grew up and when I was older, the move to the suburbs was pretty
jarring. Everyone got fatter as we stopped getting all that city walking.
Worse, the suburbs didn't have a lot of healthy food options. So you drove
more and ate crappier.
A pack of cigarettes in NYC is around $13. In a poor rural or suburban
community, its half that. A lot of the urban poor simply can't afford smoking
anymore. This must certainly affect things, at least as much as anti-smoking
PSAs.
NYC also has 1.1m Jews, who tend to have a slightly higher than average life
expectancy, especially the religiously observant who follow strict dietary
limits. That might skew things a little as well.
~~~
zhemao
The strict dietary laws make their diet less healthy, generally. Orthodox Jews
have a very restricted diet which is heavy on starch and fat. When you can't
eat fresh fruit or vegetables because of the possibility of accidentally
consuming insects, your diet isn't going to be the healthiest.
~~~
eric_h
Agreed, and I would also suggest that the number of strictly observant jews is
a small fraction of the New York population that identify as jewish and would
be counted as such in a survey
------
nxzero
There's clearly some sort of selection bias going on, since I would hope it's
obvious that simply moving NYC will not help you live longer.
(My guess is that people that live longer end up moving in with someone they
know, and given that NYC has so many people, it's more likely that they'd move
to NYC than another city.)
~~~
pavel_lishin
> _There 's clearly some sort of selection bias going on, since I would hope
> it's obvious that simply moving NYC will not help you live longer._
If you live a sedentary, car-centered lifestyle and are a heavy smoker, then
moving to NYC may indeed help you by forcing you to get more exercise and quit
smoking due to the costs.
------
lr4444lr
_The findings underscore public health research showing that healthy habits
matter. The JAMA paper found that several measures of access to medical care
had no clear relationship with longevity among the poor. But there were
correlations with smoking, exercise and obesity. ... The city also imposed
novel regulations on restaurants and food, banning trans fats that are
associated with heart disease, and requiring chain restaurants to post calorie
counts on menus. Efforts to tax or limit soda sales were unsuccessful, but
public campaigns to discourage unhealthy eating were widespread._
The implication is that the nanny state has to step in because the poor don't
exercise personal responsibility as diligently as the non-poor. Sad.
~~~
kaonashi
Yea, has nothing to do with the relative costs of each type of food.
I've also heard people bitch about seeing SNAP-card holders shop at Whole
Foods, so I guess both choices are wrong.
~~~
cylinder
Literally just saw this an hour ago. When SNAP carders are spending freely on
Whole Foods prepared meals I'd never touch, and I'm walking around the city
for 30min trying to find a decent lunch under $8, I find my anger to be
reasonable.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Organice – Using Org mode from a smartphone or browser [video] - preek
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQKc0hcFXCk
======
preek
This is one of two lightning talks I was holding at EmacsConf 2019[1].
By now, organice has naturally evolved even further - for example it features
WebDAV support. With that, organice can potentially be used with a multitude
of synchronization backends: Client/Server services ownCloud, Nextcloud and
Seafile, but also self hosted dedicated WebDAV servers like Apache or Nginx.
1\. [https://emacsconf.org/2019/schedule](https://emacsconf.org/2019/schedule)
~~~
brudgers
As an org-mode user, it looks like a great project. The Youtube video might
benefit from editing. The first four minutes don't tell me much about the
product, what it does, and why someone should care.
When something is awesome, or just useful, the maker's credentials don't
matter very much. For users, the license is mostly irrelevant (philosophical
commitments aside). Installation instructions are less important than helping
users decide whether the product is worth installing.
Put things in a hierarchy. First tell people what it is and what it can do.
Link to download information. On the download page, link to more information
about yourself. Make it easy for people to decide not to use it...most people
don't use org-mode and that's ok, I guess.
~~~
preek
Thank you for the feedback. The video is of a lightning talk for EmacsConf and
specifically tailored to this audience.
For a general introduction, I'd choose your way, of course(;
------
Groxx
Tho I'll give this one a try too, I've been using Orgzly a fair bit and am
mostly happy:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.orgzly](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.orgzly)
I haven't been able to find much else that supports org mode, except for
emacs... which seems ridiculous, as a non-emacs-user. What is it that makes
this one of the apparently-most-loved features, but so incredibly poorly
supported externally?
~~~
gonewest
I'd assume what makes alternate ports rare is the fact that the entire
implementation is in elisp. So any alternate implementation has to start by
finding (or implementing) a parser with good compatibility and
maintainability.
~~~
Spivak
Orgzly does it well enough for simple cases but if you try to use it for much
more than a basic notes/reminder system you’ll run up against limitations
_fast_ since a lot of useful behavior like complex date formats leverage the
elisp hole to work.
~~~
Groxx
Out of curiosity: have an example? I've only used relatively-simple formats in
queries, never in todos, haven't hit any issues yet.
Seems like it'd probably be a parser limitation or something tho? Or are some
of the formats lisp-code-like and need to be executed?
------
goblin89
For those on iOS, I can thoroughly recommend the beorg app for using emacs org
mode on the go. It integrates nicely into the OS, offering sync via iCloud
Drive (Dropbox and others too, though I don’t use that) and showing
notifications for deadlines or scheduled items.
It doesn’t treat org-drill items specially and shows notifications when review
is due, which is a mixed bag but not too annoying for me yet.
My only minor gripe with beorg is that on save it loses blank lines between
items, which I tend to add in desktop emacs for readability. I believe the
author would have to rewrite the app with something like concrete or lossless
syntax trees to avoid this.
~~~
preek
For those curious, here's a comparison of organice and Beorg:
[https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice/#beorg](https://github.com/200ok-
ch/organice/#beorg)
------
vyuh
Github: [https://github.com/200ok-ch/organice](https://github.com/200ok-
ch/organice)
Web Browser App:
[https://organice.200ok.ch/sample](https://organice.200ok.ch/sample)
------
onemoresoop
This is fantastic. I was just looking at org mode the other day and am
planning to start using it. Now with organice, I'll ramp up the effort to
adopt orgmode. This is fantastic, snappy and simple. The arrow buttons are a
great idea too.
------
insufferablejak
I'm wondering why this looks exactly like [https://org-web.org/](https://org-
web.org/) Is there some implementation of an org mode front-end that both use?
~~~
Groxx
Wow, yea, that's nearly identical.
Main authors for both repos are the two repo-owners tho, so there's some kind
of collab going on in any case: [https://github.com/DanielDe/org-
web/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/DanielDe/org-
web/graphs/contributors) vs [https://github.com/200ok-
ch/organice/graphs/contributors](https://github.com/200ok-
ch/organice/graphs/contributors) (and munen is the CEO of 200ok)
------
marcosdumay
Does the project have a homepage?
If I search for "organice android app" on DDG, it throws back links to organic
chemistry apps. If I try it on Google, I get pages about organizing the
android's screen.
~~~
preek
It does have a homepage:
[https://organice.200ok.ch/](https://organice.200ok.ch/)
------
taude
Hey, this is pretty cool. Just checking it out. It would be nice if you didn't
need to request Full Dropbox permission to only a specific folder or
something. I think DropBox supports that these days. This way we don't have to
give you cart-blanche to everything. Thanks.
Edited: too many spelling and grammar errors at first pass.
~~~
preek
Hi taude, OP here.
You're not giving us carte-blance to anything. organice is a front-end only
application. You're only connecting your browser to your dropbox. There's no
back-end, no data is stored on our account and we don't have analytics.
~~~
taude
OK, makes sense, I think? But....
When connecting to DropBox, though, I am prompted from Dropbox with: "organice
would like access to the files and folders in your Dropbox. Learn more"
And going to DropBox readme on the topic: [https://help.dropbox.com/installs-
integrations/third-party/t...](https://help.dropbox.com/installs-
integrations/third-party/third-party-apps), it talks about the different
access scopes: select access, app folder, full access....
~~~
preek
Yes, _your_ Browser Running organice will have full access to your Dropbox.
Nobody but you has access to your browser.
------
RMPR
I wanted to try the mobile counterpart of the app but I'm not able to find it
on F-Droid, do you plan to release it there ?
------
burtonator
God.. you guys just love org-mode! Every time I get Polar on hacker news I get
another batch of request referencing org-mode. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
RSS feed still broken. Thought pg said it was fixed? - ralph
<p><pre><code> $ date
2008-01-22 13:17:24 +0000 Tue
$ wget -qO- http://news.ycombinator.com/rss |
> tr \> \\012 |
> grep -c comitem
29
$</code></pre>
======
ralph
Still broken.
$ date
2008-01-23 12:21:20 +0000 Wed
$ wget -qO- http://news.ycombinator.com/rss |
> tr \> \\012 |
> grep -c comitem
27
$
------
ralph
Now fixed.
$ date
2008-01-24 12:35:00 +0000 Thu
$ wget -qO- http://news.ycombinator.com/rss |
> tr \> \\012 |
> grep -c comitem
0
$
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
LinuxKit: A Toolkit for Building Secure, Lean and Portable Linux Subsystems - eloycoto
https://blog.docker.com/2017/04/introducing-linuxkit-container-os-toolkit/
======
jdub
To filter out some of the buzz words: It's a new minimal Linux distro designed
to run containers, with a build system that supports various image outputs
(VMDK, ISO, cloud images, etc). The "packages" are Docker images. It's pretty
easy to configure and build your own images with… you guessed it… YAML.
Very much in the same ball park as Rancher, CoreOS, Atomic, etc.
(It's essentially a rebrand, rethink, and projectisation of "Moby", the distro
that ships with Docker for Mac/Windows. Meanwhile, Moby has become the open
source project around Docker or something... like Fedora / Red Hat.)
~~~
philips
As the name suggests LinuxKit is more of a developer kit than an end-user
product like CoreOS Container Linux, Rancher or Atomic.
Importantly updates are not handled by LinuxKit itself[1] but the concept is
that that a higher level system or packager might take care of via
CloudFormation and an out-of-band re-provisioning method.
It is obviously early days for the LinuxKit project and we will see how it
goes. Overall, though I think there is a lot of interest in packaging up
system level services inside of containers and I applaud the effort to keep
exploring these ideas.
\- CoreOS Container Linux has been continually pushing as many services into
docker image containers including etcd, kubelet, etc.
[https://coreos.com/blog/introducing-the-kubelet-in-
coreos.ht...](https://coreos.com/blog/introducing-the-kubelet-in-coreos.html)
\- Systemd community has been exploring portable services
[https://lwn.net/Articles/706025/](https://lwn.net/Articles/706025/)
\- RancherOS runs as much as possible underneath the Docker Engine and
packages up services in docker images
\- The Linux Desktop folks at Red Hat have been exploring ideas like
[http://flatpak.org/](http://flatpak.org/)
[1]
[https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/blob/master/docs/faq.md...](https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/blob/master/docs/faq.md#how-
do-updates-work)
~~~
bigmac
_Importantly updates are not handled by LinuxKit itself[1] but the concept is
that that a higher level system or packager might take care of via
CloudFormation and an out-of-band re-provisioning method._
This was an explicit omission, at least for now. We left update out of scope
because it's better handled by the infrastructure provisioning system (in our
case, infrakit). We'll use infrakit to supply updates (and the dm-verity hash,
for that matter). Thus we treat infrastructure provisioning system as the
trusted 'bootloader' for a cluster of machines. Most datacenter clusters end
up having an infrastructure provisioning system, so it makes more sense for
those systems to have the OS update responsibility. This ends up meaning less
attack surface on the host itself, and serves as a good separation of concerns
and least privilege design.
------
bigmac
For those interested in security in particular, we've outlined the opinions
and design decisions here:
[https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/blob/master/docs/securi...](https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/blob/master/docs/security.md)
In short:
_Kernel Security Incubator_ \- We want to push linux kernel security as much
as possible. In service of that, we want linuxkit to be a place where leading-
edge linux kernel security patches can land and incubate. Feature examples are
Landlock, Wiregurd, okernel, etc. We'll also incubate KSPP and container
hardening improvements, like hardening the kernel eBPF JIT and namespacing the
IMA subsystem.
_Modern and Securely Configured Kernels_ \- Latest kernel, following all KSPP
recommendations.
_Minimal Base_ \- No extra dependences, just what's needed to run containerd.
Absolutely no package manager.
_Type Safe, Containerized System Daemons_ \- many linux privescs happen due
to escalations using root system daemons. These daemons should be written in
typesafe language like OCaml and Rust. We have an Ocaml dchpcd and look to
invite more. If you're convinced by [https://tonyarcieri.com/it-s-time-for-a-
memory-safety-interv...](https://tonyarcieri.com/it-s-time-for-a-memory-
safety-
intervention?utm_content=bufferfe480&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer),
linuxkit is a place to contribute to the solution.
_Built With Hardened Toolchains and Containers_ \- uses notary signing for
all dependencies and intermediate builds, uses musl libc for hardened libc
implementation + hardened compiler options for building system packages.
_Immutable Infrastructure_ \- Linuxkit follows the principle of immutable
infrasructure. The filesystem contains a read-only root FS and boots with dm-
verity. Trusted boot via infrakit + notary hash lookup is a next step.
All in all, this multi-pronged approach should lead to a much more secure
linux base. As is our tradition, we will track progress here:
[https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/blob/master/docs/securi...](https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/blob/master/docs/security-
events.md), where we'll catalog Linux CVEs and how LinuxKit holds up.
~~~
hdhzy
This sounds just like RancherOS with strong security and focus on
immutability. Are Linux kit truly and completely immutable? That means it's
not good fit for a database host OS?
~~~
cpuguy83
A database should not affect the OS in any way.
To run a database, attach non-ephemeral storage and write data there.
------
peterwwillis
tl;dr they made a 35MB busybox initrd for containers.
Basically they wanted to ship containers everywhere in a "lightweight" way, so
they threw away the OS. They use multiple justifications for this. Using
containers means "you don't need packages anymore". Using immutable servers
means "you don't need configuration management anymore". Using an initrd and
containers means "you don't need an operating system anymore". Spoiler alert:
systemd is gone. Oh, and they use both YAML and JSON for different things.
They say that for security reasons, you can't upgrade the live initrd, you
have to boot a brand new initrd. They don't mention how they're going to stop
memory-resident attacks, so basically this is just an annoying way to avoid
having to provide a way for the user to upgrade their initrd in real time.
_" It is encouraged to consider the notion of "reverse uptime" when deploying
LinuxKit - because LinuxKit is immutable, it should be acceptable and
encouraged to frequently redeploy LinuxKit nodes."_
Expect your nodes to go down all the time. Got it.
They talk up kernel security a lot but I don't see anything about live
patching (but that's not immutable, so I guess it's bad by default). Oh, and
they want to rewrite the initrd daemons in Go and Rust, because dhcp gets
owned all the time, and buffer overflows are the only exploits that ever
happen, and C is, like, really hard, man. Spoiler alert: expect your system
apps to be buggy.
~~~
djsumdog
I agree this seems overly complicated, however I am for anything that helps
get away from systemd.
> Expect your nodes to go down all the time. Got it.
When I deploy containers, our system (marathon on DCOS) does rolling updates
where it scheduled new nodes and then gets rid of the old ones in a
rolling/rotating fashion. That's how high availability works. If your nodes go
down in a controlled fashion for updates, it shouldn't be a problem.
~~~
peterwwillis
HA was never about replacing whole nodes just to make minor changes. Rolling
updates, sure, when the system isn't complex enough to do updates in place.
The thing is, initrd's are always read-only anyway. But i'm annoyed that
they're trying to justify this by saying it's good for security or more
reliable, etc. It's just a legacy of the old design. And they have tools built
into it to let it be managed remotely - but refuse to let this configure it
live? So it can still be owned, but just not in a persistent state (unless you
find persistent storage).
~~~
sagichmal
Rolling updates of immutable artifacts is, on balance, vastly preferable to
updating software in-place with e.g. patches.
~~~
peterwwillis
And is there some evidence-based research or white paper that justifies that
claim? Because it sounds like the cargo cult of Google container networks.
------
gtirloni
If I understood this right, it's playing in the same area as RancherOS,
Container Linux, Project Atomic, etc, but with a even smaller footprint and
more customizable. I like it.
As an end user, I would like to understand what are the incentives to keep
this going in the long term (basically a community around it and security
updates).
------
secure
If I understand correctly, this is very similar to
[https://gokrazy.org/](https://gokrazy.org/), except for a different unit of
granularity and scope: gokrazy packages up Go packages into a bootable image
for the Raspberry Pi 3, whereas linuxkit uses containers and targets anything
that can boot it.
(disclaimer: I wrote gokrazy)
~~~
esMazer
out of topic: do you know if gocrazy works well on the Raspberry Zero?
~~~
DannyB2
The site says Pi 3 only.
~~~
secure
That’s correct. See also
[https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/5xgf8u/gokrazy_a_pu...](https://www.reddit.com/r/golang/comments/5xgf8u/gokrazy_a_purego_userland_for_your_raspberry_pi_3/dei7b2m/)
Notably, the Raspberry Pi Zero W has a different CPU (BCM2835, like the
original Raspberry Pi) and hence architecture than the Raspberry Pi 3. See
[https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/pi-
zero-w/](https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/pi-zero-w/) and
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM11](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARM11)
------
y2kenny
I am not sure if it's apt to compare this to a distro. Isn't this more like
the yocto project[0] or buildroot[1]? Can someone familiar with those two
projects compare them with this one?
[0][https://www.yoctoproject.org/](https://www.yoctoproject.org/)
[1][https://buildroot.org/](https://buildroot.org/)
------
craig_peacock
If I am understanding this right, this could be one of the most exciting
developments for Linux in a very long time! The closest comparison I can draw
is with one of my favourite OS's Genode, except this could be even better!:
[https://genode.org/about/index](https://genode.org/about/index)
------
thresh
So will this replace alpine which is for some reason much loved in docker
world?
~~~
StreamBright
It is also loved in the security world, and in the systemd-free world.
~~~
djsumdog
I switched to Void Linux to get back into the systemd free world. So far I'm
pretty happy with it.
------
Jare
Just went to try it and was somewhat disappointed that it requires docker
installed locally in order to run moby (I do not have it on my Win10 due to
HyperV). Is that just for pulling the containers from the docker registry?
~~~
justincormack
Yes, the build currently requires Docker. We will remove the requirement for
building the container root filesystems soon, by using the libraries for
containerd. Some but not all of the output formats also need Docker at
present, for example for building filesystem images.
~~~
Jare
Makes sense, thanks!
------
bharatkhatri14
Is there a list of CPU architectures / SoCs supported?
------
BuuQu9hu
Getting tired of this shit.
"Secure", as a word, does not make things secure. "Container", as a word, also
does not make things secure.
Sandboxes come in two flavors: Correct by construction, and exploitable. Which
flavor is this system?
What makes this better than NixOS? Than Genode? Than Qubes? Where is the
actual security writeup? Where's the explanation of the security model for the
system? How would I write code which takes advantage of structural security in
the system?
Edit: There's a writeup here:
[https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/blob/master/docs/securi...](https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/blob/master/docs/security.md)
And the Mirage design is here:
[https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/blob/master/projects/mi...](https://github.com/linuxkit/linuxkit/blob/master/projects/miragesdk/roadmap.md)
In short, to answer my earlier questions, the sandboxing is undocumented,
comparisons to other security-oriented setups are omitted, the limit of
structural security is OCaml's type system... This seems like an interesting
effort but I am disappointed that it seems more like lip service than an
attempt to actually improve on the state of security design.
------
CSDude
I really thought of this before, we package apps to our customers with a USB
because they work on the intranet. I always thought make something easy ISO
installable without using Ubuntu Kickstart/Preseed nightmare. It would really
solve many hours for us.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Rediscover 80s and 90s Movies - offsky
https://www.movienight.tips/
======
offsky
Being stuck at home this summer has inspired my wife and I to show our kids
the classic movies that we grew up with during the 80s and 90s (Goonies, Back
to the Future, Indiana Jones, etc). After going through the obvious ones, we
started having difficulty remembering them all, so I created a website for
just this purpose: to help parents rediscover movies from their childhood. It
shows every film rated PG-13 and lower that was released at least 15 years
ago. You can filter the movies by maturity level, add movies to your watch
list and see where you can stream the movies. It's a simple website, without
ads, that aims to help parents get through the summer with some good kid-
friendly movies.
Made with boring technology (PHP and a bit of JS) because it was fastest this
way. An interesting technical challenge for me (still ongoing a bit) is
cleaning the data. Some screen-scraping, a few APIs to integrate and still a
bunch of manual labor for myself hunting for urls to relevant review sites and
normalizing things. I ended up pushing most of this manual labor through
another one of my projects ([https://www.t4sk.dev](https://www.t4sk.dev))
which is basically mechanical turk for your personal private microtasks.
Ive already used MovieNight.tips to discover several great 80s movies that I
somehow missed while growing up. I hope it helps others as well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hong Kong protest: What is mainland China hearing? - onetimemanytime
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-china-blog-49354507
======
xster
> "The fastest-growing period of Hong Kong has already passed, so the young
> people there find no way to climb up the social ladder. They feel choked in
> an environment of expensive housing, sweltering climate and a neighbour [the
> mainland] that's becoming richer and richer,"
I think these problems will continue to re-occur until this root issue is
solved. In the same way how I believe Caesar/Sulla/Gracchi brothers are all
symptoms of an underserved common populace by the senate class and where the
commoners are constantly ready to be incited into a mob rule when economic
interests are not pinning them to vest in the system.
And now the vestigial, oligarchic functional/geographic-split legco voting
system and the colonial parallel governorship (aka chief
executive)/legislative system is failing the Hong Kong common class with 20%
poverty rates and twice the housing to pre-tax median annual income ratio than
San Francisco in a monopolistic/unregulated/colonial elite-serving economic
framework. And that's without even counting in the half-million class-less
filipino/indonesian domestic serfs.
I think their way out of their structural societal problems would be to
emphasize the class issue and on decolonializing their governmental and
economic framework as soon as possible (which I think part of the protest
movement gets, and which isn't against Beijing's interests) or go the Chinese
socialism route (since China holds humanity's record on poverty reduction, but
the locals will obviously not accept this route). But re-glorifying their
colonial past or preserving the status quo (which I find is the mainstream
protest ideology) isn't it.
To put it in American terms, I think they need Bernie, not Trump.
~~~
wobblegong
Agreed, I'm an HKer who grew up there but am in the US now. There is a certain
desperation that is palpable from talking to my friends back home.
They've been so let down by the HK govt that they've just given up all hope.
Career sucks, family sucks, home sucks, can't marry cause houses are too
expensive, rent is unaffordable so you can't move out, unless you're in the
top 20% of your senior class, you can't go to college, it's grim. Most people
I know are trying to move.
Unless the societal ills get solved, people will always find another
proxy/reason to protest.
~~~
xster
Right. Protests are a means to an end and the people should be clear about
what the end is. That's the whole point of not being administered by China in
the first place, where you would just voice your discontent and let the
'technocratic' 'leadership' figure out a solution. The people have to self-
direct towards a long term goal.
I think the current situation is tricky in that the 2 issues are partly
conflated in the sense that Hong Kong needs to be careful to not just give the
half-democratic colonial leash to China. But that's the extent of it (since
Beijing didn't setup that colonial structure), and it's important to not
conflate the rest of the issues with it. The institutional/functional half of
the legco basically seems like a collection of medieval guilds and I don't see
it trying to, or having the financial incentive to resolve societal issues for
the bottom of the society anytime soon.
The fight for political reform does seem like the right thing to do but I
think the only way to success is to stay extremely focused and framing it as a
people vs colonial oligarchy issue rather than a British vs China issue or a
woke vs brainwashed wumao issue. And most importantly, to not make it about
defending the status quo, where Hong Kong will fall deeper in the hole since
it not being able to continue to skim off the top of all China trades like it
could during the 80s can't float all boats like it could in the past anymore.
If Hong Kong fails to prove that its current political system is an advantage
rather than a disadvantage that translates to economic and social wellbeing,
Beijing will have little incentive to not scrap its system come 2047. And from
the present perspective from the Beijing side, all signs would point to it
looking like a disadvantage so far when comparing the relative deltas of urban
and rural development and wellbeing vs the mainland. This, of course, ignores
the fact that the CCP system will hit a glass ceiling in economic development
vs countries with mature judicial systems, checks and balances etc, but that’s
a limitation for its future potential rather than a present problem for Hong
Kong and mainland.
------
flying_sheep
I lived in Hong Kong for 30 years. What was happened in these 3 months did not
come out of nowhere.
1997 - now: HK gov allows 150 people from China to immigrate to Hong Kong
_every day_ , even there are strong opinion to suspend immigration due to lack
of housing and crazy population density problem. Even worse, HK gov does not
pose _ANY_ restrictions of the immigrant about their education, language, or
criminal background. There was one case that one pro-Beijing arsonist killed 2
immigration Officers but still obtained residency in HK.
2012: HK gov tried to introduce a compulsory brain-washing subject to high
school. 500 thousands (out of 7 millions) people protested.
2013: HK gov used crappy reason to turn down a well-known HK businessman to
obtain free public broadcast license. So that HK has effectively only one
company to run free TV channel. And the news of that channel is highly biased.
2019: HK gov tried to pass extradition law to China. Even after 1 million
people protested, HK gov still continues legislation. After 2 millions people
protested, the CEO of HK gov only said "the bill is dead" in TV but did not
formally withdraw the bill in legislation council.
This is only a tiny list of what gov did in the past 22 years. What gov is
going to do is to pass a construction that cost trillions of HK dollars (app.
120 billion USD). That will basically empty the treasury of HK, and the future
of every HK people. That's why people are so frustrated and protest in that
extend.
~~~
ToniCipriani
Article 23 and the National Security provisions is also a big one.
------
AnimalMuppet
I'm not sure it matters so much what they're hearing now. What matters more is
what they've heard for the last decade or two - that it's all about great
China and uniting to follow the CCP leadership, that anyone disturbing that is
an antisocial troublemaker, and that such people deserve negative
consequences. After having that mindset drummed into you for long enough, it
may not matter what perspective they hear about the Hong Kong protests, at
least if they don't hear it for too long.
~~~
Leary
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4GXZOss6J4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4GXZOss6J4)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdxXCTpHARQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YdxXCTpHARQ)
This is the scene that mainland Chinese people are seeing. A reporter of
Global Times was bound by protesters in the airport and attacked until
unconscious.
~~~
yorwba
Those are on YouTube, so law-abiding citizens aren't seeing them. The search
results for Hong Kong on Weibo are a bit different:
[https://m.weibo.cn/search?containerid=100103type%3D1%26q%3D%...](https://m.weibo.cn/search?containerid=100103type%3D1%26q%3D%E9%A6%99%E6%B8%AF)
------
tzakrajs
Sounds like CCP did a good job of stoking division between HK and mainland
China leading up to this powder keg being lit.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stripe's API was down again - klinskyc
Hasn't hit their status page yet, but our error rates are spiked up again, and they just posted a tweet -> <a href="https://status.stripe.com/" rel="nofollow">https://status.stripe.com/</a><p>5:35 Eastern -> Their status page has been updated
======
tibbon
Stripe gets the front page because they are popular with developers, but I've
dealt with so many other more-corporate payment processors that are absolutely
_awful_ for reliability. Rampant downtime, terrible support, terrible
concurrency limits, failure to meet SLAs, terrible documentation (900 page
specs that are impossible to read). They all think they are awesome, and yet
can't go more than 48 hours without having some system degradation email sent
out. I don't want to name them, but they are some of the worst businesses I've
ever dealt with. They just want to sit there and collect huge amounts of money
for helping you connect to Visa/Mastercard/etc, and do little else.
Rage. Stripe hitting a little downtime is nothing in comparison.
~~~
drspacemonkey
I dealt with one that seemed actively hostile. They would change their API
without any advance warning at all. Data fields that we depended on would
mysteriously vanish in the middle of the day, causing our entire system to
grind to a halt until we put in a hotfix. Happened several times in the two
years I worked on that project.
~~~
october_sky
Wow?! An API should be treated as a contract.. I hope you dropped them
~~~
drspacemonkey
It would have been nice if dropping them had been an option for me.
------
edwinwee
We're seeing a spike in error rates and we're working on a fix now. (We've
updated our status page:
[https://twitter.com/stripestatus/status/1149065544399609856](https://twitter.com/stripestatus/status/1149065544399609856))
------
rglover
Kind of incredible that this is the first time I remember Stripe being down in
a long, long time.
Serious kudos to their team and hope they get this resolved soon :)
~~~
civicsquid
I've seen a lot of comments like this on HN since earlier today regarding the
Stripe API downtime. It's very positive and I'm glad to see it in response to
an event that usually garners frustration.
Never used Stripe's API myself, but it sounds like they are vastly reliable
beyond these blips.
~~~
jammygit
Out of curiosity, why is this downvoted?
------
dmlittle
It would be great if Stripe would offer an RSS feed for status updates in
addition to twitter posts. A lot of other services have one and it's very
convenient to subscribe to in Slack for updates. At my current company, for
example, we have a #third-party-outages channel which we have all available
third party services (GitHub, NPM, CircleCI, Slack [yes, it's meta],
HackerOne, etc.) status page RSS feed notify in case of an outage.
~~~
jammygit
I didn’t realize you could use slack as an rss client
~~~
ComputerGuru
Via a bot.
------
harrygallagher4
Ran into this one in the wild when it happened, before stripe status had even
tweeted about it. I was trying to order doordash and got a "Could not
deserialize JSON object" error when adding a credit card. Hope this is fixed
soon, the girlfriend and I are very hungry :(
Edit: update if anyone cared, API seems back up and we have ordered food! :)
~~~
egty
I care! What did y'all get? Was it tasty?
------
dang
The thread from earlier today is
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403774](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20403774).
------
cristea
The last error message on their credit cards endpoint reads «This API method
has been temporarily disabled due to exceptionally high traffic». It might be
a DDoS attack.
~~~
edwinwee
We're investigating what happened, but we know this wasn't a DDoS attack.
------
slics
Is it due to another Fiber Cut somewhere? Recently almost the entire east
coast was down due to fiber damage. I guess the cloud services are as good as
the wires that run in the ground.
~~~
jxramos
grounding the cloud!
------
jasonb05
Bad day to launch my new GAN book. damn it!
~~~
how_77462348
I was able to still get through and get it.
~~~
jasonb05
Thanks!
------
sauldcosta
Yep, definitely is. Have been getting 503s for the last 15 minutes.
------
paulmendoza
Second time today. This has been a painful day. That uptime percentage is
really ticking down fast. The developer/test mode APIs also seem to be down
now as well.
------
duxup
Anyone have any good advice on storing a failed transaction and retrying
later?
Is that even feasible with Stripe?
Obviously there would be security considerations.
~~~
ComputerGuru
The real solution is to never rely on one party. We fall back to another
payment processor after using a heuristic to see if the error isn’t one that
makes sense. If it’s a problem with the payment card, it’ll fail again, no
harm done. If it’s a problem with the provider, it’ll go through.
(We wrote a payments abstraction library easy enough to (partially or fully)
fill for any payment provider’s core functionality, so it’s literally just a
couple more lines of code at the call site. It took several rewrites to get
the abstraction to cover all the oddities each time we added a new provider
implementation, though!)
~~~
maxgashkov
But for that you have to touch CC info directly with all the risks and
compliance bullshit.
~~~
dangrossman
You can use a third party vault to collect and store CC info without it
touching your servers. I use Spreedly. I can then charge any of the stored
cards with any of like 45 different payment gateways, including Stripe.
Keeping your own billing systems online when one of your gateways is down is
one of the use cases. This has worked great for the past 7 or so years I've
been using them. It might become more difficult with PSD2 SCA however...
~~~
athrun
what happens when the vault goes down?
~~~
dangrossman
That happens much less often than payment gateways going down. Spreedly's
service is at least an order of magnitude less complex than running a payment
processing company. However, you can have resilience against that situation by
having a backup integration with one of your payment gateways directly.
Spreedly will gladly collect a customer's credit card for you, save it in
their vault, AND save it in your Stripe account, and any other gateways you
work with. So, without having touched any CC info yourself, you can tell
Spreedly to charge a customer via Stripe, or you can directly tell Stripe to
charge that same card.
------
fbelzile
It looks like it's up again for me.
~~~
pgm8705
I've had transactions getting through every once in a while but most are not.
~~~
foobiekr
SAAS: if one transaction gets through, it’s not “down” or “unavailable”, it’s
“elevated error rates.”
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Airmen who surveil the Islamic State never get to look away - stablemap
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/the-watchers-airmen-who-surveil-the-islamic-state-never-get-to-look-away/2017/07/06/d80c37de-585f-11e7-ba90-f5875b7d1876_story.html
======
peterkelly
> The number of allowable civilian casualties can vary with the importance of
> the target.
A fascinating insight into the mindset behind a terrorist organization. The
complete devaluation of innocent human lives in order to achieve the group's
objectives.
~~~
throwanem
That is a frankly astonishing misapprehension of the case.
A military organization, such as that described in this article, seeks to
minimize civilian casualties to the utmost possible extent. One of the
realities of warfare is that civilian casualties can't always be entirely
avoided, and a war still be prosecuted with meaningful hope of success. But
the failure to avoid civilian casualties, however necessary, is regarded as a
failure nonetheless, and weighs heavily on those involved - perhaps you
overlooked the mention of an increased need for anti-suicide counseling after
strikes in which civilian casualties occur. One does not often find "the
complete devaluation of innocent human lives" coincident with contemplation of
suicide as a potentially proportionate response to having taken them.
A terrorist organization, such as its current adversary, has no such scruples,
and indeed will often seek to inflict as much atrocity on innocents as it can
manage. The incentives, and the balance of advantage and disadvantage, for
irregular fighters, are such that the involvement of civilians - not just as
targets, but also as human shields and as a sort of moving camouflage in which
to conceal oneself - is an utter necessity, because there's only one way for a
stand-up fight between a regular military and a guerrilla band to end. The
typical fashion in which such bands misuse innocents by default would weigh
heavily on their members as well, which is why one finds such a heavy
investment in ideology among these groups, whether it be religious as in the
current case or secular as in the case of last century's "Communist
revolutionaries". You have to have _some_ story to tell yourself that makes
your flagrant abuse of civilians seem righteous - in other words, to devalue
innocent human lives enough that you can live with the things you do to them.
To casually equate such wanton violation of every civilized standard of
conduct, with the extreme if admittedly at times imperfect care that military
forces exercise to _avoid_ behaving even remotely similarly, strikes me as
something that must be motivated either by arrant ignorance of the facts
underlying the case, or by some sort of ideologically motivated disinterest in
them. Neither seems to me terribly useful in developing an accurate
apprehension of reality.
~~~
hasenj
> A military organization, such as that described in this article, seeks to
> minimize civilian casualties to the utmost possible extent.
This has only become the case officially after WWII.
And frankly I think the only reason this even matters is the media.
Civilian lives meant absolutely nothing and were considered fair target during
war.
Millions died in WWII from intentional fire bombing campaigns on urban areas
by the allied forces.
Same in the Korean war.
Same during the Vietnam war.
Civilians were purposely targeted to "demoralize the enemy" and force them to
surrender.
The official difference between war and terrorism is that war must be
officially declared by a government and have specific objectives and once the
objective is reached then the killing should stop.
~~~
vain
> _The official difference between war and terrorism is that war must be
> officially declared by a government and have specific objectives and once
> the objective is reached then the killing should stop._
What's your source for this definition?
~~~
hordeallergy
Also, haven't isil declared war, and with specific objectives?
~~~
throwanem
Which government has recognized ISIL's claim to sovereignty in those
territories it still holds, or indeed in any territory at all?
~~~
vacri
The US and Russia both have claims to sovereignty there!?
~~~
throwanem
ISIL's claim is the one under discussion, though. That's the one whose
recognition would signify in the question of whether their actions are
legitimate warfare, by the standard cited earlier in this thread. US and
Russian claims are a different question altogether.
------
d--b
Ugh, this is the most depressing piece of journalsim I've read in a long time.
The combination of actually-happening-dystopian-surveillance-based war and
ptsd-ladden office-space-like-suburban life makes me sick to my stomach.
~~~
zxcmx
Is it so different if you fire the guns yoursef?
Is the experience more "authentic" if you are in the warzone?
Are we in a world where we need artisanal, hand-fought wars?
I know exactly what you mean though :( But the problem is war itself.
Humans are humans, but we need to resist war on every level we contribute to
it, no matter how remote. This might mean not contributing to organisations we
otherwise support.
~~~
adrianN
It seems to me that sometimes the best way to resist is to fight. How would
you deal with groups like IS without killing people?
~~~
Filligree
For groups like it, the only fix would be to not create it to begin with.
That is to say, it's the usual--improve the economy, secularize the world,
prevent people from feeling desperate enough that forming such groups feels
like a good idea. Some of it is about ideals, so spread Western ones; push the
world closer to being a cultural monoculture.
It's worth doing, but in the meantime, you have to fight them when they pop
up. There'll be lash-back to any attempt at doing this, too.
~~~
adrianN
Some people don't like being secularized and might start shooting if you try
too hard.
~~~
Filligree
That's a problem, for sure. Ideally you do this slowly enough that no-one gets
very upset, but...
What do you do about a country that treats women like chattel? If you push
heavily then people on all sides get upset, but if you don't then you're
overlooking suffering. It doesn't get any less real just because it's far
away.
~~~
meric
> What do you do about a country that treats women like chattel?
What do you do about a country where greed, lust, power permeates their entire
leadership, leading to gross economic, social and emotional inequality within
the country, willingness to express unchecked interference in others, an
unsubstantiated belief in their own cultural superiority, and along with all
other manifestations of the absolute lack of modesty in all layers of society,
through all behaviours?
You try to get out of the way, as far as possible, mentally, emotionally,
socially, physically and hope they shoot themselves on the foot enough by the
time they arrive they can't muck you up.
You may have gotten far away, but it doesn't get any less real. Keep going,
for they are chasing you, hunting you down.
------
kristofferR
I'm reminded of the July 12, 2007 Baghdad airstrike video:
[https://youtube.com/watch?v=w08bAwq_zro](https://youtube.com/watch?v=w08bAwq_zro)
------
golergka
I never get surprised to the ridiculous moral mechanics that drive western
commenters here and elsewhere to declare this "evil" or "terrorist". I get it,
you get squeamish at thought of killing — but when the rocket strike, although
killing innocent civilians, is net positive on innocent lives, why the hell
are you only talking about casualties and not about countless lives saved?
~~~
lb1lf
-Quick, snarky question: Would you feel as relaxed about the occasional loss of innocent life if the operations were carried out in your own neighbourhood?
~~~
golergka
Personal ethics and society ethics don't always match up and don't have to.
Society ethics should be utilitarian, optimizing general welfare from a third
person, objective point of view. Personal ethics is inherently subjective and
tied to your personal point of view.
Personally, I (and most people) support systems of societal ethics (such as
governments) because they work for me most of the time. Not necessarily
always.
~~~
mmjaa
Morals are personal. Ethics, social. There is no such thing as 'society
ethics'.
In this case, the ethics of one group allows it to destroy the civilisation of
the other group, whose ethics are not aligned well enough to the original,
more powerful group.
------
vacri
Every time I read one of these articles these days, it reminds me of Frankie
Boyle's comment:
> _American foreign policy is horrendous 'cause not only will America come to
> your country and kill all your people, but what's worse, I think, is that
> they'll come back 20 years later and make a movie about how killing your
> people made their soldiers feel sad. _
~~~
andruby
Awch, that's painful in many ways.
------
dmix
I wonder what kind of latency they get with this feed from a drone in the
skies of Iraq to a base in Qatar to her office in the East coast of the USA.
Considering they need to respond pretty fast to what's happening and
coordinate with pilots or people on the ground.
~~~
d--b
[https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/21352/how-do-
dr...](https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/21352/how-do-drones-
overcome-latency)
------
dredmorbius
"It's just data."
Information is pointers.
Some points to lives.
Some, deaths.
------
staofbur
This makes me think of Enders Game.
------
dingo_bat
Good, this is exactly how developed nations should fight wars. No need to send
in personnel.
Also, I hope somebody is taking all that video and text analysis and feeding
it into a mammoth neural network. We need to automate drone operations ASAP.
------
rdl
This seems like a perfect opportunity for automation. Describing a scene from
a video feed and what is happening is within current tech, especially with
periodic human oversight.
~~~
vesak
So now again we're devising methods of killing people that make it easier for
the killers. That's the same problem that the overseers of death camps faced
and solved.
~~~
HenryBemis
well we do have a few "Judges Dredd" on this planet, no wonder that they will
become more efficient/effective.
the solution is never the violence as it will only bring more violence. I
wonder why some humans persistently fail to understand that.. oh wait.. it's
money.
~~~
briandear
Would you rather we did nothing and all and allow things like this to continue
to happen: [http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-
sex...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-sex-slaves-
lamiya-aji-bashar-nadia-murad-sinjar-yazidi-genocide-sexual-violence-rape-
sakharov-a7445151.html)
There are people quick to condemn drones, still other condemn troops on the
ground, finally others who condemn providing weapons.. yet, not yet has one of
those proposed an actual, concrete solution to ending the Islamic State. This
isn't a group that responds to "talks" or "negotiation" or "diplomacy." They
are fanatics. They are rabid dogs. While many ISIS fighters weren't born
rabid, they quickly get infected. They make the Taliban seem positively
liberal. And, life under the Taliban was pretty close to hell -- especially if
you were a woman.
Have a look at this story from a former ISIS fighter as to what that group
does: [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-isis-member-explains-
why-...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/former-isis-member-explains-why-he-left-
terror-group/)
It feels that these anti-drone, anti-fighting, pacifist, appeasement types
would have us sign a Munich Agreement, condemning the people of the
"Sudetenland" to Nazi rule while proclaiming that betrayal as "peace for our
time."
Using smarter, technology assisted targeting would make it easier to stop the
pure evil of ISIS -- who, if given the opportunity, would suffocate Europe
under a veil of oppression that would make even Hitler blush.
I get it "drones," "Dick Cheney," "Bush, Bush, Bush, "NSA," "CIA," "US
Imperialism" \-- I know these are dog whistles to rile up progressives to make
them instinctively oppose anything the US does in the region.
It could be argued that defeating ISIS is one of the most progressive causes
on the planet today. Defeating an enemy that throws suspected gays from
rooftops, enslaves minority women, requires unrelenting devotion to a
government-imposed religious system, wants all Jews dead, straps bombs to
puppies, destroys historical sites, burns books -- I think I just described
almost the entire cannon of anti-progressivism possible. And yet, there is a
subset of progressives that actually suggest violence isn't the answer?
I guess if ISIS were global warming skeptics, maybe then we should try harder
to kill them?
On the other hand, if the US were to invest billions in building up the
economies of the region, perhaps providing billions to small businesses and
entrepreneurs -- then the US would be accused of economic imperialism. If the
US just stays out of the region completely, that's no different that the US
staying neutral in World War II, while China was conquered by the Japanese,
Europe and North Africa became a sea of Nazi red and millions of people, by
virtue of dubious genetic "inferiority," are shipped off to the camps.
Have we learned nothing from history? Evil, left unchecked, doesn't respond to
calm reasoning, it responds to overwhelming force.
If ISIS were in your front yard raping your sister and your mother, setting
your toddler brother on fire with gasoline while eating your pet dog for
dinner -- would you attempt to negotiate? Would non-violence really be the
answer? What if groups of heavily armed Republicans rolled into the Castro in
Toyota Hiluxes and started open firing on LGBT people?
It's easy, and quite frankly arrogant for any of us to sit in front of our
shiny computers, some of us on Aeron chairs making several thousand times more
money than the average person in ISIS territory will ever see in their
lifetime -- and talk about non-violence. It's that salon-pseudo-liberalism
that let the Nazis waltz right into Paris and sent the Jews from the Gare de
l'Est straight into the ovens.
Even Bernie Sanders supports violence when the threat is of enough
significance. In 1998, he voted for the US policy of regime change in Iraq. He
called Saddam a "brutal and illegitimate dictator" who should be removed from
office." Sanders again in 2012 voted to arm Syrian rebels against Al-Assad.
Hillary Clinton's policy proposal against ISIS featured this:
"Defeat ISIS in the Middle East by smashing its stronghold, hitting its
fighters, leaders, and infrastructure from the air, and intensifying support
for local forces who can pursue them on the ground."
Even GHANDI supported using violence in the defense of the innocent. "I would
rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honor than that she
should in a cowardly manner become or remain a helpless witness to her own
dishonor."
This idea of absolute non-violence is naïve.
~~~
jdietrich
Show me some evidence to suggest that drone strikes are making things better
in the Middle East. Literally anything.
ISIS didn't emerge ex nihilo. There's nothing in Aleppo's water supply that
turns people into mindless killers. They formed as a direct consequence of the
wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the overthrow of the Syrian regime. If we've
learned anything from our history of "intervention" in the middle east, it
should be that it's incredibly easy to make matters worse through poorly-
planned military intervention. The evidence of our failures in this respect is
abundant, going back beyond the 1953 Iran coup to The Great Game and the first
Anglo-Afghan war.
Drone strikes and bombing sorties might make you feel better, but there's no
evidence whatsoever that they're actually improving the situation. It's
equally likely that the bombing campaign in Syria, Pakistan and elsewhere is
just giving another generation a plausible reason to despise the western
world.
>If ISIS were in your front yard raping your sister and your mother, setting
your toddler brother on fire with gasoline while eating your pet dog for
dinner -- would you attempt to negotiate?
I'd take up arms to defend myself, and pray that nobody drops a bomb on my
house and calls my death "collateral damage".
~~~
briandear
Here's drone analysis from the liberal-leaning Brooking Institute:
[https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-drones-work-the-
case-...](https://www.brookings.edu/articles/why-drones-work-the-case-for-
washingtons-weapon-of-choice/)
"Drones have turned al Qaeda’s command and training structures into a
liability, forcing the group to choose between having no leaders and risking
dead leaders."
~~~
jdietrich
It's not at all clear that removing al Qaeda's leadership is a net
improvement. A leaderless al Qaeda is potentially more chaotic and more
indiscriminately violent; a diminished al Qaeda may simply create a vacuum to
be filled by IS or some other group.
A lot of this is reminiscent of the drug war. Taking out a kingpin looks like
a victory, but it only creates short-term instability and a surge in violence.
The root causes remain unchanged.
How many people do you need to arrest to eradicate the drug trade? How many
people do you need to kill to eradicate extremist ideologies?
[https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/exploiting-disorder-al-
qa...](https://www.crisisgroup.org/global/exploiting-disorder-al-qaeda-and-
islamic-state) [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-
east/2015-02-...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-
east/2015-02-04/al-qaeda-loses-touch)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What's happened to Webnotes? - ysoh
Hi, who is using webnotes currently? I discovered their service was down since yesterday. WHY??<p>http://www.webnotes.net/
======
ysoh
It gets alive again.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft offers developers 95% of app revenue to compete with Apple, Google - walterbell
https://www.techrepublic.com/article/microsoft-offers-developers-95-of-app-revenue-to-compete-with-apple-google/
======
eberkund
This is meaningless without some kind of guarantee they won't increase their
cut in the future. It's like, invest significant effort into developing for
our platform because we will give you 95% of the revenue. Oh you (and many
like you) have released the fruits of your labor and now our app store has
surpassed the Google and Apple ones? Well guess what, now we are going to take
a 30% cut because we reserve the right to increase our cut at any time as
indicated in our ToS.
------
rbanffy
To anyone with apps on two or more stores, MS included: is it worth it?
I considered registering so I could publish my browser extension
([https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpepefy-making-
tw...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/unpepefy-making-
twitter-g/ldjnhcjpldbplikakcfkcmeblikfadpe)) for Edge or IE, but having to pay
to register was a turnoff for publishing what should be a free extension.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Utah Teapot - jlas
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Teapot
======
bhouston
Here are these models in interactive WebGL:
The classic Utah Teapot.
[http://clara.io/player/8d9a8181-f1ce-4340-b24f-e36bbaf318f7](http://clara.io/player/8d9a8181-f1ce-4340-b24f-e36bbaf318f7)
Blender's Suzanne:
[http://clara.io/player/fdcbe819-ec7d-4468-99c0-3cc34ede9782](http://clara.io/player/fdcbe819-ec7d-4468-99c0-3cc34ede9782)
The Stanford Bunny:
[http://clara.io/player/616bf87b-c7f2-4925-b0d5-688069aee331](http://clara.io/player/616bf87b-c7f2-4925-b0d5-688069aee331)
To start editing these (or change the material, even render it via V-Ray, or
export as STL) in your browser, just click the "Edit" button in the top left.
------
batbomb
More info:
[http://www.cs.utah.edu/gdc/projects/alpha1/help/man/html/mod...](http://www.cs.utah.edu/gdc/projects/alpha1/help/man/html/model_repo/model_teapot/model_teapot.html)
> The way I got the story (this was even before my time as a grad student at
> Utah) the original teapot was modeled by Martin Newell and rendered by Jim
> Blinn in 1974 or early 1975. The Utah Teapot was the first computer graphics
> object to be designed and rendered as sculptured surfaces, rather than as a
> set of polygons. The design program which was used to create it used bicubic
> Bezier patches as a representation, and used a Tektronix storage tube
> connected to a DEC PDP-10. Position continuity between Bezier patches was
> maintained by keeping control points on the edges of adjacent 4 x 4 patch
> control meshes in the same place. Tangent continuity between patches was
> maintained by keeping the control mesh links adjoining adjacent edges
> collinear. I don't know how the radial and bilateral symmetries were
> maintained.
(You can find more interesting info there as well)
I've actually used a derivative of the software alpha_1, at Utah while I was a
high school program at the U. I actually used it to create a model of Escher's
Belvedere, IIRC using NURBs for the dome.
------
GuiA
In the same vein:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna)
------
greenyoda
See, also, the Stanford Bunny:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Bunny](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_Bunny)
List of common 3D test models:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_3D_test_models](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_3D_test_models)
------
yzzxy
Related story:
Blender uses a low-poly monkey for a placeholder, called Suzanne.
Producer Tommy Trash released a single called "Monkey in Love" with this cover
art:
[http://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-000053576235-yu7a6g-original.j...](http://i1.sndcdn.com/artworks-000053576235-yu7a6g-original.jpg?435a760)
Hmm... that looks familiar. Let me just check:
[http://williamgoldie.com/imghost/suzanne.png](http://williamgoldie.com/imghost/suzanne.png)
Yep. Looks like the artist just made a glass material and rendered Blender's
built-in model. I've surprisingly been unable to find any discussion of this
on the web.
------
necubi
If you find yourself in Silicon Valley, you can see the original Utah teapot
at the Computer History Museum. They have an incredible collection of
artifacts from the beginnings of the computing age.
------
balls187
Is the Utah Teapot the 3D version of `helloworld` ?
~~~
Laremere
I don't think it's commonly made by beginner modelers the way helloworld is
with programmers. As I understand it, the teapot is more so useful as a pre-
built model which you can use to test out different textures, materials, and
shaders. It's not too complicated of a shape, but it has curves and flat areas
more simple geometry doesn't have.
~~~
gtremper
It's the "hello world" for people writing rendering software.
~~~
a_e_k
I'd say it's more like the "Lorem ipsum" [0] of rendering. It's usually just a
convenient placeholder to test things out on.
[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorem_ipsum)
------
jlas
I thought it was neat that the OpenGL Utility Toolkit (GLUT) has a built-in
_glutSolidTeapot_ function for drawing the teapot.
[http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenGL_Programming/Basics/2DObj...](http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/OpenGL_Programming/Basics/2DObjects#Shapes_Built_In_to_GLUT)
------
ck2
I don't think they are done until you can 3D print it back into reality from
the virtual model.
~~~
nathancahill
It's been done:
[http://www.flickriver.com/photos/creative_tools/4454791986/](http://www.flickriver.com/photos/creative_tools/4454791986/)
~~~
fallinghawks
Does that photo have a slight illusory motion to it?
------
Jack000
don't forget Suzanne
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_(software)#Suzanne](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blender_\(software\)#Suzanne)
------
foxwoods
Here are more of these:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Test_items](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Test_items)
------
davvid
Pixar also hands out a Renderman Teapot every year during the Renderman Users'
Group at SIGGRAPH.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Open source tool for watermarking social videos and photos - formeranomaly
https://github.com/Remixee/RMXNews
======
formeranomaly
Made with the usual suspects youtube-dl, ffmpeg and electron.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Using Native Python Libraries in Lambda - Apes
http://codrspace.com/apeschel/using-native-python-libraries-in-lambda/
======
Apes
Hello, just put up this quick walkthrough on how to use a native library with
Amazon Lambda. Any feedback or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Univac 490 – 1963 Computer – Gallery Talk - broswell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hq7aVCc2GP810
======
broswell
The Univac 490 was an early Real Time Computer System. One installation was at
Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland.
Our museum is currently closed due to COVID-19, so we are making some videos
System Source Computer Museum
[https://museum.syssrc.com](https://museum.syssrc.com)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Edw519 wrote a book compiling his best HN Comments - zyfo
http://edweissman.com/i-turned-my-hacker-news-comments-into-an-eboo
======
edw519
Original author here.
This was a little side project to have some fun and maybe spread a little
value.
I frantically threw this together over the weekend to be ready for the traffic
Marc Cenedella (CEO of TheLadders.com) promised me today. His posts:
<http://twitter.com/cenedella/status/57759591789887489#>
and
[http://www.cenedella.com/job-search/leonardo-da-vincis-
resum...](http://www.cenedella.com/job-search/leonardo-da-vincis-resume-2/)
Thank you, Marc.
As many of you know, I spend most of my time writing software and generally
resist spending time writing other stuff (even though I always find time to
say something here). So in typical hacker fashion, I "launched" what I had
with the intention of accepting feedback and iterating. You guys have always
been really good at that.
I originally planned on a Kindle ebook, but Scribd was just so much easier for
me. I didn't realize that others had problems viewing or purchasing. If you're
outside the U.S. or have any other problems reading the sample, just email me
and I'll send you a free pdf.
All of your feedback is greatly appreciated. I'll keep updating the content as
I go and will gladly accept help with typesetting or distributing. I plan to
follow up with some of you during one of my breaks today.
If you buy the book and don't like it, I will buy you a cup of coffee the next
time we are together. If you buy it and do like it, make that a beer.
~~~
imajes
@edw519: send me an original editable format of the book and i'll typeset it
for you.
[email protected]
~~~
crocowhile
edw, do this and give this guy some cut. The scribd version is awful (at least
on my screen: <http://i.min.us/iksKDk.png>
------
pero
Hate to be the bearer of bad news--perhaps somewhat mitigated by the lack of
hardcopies--but it's 'foreword' and not 'forward'.
That is, unless this is either some technolingo or inside joke that I'm not
privy to.
------
cosgroveb
"I never publish my code. Ever. Users get to give me feedback, but I don't
care what other programmers think. Sure, I learn from them, but never in the
context of reviewing the code I wrote. I learn from the code of others and
apply those lessons to my own work."
You can, of course, do whatever you want but this seems awfully selfish...
Essentially saying that you will take whatever others (foolishly?) give in
open source, blog posts, etc., etc., but never give back. Am I reading this
correctly?
~~~
edw519
_Am I reading this correctly?_
No.
1\. Almost everything I ever wrote is proprietary. I couldn't legally share it
if I wanted to.
2\. I have never taken anyone else's code. In fact, I have rarely even ever
read anyone else's code. To me, someone else's source code might as well be
object code. "learning from them" means getting feedback without getting code.
Others make suggestions. I write my code.
3\. I prefer these analogies: You can eat in my dining room without going into
my kitchen. You can enjoy my wardrobe without watching me get dressed. You can
watch the movie or read the book without watching either being made. And you
can provide feedback about any of them that can be accepted and used.
My source code is private. My customer list is private. My address book is
private. My current location is private. My personal schedule is private. You
can, of course, share whatever private information you want, but calling my
choices "awfully selfish" is myopic and misinformed.
~~~
crocowhile
>I have never taken anyone else's code.
This is REALLY hard to believe. Also, god bless the person who thought me to
use other people's code.
------
rb2k_
I think I'd really enjoy the read.
It would have been a bit nicer if the great comments were accompanied by some
good design/typesetting (generate latex?) and an alternative format (epub).
There are a few solutions based on princeXML that can take easily generatable
HTML+CSS and convert it to pdf (example:
<http://www.alistapart.com/articles/boom> ).
While the Prince license might not be the cheapest, there also is a webservice
that does the conversion (<http://docraptor.com/tour>)
~~~
lubos
docraptor.com looks like a paid version of wkhtmltopdf which is free
~~~
rb2k_
docraptor.com uses princexml which theoretically could not only do HTML, but
any XML based format. Prince does however include a default style sheet for
XHTML and HTML seems to be the only input that docraptor accepts. Not sure
what happens if you throw non XML conform HTML on Prince.
------
wallflower
Ed is one of the most prolific and valuable members of the HN community. That
being said, I'd love for andrewwarner to do a Mixergy interview. Ed is not the
typical Mixergy success though but we could all learn from his b2b success.
~~~
edw519
Thank you, wallflower.
A few years ago, I did a Mixergy interview along with rms about Hacker News:
<http://blog.mixergy.com/why-communities/>
Andrew, if you're reading this, I would love to do another, not about my past
projects, but about my next one. Stay tuned...
_we could all learn from his b2b success_
Hmmm, sounds like an idea for another ebook....
~~~
AndrewWarner
Yup. I'm reading this. Let's talk privately about how we could set it up.
<http://mixergy.com/contact>
------
maxklein
He should do Amazon Kindle self-publishing and write about the sales numbers
later.
------
epo
I'm not a US citizen and all I see is obfuscated content reminiscent of
rot-13. Am I being slow this morning?
~~~
Schmidt
Try disabling noscript / enable javascript. I had the same problem
------
arthurk
I tried to read this but the Scribd reader hung up on me after a few pages and
all I got to see were blank pages (I'm using FF4). Would it be possible to
compile some of the comments in a "Sample.pdf" file and directly link to that
instead?
------
nopassrecover
I just saw this in his profile yesterday, intend to buy.
EDIT: Apparently I need to be a US citizen. I'll find some other way to send
him a donation.
------
joshuacc
I just purchased the book and it was totally worth the $2.56. Which, BTW, is a
nice price. :-)
Comment #49 is a piece of advice that will pay for the book many times over,
no matter what you do for a living.
------
DanielBMarkham
Congrats Ed! Good luck publishing!
I have a similar project, so I'd like to know how you decided which comments
to pick, how you put them together, etc.
I'm working with the epub format right now. Not sure if I made the right
choice or not, but it seemed like the best technical option to hit the most
platforms. Never occurred to me to use Scribd.
~~~
edw519
Thanks, Daniel.
My app gives 5 sort options
\- by descending number of words, because short comments don't make good book
entries
\- by descending points, to take advantage of the feedback you guys already
gave me
\- by descending date, to grab the more applicable comments
\- by descending weight, my own changeable formula, attempting to put the best
stuff up front
\- in output sequence, to get a feel for how the final product will flow
I say a little more about this in the foreword.
I also hope to clean up the app and make it available if anyone else wants to
give it a try.
------
Tycho
I probably would have bought it for that price but it says United States only.
Perhaps Gumroad or Hawtcakes would work? Or the Kindle store? (I heard you can
instantly convert files to Kindle format by mailing them to
[email protected])
Another site that I used to visit regularly, for about 7 or 8 years, had a
poster who kept his own text-file of all the great posts he'd read over the
years. Occassionally he would tease us by posting extracts (of course,
everybody wanted to know how many of _their_ comments made the cut)
occassionally. But I always thought the file itself was probably worth actual
money. And I keep forgetting to make a similar effort for other online
communities (HN for instance. But you'd be here all day catching all the great
coments on HN).
------
openczun
Jason Gilmore (@wjgilmore) has an interesting article on publishing a book
using DocBook, and git for version control.
[http://www.wjgilmore.com/blog/entry/why_i_published_easy_php...](http://www.wjgilmore.com/blog/entry/why_i_published_easy_php_websites_with_the_zend_framework_using_docboo)
\--
Also, I just bought Ed's book ... Really great commentary in there. Somewhat
sad I've only been a member of the HN community for such a short time.
------
revorad
Thanks Ed! How did you make the ebook? I've been looking for a good app to
convert blog feeds to books, but haven't found anything that just works.
If you send me an email I will be happy to put it up for sale on my new store
(for free of course).
You might also want to try Sahil's <http://gumroad.com>.
~~~
pero
How the book was made is discussed in the 'forward'--which is viewable in the
preview.
~~~
revorad
Thanks, that's an interesting read too!
------
WiseWeasel
This will sit nicely next to my Encyclopedia Weaselicus, available now for the
low, low price of $3.59.
------
amitagrawal
Stuff like this should be made a compulsive reading for hackers.
This solves a very basic problem with hacker-related knowledge - you don't
know what to search until you know what to search!
And books like Ed's solve this by compiling it all in one place. Someone here
did one for pg's essays and other articles and the result was a 12+MB file
good to last you a few days if you're at it.
------
MikeCampo
Great idea and I would love to buy it, but I'm not a US citizen :(
------
vkdelta
bought. read. Worth every penny 256 times.
------
m0th87
About time :)
------
zyfo
Link to the actual book: <http://www.scribd.com/doc/52729281/The-Best-Of-
edw519>
I really like this idea and will buy the book. However, it would be nice if
the comments were time-stamped, as not all advice is timeless.
Anyone know of any other forum-comments-turned-book examples?
EDIT: I would buy it if I didn't have to be a US citizen to buy a digital book
in scribd. Why is this a problem for a book like this?
~~~
tyng
Good find. I believe Amazon allows you to sell ebooks internationally, I could
be wrong though.
~~~
electromagnetic
It does.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Israel Caught Russian Hackers Scouring the World for U.S. Secrets - tsneed290
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/technology/kaspersky-lab-israel-russia-hacking.html?referer=https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/75kszo/how_israel_caught_russian_hackers_scouring_the/
======
arkitaip
Regardless if Kaspersky knew about the attacks or not, surely their reputation
is utterly destroyed. Either they worked for Putin or got breached by his
hackers, neither which sounds good.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CDC staffers say White House putting politics ahead of science - notRobot
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/20/politics/coronavirus-travel-alert-cdc-white-house-tensions-invs/index.html
======
nck4222
This has been painfully obvious for the duration of this administration,
nevermind just recently.
The danger is that at some point an administration would be so adept at this
that it's not painfully obvious. In theory, at the very least the electorate
is informed enough at this point that they can consider this information when
voting. Admittedly, that's pretty optimistic take on the US electorate
however. An educated, well informed public is necessary for a successful
democracy, and America's problems with education are well documented.
~~~
noad
The dawning realization that there are very little to no checks or balances on
the executive branch has not led to calls for reform, it has not led to calls
to ratchet back power in the executive branch at all.
Just the opposite, it seems like both Democrats and Republicans top priority
seems to be seizing and expanding their own power. Nothing else matters, they
just want this newfound freedom to operate in the margins for themselves. All
the messaging is about how the other side is evil and THIS election is the
most important of our lifetimes, you absolutely have to vote for our team and
not the truly evil other team.
The first competent authoritarian demagogue is going to do much more damage
than this administration. Nobody seems to care at all about the side effects,
they just want their team to stay in power or get back in power.
~~~
paulryanrogers
There have been some calls to break up the status quo over the years; such as
with campaign finance reform, same day primaries, term limits, etc.
Not everyone is totally drunk on power since Romney crossed over to convict
and Democrats have critized Obama.
------
_bxg1
I've stopped being surprised, and I don't have the capacity to continue being
upset every time something like this comes up. This administration is a farce.
It's just a fact of life. Expecting otherwise at this point is like expecting
an infant not to throw their food all over the table. It's just a waste of
energy.
~~~
snarf21
This is the exact intention of his strategy. People just want to live their
lives. We really need to do away with the concept of executive orders. At
least laws have built-in checks and balances and require compromise. Just goes
to show this is not a government for the people, merely the rich and powerful.
~~~
_bxg1
I think the word "strategy" is generous.
------
whatshisface
This poses a big problem with the "you can only say it if the CDC says it"
policy of some major platforms: the President is in charge of the CDC, so what
the platform providers think of as an impartial unbiased source is ultimately
beholden to politics.
~~~
mc32
“Former members of the CDC we hold in high esteem“
~~~
whatshisface
What's that a quote from? There is more than one major platform.
~~~
mc32
No one yet. I’m just pointing out the criterion can be changed at any time a
platform wants without providing any basis.
------
vharuck
>Some experts say the worst consequence of the frayed relationship is a
general sense that the CDC has lost its place as the face and voice of public
health in the midst of a 100-year pandemic.
This will be the second worst outcome of the pandemic for the world (the worst
being the harm and loss of life directly caused by the virus). The CDC does a
lot, and they had built and relied on a lot of clout among experts and the
general public. That's rare and valuable. But if that goes away, everything
will get harder. It's already hard enough to convince people to adopt
healthier behaviors when they believe the CDC gives good advice.
I've admired the CDC as an apolitical agency that is led by experts, wants to
help instead of control, and is willing to adapt (at least more than most
federal agencies). I just hope the state and local officials don't lose faith
in the CDC.
------
tenebrisalietum
The party in power always gets blamed for a poor economy.
Given this, it's not surprising that the party in power wants to do everything
it can to keep the economy from freefalling.
The change in norms starting in 2016 may cause this to be different this
election year, though.
------
doubt_me
Vote
------
generalpass
From an organization that puts politics ahead of journalism.
------
malandrew
It's really rich having the CDC make that accusation when only 10% of its
budget is spent on infectious diseases and a sizable portion of the other 90%
is spent on more politicized "diseases".
Not saying the White House is not wrong here (they certainly are), but the CDC
should also get its own house in order and return to 100% focus on infectious
diseases, which was its original mission statement before rampant political
scope creep.
~~~
orwin
If the CDC really only spend 10% of its budget on HIV, hepatitis, Ebola, flu
and infantile diseases like chickenpox and measles, including worldwide
outbreak surveillance, and 90% on "politicized" disease, it is indeed an
issue. I'd like numbers on this still.
And do you count obesity, tobacco and diabetes in "politicized" disease? and
if you do, could you explain why?
~~~
malandrew
CDC originally stood for Communicable Disease Center when it was founded in
1946. From 1946 up until 1992, it was really only involved in preventing
communicable diseases (i.e. infectious diseases like malaria, HIV, polio,
smallpox, the flu, etc.). It was not until an act of congress in 1992 (the
Preventive Health Amendments of 1992), that its role was changed to prevent
disease, injury and disability.
It was at that point that it started its mission started to become politicized
because there was no longer a very clear criteria about its mission statement.
Preventing disease, injury and disability, especially those due to lifestyle
choices is a very broad charter open to interpretation depending on your
politics.
Some diseases, injuries and disabilities are such where there is universal or
near universal agreement, and thus are less politicized. I won't specify any
particulars of which ones I think are or are not worth pursuing because my
politics are irrelevant to the point I'm making. Suffice it to say that
agreement on what is worth pursuing exists on a spectrum from a disease,
injury or disability that near 100% of Americans agree is worth addressing to
ones where 50% or fewer think is worth addressing. The lower the percent of
Americans that believe something is worth addressing with federal dollars, the
more politicized it is.
The issue is that as you expand the scope from communicable diseases receiving
100% of attention to preventable diseases, injuries and disabilities, you
necessarily dilute the scope and attention paid to the communicable diseases.
Since 1992, the scope of the CDC has become so broad that's they don't really
have communicable diseases as a priority and the problem with that is that we
pay for that dilution of focus in the CDC's extreme incompetence when a
pandemic arrives.
Prior to 1992, the President and Governors would be speaking to leadership at
the CDC whose sole focus was communicable diseases. Since 1992, the President
and Governors are increasingly likely to be speaking to career bureaucrats
that may or may not have any professional expertise with communicable diseases
and their prevention and such people will likely be several levels removed
from the people at the CDC that still do work on communicable diseases.
tl;dr the Center for Disease Control has become a jack of all trades, master
of none.
Also, a clarification on my numbers since I spoke imprecisely. Less than 10%
is spent on emerging and zoonotic infectious diseases, which are the ones that
concern us with an unexpected pandemic. $509M out of $6.594B.
$2.557B is spent on existing communicable diseases ($1.318B HIV/AIDS,
hepatitis, STI, and TB and $730M immunization and respiratory diseases). $825M
is spent protecting Americans from natural and bioterrorism threats, which is
honestly shocking considering how badly they bungled this natural threat.
$468M is spent on monitoring health and ensuring laboratory excellence, which
is also shocking after they shipped lots of faulty tests and when it is the
FDAs job to approve new tests.
------
jakeogh
The CDC guidelines regarding masks have no science behind them. They are not
established to protect anyone from Coronaviruses, any yet the effect of their
mask guideline is we have millions of people driving their cars and walking
_outdoors_ breathing significantly elevated CO2 levels and significantly
lowering their blood oxygen content.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23206415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23206415)
~~~
hello_1234
Most people who contract the virus are asymptomatic, and they spread the virus
without even realizing that they have it. It seems quite obvious that if we
encourage everyone to wear masks (including the asymptomatic carriers), we can
greatly reduce the number of transmissions. We know the virus transmits
through airborne droplets, and science is pretty clear that masks reduce the
spread of those droplets.
~~~
jakeogh
[https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/mask-
use...](https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/coronavirus/mask-use-rises-
dramatically-evidence-their-effectiveness-sparse-and)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HN comments are underrated - ingve
http://danluu.com/hn-comments/
======
pavlov
I second Dan's advice of blogging more.
I'm a very average HN commenter. I do put in effort in writing here, trying to
be civil above all and sharing my experience where it could be of interest.
But I'm not Alan Kay, I've never rewritten a distributed deep learning system
in Haskell using a genetically optimized Paxos consensus protocol, and my
entrepreneurial experience is a loose string of "don't do this" case studies
at best... So my comments certainly won't make anyone's "Best of HN" list.
Last week, after the news broke that Salesforce walked away from buying
Twitter, I was about to write a HN comment about what Twitter could do. The
text got long enough that I decided to expand it into a Medium post instead:
[https://medium.com/swlh/twitter-could-be-the-next-
mozilla-e7...](https://medium.com/swlh/twitter-could-be-the-next-
mozilla-e788e3bfd841#.x0gbzodo4)
To my surprise, the post has 28,000 views and 755 recommends so far. If I had
written it as a HN comment, it would have got maybe 5-10 upvotes and perhaps
spawned a short discussion thread about how unrealistic my idea was. (Please
don't bother to criticize the content of the blog post in replies here -- I'm
just using it as an example of blog vs. comment.)
I love reading HN discussions... But maybe there could be a site that slots
between the HN and Medium formats, and lets you expand your comment into a
blog post with minimal friction? Call it "HN Long-Form" or whatever. Ideally
it would interface with the HN comment system so that you could mark your
comment with something like "Promote to long-form" after you've written it.
That would create an editable post on the long-form site. You could then later
expand your comment there, and publish it on the long-form comment aggregator
site. (Maybe I should just build this myself and see if it feels right.)
~~~
atmosx
> I'm a very average HN commenter.
An 11k karma is not _average_ IMHO. You're way above average HN commentator.
I think that you just used the _best tool for the job_. That doesn't really
mean anything about comments. You read what I consider _low level_ comments
and _high level_ comments on technical and social subjects from the SAME
nickname all the time at HN.
~~~
pavlov
I've been on the site since 2008 IIRC, so I've had plenty of time to
accumulate karma.
------
pavlov
On second read, I'm not sure I agree with the first paragraphs of Dan's post
at all. He seems to be saying that HN is terrible, but a handful of comments
from star posters rise above the muck. I just don't think that's fair.
Yes, the cliché is that HN is a place full of mean, entitled semi-autists who
will criticize your site's CSS whitespace formatting when you ask for business
feedback... And of course there's a grain of truth to that (persistent
stereotypes usually don't come out of thin air), but it misses the mark on two
dimensions.
The first is that the criticism you get on HN is no worse than what other
aspiring creative professionals suffer. I went to an art and design college,
and the critique you'd get from students and even teachers was 99% of the time
harsher than the HN style, yet no more guaranteed to be useful.
Consider a first-time novelist who spent years on a book. One day it gets
critiqued in a newspaper. The professional critic might find that the author
has a clumsy style, poor research, paper-thin characters, and seems to lack
the life experience to even write about the topic. What do you do after that
kind of criticism? You suck it up and go back to work on the next novel.
Making use of feedback is all about filtering and reducing multiple sources
into something actionable. Nobody is right all the time. Your parents were
wrong. Your teachers were wrong. Your peers were wrong. Your professors were
wrong. Your boss was wrong. Your cofounders were wrong. Your investors were
wrong. HN commenters were wrong. Still it's worth taking in all these inputs
as much as you can.
The other dimension of HN comments is that they can be surprisingly deep. When
an arts or culture topic makes it to the front page, it seems like someone
comes out of the woods with the perfect personal anecdote. Whether it's
Mondrian, Messiaen or Modiano, there's always someone on HN who happens to
have a passion for it.
HN comments are underrated, but it's not just because of star power: it's
everyone's contributions that make it consistently worthwhile for me.
~~~
Mz
Comment moved, per request.
~~~
lucb1e
Is there any reason why you replied to a comment instead of responding to the
article? Because as a sub it has little added value to the parent, but as a
top level comment I would have liked to see it as the #1 comment.
Edit: for the record, it moved to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775905](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12775905)
------
anton_tarasenko
When I worked with the HN post data, I noticed that some years ago HN users
had correctly predicted the "Show HN" projects that later got funding. Those
projects had more upvotes.
The more recent data has no such connection. It seems that the influx of users
reduced the quality of judgement.
So one way to improve HN submissions and comments is to weight points by the
user's tenure on HN.
I also suspect that early comments dominate late comments by the time factor
alone. The sorting algo gives a brief advantage to new comments, but old
comments are more visible. A post on the front page gets 30+ comments in the
first hour, and latecomers can only post into the void. To address that, long
branches could be collapsed by default, leaving only 2-4 visible messages per
branch.
~~~
tgb
Interesting, but when I upvote Shown HN posts, it's because it contributed to
my enjoyment of reading HN. That's largely orthogonal to whether it would be a
good product, and often times is directly contradictory towards it (fun tech
demos -> upvotes, products -> meh). I don't think that's a decline in the
quality of HN, it's just a different focus. I use HN as entertainment rather
than as a prediction market. But I can see that others would not like the
shift.
~~~
jschwartzi
Yes. And the analysis could be improved by coding each submission according to
its intended status as a cool toy or a side project. I bet that as HN has
grown we're seeing more toys and less startup projects on Show HN.
------
anexprogrammer
HN comments are full of naive political opinion, groupthink, and a tendency to
blind optimism on all things technology or new. Often older ways have merit
too.
It's also probably the only place left on the net where, from comments, I'll
find out rapidly, and bluntly with citations, when I'm wrong (and, yes I'm
often wrong on the Internet!), usually learn something new on the topic, and
sometimes talk with the guy who invented it. My ADHD brain loves the depth
that side topics can get explored and being surrounded by people far cleverer
than me.
I wouldn't have it any other way.
~~~
Jimmy
>I'll find out rapidly, and bluntly with citations, when I'm wrong (and, yes
I'm often wrong on the Internet!), usually learn something new on the topic
If you stay off the default subreddits and only go on the intellectual/debate
subreddits, then I honestly think reddit is better for this. The amount of
expertise on reddit is astounding. It's very easy to find someone to
rigorously challenge any view I have. I'd go so far as to say that it's the
smartest place on the internet (except for maybe places like MathOverflow and
some other specialty blogs/forums). They do have a natural advantage because
of their huge userbase.
~~~
shawnee_
Business startup ideas are essentially experiments in economic theory.
Yet HN comments are vastly inferior to Reddit's when regarding anything to do
with economics.
It didn't used to be this way, and I kind of miss the HN of old... where logic
and fearlessness were valued more than affiliation or keeping up of brand
appearances. I've been finding it increasingly disconcerting that the
incentive here lately has been to discredit or silence (bury) comments from
anybody whose opinion points out something like: yeah -- Airbnb's "business
model" might be creating way more more problems than it's claiming to solve.
Or that collusion in and among YC-funded companies might (or maybe should)
yield some Antitrust issues. The tech commentary can be pretty good, and there
are plenty of active HNers whose opinions I respect. However, it is leaning
heavy on becoming selection-biased and just plain mean to anybody with an
original idea.
~~~
VodkaHaze
Reddit is a swamp of filth wrt economics comments.
Basically all the subreddits except /r/academiceconomics, /r/badeconomics,
/r/econpapers are awful. I'm friends with the mods of /r/economics and they
have a really hard time reigning in the masses of ideologues (on all sides)
ruining what should remain pure economics discussions.
~~~
tptacek
Reddit and HN make an interesting comparison. Reddit's highs are _really_
high, far higher than HN's, often skirting the level of "so good as to be
newsworthy". But Reddit's lows --- and I don't mean trolling and harassment, I
mean the lower bounds of normal conversation there --- are much lower. I think
the median HN comment is better, by a lot, than the median Reddit comment.
I think you can extend the same judgement out to entire threads --- the best
Reddit threads being so much better than HN's that it's hard to even imagine
what HN could do differently to compete, and the median HN thread being better
than the median Reddit thread.
Another interesting thing is that the comparison would probably fall apart
completely if not for the heavily-moderated subreddits that produce the best
comments. If the Reddit comment cohorts included only the lightly moderated
subreddits, HN would probably win on all metrics other than volume and
diversity of topics.
~~~
toxican
While I still think HN probably has the better median, the quality of what
you're exposed to on reddit is mostly up to you. Ditch the defaults and
Reddit's median skyrockets. Ditch some of the more popular non-defaults, it
skyrockets some more. Start building a list of well-moderated subreddits with
a strong sense of community, and it jumps some more.
Not that you're doing this with your comment, but it has always struck me as
odd to treat reddit like it's a single website with a single experience for
all users. Yes, there's a base, universal experience, but it's truly up to the
user to tailor that experience into what they want. You want memes and fart
jokes? There are subs for that. You want to look at breathtaking photos? There
are (poorly named) subs for that. You want to discuss why obscure Warcraft
character A is behaving so oddly toward Warcraft character B? There's a sub
for that. To me, that will always be Reddit's strength.
No matter what reputation it gets, no matter how much shit goes on in the
defaults, there's always my little specialty subreddits filled with meaningful
content to consume.
~~~
tptacek
So that's the obvious response, and I agree, I think --- the comparison does
get trickier if you take just, say, AskHistorians versus HN (there are casual
Redditisms condoned even on well-moderated subreddits that are annoying enough
to keep the comparison tricky).
But if you compare the basket of subreddits relevant to HN --- programming,
crypto, etc --- right now, I feel like HN is winning handily. Reddit only
starts crushing HN when you broaden out into topics that aren't really in HN's
bailiwick.
~~~
Ar-Curunir
I find /r/crypto much better than HN for crypto discussions; you have more
than one crypto person there ( as opposed to essentially just you).
~~~
cpach
AFAIK HN has more than one qualified crypto persons.
------
dancek
I think HN needs a way to easily find the top comments. There are absolute
gems deep in discussion threads, but you'll need to spend a lot of time
reading to find them. Hence, it's very nice of Dan Luu to list some of his
favorites.
The top root-level comment for each comment page is obviously easy to see, but
good comments deeper in the comment tree are easily lost. Would be great if
e.g. the top 5% voted comments on a page were highlighted in some way.
Perhaps a workable solution would be to just follow the comments listing of
smart people. Guess I'll at least try that.
~~~
qb45
I swear there was a way to show top voted comments but I can't find it now.
~~~
DanBC
[https://news.ycombinator.com/lists](https://news.ycombinator.com/lists)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments](https://news.ycombinator.com/bestcomments)
~~~
tptacek
The problem with /bestcomments is that it's based on votes, and thus does not
in fact track the best comments.
------
latch
Removing the vote count was a step back.
You end up with highly positioned comments that are factually wrong and no way
to weigh the corrections made in replies.
If you saw that a comment had 20 votes, but a reply had 500, you'd have
something to go by. If nothing else, they could show the relative score of a
reply to its parent.
~~~
crispyambulance
How about just reading and evaluating what the damn words say instead of
relying on a "score"?
~~~
latch
Because there are a lot of topics, even in my professional field, where I
don't have the necessary foundation.
Because sometimes a comment reaffirms or conflicts with my evaluation and it's
useful to have a weight assigned to that.
Because the world has enough people who make their own evaluation and refuse
to change their opinion regardless of overwhelming evidence.
~~~
coldtea
> _Because there are a lot of topics, even in my professional field, that I
> simply don 't have the necessary foundation._
And what makes you think that the "majority vote" on them will be correct?
Most often, it's the majority that doesn't have the necessary foundation.
~~~
latch
It's not an all-or-nothing. It's an extra piece of information.
There might be valid reasons to remove it (it hurts the community, it leads to
negative behavior, .... I forget why they took it off).
But when it comes to trying to assess the quality of the comment, more data is
better than less. Then you have the option to weigh it as you see fit,
including ignoring it.
~~~
BeetleB
>It's not an all-or-nothing. It's an extra piece of information...But when it
comes to trying to assess the quality of the comment, more data is better than
less.
It could be an extra piece of _disinformation_ , which can make it more
difficult to evaluate.
I suppose I'd like it if there was no way to sort. What happens on Reddit is
that such comments easily bubble to the top, and they're often wrong, or just
making a silly joke rather than being informative.
------
tedmiston
I really think the author is onto something here.
Recently I've been thinking about doing a couple blog posts that summarize the
HN thread for a given article* in perhaps ~1500 words. I think of it like the
approach that r/tabled uses for AMAs on Reddit (example: [1]).
Would others find this interesting, or would you rather just read the comments
yourself?
A second idea is — a daily / weekly update of comments from all of the people
you're interested in "following" on HN. You can do this very manually right
now. I think it could be an interesting proof of concept.
*When I say one article, I really mean the aggregate of recent links around that topic as discussions are often merged or commenters bring information from other sources into the commentary for whichever link takes off on that topic. Often that is the most original source, but not always.
[1]:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/4lh4t1/table_iama_i...](https://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/4lh4t1/table_iama_i_am_david_belk_im_a_doctor_who_has/)
~~~
jacquesm
I did this once:
[http://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-sell-your-
company](http://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-sell-your-company)
It's still one of the most visited pages.
~~~
tedmiston
This looks excellent, and _very_ thorough. Thanks for sharing.
------
sideproject
I absolutely love comments on HN and they are probably the main reason I read
this site a lot. Some times, the posts themselves are quite self-explanatory
from the title and I just go straight to the discussions.
I created a little site called HackerNews Club
[http://hackernews.club](http://hackernews.club)
Where you can easily search for user's submissions and comments. FYI, here's
Dan's comments :)
[http://hackernews.club/luu#search/52e35e01f172df6d183c59633c...](http://hackernews.club/luu#search/52e35e01f172df6d183c59633ce86089ad66cece)
And HN users ordered by the number of comments they have made.
[http://hackernews.club/#search/39a2159841122c713bf4324d6f9de...](http://hackernews.club/#search/39a2159841122c713bf4324d6f9de7fbb98cfcd1)
~~~
phs318u
Seconded. I too love HN comments. Overall, my perception is that HN has
reasonably non-clickbaity articles with a good blend of tech and non-tech. The
comments I find largely pertinent, overwhelmingly constructively critical,
with FAR fewer trolls, flames and biased voting than any other public forum on
the internet I've ever come across since the original Usenet days. In fact, it
reminds me very much of good ol' Compuserve (there's nothing like having to
pay REAL money for a subscription to curb bad behaviour).
------
qwertyuiop924
You post a list of the best comments on HN without putting The Wisdom of Bane
on the list?
Seriously, how did The Wisdom of Bane not make it one here? That is one of the
best comments on all of HN.
For the uninitiated:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8902739)
~~~
bane
Aww shucks. Thanks for the shout out.
I realize reading this again that I owe a more significant writeup -- I
started one not long after this and wasn't happy with how it was shaping up.
Maybe I'll have another go at it.
Since writing that comment two years ago I've added a couple more examples
consistent with the ones in the original post.
One thing I keep seeing is how teams seem to think that the planning stage of
this kind of work involves figuring out how to shove the problem into the big-
data platform du jour instead of figuring out how to solve the problem that
has the business need. When they're working with the platform, and hitting the
inevitable and unplanned for performance issues (because, you know, just shove
the node to the hadoop cluster and it'll magically take care of that), the
solutions never tackle the algorithmic bottlenecks but instead seem to focus
on messing with the platform or changing platforms, or changing run-time
languages or throwing more hardware at it.
If you are having trouble taking the nuts off your wheel to change a tire,
using a bigger hammer or a blow torth isn't going to help. Take the time to
find the wrench, of the right size, and then things will work much better.
~~~
qwertyuiop924
I mean, you get shoutouts every day. Thanks for responding to this one.
>One thing I keep seeing is how teams seem to think that the planning stage of
this kind of work involves figuring out how to shove the problem into the big-
data platform du jour instead of figuring out how to solve the problem that
has the business need.
Ahhh yes. The "when X is your hammer" problem.
In this context, I think the appropriate incarnation is, "When Hadoop is your
hammer, everything looks like 1000 nails to be hit very quickly, using brute
force."
------
acabal
These criticisms, when phrased in the manner of the post ("HN is full of mean
and rude people"), suggest by omission that there's some kind of internet
forum Nirvana out there where everyone's nice all the time and nobody every
says mean things or is rude. ("HN is full of mean and rude people [... unlike
place X, which is always great all the time]")
But the thing is, once a community reaches a mid-to-large size, certain kinds
of people will always going to think it's full of jerks and trolls, and that
its golden age has long passed--regardless of the community's age or actual
composition.
I run one of the largest online writing communities online, Scribophile. We've
been around going on 9 years and I personally pride myself on the reputation
we've earned as being a friendly and supportive community. By and large people
seem to agree. And yet every now and then we still get people complaining that
Scrib members are out to get them, that everyone is mean, that Scrib's golden
age has passed. (I started hearing that same golden age comment about 6 months
in, by the way).
I think the truth is more like the faceless, voiceless, anonymous internet
makes it really easy for people to both a) be jerks, and b) misinterpret
harmless posts as people being jerks. I think this phenomenon happens in every
mid-to-large sized community, ever. And I don't think it's really helpful to
criticize any community of that size as having nothing but mean people, or
trending towards meanness.
~~~
zodiac
Uh, did you read his second paragraph?
> And yet, I haven’t found a public internet forum with better technical
> commentary.
~~~
lstamour
I don't think they're mutually exclusive opinions. HN could be seen as mean or
rude just as it can be technically correct -- and sometimes at the same time.
The original post also acknowledges that there's been an effort to reduce
negative comments in the past few years.
~~~
zodiac
I read danluu's first two paragraphs as making the argument that "comments on
HN are bad, but better than comments on any other online community", instead
of as trying to distinguish between meanness and technical correctness.
------
oskarth
I often find my self searching through old HN comments for all kinds of
things. Just off the top of my head I've searched for comments on: Redis, ZFS,
Raft, SQS, ZMQ, message queue, RDS, connection pools, ECS in the last few
days. I've learned quite a lot of things from reading comments by people with
way more experience in these matters than I have. And that's probably less
than half of my searches. A google search might give me some good stuff, and
Stack Exchange too, but HN comments are indeed underrated.
~~~
akkartik
Indeed. Searching on [https://hn.algolia.com](https://hn.algolia.com) is an
integral part of my workflow. When I read an article I often want to see:
a) What did people say about it on HN? Because the comments there are often
superior to the comments on the site itself. If there are multiple threads on
it separated by years, it's often interesting to read them all and reflect on
how opinions of reasonable people have drifted over time.
b) Did I upvote any of the threads? (i.e. Have I read this before?) Did I,
perchance, _leave a comment_?
Often this process adds a few more favorites to my list
([https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=akkartik&comments=...](https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=akkartik&comments=t)),
which is also growing to be an integral part of my workflow.
------
blt
I think the culture of rejecting joke-only comments is significant. I love a
good joke, but so does everybody else. Rewarding jokes would have a major
effect on the signal/noise ratio.
~~~
YeGoblynQueenne
Maybe have a [jokular] tag and let readers flag a comment as such, then allow
[jokular] comments to be hidden for the people who find them noisy.
Edit: this comment deservers the [overengineering] tag...
~~~
mortehu
Slashdot has something similar. Moderators' points have to be tagged with
"Funny", "Interesting", etc, and users can choose how to weigh each type of
point.
------
shubhamjain
I prefer cynicism over unthoughtful, inconsequential comments that floods
several discussion forums that I have come across. "Nice article", "Great
write-up" and the next thing you know, you have created a place where people
are only interested in submitting their articles and getting it upvoted rather
than make meaningful contributions.
People want to make good contributions here and that's something that
differentiates HN from other news aggregators.
~~~
nabla9
".. the measure of a healthy organization is probably the degree to which
negative thoughts are allowed. In places where great work is being done, the
attitude always seems to be critical and sarcastic, not "positive" and
"supportive". The people I know who do great work think that they suck, but
that everyone else sucks even more." -- Paul Graham
~~~
wpietri
The first bit is true, but the second is pretty much the opposite of what
Google found: [http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-
learn...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/28/magazine/what-google-learned-from-
its-quest-to-build-the-perfect-team.html)
In particular, Google found that psychological safety is a key component of
successful teams.
Indeed, I think in an environment where rudeness is the norm, it's much harder
to get people to share negative thoughts. Sure, you'll have a few alpha-dicks
who will say whatever shitty thing that comes to mind. But most other people
will just keep their lips buttoned because they don't want to deal with
critical, sarcastic comments.
If you want real, long-term organizational improvement, you have to create an
environment were people are willing to share problems and concerns without
fear that they'll get insulted or blamed.
One great example is Toyota's culture of continuous improvement, which helped
them go from post-WWII decimation of Japan to the world's dominant carmaker.
They're explicit that "respect for people" is foundational. A good book here
is Rother's "Toyota Kata", which goes into Toyota's culture and people-
management practices.
Another is airplane safety. For its ubiquity and technological complexity,
flight is amazingly safe. But this requires a culture of deep, thoughtful
honesty. Sidney Dekker's "Field Guide to Human Error" explains how much this
depends on creating blame-free contexts, how much it requires a deep respect
for people. Without that, people will a) blame others, and b) cover their own
asses in an effort to avoid getting blame. That muddies the waters enough that
you can never find and fix the systemic problems that caused bad outcomes.
TL;DR: If you really want people to share negative thoughts, you need
positive, supportive environments.
~~~
hiou
Nope. Seen both many times. The positive enforcement causes no one to share
any negative thoughts after a while and the company smiles it's way out of
business.
Unfortunately people who will not speak up out of fear are toxic to company
culture. The creative process is immediately destroyed when people need to
second guess everything they say or do since it is impossible to know if you
are about to say the wrong thing.
If someone can not tolerate cynical and sarcastic comments they need to be
removed quickly. This is very different from mean spirited put downs and
intentionally hurtful comments.
Stuff like "idk that button looks like it was mad in 2002" or "I swear we have
the shittiest parser ever right here". Is good and fine.
"You talk to much", "why did you write it like that? It doesn't make any
sense" Are bad.
Notice how the first like says "we" or talks about a specific feature and the
others talk about specific people.
~~~
xenadu02
First your anecdotes are not persuasive compared to two incredibly successful
companies and one incredibly successful industry.
Second, you missed the point. It isn't about prohibiting anyone from
expressing a negative opinion or sugar-coating things. That's a false
dichotomy. It's about not attacking the messenger and not looking to place
blame. It also means accepting valid criticism. You can be 100% honest without
being an asshole.
Why do so many people (especially in tech) try to link "being a raging
asshole" with telling the truth? The two are unrelated.
~~~
hiou
The problem is that many people who are hurt easily by cynical and sarcastic
behavior(which is very different than being as asshole) typically take
themselves very seriously and it's a sign that they are very self focused and
place their own concerns way above those of the team.
I wonder if there is a language barrier but cynical and sarcastic is very very
different from putting people down.
~~~
nickpsecurity
"The problem is that many people who are hurt easily by cynical and sarcastic
behavior(which is very different than being as asshole) typically take
themselves very seriously and it's a sign that they are very self focused and
place their own concerns way above those of the team."
Please give evidence supporting that claim. What I've seen is a lot of people
are just non-confrontational by nature. They'll do a lot to avoid being in a
fight. However, they may want to discuss things even with criticisms. It just
becomes harmful to them after the conversational style crosses a certain line.
Knowing this, groups like Toyota put a line down that allows the negative
information to come in without the personal attacks or circumstances that shut
many people down. Continuous innovations resulted that dwarfed the competition
doing what you suggest. This is not an isolated incident as many innovative
companies create similarly respectful environments where everyone tries to
improve, either positively or negatively, the process or products without
attacking each other.
~~~
grzm
Lots of good discussion in this whole thread. Another thing to keep in mind is
that good, effective communication involves both/all parties.
That involves the speaker communicating in a way that will be effectively
received by the listener, and the listener actively participating to try to
hear what the speaker is trying to communicate. So it's context dependent as
well.
There very well can be mismatches and miscommunication, but if the goal is
effective communication, I think in a lot of cases these can be tolerated and
worked around. Takes both sides.
~~~
nickpsecurity
"That involves the speaker communicating in a way that will be effectively
received by the listener, and the listener actively participating to try to
hear what the speaker is trying to communicate. So it's context dependent as
well."
That's a good point. In my classes on it, they called it active listening.
Anyone interested in following up on your point should type that phrase into
Google to find all kinds of interesting resources appear. Another angle I
found interesting was "dang" linking to Principle of Charity:
[http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html](http://philosophy.lander.edu/oriental/charity.html)
I think that would've stopped a lot of arguments. I was against enforcing it
totally at moderation level as I'm for empirical approach where we do dismiss
bad information if it clearly fits the pattern. It's good as a general
principle in discussions, though, when one's instinct is to think other party
is an idiot on specific topic. A combination of active listening, charitable
approach, and follow-up questions can make that discussion much better for
both parties. I even learn from people who are clearly wrong about an issue
when I see what things matter to such people & can fine-tune my solutions or
arguments to reach more people. Other times I'm wrong with similar effect of
fine-tuning ideas or beliefs as long as I suck it up. :)
~~~
grzm
Thanks for the Principle of Charity link! It calls to mind Anotol's Rapoport's
rules, summarized by Daniel Dennett as:
> How to compose a successful critical commentary:
> * You should attempt to re-express your target’s position so clearly,
> vividly, and fairly that your target says, “Thanks, I wish I’d thought of
> putting it that way.
> * You should list any points of agreement (especially if they are not
> matters of general or widespread agreement).
> * You should mention anything you have learned from your target.
> * Only then are you permitted to say so much as a word of rebuttal or
> criticism.
[https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-
rapo...](https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/28/daniel-dennett-rapoport-
rules-criticism/)
Might be too much for every comment response, but good to keep in mind.
I think I've been particularly fascinated by this whole area recently in part
because I know it's something I need to improve on. Your point _I even learn
... suck it up. :)_ is spot on.
Thanks again for your thoughtful remarks and contributions. Much appreciated.
Off to dig into the Principle of Charity and its references.
~~~
nickpsecurity
Yes, Rapoport's rules seem comparable. Succinct too. Bookmarked. :)
------
angry_octet
I greatly miss Usenet newsgroups -- NNTP ones, not yahoo or google groups, or
any of the pale http immitations. The best were usually moderated of course,
but even unmoderated ones often had high signal to noise. I imagine how they
might be now with rich text rendering, e.g. embedded TeX and images.
Good newsreaders (MT-Newswatcher on MacOS springs to mind, but also fast
console programs like _tin_ ) really helped. There were no 'likes' or 'vote'
buttons. But there was the ability to whitelist or blacklist certain authors
by adding them to a user's 'killfile', leading to the wonderfully pithy
permanent downvote reply:
<plonk>
~~~
DrScump
"I greatly miss Usenet newsgroups... but even unmoderated ones often had high
signal to noise..."
Me, too. My presence there began in 1987.
Part of what helped its signal-to-noise ratio was that participants tended to
be in industry or academia, resulting in both better-informed contributors and
a sense of community.
There was, of course, the odd flamewar here and troll there, but they were the
exception, not the rule. Even passionate arguments were mostly civil (ah,
comp.lang.c was quite a lively place as the ANSI standard was being
discussed... even just the NOALIAS debate alone).
Participants also cared about readability; good netizenship meant trimming
text unrelated to the context you were discussing ( _interleaved posting_ , as
Wiki calls it).
As the AOL bridge and the top-posting mongrel horde of Outlook posters flooded
in, there went the neighborhood... _damn neighbor kids messing up our lawn!_
~~~
angry_octet
And now top posting is the norm in email! It's so _anti-electronic_ to do it
that way, as if we were exchanging _letters_.
> Participants also cared about readability; good netizenship meant trimming
> text unrelated to the context you were discussing
I get confusion these days if I use [snip], people think I am mutilating their
email through spite or something.
------
mooreds
I have often thought it's be great to do a "best comments of the week" email
list the same way "Kernel Traffic" did for a number of years with Linux kernel
development: [http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kernel-
traffic/archives.html](http://www.kerneltraffic.org/kernel-
traffic/archives.html)
Condensing comments down to the 5-10 gems would be very interesting. And,
perhaps with the voting system, not that difficult.
~~~
veddox
I like that idea! The only problem I see is that great comments are often
embedded within an extensive discussion - how do you give readers of such a
digest the necessary context without too much bloat?
~~~
mooreds
I can think of two options:
* Embed enough to give the reader context (maybe a link to the original article or quoting the parent or grandparent is enough)
* Only include those comments that are stand-alone.
It'd be quite a lot of work, but even if you highlighted 10% of the great
comments, you'd provide a great service.
~~~
veddox
Absolutely! If you do it, I might just subscribe :-)
~~~
mooreds
Same to you :)
------
libeclipse
Another thing I've noticed about HN comments is that everything is hyped
beyond what it deserves.
For example, the recent DDoS attacks were just a bunch of skids with Mirai,
but it was discussed as if it was the end of the internet.
There's also the issue of self-censorship, where users will refrain from
posting their opinion in case they get downvotes and negative karma.
The things people post here are fascinating, but the comments, in my honest
opinion, aren't.
~~~
sotojuan
To be fair those two things aren't HN specific. They seem to be human nature
as they've happened in ever forum I've been part of.
------
throw2016
I miss the deep expertise often on display on forums like slashdot in the past
which is conspicious by its absence here.
In many ways this is more of a professional board than a personal board. A lot
of folks here are in the profession and don't seem to speak their mind, lest
they lose career opportunities. This also seems to promote an affection of
expertise and authoritative tone even on subjects commentators may not know
much about.
There is offhand dismissal of dissent as 'resistant to change' and a serious
lack of scrutiny that often allows broken technologies and services to be
hyped endlessly untill people come back months or years later to report
deficiencies but by then the train has left the station.
And any forum that promotes downvotes to signal dissent cannot by design
promote diverse discussion and will naturally coalesce around a 'socially
acceptable' consensus.
------
cyanbane
Reading this article and thinking back on the users on HN that I do enjoy
reading comments from I think that a neat feature may be the ability for a
logged in user to "favorite/mark" specific authors. Those authors only get
some particular character in front of their name (or a different color) so
that they stand out more. I do agree with this post about seeing certain names
and knowing that the signal ratio will be higher is nice. May just need a
better way to discern those when scanning a comments section.
~~~
cju
On Firefox, you can use extension "Favorite Users - Hacker News".
------
amelius
I wish there was more research in moderation systems. I think it is a
fascinating topic, because it can make or break an online forum. And perhaps
it even has applications in political decision making.
~~~
nickpsecurity
I agree. I don't know of any such research but this article posted on HN was
one of best summaries on the subject I've seen:
[http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11387934/internet-
moderato...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11387934/internet-moderator-
history-youtube-facebook-reddit-censorship-free-speech)
------
bambax
> 1838 days ago
Trivial improvement to HN: after more than 30 days, render time in number of
years and months instead of just days.
~~~
cybertronic
Even better: actual time and date of submission
------
return0
HN comments need a vertical bar on the left side to indicate indent level. i
find it hard to skim conversations in narrow screens.
~~~
sidcool
Agree. But I am just happy that they added collapsible comments.
------
lorenzhs
The comments on that "Lenovo is blocking Linux on some new laptops" story a
while back were truly abysmal. I think that's the only time where I was really
disappointed by HN comments. Now obviously (and as many of the more thoughtful
commenters pointed out) this was just a case of missing support in the Linux
kernel. There was no "secret deal" between Lenovo and Microsoft that the
customer service rep on that forum revealed. Intel posted some patches to fix
this a few days ago: [http://marc.info/?l=linux-
ide&m=147709610621480&w=2](http://marc.info/?l=linux-
ide&m=147709610621480&w=2)
The thread I question, with over 1000 points and 500 comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545878](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545878)
~~~
qb45
There was more to it than missing support in Linux.
These SSDs have two modes of operation: AHCI (supported by any OS) and
proprietary (requiring special drivers). Lenovo chose to hide the
corresponding menu in UEFI setup and hacked the firmware to revert changes
made through UEFI variables so that the SSD was permanently stuck in
proprietary RAID mode, at that time supported only by Lenovo's modified
Windows 10.
Ultimately Lenovo said they did it because RAID mode performs better, but they
only published this explanation after the outbreak of Internet drama.
~~~
lorenzhs
I didn't argue that Lenovo did everything right - but there was no conspiracy.
No secret deal with Microsoft. There were lazy decisions on Lenovo's side and
missing driver support in Linux.
But regardless of what the actual technical reasons where, when you look at
that thread now, wouldn't you agree that many of the comments were sub-par and
didn't meet the quality guidelines of HN?
~~~
lisivka
If deal is secret, how you know?
~~~
lorenzhs
Because you can now boot Linux on these machines. If there had been a deal, it
would have failed its purpose. Occam's Razor leads me to conclude that almost
certainly, there was no conspiracy. Let alone that some community forum
support guy would never be told about a secret deal.
~~~
qb45
> Let alone that some community forum support guy would never be told about a
> secret deal.
Nobody said it was secret, besides you. I think it was parent's point that you
are strawmanning here.
This was also the sole reason I responded to your initial post. You
misrepresent people's position and then complain that what you presented is
"abysmal" and "disappointing".
~~~
lorenzhs
That wasn't my impression reading the original submission or the comment
thread. Lots of things that would adequately be explained by lack of Linux
drivers and stupidity on Lenovo's side were attributed to malice and purported
as fact.
Also, the source of the entire story seems to have a background of baseless
accusations about vendors maliciously preventing Linux:
[https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/778680150812536833](https://twitter.com/mjg59/status/778680150812536833)
~~~
lisivka
But we also know that MicroSoft bribe officials for looong time. See link[1]
for example. MS can just bribe someone in Lenovo directly. Or, maybe, someone
in Lenovo is a huge fan of MS, so he can act against Linux just in case (I saw
this in my own company).
[1]: [http://techrights.org/2016/02/15/microsoft-bribing-
officials...](http://techrights.org/2016/02/15/microsoft-bribing-officials/)
------
netsec_burn
This article and its comments are surprisingly negative. I've long held the
opinion that HN is the best aggregator out there, and the comments are top
notch as well. Far better than Reddit, subreddits like
/r/programming+sysadmin+netsec etc, /g/, Slashdot, and the list goes on.
------
franciscop
My feeling is that a large enough part of Hacker News has been any time within
the last 10 years actively contributing in Stack Overflow. From my own
experience, I learned how to ask/answer technical questions and participate in
a technical discussion there while trying not to keep it political, and I
totally feel that has helped me to provide good comments in HN from time to
time.
So I would challenge the sentences:
> And yet, I haven’t found a public internet forum with better technical
> commentary.
I have, it's StackOverflow. Even though it is not a _public internet forum_
properly, I've found there some awesome technical commentaries there and I
think it might have helped HN a lot on that side.
------
cronjobber
> when people make comments that aren’t just reasonable sounding but are
> actually correct, those comments tend to get upvoted
For a while, I found that on pages with lots of comments the most interesting
ones were to be found at the top––and, buried between actual dross, at the
bottom.
That _might_ have changed, I don't see it that much anymore. But that could be
a side effect of something even less desirable. I think _some_ people may have
started flagging whole articles when the discussion has "too many" comments
they dislike. I can't prove this, of course.
~~~
zzzcpan
I have the opposite experience. I never found the most interesting comments at
the top on popular posts. They usually just reflect a public opinion or come
from "famous" HNers. I even reconsider my opinions, when my comments are
upvoted too much. Because it means that public shares the same opinion and it
is likely to be influenced by PR/marketing/politics.
------
sharpercoder
Coming from a certain frame, context and worldview given to someone by his/her
parents, many comments are not ill-intendend but come off as unhelpful or
negative. A problem with moderation on the web is that for willing people it
is hard to grasp why you have been given the mdoeration you got.
An idea I'm toying with is to allow meta-comment reactions to comments. They
would extend horizontally (as opposed to vertically for non-meta comments) and
allow medium-to-high experienced users to provde meta-comments (feedback).
~~~
humanrebar
> ...many comments are not ill-intendend but come off as unhelpful or
> negative.
Unhelpful to whom? Pointing out bad examples as bad examples is helpful to the
inexperienced; they may learn to avoid some pitfalls.
People who publicly push back against popular bad schools of thought provide
encouragement to others in the minority who might give up the fight out of
fatigue instead of conceding on the merits.
~~~
sharpercoder
I'm trying to point out that meta-comments (feedback) can help guide the
discussion in the correct direction. It's generally unwanted to mix meta and
non-meta discussion. So it may be practical to do allow for meta-commenting on
comments, but display it horizontally. This would allow users to focus more
and better on the matter at hand.
------
spectrum1234
This article and the (currently) highest rated comment with the Medium article
is making me want to write more.
I've always considered a simple blog where I just write short commentary on
articles I've read that I feel are incorrect or incomplete. One thing that has
held me back is knowing I'm not a brilliant writer. However am going to try
and keep in mind the great blog post by Paul Graham that stresses to always
write in short sentences. Good luck me!
------
hellofunk
> comments are often gratuitously mean, and people will often defend
> gratuitously mean comments by claiming that it’s either impossible or
> inefficient to convey information without being mean.
> Most of the negative things you hear about HN comments are true.
I think it is interesting how the relatively anonymised nature of the internet
has a similar effect on people of all stripes. HN readers, I believe, are
among the more intelligent, or at least curious, in our species. The same is
true of another popular internet forum, Stackoverflow. Yet there exists an air
of negativity that is of much higher ubiquity than in "real" life where people
are not anonymous. And this is true of most other internet forums as well
where more of the general popular participates. I think it shows in a strange
way that people just have a lot of negativity to vent, and the internet has
made that really easy and without consequence to the rest of one's life, and
that this remains true regardless of one's interests and general intelligence.
~~~
GrinningFool
I've found my negative tendencies curbed quickly when I started using my real
name, or accounts directly linked to my real name (such as this one). For me,
it just forces an extra second of thought - whatever I type next affects
people's perception of _me_ as a person.
At first this was just in the form of considering my reply more, but over time
it shifted to occurring as a part of reaching my initial conclusions.
~~~
nickpsecurity
I use my main account as "nickpsecurity" for the same reason. I've posted as
"Nick P" in security field for a long time. It's close to my real name. I do
controversial posts and generate plenty of material that could be used for
smears but tying it to my real identity does filter out some foolish, reckless
or smearing comments I might otherwise make with zero accountability.
So, I post everything here under that name or don't post it at all. The
results have overall been positive with a very low amount of bad reactions in
moderation or downvotes vs an aggressive throwaway I might create to write
comments of dubious value.
------
Mz
Yet another human bemoaning the fact that when myriad humans randomly get
together on the internet, some folks are clueless, some folks are not nice,
some folks write poorly, etc. There are things that can be done to improve
online discussion. But expecting everyone to be equally knowledgeable, savvy,
etc is simply not a reasonable expectation.
~~~
JoachimSchipper
Well, you can't have both that and "open", at least...
------
renke1
I admit that I usually read the comments first and then go to article.
------
lmm
> For the last couple years (ish?), the moderation regime has been really
> active in trying to get a good mix of stories on the front page and in
> tamping down on gratuitously mean comments. But there was a period of years
> where the moderation could be described as sparse, arbitrary, and
> capricious, and while there are fewer “bad” comments now, it doesn’t seem
> like good moderation actually generates more “good” comments.
I agree that there was a major change in moderation 1-2 years ago. But I think
it's worse rather than better. The moderation is more arbitrary and capricious
now (in particular it's a lot more active during the hours when the US is
awake), and there are a lot of positive-but-contentless fluff comments and
even humour, both of which are inimical to what made HN great.
------
zyngaro
So true. I often jump to the comments before I read the linked article. The
comments a very often of better quality and more informed than the article it
self. HN is unique in today's internet it's a great community and I hope it
stays that way.
------
bashexporting
HN comments are moderated (not the moderators which are completely fine and,
in my case, always clear of what was off-topic and in need of flagging, but
the community that flags) by the hive-mind that is like any hive-mind against
diversity.
Of the dozens of accounts I had, some have reached karma levels of awe, and
some were met with extreme flagging and disapproval.
The most pleasant and interesting discussions are mostly in the technical,
scientific themes.
When it comes to diet, lifestyle issues, comments are overflooded with bunch
of anecdotal claims, unscientific babbling and extreme boasting.
I stay away from these threads after I've realized this was the case.
------
ericolo
I come here for the content. Before I started frequently coming here, I used
solely reddit. I didn't "get" HN at the time. But at some point it started
growing on me, I started coming here more and more often, and right now it's
my primary source of random information. I still reddit, but more for leisure
and time wasting than anything else.
I don't check comment much, thought.
As a side effect, it had also changed my browsing customs; before it wasn't
difficult for me to go down to the 10th page on reddit.
Nowadays I'm barely past the 2nd page.
------
xcombelle
From my point of view, which is biased relatively to the HN target audience
because I'm not so much interested in the startup things, reddit is overall
superior to HN, either concerning the posts or the comment thread. concerning
the technological news feed, my best source of content is definitely
[https://lobste.rs/](https://lobste.rs/)
------
soufron
I feel the same. Most often, the comments are way more interesting than the
links they're commenting. This led me to calm down on commenting all the time,
coz I felt like I needed to try to make good quality comments in order to
compare favorably to the rest of the discussion, and to contribute to the
community. I wonder if others feel like this and decided to restrain on
commenting?
------
karussell
> HN comments are terrible.
The truth is that more articles than comments are waste of time (as comments
are often a lot shorter or simpler to grasp) so I have to disagree here: I
often find myself reading the comments before clicking on the article to save
me time. And I'm not the only one.
------
egeozcan
Of course the top comment can sometimes be positive. For example when the
article is about HN itself.
On a more serious note, I guess most people in the tech crowd can make a
5-item list of why HN comments suck and that is exactly the power of HN
comments.
------
Jaruzel
Zero criticism here - I _love_ danluu.com posts[1], but ...
Who is he? And why does all of his posts get massively up-voted?
Thanks in advance, from an ignorant chimp. :)
\--
[1] However, a little bit of CSS sprinkled on them wouldn't go amiss - even
just 'max-width' would help a lot.
~~~
JoachimSchipper
I upvote danluu.com because I consistently like the posts; at some point, the
domain name becomes a marker of quality.
Dan Luu has an about page and a LinkedIn page, but he's not a mega-celebrity
or Chief Architect of Google or some such - he's mostly a guy with an
uncommon-but-useful mix of backgrounds who writes well.
------
z3t4
One thing I dont like about HN is that I do not have time to read everything
and explore each new technology. It's like throwing away good food when you're
hungry.
------
jordanpg
The bellwether of a bad but possibly technically interesting HN comment is one
that begins with a humblebrag: "One time a Fortune 500 company hired me to re-
write their entire web tier using Django" or "last year, for fun, I wrote a
fully-functioning TLS implementation in node".
Such nonsense (or at best, unneeded information) is intended to provide
credentials so that the reader will take what follows more seriously. But
ironically it only serves to erode confidence.
~~~
GrinningFool
More and more I'm trying to take those at face value - a statement that
translates as: "I have opinions on this, but before I give them let me explain
why I think I am qualified to do so.
For most, perhaps it's a bit of both. And is that a bad thing? Is there
something wrong with asserting your right to wield a technical opinion while
also showing off a thing that you're proud of having done?
On the other hand, if I had prefaced that opinion with the following , it
would be been a bit over the top:
I've been reading comments for years. Not just on HN, but all over the
Internet. In fact, once I spent 60 hours in a week, just reading comments.
------
yanjuk
A way to reduce disruptive comments might be to make one downvote cost one
karma point.
Down-voting should be for disruption, not ignorance. Ignorant comments are
fine. Get them out there so they can be aired and corrected. Laymen get to
know what they think. Experts get to know what laymen think. Occasionally
there's a good idea.
Talk is cheap and we should do more of it. The alternative is people being far
more ignorant than they already are. But silently, in private, with more
potential for harm.
~~~
veddox
> A way to reduce disruptive comments might be to make one downvote cost one
> karma point.
That is such a good idea it has actually been integral to HN for, oh, I don't
know, a pretty long time... From the FAQ
([https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html)):
''' How is a user's karma calculated?
Roughly, the number of upvotes on their stories and comments minus the number
of downvotes. The numbers don't match up exactly, because some votes aren't
counted to prevent abuse. '''
~~~
tedmiston
This is what Stack Overflow does. Since it "hurts" their own karma, people
downvote less. One implication of that is that when threads stay at zero, it
can be hard to differentiate the reason why. Sometimes it's just that the
question is well written but obscure.
~~~
NeutronBoy
> Since it "hurts" their own karma, people downvote less.
Yes, so they just vote to close the question instead.
------
jasonkostempski
"Some downsides of immutability" ...
------
dilemma
The first and second paragraphs seem to contradict each other.
Comments (and previously blogs, but not so much anymore) can have more insight
than news articles because they're based on first hand experience. Journalists
don't have that, and the organization they work for often has problematic
incentives which they push onto the writer.
HN comments are indeed very terse, to the point of being unfriendly. It
bothered me at first but now I'm used to the style and sort of like it.
~~~
scwoodal
I'm guessing the author tried to convey a stereotype about the comments in the
first paragraph. Then tried to debunk that stereotype in the rest of the post.
There definitely could of been a sentence or two to help transition between
the two as it felt odd to me as well.
~~~
maxerickson
The post is dismissive of the value of the majority of the comments, it just
thinks there are some that are worthwhile.
It also suggests moving that content off of HN (or at least replicating it
elsewhere).
------
wfeui3
I lost faith in HN crowd when hyperloop started. California can not even
replicate 40 years old TGV, but somehow it will build space-like technology
for fraction of price.
And than there are politics. Entire world should accept millions of refugees.
But SF is different, and should not even host 400 homeless who arrive every
year.
~~~
ghaff
But it should build lots of housing for tech workers for whom life just isn't
worth living if they have to be anywhere else on the planet.
~~~
argonaut
Yes, because otherwise they'll just take all the other housing, since tech
workers are paid more.
------
anythingbot
I would like to propose wikipedia edit history and comment deletion milestones
for the hn comment system, and in addition, a comment redaction facility that
works like redaction of classified documents.
------
emblem21
Honestly, I come here just for the comments. I rarely read the articles unless
a comment is excited about something arcane.
------
k__
I follow many people on twitter who dislike HN. Reason for this is opinions
here are alsmost entirely from white males with money.
~~~
jessaustin
If this were true, it would merit study. How can a forum that is open to all
and used in mostly anonymous fashion, so effectively police the race of users?
And how could other less open less anonymous activities hope to succeed in
diversity?
~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
With regards to the gender aspect, see any of the threads related to 'women in
computing' and the horrible posts therein.
~~~
tnones
Only if you assume women cannot be successful in technology without needing a
special interest group mooching off the entire enterprise.
It's a vicious cycle based on a kafkatrap. If you don't agree that women are
discriminated against in tech, you're discriminating against women. Culture
committees, diversity consultants and women-only groups are set up to
"address" this problem, yet all they do is create more division and
alienation, holding up the most stereotypical fragile princess as
representative for every woman on the planet.
They keep throwing all sorts of accusations and aspersions on every single guy
in the field, shriek and pearl clutch when they receive blowback, and have the
gall to call this empathy, in a field where the average worker is an
undersocialized and overworked code janitor. Whose preferred communication
styles, hobbies and accomplishments are fair game to ignore or bulldoze over.
Pointing this out gets you labeled as "horrible". Fine, then. Yet another word
to add to the pile that has lost all meaning. Misogyny used to mean "hatred of
women", now it just means "something a woman hates". Which appears to include
the average mid-rung nerd.
~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
A perfect example of my point.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Good payment provider in Europe? - sxsde
What is a good payment provider in Europe?
======
ColinWright
Some recent discussion of this over at hackful: <http://hackful.com/posts/370>
~~~
sxsde
Thanks!
------
Sander_Marechal
I have worked with Ogone (<http://ogone.com/>) several times. No complaints so
far.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HyperDex: Hashing in Hyperspace for fast (really fast) key value store searching - peterhajas
http://hyperdex.org/
======
joshu
There's no actual documentation on the site or in the tarball :(
~~~
rescrv
I've uploaded a simple tutorial (<http://hyperdex.org/tutorial/>) on how to
get started. The tutorial covers everything from installation through to fully
functioning sample code.
If you have a minute to check it out, I'd appreciate any feedback you can
provide.
~~~
joshu
Thank you. I will do so.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
JRuby on Rails on Google App Engine - moomerman
http://olabini.com/blog/2009/04/jruby-on-rails-on-google-app-engine/
======
zacharypinter
App Engine might just be the push that JRuby needs for larger adoption within
the Rails community.
------
oomkiller
Thanks alot for this!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
To Design or Not to Design in the Browser - Annet
http://www.htmlcut.com/blog/designing-directly-in-browser.html
======
create028
Personally I will always start any design within photoshop, or actually really
back to basic's with pencil and pad to start off with. It is this raw
creativity and freedom that distinguishes a designer from a developer.
A simple way to describe how I see it is this analogy, would you rather get
dressed in a box, or would you rather get dressed then try and fit in the box.
You will end up in the box at some point either way.
~~~
Annet
"It is this raw creativity and freedom that distinguishes a designer from a
developer" - true! I have a friend of mine who is an absolutely left-brained
guy and can develop a website from scratch in a code editor. Frankly, his
websites aren't too creative and are a little bit 'mechanical', IMHO.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Coronavirus-tracker-CLI: Track conronavirus cases from command line - sasvari
https://github.com/sagarkarira/coronavirus-tracker-cli
======
chmaynard
The README needs to explain if the data is coming from the CDC or some other
source. We all know how unreliable this data can be, especially in the USA
where testing is woefully inadequate.
~~~
pretty_dumm_guy
Seems like data provider is John Hopkins University
[https://github.com/ExpDev07/coronavirus-tracker-
api/blob/370...](https://github.com/ExpDev07/coronavirus-tracker-
api/blob/370772c79e6bb9d0b68eaf41c6feac828c2bae88/app/services/location/jhu.py#L28)
I followed the breadcrums from here btw:
[https://github.com/sagarkarira/coronavirus-tracker-
cli/blob/...](https://github.com/sagarkarira/coronavirus-tracker-
cli/blob/44ae662113aa0293015ed3a3ec636c466b93d3a1/lib/api.js#L11)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pork grown in laboratory - dc2k08
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/article6936352.ece
======
jamesbressi
This will answer your first question:
"[b]So far the scientists have not tasted it[/b], but they believe the
breakthrough could lead to sausages and other processed products being made
from laboratory meat in as little as five years’ time."
~~~
nfnaaron
Another reason not to eat ground-anything. One, it's harder to keep ground
meat clean; you can't clean off the e-coli once it's been mixed in.
Now we won't be able to tell whether we're eating real or synthesized sausage.
I would be reluctant to eat synthesized meat because we probably don't
understand (or manufacturers will ignore) the entire relationship between a)
the result of the complex process of growing meat on an active bone that's
running around, and b) how our bodies evolved to process and benefit from
_exactly_ that configuration of protein, nutrients and composition.
~~~
andrewvc
We'll just have to see how your diet compares to my lab meat, multi-vitamin,
Metamucil, acai berry extract, and Slim Fast diet.
------
TNO
Does that make this pork kosher?
~~~
dfreidin
I suspect that it doesn't, since it's made from cells taken from a live pig,
and the rules are based on characteristics of the animal the meat comes from.
If they could synthesize it totally artificially, it might be kosher, but if
it comes from a pig, it's probably not.
~~~
bwhite
If it were truly synthesized from scratch -- individual atoms plucked one by
one from the air -- the answer to the question of whether or not it is kosher
is mu (<http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/M/mu.html>) as kosher is inapplicable
to non-food items.
Even if the donor cells are from non-kosher animals, there is a modest body of
responsa (case law) that seems to permit it. Some authorities permit the use
of gelatin made from non-kosher animal bones, claiming that the end product is
totally different in nature than the starting (non-kosher animal) product; and
that creating the gelatin required putting the animal product into a state of
total inedibility, thus removing it from the domain of kosher/non-kosher,
notwithstanding its subsequent reconstitution into edible food. Vat-grown meat
is supposed to be very similar if not identical to bio-meat, so it's unclear
if these authorities would rule the same way for vat-grown pork as they do for
pork-derived gelatin.
Even amongst sources who do not abide by the above ruling (and it appears a
majority do not), there may yet be hope for the kosher cheeseburger. If the
donor cells which are vat-cultured are from a kosher cow, the resulting food
may not be considered meat (with respect to the prohibition of mixing meat and
milk). Again, based on responsa regarding the gelatin question, gelatin made
from kosher bones and hides is parve (neither meat nor dairy). However, these
responsa seem to agree that one of the main arguments that this is so is
because one stage of gelatin creation is processing the raw material into what
is essentially non-food, thus eradicating its inherent "meatness" (but nothing
can remove its applicability to the question of kosher). This may or may not
be applicable to the case of vat-grown meat; however, if the process entails
some cells being stripped away from the meat and/or pulverized into something
inedible for a period of time, the resulting product may well be kosher but
not considered meat. The only question left would be: american cheese or whiz?
------
maxklein
I forsee a future with 3 categories of meat: Synthetic, Factory and Free
Range. With free range reserved for the top 1% of the population.
~~~
JulianMorrison
I forsee a future with two categories of meat: "cruelty free" and
"contraband", with a voting majority viewing the latter as one small step
removed from serial-killing.
~~~
derefr
Do you actually forsee that, given human nature, or do you just like to wish
it were so?
~~~
JulianMorrison
Actually forsee, and _don't_ particularly wish it was so.
It's like when cars got seatbelts. First they were a good idea, then they were
the law.
It takes 20 years to completely turn over the most culturally productive
sector of society. Children will grow up in the world described by maxklein -
and I guarantee they will ask why cows and pigs are still dying. (There will
be an element of spite-the-rich hiding under the high moral tone.)
Twenty years after that, "abbatoir" will be a word that lives in history books
- and in horrific news stories of police raids on black-market Mafia farms.
------
Freebytes
The lab of the United States Congress has had them beaten to this discovery
for years now.
On a serious note, I can see great potential for this, but the question is
raised: Does the damage caused by creating the input outweigh the benefits of
the output?
What is necessary to create it, and is it worth it monetarily? Does it truly
decrease suffering or is there some aspect we are missing?
~~~
jerf
We can't answer those questions until someone tries to scale it up, which will
be a ways off yet. However, it is not hard to imagine that it will be
radically more efficient than current systems; you won't be maintaining much-
less-useful organs in the pig, you won't be gated by the efficiency of the
pig's digestive system (which is good as biological digestive systems go, but
it's still a biological digestive system), you won't have the gut bacteria
creating undesirable and effectively uncontrollable methane emissions, etc.
(Some sort of waste will still exist, but it will be controllable, and the
odds that it can be profitably used in some other application are much higher;
methane is valuable when collected, it's just very difficult to collect from
mobile animals.)
It's hard to do a full accounting, but it's hard to imagine how it won't be a
much better environmental choice than current techniques.
This, by the way, is a small example of why I don't think total ecological
panic is entirely justified. There are bad things happening for sure and we
should take steps, but the implicit assumption that so many people hold that
technology has already reached its apex is very wrong. Can you imagine a meat
factory that takes the waste products from the meat, uses on-site solar power
to re-energize the waste products back into biological food, and feeds them
back to the meat with extremely high efficiency and only simple, safe inputs
to the system? I can. (When I say "panic", I mean the emotional response, not
that you shouldn't be concerned about anything.)
~~~
wooster
Cattle rancher here.
The amount of energy it takes to run a cattle ranch is dwarfed by the amount
of energy it takes to, say, air condition a moderately large office building.
In this case, you'd probably be air conditioning a huge factory. And what
would you feed the lab meat? Some sort of sugar slurry? I'm not sure how
that's any better than corn. Or, in your posited scenario of "re-energizing"
waste, are you going to cook it? That takes a lot of energy. If not, you're
going to end up with serious problems if you create a closed loop protein
system (think BSE).
Then the big energy inefficiencies come when you start packing, shipping,
refrigerating, and then throwing away (most of it, sadly, as most people don't
buy deep freezers) your protein.
~~~
jerf
The amount of energy _that you pay for_ is dwarfed by air conditioning,
certainly. But if we're going to talk environmental impact, you have to count
all the other inputs, too.
It would certainly start out less _economical_ , but I still wouldn't care to
bet about the final outcome if everything is considered. To some extent it
would depend on your accounting; "tons of carbon" isn't my personal favorite.
~~~
wooster
What other inputs? Sunlight and water? Grass is an efficient way of harvesting
solar energy. If you're talking about a growth cycle which doesn't involve
animal fertilizer inputs, you've got to have a huge external energy source
involved to manufacture fertilizer, so that's a pretty big cost of _not_
raising animals on available pastureland.
That, and don't even get me started on methane emissions, which is a handy way
to deflect discussions about CO2, but not a great way to actually do anything
productive (look up radiative forcing and the relative atmospheric lifetimes
of greenhouse gases).
------
dagobart
I read most of the thread here but not all, so I hope I'm not repeating
anything yet said: I'm convinced that once we can produce meat rather than
butchering animals, why in the world would anybody want to farm animals? I
guess cows and pigs would be the next animals going to be extinct soon.
So I doubt it's that a good idea to be able to produce meat.
~~~
HeyLaughingBoy
Well, let's see.... perhaps the farmed animals taste better, perhaps some
people enjoy the connection with the land and Nature by growing/raising their
own food, animals aren't just raised for meat: many animals (sheep, goats,
etc) are also raised because their wool/hair can be used for clothing, cows
provide leather, beef shanks probably aren't going to be grown in a lab, but a
slowly braised shank of beef is absolutely divine!
Put a simpler way: you can buy cheap beef at the grocery store, but the bison
farm down the road from me that sells grass-fed, pastured bison meat still has
a 4-6 month backlog on orders...
------
leif
Is anyone else reminded of Better Off Ted?
~~~
noonespecial
"Tastes like despair" was the first thing that sprang to mind.
------
mahmud
Yet another petri-dish I can not enjoy :-(
Seriously, this might be good news for people concerned about animal welfare
or about the CO2 emissions of livestock.
~~~
gregwebs
For anyone concerned about the environment or aninmal welfare, they should
find pasture raised animals, which sequesters carbon as the topsoil grows.
This lab meat is going to end up getting its energy from oil until our society
is powered by renewable sources of energy.
------
jim-greer
"Shmeat is inescapable future of humanity!"
[http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-
videos/22197...](http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-
videos/221975/march-17-2009/world-of-nahlej---shmeat)
(Skip to 1:00 for relevant segment)
------
stavrianos
Another moral question is made moot! Science, you've done it again!
~~~
ibsulon
Not yet, but soon.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WiFi-hacking neighbor from hell gets 18 years in prison - evo_9
http://arstechnica.com/#!/tech-policy/news/2011/07/wifi-hacking-neighbor-from-hell-gets-18-years-in-prison.ars
======
helmut_hed
The neighbor from hell "spent _two weeks_ cracking the Kostolnik’s WEP
encryption"? I thought this was supposed to take only seconds now...
------
baltcode
duplicate? : <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2757234>
~~~
palish
First time I saw it. Thanks for linking to the previous comments though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Predictive World analyses your future based on data - _azerty_
https://predictiveworld.watchdogs.com
======
_azerty_
The site actually shows what your data say about you, not necessarily your
_real_ profile or future. It's based on demographic and psychological data
calculated from your Facebook likes.
University of Cambridge is also involved.
Warning: asks for Facebook Connect
------
simonelaja
Could have been more accurate.
I guess facebook likes are not precise enough to really describe a person.
Still pretty cool though.
------
longtrand
Huge graphiks !!
------
clay_clay
Awesome!!
------
tlaget
Smart
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What would you do if you were RIM's new CTO? - stevewilhelm
======
yanivtal
RIM's lost the ecosystem war already so they need to abandon the burning
platform. I would either use Windows Phone or fork Android depending on
Microsoft's willingness to give up source. After deciding on the OS I would do
deep integration with 1) Cloud storage 2) BBM 3) Social 4) Docs.
Imagine having a screen on your phone that has all the newest docs that your
team has created, and being able to comment on one right from there. Imagine a
screen that shows you what everybody on your team is working on and who's
waiting on what. I would work with up and coming enterprise software companies
and try to close bus dev deals that give us an advantage, and I would offer
our data centers for doing the heavy lifting.
Their advantage used to be their integration with e-mail. Now they have to
embrace cutting edge collaboration tools.
------
electrichead
It should be entirely possible for them to use a modified version of Android
like the NSA one. Starting from scratch again with QNX does not seem to be
going well for them. The blackberry OS was based on java, so I presume it
should be easier to keep some of their old code base than to start over.
I definitely don't want to be in that guy's shoes!
------
calculus
Drop the harware business, and focus on getting the complete device management
software solutions that companies can't live without. (from cloud backup to
security enhanced android forks)
------
staunch
Start making the best Android phones possible for business users.
------
stevewilhelm
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/29/us-rim-
idUSBRE82S1...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/29/us-rim-
idUSBRE82S1DW20120329)
------
michaelochurch
Fire people on April 1. They don't know if they really lost their jobs till
Monday, 4/3.
(At a startup where a lot of people I care about work, the CTO just left, and
the VP/Finance is moving against star engineers because, perversely, it
benefits her if the company fails a key deliverable. I am in a shitty mood
right now.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
In Chicago, ‘bomb trains’ hidden in plain sight - wglb
http://www.midwestenergynews.com/2015/04/09/in-chicago-bomb-trains-hidden-in-plain-sight/
======
wglb
And a related story from Wisconsin: [http://www.wisn.com/news/milwaukee-
residents-express-concern...](http://www.wisn.com/news/milwaukee-residents-
express-concerns-about-trains-carrying-crude-oil/32264978?absolute=true)
~~~
wglb
And a related story in the tribune:
[http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-oil-train-new-
da...](http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-oil-train-new-data-
met-20150403-story.html#page=1)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apply HN: Booksauce – Episodic Videobooks - booksauce
Problem: People are reading less, specially younger ones, and attention span has declined from 12 to 5 mins in the past 10 years. 63% of people believe books are important, and wish they read more but they don’t because they don’t like reading.<p>Product: We will produce engaging video books. Each video book is about 15 episodes, and each is 7 minutes long. It’d cost only $3,000 to make a book into episodic videos, about double what it costs to make an audiobook. We will develop a platform that will manage the pipeline of videobook creation including editors abridging the book, shooting actors in studios, and visual effects designers and authors working through the production. Custom software further automate the process of adding visual effects and processing the videos. On the other side, we will develop a market place like Audible’s for purchasing and streaming videobooks.<p>Demo: Here’s a sample episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9clIRapyJM & an iOS app to try: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/booksauce/id1089945842?ls=1&mt=8<p>What we’ve done so far: an iOS app, and produced the book Think and Grow Rich into a video book, and signed up several authors to have their books produced into videobooks.<p>What Else is Out There to Solve This: Some have done video summaries that run about 5 mins or so for an entire book, but that is too abridged and are barely good enough to know the topics the book covers.<p>Revenue Stream: Books will be sold in our platform at $9.99, with 20-25% going to a book’s right-holders.<p>TLDR: A platform for production of episodic video books based on non-fiction books. These video books are divided into 15 episodes of 7 mins, and our goal here is to target millennials and others who no longer have the attention span to read a 300-page book.
======
chaostheory
At first, I didn't really understand what you were offering when a lot of
people are perfectly happy with Audible and podcasts in general. It wasn't
until I saw your demo video when it clicked for me and I really really like
what you have. I kind of understand why you guys are marketing this as 'video
books', but what I see is a semi-automated documentary factory. Your platform
can potentially help people create quality documentaries at a fraction of the
time and cost. Content hungry companies like Netflix and Amazon (for Prime
Video) would drool at your platform's potential.
You can probably make something similar to like say 'The Story of Maths' with
what you have now or the near future.
Hopefully your Apply HN doesn't completely blow mine away, which I'll be
posting this coming week ;)
~~~
booksauce
Do you find yourself reading as much as you want to?
~~~
chaostheory
Yes, especially with Audible's help. With Audible, I can 'read' books when I'm
on the subway, when I'm in the doctor's office, when I'm in traffic, when I'm
doing mind numbing manual chores, when I'm working; you get the picture.
Podcasts are a good substitute when I get tired of books in audio form. For
most books, I don't just need any visuals. Since Audible is owned by Amazon,
for me the pricing is pretty good.I get multiple books a month and they have
frequent sales. Averaged out I easily spend less than $10 per book
I have only one complaint about audio books, specifically works of fiction. My
gripe is that they tend to only have one reader / narrator. ie. A male or
female narrator will take on all the roles of a book's characters which
typically have both males and females. Most of the time, even when the
narrator is good at voicing the opposite sex, it's still not goo enough to
suspend disbelief and it makes it an inferior experience to actually reading
the book as opposed to just listening to it. This needs to change. I'd rather
pay more than keep the status quo. Consequently, I tend to only listen to non-
fiction audio books.
The second problem I have is with all audio content in general. There's simply
so much quality content now that I'm finding myself not being able to listen
to everything I want.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: How I visualize my apartment search - quan
http://clusterize.com/compare-apartments
======
AceJohnny2
How do you establish "distance to work"?
While searching for an apartments, I've always wished I could have a "heat-
map" overlay of distance-to-work, taking into account traffic at given commute
hours.
I suppose this should be possible nowadays with Google Maps' APIs.
------
quan
I recently started looking for a new apartment and found it exhausting to keep
track of all the posts. So I put this together to better visualize and compare
apartments. It doesn't have to be about apartments though, you can edit the
input text and play around with it.
------
robdoherty2
nice!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple relents, begins selling "old" Final Cut Studio again - k33l0r
http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2011/09/apple-relents-begins-selling-old-final-cut-studio-again.ars
======
burrokeet
Apple has the resources to own a big piece of the pro media market too - Mac
Pros, Final Cut Pro, Color, Shake, Final Cut Server, Logic, XSan, OS X Server,
etc. - they keep systematically destroying these for some reason.
I think Apple's corporate culture and ego, however, doesn't lend itself at all
to this market - this market requires communication and feedback between
developers and end-users, and roadmaps of upgrades and bug fixes and features,
all things that Apple doesn't do for the most part.
All in all it is a shame in any event - I had a friend who runs a video
editing department with 20 editors, and they literally just completed a very
large Final Cut Server install a few weeks before FCPX (not Final Cut Server
compatible) and the very sudden EOL of Final Cut Server. Of course it will
work fine for a while, until hardware/OS render it obsolete/incompatible, but
what about bug fixes, support, etc?
~~~
michaelbuckbee
Apple's margins and revenue are much better for consumer technologies (iOS)
than for their pro lines (which certainly explains at least some of their
reasoning behind all but outright abandoning the Pro market).
Source: <http://www.asymco.com/2011/07/26/apple-has-moved-on/>
~~~
burrokeet
I understand that, but they can still do Pro as well w/o hurting their bottom
line - plus IMHO there are LOTS of implicit and indirect benefits to Apple
overall by having the Pro community still being Apple evangelists.
On the other side of it, if they are not really going to do Pro, then just
don't do it all and stop mucking around and pretending - sell off the line to
someone who can handle it properly - what they did by EOLing Shake was
terrible terrible terrible
~~~
jinushaun
I don't know... Photoshop didn't sell Macs, but iPods and iPhones did. The
time and energy is takes for them to produce pro software versus the return on
investment is probably too low. It's such a small market, relative to general
consumers.
------
pavlov
There are broadcast customers with installations of hundreds of FCP seats [1].
I suspect that Apple discovered that they may have contractual obligations to
these customers due to the way Final Cut Server was sold.
It's easier to bring back the product in the most limited distribution
possible, rather than risk a lawsuit.
[1] For example, Norway's national broadcaster NRK has 200+ FCP seats just for
their video library: <http://broadcastengineering.com/mag/nrk-keeps-
watchful-0709/>
------
acak
I read earlier that Lion was Apples "Vista" moment.
The FCP situation is more reminiscent of what happened with Vista - where MS
had to extend the life of WXP until they offered something better.
Although, it'll be interesting to see how well Lion is doing in terms of
market share at Apples next event.
~~~
ugh
Whatever happens with FCPX is utterly insignificant compared to the rest of
Apple. To call this a Vista moment is laughable.
~~~
wanorris
The point was that what's happening with FCP closely tracks the problem
history of Vista, not that the problems are of the same scope. If you reread
the parent comment, you will not find him calling this "a Vista moment".
------
huhtenberg
This might as well turn into a new New Coke [0].
[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke>
------
junklight
I'm not sure that this actualy means anything. Just a pragmatic move while
they get the pro features into FCPX.
I guess if there is any hidden message it might be that they are wanting to
keep the pro's onside - which might be good news for the direction of FCP and
Logic.
(also to note that there is nothing actually wrong with FCPX - I'm using it
everyday working on some marketing materials right now. I can see that Pros
are missing some features which is fair enough but it's an extremely usable
application and I'm finding it very friction free to work in)
~~~
pavlov
FCP X is more like "Aperture for video". It's a completely different app from
the old FCP, which offered an editing paradigm in tune with the conventions of
the TV/film post-production industry.
Editing video in FCP X feels a lot like manipulating photos in Aperture: it's
great for quick adjustments, but doesn't allow the kind of meticulous control
you'd get with Photoshop. Unfortunately Apple doesn't have that kind of
control-oriented video product anymore, so those looking to move up from FCP X
will have to go with either Avid or Adobe.
~~~
joeybaker
Aperture is a workflow management tool that allows you to do a ton of photo
editing too. A photojournalist, for instance, wouldn't need any more power.
FCP X, as you say, represents a similar approach.
But, the problem isn't that it isn't the video equivalent of photoshop —
that's After Effects or (maybe) Motion. The problem is that FCP X is missing
basic "Apeture" functionality like any kind of real audio editing, or the
ability to export to another program.
------
pbhjpbhj
The update is hilarious:
' _Update: An Apple spokesperson told The Loop that the company has "a limited
quantity of Final Cut Studio still available through Apple telesales to
customers who need them for ongoing projects."_ '
Don't Apple know how they can make more copies ... if they don't someone else
will do it for them.
------
daimyoyo
I wonder how many people will take advantage of this given that you can't get
it in stores or online.
~~~
dagw
Given that the old version is $700 more than the new version this 'offer' is
only aimed at those people who really really need the high end professional
functions stripped from the new version of FCP (and they'll probably be
cursing Apple and muttering something about switching to Avid as they place
the order).
~~~
DrJokepu
Of course, Avid Media Composer costs at least $3000 so they will probably just
stay with FCP.
~~~
chrischen
$2300
[http://shop.avid.com/store/product.do;jsessionid=EA4C89BEF63...](http://shop.avid.com/store/product.do;jsessionid=EA4C89BEF63AA07D87C4575C43D2775F.ASTPESD2?product=307190015842432)
~~~
DrJokepu
When I follow your link from the UK it lists the price as £1,869.95 which is
about $3000. Outrageous.
~~~
ceejayoz
Maybe that $3000 includes VAT?
------
gnu6
"more than 8,000 people signed a petition that demanded the source code to
Final Cut Pro 7 be sold to a third party"
I wonder that anyone would make such a short sighted demand. Apple should
properly release the source code of Final Cut Pro 7 to the public under a Free
Software license. That would prevent this type of thing from happening again.
~~~
homosaur
I'm not sure that there's enough free software developers that even have the
expertise to work on something like FCP. If there are, then where's the GPL
video editor that competes? Pro tools like that are still commercial only
until someone proves otherwise in code.
~~~
gatlin
It would take a Herculean effort to start such a project, and it would be
virtually guaranteed that 1) few people would trust it since it's not a name-
brand and 2) it would be several years before it had feature parity. The
social and technical inertia combined make it not a good use of time.
~~~
CamperBob
_few people would trust it since it's not a name-brand_
Fat lot of good it did to trust a "name brand" in this case.
~~~
homosaur
As long as Apple keeps selling old FCP to those who need it before getting the
new Final Cut up to speed feature-wise, I don't see the problem. If you stick
with the same old, ugly codebase forever you end up with kludgeware like
Photoshop... or Windows. The mistake here was ever taking old FCP off the
market in the first place until they got the new one fixed. I mean they are
selling it for $300, so that's almost an admittance on Apple's part that the
feature set sucks.
------
dlss
Apple relents? There's no way this would have happened on Steve Jobs's watch
~~~
benr
Ha! I'm guessing you're being sarcastic?
I just finished listening to John Siracusa on Hypercritical who was making the
point that it won't be long until people start saying "there's no way this
would have happened on Steve Jobs's watch".
It's easy to see the sarcasm when Steve's only been gone from Apple for a
week, but give it a year and people will start forgetting that Apple lead by
Steve would go back on decisions when they released they'd made the wrong
call.
Another example of this that John gave is when they prematurely removed
Firewire from the 13" Macbook. While Steve was CEO they realized that the
market wasn't ready for that so they put it back in. And everyone was happy.
In 6 months, if Apple concedes they were wrong on something, will the market
think Tim Cook is weak and Apple is doomed?
~~~
masklinn
> Another example of this that John gave is when they prematurely removed
> Firewire from the 13" Macbook. While Steve was CEO they realized that the
> market wasn't ready for that so they put it back in. And everyone was happy.
A much better example is iMovie, because _the exact same events unfolded as
with FCP_ :
* Apple has iMovie HD 6, a product with its roots in iMac DV but well understood and liked by its users.
* Apple releases iMovie '08, a complete rewrite of iMovie lacking many of HD6's features and completely panned by critics, HD6 is not available anymore
* Apple makes HD6 available as a free download to all iMovie '08 owners
------
pmoehring
"Final Cut Studio can be purchased for $999 (or $899 for educational buyers).
That's the same price the suite was being sold for as of July 2009, but $700
more than its newer replacement, Final Cut Pro X."
Yes, the new one costs 299. Way to make a buck...
~~~
masklinn
Yeah, I mean it's not like that's the original price of FCP7 before it was
pulled or anything.
Wait, yes it is, FCPX is basically a different product and production house
(the kind of people who will buy a 5-figure piece of single-user software if
they need it) have asked for FCP7 to be available again for their production
due to features missing from FCPX and the inanity of switching mid-project.
FYI, Avid Media Composer (one of FCP7's competitor) is 3 times the price of
FCP7.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are your thoughts on licensed Software Engineers? - mlwarren
I came across this article from 2012 that talks about some states in the US now offering a licensure examination for Software Engineering. The idea is to bring standards to the software field similar to the ones that exist for other branches of engineering.<p>The comments section is particularly negative to this idea. It seems like most of the people commenting are established software developers that are reluctant to this change.<p>Reading the article, I begin to agree that licensure may be a good idea. The term "Software Engineering" has such a wide span that some delineation could be a good thing. As software continues to eat the world what will delineate the differences between a CRUD web application developer and someone qualified to write code for pacemakers, satellites, missiles, etc?<p>How is this sort of thing handled in countries other than the US?<p>Is licensure a good or bad idea? I'd like to hear the communities' thoughts.<p>Link: http://theinstitute.ieee.org/career-and-education/career-guidance/licensing-software-engineers-is-in-the-works
======
ctb_mg
I think our environment is changing too quickly for a licensing/certification
program to keep up. Unless you broaden the scope of such a license so that it
applies regardless of the technology used.
------
FurrBall
How many Ph.D's have you met who can't write software? If years of study is
not a good measuring stick, I don't see how a "software engineer"
certification will help.
I see it as red tape. For serious work you have serious interviews. It doesn't
involve looking at their certs and degrees.
It comes down money. There will be a fee paid for the exam. Will other
organizations be able to offer certification or will IEEE have a monopoly?
------
penrod
I am an established developer, and licensing would not hurt me at all: I work
for a big company, I have a CS degree, and years of experience. I object to
licensing because it would destroy the most appealing aspects of our industry.
Right now, if you've got a great idea you can drop out of college and
bootstrap a company that changes people's lives and makes you a billionaire.
That is _fucking awesome_. Licensing would kill that _completely_.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Skeuomorphism: The Opiate of the People - pchristensen
http://www.andymangold.com/skeuomorphism-the-opiate-of-the-people/
======
flyosity
There's a difference between "looking like something I'm familiar with" and
"working like something I'm familiar with". The problem with bad skeuomorphic
design is when it _looks_ familiar but doesn't _act_ like the thing it's
mimicking.
A good example of this was brought up by Josh Clark in his talk at Swipe
Conference a few months back: the Address Book app on the iPad. The main
interface is an open book, but you can't swipe through pages like you're
actually reading an address book. In fact, if you swipe in the middle of the
right page, you're going to swipe on a contact's field and then a delete
button will pop up! Trying to swipe from page to page (like you would if this
design mimicked the real object's affordances) could actually be a destructive
action.
The design of Classics for iPhone and, later on, iBooks is skeuomorphic and
resembles an open book, but you can (mostly) treat the app as if you would a
book using similar actions. This is an example of skeuomorphic design that
actually works. It looks _and works_ like the real world thing it's emulating.
Bad skeuomorphic design simply _looks_ familiar, but the user experience takes
a wrong turn as soon as you start to use it like you would use the real thing.
Bad skeuomorphic design can actually deeply harm the user experience because
it builds up a false trust with users.
However, using real-world textures, patterns and materials like leather,
tartan, glass and aluminum in your app interfaces just to spice it up a bit
does not necessarily mean you're designing in a skeuomorphic manner if these
items are used purely in an ornamental sense. An app like Find My Friends that
looks like a baseball glove obviously isn't made to replicate a baseball
glove's functionality, it simply uses some stitched leather textures from the
real world. This doesn't mean it's a skeuomorphic interface but it does, in
this case, mean it's ugly. The secret is to use realistic patterns and
textures sparingly, not drop them from the sky all over the screen.
~~~
lubutu
I always found iBooks' attempt at skeuomorphism really off-putting, at least
on the iPad: the size of each page will change depending on whether you hold
it portrait or landscape, and so the number of pages, and on which pages text
can be found, will all change. I actually stopped using it shortly after
downloading it for exactly this reason. It promises to behave like a book, but
falls far short. No pages at all would have been preferable.
~~~
SoftwareMaven
I want something between Kindle and iBooks. Kindle is too flat and lacks any
personality. iBooks gives the personality, but the skeuomorphic behavior is
off just enough to be disconcerting (like a robot that is almost, but not
quite, human).
------
joebadmo
_But what hadn’t occurred to me is that it doesn’t matter if it actually does
make it easier to use, all that matters is that it makes the average person
think it’s easier to use. In reality, a user must take time to learn any
interface, whether clad in faux leather or not. The skeuomorphism in iOS
plainly tricks people that might otherwise walk away, convinced that they
can’t learn something new, into putting in the time required to get acclimated
to a new interface.
For every one designer pointing out flawed and unnecessary ornamentation in
iOS, one hundred non-designers, normal people, are tricked into thinking they
understand something new._
But this is violated as soon as that person walks up and tries it and the
thing doesn't work the way they thought they knew it would.
Skeuomorphism _can_ help when used properly. If something looks like a button,
I know by metaphor that pushing it will do something. What's really tragic
about Apple's recent use of skeuomorphism is that it often doesn't make any
metaphorical sense, and is also horribly ugly.
But I think we should move on. The people that need skeuomorphism as a crutch
are dying out. The new generations are growing up with digital interfaces.
We're artifically limiting what we can do by simulating physical things.
Here's my first attempt at thinking about what the implications of wholly
embracing the digital medium are:
[http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/9325300749/a-different-
kind-o...](http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/9325300749/a-different-kind-of-gui)
~~~
jodrellblank
_But this is violated as soon as that person walks up and tries it and the
thing doesn't work the way they thought they knew it would._
Point is, that happens after they've paid for it.
~~~
cgislason
I wonder how these points relate to the high satisfaction rate of iPhone
users. Or maybe there's no relation at all?
~~~
rsynnott
Probably not much. Most of the skeuomorphism is actually relatively new.
------
WiseWeasel
How does the leather skin on "Find My Friends" trick people into assuming
familiarity? It's an application without a physical analog, other than
shouting your friends' names really loudly or wearing a weird hat or bright
shirt.
I think someone with a high position in Apple's iOS app software department
just really likes that leather look, and people are reading way too much into
this. There are cases where the skeuomorphism is appropriate, such as the
striped yellow notepad or the wooden bookshelf in iBooks, but Apple has
clearly extended the use of these themes beyond where they make any kind of
logical sense, making them simple arbitrary aesthetic choices.
~~~
chrisdroukas
Could it be a function of 'comfort in familiarity' in what's otherwise a
jarringly personal app?
~~~
WiseWeasel
To me, it just looks weird, with interface elements such as buttons and text
fields sculpted in leather. I cannot see how it would make me feel
familiarity.
~~~
chrisdroukas
Maybe comfort is a better word for it.
It would be interesting to see an A/B test of the leather UI and a standard
iOS UI — something that looks exactly like Google Maps with Latitude on top of
it, for instance.
I'd be willing to bet that the leather UI is better received by users. The app
is divulging a core aspect of privacy but it certainly manages to look
friendly doing it.
------
jongold
The biggest problem is the use of metaphors that won't make sense in a couple
of years. When we don't have printed magazines and newspapers we'll be stuck
with the legacy of dated apps and metaphors.
Indulging in objectively bad design in the short term to appease technically
inexperienced users isn't a solution, it's putting a band aid on the infected
wound of inconsiderate UI designer.
For more on that line, I wrote about it a few days ago
[http://designedbygold.com/2011/10/the-metaphors-breaking-
the...](http://designedbygold.com/2011/10/the-metaphors-breaking-the-future/)
~~~
alttag
Are you talking about "Save to disk" icons that include pictures of floppy
disks? =:)
~~~
jongold
Absolutely - great example.
------
pchristensen
Useful related reading:
<http://www.alistapart.com/articles/indefenseofeyecandy>
Emotional Design by Don Norman - [http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Design-
Everyday-Things-ebook...](http://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Design-Everyday-
Things-ebook/dp/B005GKIYD4)
(summary of above - <http://www.curledup.com/emotionl.htm> )
------
dylanrw
I think it has it's place but I mainly use it as a way to inform the user's
concept of an app or a portion of an app.
Example: At WePay we don't use skeuomorphism in the UI except for receipts and
tickets, these are parts of the app that have a real world analog and we want
to stress that these are the valuable results of a transaction that should be
held on to.
In the end you have varying degrees of metaphor in UI design, this is just one
of them...
------
sherwin
Related: <http://madebymany.com/blog/apples-aesthetic-dichotomy>. This writer
brings up an excellent question: for whatever reason Apple seems to think
having skeuomorphic interfaces is a good idea.... so why isn't this reflected
in the hardware itself? Why is the macbook/ipad not designed to look like a
notepad or briefcase?
~~~
cageface
This exactly. On the outside Apple's devices are sleek and futuristic and
often boldly unconventional. For some reason they seem to lose their nerve
when it comes to software.
------
saturdaysaint
This is blowing one element of design way out of proportion. I'm not a huge
fan of brown leather, but to me, iCal is much easier to look at and
functionally clear than Google Calendar, and part of this has to do with the
use of texture.
When I open iCal (in the cloud or desktop), my focus rests naturally on the
actual calendar because the texturing puts all the settings in the background.
I like that the calendar itself is elegantly centered on the screen. I like
that it has only settings I'm likely to use and that menus I use less the
calendar selection column) are completely out of the way.
I don't have any problem using Google Calendar, but it's flatness annoys me.
The calendar is lumped into the bottom of the screen, which is kind of an odd
de-emphasis of the most used element of the app. The banner and many controls
I don't use all the time have the same dark hue as the current week. Search is
disproportionately (for my calendar usage, anyway) prioritized in terms of
screen space. The whole left column (with the garish "create" button and a
mini calendar) is basically useless.
Yeah, Apple needs to go easy on the leather (surely _something_ could be more
consonant with that silk texture), but ultimately Google has a lot more to
learn from iCal than vice versa. And I think iCal actually shows, albeit
imperfectly, that texture does have its place.
------
jcfrei
interesting read, but I would have appreciated a few more examples of
skeuomorphism other than the leathery ical. frankly I ask myself whether it's
possible to design a GUI without any skeuomorphisms at all. Wouldnt we be
unable to use it? aren't we only able to interact with computers and with the
world in general because we remember certain visual clues on what the expected
behaviour is (eg. red & green traffic lights, light switches, door knobs...)?
~~~
fleitz
It would be pretty much impossible. People are symbol processors, if they
don't understand any of the symbols then they can't learn it. This is probably
why car analogies are prevalent in the tech field, and higher dimensional
spaces are difficult to understand.
It's extremely difficult to understand what Mayan tablets mean because we
don't understand the symbols. This is why things like a rosetta stone are so
important, because they give us clues as to what symbols mean.
Every symbol is evaluated in the context of the individual.
Designing an interface with no 'skeuomorphisms' would be extremely difficult,
it's arguable that roman letters themselves are 'skeuomorphisms' of the
requirements originally for stone tablets. An interface with no skeuomorphisms
is like a person who no one can relate to. It's the difference between
learning a new language and learning a new word in a language you already
know.
"Good" designers have their own symbology so designers who are trained find
other "haute" design easy to use. Since most people aren't "haute" designers
it becomes difficult to relate to and use their designs.
There's a great article out there about a hotel that installed really well
designed light switches that no one could use but everyone loved once they
figured out how to use them. "Haute" design is like C4, it has huge activation
potential to overcome but once you overcome it, it's explosively powerful.
However, the activation potential is a hinderance to adoption.
~~~
mannicken
"People are symbol processors"
No.
"Since most people aren't "haute" designers it becomes difficult to relate to
and use their designs."
No.
It's easy to judge how realistic or beautiful a face is, but much harder to
draw it. Similar concept with design.
I think you're making a fundamental assumption that design/drawing/visual
disciplines are symbol-based, when they are not symbol-based.
I highly suggest reading "Drawing on the right side of the brain". I've
studied art, and in every drawing class something along the lines of "No,
symbols are bad, boo egyptian eyes, switch to the right side of the brain" was
said at some point.
------
saturdaysaint
If Safari had prominent wood grain I'd care, but the fact that this kind of
design is isolated to a few of Apple's more obscure, lesser used apps makes
this whole thing a non-issue.
I will say that I prefer iBook to the reading app I actually use (Kindle,
since I'm in Amazon's ecosystem) - I find the subtle border and gradients on
the edges (and a handsome color scheme) more pleasing to the eye than the flat
"text on a plain background" that I see in the Kindle and Google Books apps.
Done right, texture and shadow can subtly draw the eye to the most relevant
section of a screen. To me, the flat interfaces that the anti-skeutomorph
people seem to admire are unnatural and decidedly uneasy on the eyes.
------
fuzionmonkey
Apple's skeuomorphic design for iCal is bad. iCal has been made to look like a
real calendar, but in reality it isn't used like a real one at all.
If iCal worked like a real calendar, skeuomorphism would have value, but in
its current form, it's just an ugly skin. It doesn't actually show users how
to use it.
Read about it here: [http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-
os-x-10-7.a...](http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2011/07/mac-
os-x-10-7.ars/5)
~~~
tripzilch
You're confusing _affordance_ with skeumorphism.
Skeuomorphs are non-functional, by definition.
~~~
dpark
By who's definition? Some common skeuomorphs are shutter sounds on cameras
without physical shutters and page turn animations in e-books. These are both
skeuomorphs because they reference functionality in an earlier object, and
they are largely ornamental. However, these are also functional. The shutter
sound tells the user that the picture has been taken, and the page turn
animation provides a visual transition between two pages. Both of these could
be accomplished other ways (such as a chime and cut-through-white
respectively), but that doesn't make them entirely non-functional.
------
mambodog
This is what happens when high design meets the real world. As much as it
pains designers to realise, most people have _shitty taste_ and as such, there
are times when compromises must be made to get them on board. As Reichenstein
notes, for most consumer-targeted UIs, users won't even give your _serious
design_ a chance if it lacks a bit of eye candy. You'll just have to find some
kind of balance.
~~~
wladimir
You make it sound like your particular taste is superior. But minimalism is
not the end-it-all. It's one of many possible styles.
What does it even mean that "most people have shitty taste"? I guess it's easy
to agree with that on an emotional level because taste is so varied. There is
always bound to be a large number of people that you don't agree with in
taste. That is completely subjective though, those people will probably find
your taste shitty.
------
grandalf
This is very entertaining and revealing. It helps me realize why I have been
unable to get myself to use any of those apps with wood grain, leather, etc.
I'd argue that designers should stop overreacting to this though b/c few are
innocent of using typefaces in a nostalgic way from time to time.
------
barefoot
I ended up clicking over to the (very interesting) wikipedia definition.
Does anyone know what the purpose of the Maple syrup handle is?
~~~
michael_dorfman
It doesn't have a purpose; that's the point. It's modelled after the handle on
larger jugs, which permit the user to hold the jug-- but that makes sense on a
gallon jug, and not on a half-pint jug.
------
beteg
Shaquille O'Neal: the Michael Jordan of Basketball.
------
gringomorcego
I think it just gives people the confidence to play around with it. And that's
what really matters. As longs as people are willing to play with it and aren't
scared away, the design is pretty darn good.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Bicycle hacks? - ANH
I'm a software engineer, but also a committed recreational cyclist. I'm sure there are others out there like me, and I'm wondering what kind of cycling related hacks members of the community have performed. Whether it's to increase performance, augment carrying capacity, find better (ie, safer, less-trafficked) routes to your destination, a total redesign of the bicycle as we know it, or just a cool modification, what have you seen or done?
======
noodle
i have not done it, but just seeing this as a product makes me want to try and
replicate it:
<http://www.nightbrighttyre.com/about/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
UK refuses entry to far-right activists - RickJWagner
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-trending-43393035
======
travmatt
>"The irony is that the far right have long called for the British government
to take firm control of our borders. Now they are doing just that."
That is actually pretty funny.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Hobo Ethical Code of 1889 - pmoriarty
http://www.openculture.com/2016/11/the-hobo-ethical-code-of-1889.html
======
jlg23
A friend once gave a talk at the chaos congress whose title, IMHO, captures
the essence of those laws: If you want to live outside of the law, you have to
be honest.
To this day, words I live by and they never failed me.
~~~
sov
That's a Dylan quote.
[https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/absolutely-sweet-
marie/](https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/absolutely-sweet-marie/)
~~~
jlg23
How fitting, this friend of mine could have been the tambourine man...
Thanks for the pointer!
------
loosetypes
For anyone intrigued by this sort of thing - that is to say the ethics of hobo
culture - I would highly recommend reading `You Can't Win'[1], the
autobiographical account of Jack Black's train hoppin', bank robbin' life as a
yegg.
[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can%27t_Win_(book)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/You_Can%27t_Win_\(book\))
~~~
mirimir
I was going to mention that. But I gather that yeggs were a distinct group
from (or maybe subgroup of) hoboes. They didn't abide by at least one of the
rules:
> 2\. When in town, always respect the local law and officials, and try to be
> a gentleman at all times.
I gather that it was a steal-from-the-rich thing. Banks were OK targets. And
jewelry shops. But not hard-working folk.
It's never made sense to me, honestly.
~~~
FranzFerdiNaN
The rich are only rich because they steal from the poor, either directly by
scams or indirectly by theft of wages and labor productivity. Capitalism
unfortunately enshrines this behavior in the law so it's seen as a good thing,
while a poor person "stealing" from the rich is seen as bad.
~~~
dan-0
> The rich are only rich because they steal from the poor, either directly by
> scams or indirectly by theft of wages and labor productivity. Capitalism
> unfortunately enshrines this behavior in the law so it's seen as a good
> thing, while a poor person "stealing" from the rich is seen as bad.
I think you might need to look up the word "steal" in a dictionary. That or
you're deliberately skewing the definition for your own agenda. I'm hedging my
bet on the latter.
The first definition provided when Googling "steal": take (another person's
property) without permission or legal right and without intending to return
it.
If a good or service is provided that is needed or desired by either a group
or an individual there is a cost regardless of whether that cost is absorbed
by the individual or group procuring the good/service (as in Capitalism) or by
society. The provider of that good or service should somehow be rewarded or
incentivized to continue providing the service so as to keep that service
provided.
You made a blanket statement that "rich are only rich because they steal from
the poor...". That's wrong, true in some cases, but far from a universal
truth, if I'm wrong please prove it. If you're good a something society deems
valuable, shouldn't you be compensated adequately for that? Should a good
jeweler be compensated well for producing a necklace of spectacular quality if
someone is willing to pay for it? Should a good neurosurgeon who went through
probably a decade of intense schooling be adequately compensated for
extracting a tumor? Are either of these people stealing from someone? The
answer is no. They are providing a service that the recipient or society (in
the case of universal healthcare) willingly compensate them for.
This is in direct contradiction to your point of a "poor person \"stealing\"
from the rich", which brings me back to my first statement. You used quotes
around "stealing" which deliberately attempts to invert or misdirect the
actual definition of the word. Taking something from someone without their
permission is "stealing", not providing a service for compensation. In the
case of the jeweler, that jeweler bears the cost of materials and time the
spent to both learn how to make the commodity when their product is stolen. In
the case of the neurosurgeon, when their product is stolen, it's very
equatable to slavery.
It doesn't matter what economic model you prescribe to, if people providing a
needed good/service aren't adequately compensated, the quality of that
good/service degrades or becomes non existent. Unless, of course, you enslave
or force those people to provided the good/service, which is not what anyone
should be advocating.
~~~
mlevental
does a person that has brain cancer really voluntarily pay a neurosurgeon for
treatment?
does a person that gets paid a wage for menial labor that funnels into a value
chain that some executive sells for much more than the wage really work
voluntarily?
does someone that's manipulated by social media that buys worthless overpriced
brand name items really pay voluntarily?
does someone that gets arrested on trumped up charges and values their freedom
really pay a lawyer voluntarily?
do people that live in blighted, neglected neighborhoods really move to higher
cost of living neighborhoods voluntarily?
I could go on.
Your post implicitly assumes that contracts between equals exist. They don't.
also "if people aren't compensated, the quality..." is an assumption of your
model, not an implication
~~~
mieseratte
> does a person that has brain cancer really voluntarily pay a neurosurgeon
> for treatment?
Yes
> does a person that gets paid a wage for menial labor that funnels into a
> value chain that some executive sells for much more than the wage really
> work voluntarily?
Yes-ish... one can't really not participate in society in this day and age.
One can't just go homestead anymore and subsistence farm. So I understand the
argument.
> does someone that's manipulated by social media that buys worthless
> overpriced brand name items really pay voluntarily?
Yes... get TF off social media.
> does someone that gets arrested on trumped up charges and values their
> freedom really pay a lawyer voluntarily?
Yes
> do people that live in blighted, neglected neighborhoods really move to
> higher cost of living neighborhoods voluntarily?
Yes. It's entirely possible to live in a shit area and life a "good life,"
though there are mental costs associated.
...
It's not black and white as you paint it.
~~~
mlevental
i think you and i have a very different understandings of the word "voluntary"
~~~
xbkingx
One that ignores the entirety of human psychology, probability, and what we
understand about motivation, reward, and healthy socialization.
Technically you could successfully perform your own neurosurgery at home with
a spoon and a dull butter knife...
~~~
mieseratte
> Technically you could successfully perform your own neurosurgery at home
> with a spoon and a dull butter knife...
I was not implying that in the least, that's what you chose to read into it.
> One that ignores the entirety of human psychology, probability, and what we
> understand about motivation, reward, and healthy socialization.
Like anyone involved in software, you're surely an expert in all of these
topics and thus qualified to make this claim without backing it up.
One can voluntary, that is choose, to opt-out of any number of those
situations. Some may be more important or costly than others.
~~~
xbkingx
> Like anyone involved in software, you're surely an expert in all of these
> topics and thus qualified to make this claim without backing it up.
PhD in neuroscience, undergrad research on reward and behavior. So, yes, yes I
am qualified. You are 100% wrong on all fronts.
------
Clubber
The US would be better off if we put the hobos in charge. Seems like they have
a lot better ethics than many politicians and business leaders.
~~~
throwaway_boi
It's easy to be incorruptible when you have no power.
~~~
jessaustin
That cuts both ways. There's no law of nature requiring the hideous
monstrosity of coercive power that we've created.
~~~
giardini
Please be clear: are you talking about
\- the NSA, CIA, and FBI,
\- Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google, or
\- AT&T & Comcast,
or something else?
~~~
staticautomatic
The forces shaping the society we live in are much deeper and more pervasive
than 3 letter agencies and big corporations, bad as they may sometimes be.
~~~
ILikeConemowk
This is also my line of thinking but would love to read more about your
perspective.
Would you be willing to elaborate on "the forces" you think shape our society?
~~~
mlevental
just Google "Hegel ideology"
------
kevinconaway
The linked article[0] contains more narrative around the hobo lifestyle and
the rules listed in the submitted article
Wikipedia[1] also offers some definitions of the hobo slang used in the code:
Boil Up - specifically, to boil one's clothes to kill lice and their eggs;
generally, to get oneself as clean as possible
Jungle - an area off a railroad where hobos camp and congregate
[0] [http://brktrail.com/hobo_ethics/](http://brktrail.com/hobo_ethics/)
[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobo)
~~~
staticautomatic
Any relation to "The Jungle"?
------
IanDrake
Why does this article start out with unsupported claims of billionaires
behaving badly?
When a writer puts down people who add enormous value to the world while
putting those who extract value on a pedestal, I have to wonder about her
motives.
------
peter_retief
Interesting take on freedom and the responsibility to be a good person and
work for wages as compared to the freedom movement of the 1960's. Good take
away is that bad things happen to good people and we should be kind to a fault
at every opportunity we get
------
amelius
> When traveling, ride your train respectfully, take no personal chances,
> cause no problems with the operating crew or host railroad, act like an
> extra crew member.
Just what they need, a passenger who thinks they are crew.
~~~
fb03
I think what he actually meant with 'acting like an extra crew member' is
minding your own business without interacting or bothering other people,
including staff.
They won't accept it anymore (for other homeless) if they have multiple bad
events, altercations etc.
------
qrbLPHiKpiux
I was hoping the article would be in BBS like format.
------
aaron695
Let's not forget the life of a Hobo was one of sexual assault, poverty, mental
illness and a host of other problems (The article links to some of the major
issues)
I'm all for Medieval societies where we dress up and pretend to kill, so have
no problem with romanticising the Hobo life and trying to move it forward, but
let's not take any actual lessons from the old way of life, keep it in the
realm of fantasy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Yahoo lost its way - ciscoriordan
http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_8592114
======
wave
Why did Yahoo management decide not to own a search engine? I mean that is
their core business.
~~~
pg
They didn't think it was their core business in 1998.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Swift versus Java: the bitset performance test - deafcalculus
http://lemire.me/blog/2016/09/22/swift-versus-java-the-bitset-performance-test/
======
simophin
I think it's a bit unfair to compare Swift with hotspot jdk. Try Android?
(don't get me wrong I'm a big fan of Java, I just want to see the real world
comparison)
------
pawadu
You know you are micro-benchmarking when you get this
> m.l.m.b.Bitset.count avgt 5 0.001 ± 0.000 s/op
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Boy survives tetanus. 57 days in hospital. Parents refuse further vaccinations - wjossey
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/09/well/oregon-child-tetanus-vaccine.html
======
DanBC
> This month, a teenager who defied his mother’s antivaccine beliefs and
> started getting shots when he turned 18
Just in case any young people are reading: In England you get to make your own
medical decisions at 16 and your parents don't need to know, and if you're
under that age your doctor will see if you understand the issues ("Gillick
Competent") and if you do then again you can make your own medical decisions
and your parents don't need to know.
This is because you are a human, and you have human rights, you are not the
property of your parents.
------
senectus1
All it takes is an epidemic level flu to hit and these idiots will be
classified as terrorists.
------
amanzi
I'd love to hear the parents' perspective on things... "The boy spent 57 days
in the hospital and racked up medical bills of more than $800,000." All that
pain and cost, and they still didn't want further vaccinations: "But despite
an “extensive review” of the risks, and the benefits of vaccination, the
article said, the family declined the second vaccination — or any other
recommended immunization."
------
dogma1138
You leave a 13 year old with a mobile phone home alone for the evening in the
suburbs and you can go to jail.
You torture a kid by denying effective treatment it’s fine.
I can’t understand the doctors that didn’t say fuck it I don’t care what these
morons think and didn’t just vaccinated the kid.
~~~
kuhhk
> I can’t understand the doctors that didn’t say fuck it I don’t care what
> these morons think and didn’t just vaccinated the kid.
Probably because they didn’t want to lose their medical license, and make
their degree (that they’re still paying back their debt on) suddenly
worthless?
~~~
dogma1138
The a medical board that revokes their license it should be disbanded, forcing
someone to suffer through this seems to be directly go against the Hippocratic
oath.
~~~
beatgammit
Forcing someone to undergo a procedure that they explicitly do not want is far
worse than harming someone at their request IMO.
Doctors aren't there to make everyone healthy, doctors are there to offer
their services when desired. Sometimes they have to make a tough call and
can't ask permission (e.g. patient is incapacitated and the legal authority
isn't available), but directly going against someone's wishes _is_ harm.
------
einrealist
Parents like this should be denied all tax-exempts. They should even have to
pay a high extra tax. That tax money can then go into vaccination education
and treatment of unvaccinated children.
~~~
bjoli
In France vaccination is mandatory, and not vaccinating your kinds is
considered child abuse in the eyes of the law.
I have argued for a long time that not following the child vaccination
programme (in Sweden,my home country) should disqualify you from childcare and
any public schools since you are putting other kids at risk. then I'd probably
withdraw their government benefits (1050sek/month/child)
Edit: but of course, one should also see to what works on the population
scale. Sweden has no compulsory vaccination, but also has the highest
percentage of vaccinated kids in the world. I do however think removing child
benefits or limiting childcare for unvaccinated kids is a good idea. You can
choose whether you vaccinate your kids, but you can't choose not to have an
infection sensitive kid that can't be vaccinated.
~~~
DanBC
> should disqualify you from childcare and any public schools since you are
> putting other kids at risk.
In the UK you're allowed to home-educate your child, and we see
disproportionate numbers of parents with conspiracy-theory mindsets home-
educating. This is because we see larger numbers of "freemen on the land" and
"sovereign citizens" in this group.
Excluding these children from mainstream education feels satisfying, but may
well be counter productive. At school they get to see all their friends having
BCG and polio vaccines (I had these at school, are they still given?) and not
suffering any harm. They also get less indoctrination about wierd ideas. And
I'm uncomfortable with making the child suffer because they have an idiot for
a parent.
So, it's a bit tricky.
~~~
bjoli
Sweden has no homeschooling (except for one orthodox Jewish family a couple of
years ago which I believe ended up in the supreme court. I don't know the
final.judgement though), so that problem is already solved.
But yes, that is a problem.
------
hbogert
I don't know what's more shocking, the inflated 800k, or the ignorance of the
anti vaxxers
~~~
dogma1138
I’m not entirely sure how inflated that is form the NHS in Wales:
“A Level 3 Intensive Care bed cost an average £1932 per night”.
Add to that the additional costs of the treatment and staff and even in a
country with relatively cheap health care you get to costs of $300-400K for a
period of nearly 60 days.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why the Return Trip Feels Shorter Than the Way There - prostoalex
http://www.citylab.com/commute/2015/06/why-the-trip-back-always-feels-shorter/395714/
======
mseebach
I wonder if the destination matters: Going to a fair or theme park, actually,
even going to work, most people would be preoccupied with anticipation and
planning, some sort of excitation, while going home, your mind is in a
reflective/contemplative/relaxed state. In the former state, you're more
acutely aware of not being there yet, while less so in the latter.
~~~
kej
It's interesting that you mentioned theme parks, because the title reminded me
of the illusion created on Disneyland's Main Street by varying the heights of
the buildings. At the front of the park, the upper level is close to full
size, but as they get closer to the castle the upper floor shrinks.
As a result, the street looks longer as you enter the park full of excitement,
and shorter as you leave it exhausted at the end of the day.
------
thekingofspain
I notice it very much when walking in my day to day life, although it also
happens in car rides. As some others have expressed, it feels to me like my
brain is more active and focused on the destination, whereas I'm more likely
tired and docile on my way back, slipping into the rhythm of the trip.
Specifically, I'm thinking of this in the context of a night out (alcohol or
not), where incredibly long walks are feasible on the way back. Obviously,
there are other psychological factors that influence perception at this point,
but I notice the exact same effects all the time, just slightly less
pronounced.
I also wonder about what I'll call the "Lifetime" effect. Consider how car
rides in general or long wait times at a doctors office start to feel shorter
as you grow up (infinitely long as a child, pleasantly short as an adult).
Intuitively, this is because of your life experience (or lack there of) and
the fraction of your life-to-date that any given wait takes up. The time
lengths stay relatively constant, while they progressively eat up a shrinking
percentage of your life-to-date. Perhaps this same effect could happen over
the course of a day, or a couple weeks, or an hour. The initial trip consists
of 100% of your experience thus far until you get there and subsequently turn
around, but at that point any task necessarily takes a smaller proportion of
the overall time than the initial trip felt like (and was) at the time.
Perhaps something like that would explain it as well.
------
mavhc
Reminds me of a proposed explanation for
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_illusion)
We think it's further away at the horizon, so should be smaller, but it's not
smaller, so we think it's closer, and therefore think it's bigger.
------
rbanffy
I've been flying between Brazil and Europe a lot and I can tell you both ways
feel _very_ long.
Someone needs to resurrect the supersonic passenger carrier.
~~~
TillE
I've put some serious thought into going the opposite direction, and reviving
dirigibles instead. Sort of a cruise ship experience, when you need to cross
the Atlantic but you're not in a particular hurry.
Unfortunately, I don't think the economics really work out. Except maybe as an
expensive novelty.
~~~
rbanffy
Dirigibles are not particularly sturdy. I'd be worried to travel great
distances on one, specially in regions where bad weather is common.
------
vinbreau
I used to make frequent 4.5 hour drives between Austin and S.E. Texas. The
drive home always feels twice as long, not shorter. There's an excitement
about the place I'm visiting and so the trip there feels quick. The drive home
is after the fun has been had and now I just want to be home as quickly as
possible. As a result that trip feels so much longer. My experience has always
been the opposite than demonstrated in the article.
~~~
cc438
I think there is another effect at play during a return trip, at least for me.
I used to regularly tackle a 900 mile (1,800 mile roundtrip) haul between home
and college and it felt longer with each trip.
The trip felt longer as my familiarity with the route increased. I reached a
point where I knew _exactly_ how far I still had to travel at any point and
the close I got to my destination, the more frustrating it became. I'd feel
like I was on the home stretch as I knew my surroundings intimately but I'd
still have 1-2 hours left to go.
~~~
vinbreau
Yeah, driving into Austin at night after being on the road for hours was like
this. We would see the lights of the city spread out across the horizon. It
would feel so close, yet we still had an hour drive ahead of us.
------
reubenswartz
In dangerous situations, the brain works extra hard to process what's
happening, perhaps so you can deal with a similar situation later. This can
cause a "slow motion" effect, where your brain, by laying down memories more
"densely", slows the subjective passage of time.
I think a less extreme form of this may account for the return trip
phenomenon. I notice (very subjectively) that trips seem t take longer if: *
I'm stressed about getting there on time. * I'm going somewhere unfamiliar
(often the outbound part of a trip) * Either of the other 2, plus NOT using a
nav system to do the thinking for me, so I have to look for signs, landmarks,
etc.
In other words, the more actively your brain is involved in the drive, the
longer it seems to take.
These days, I can just put on a podcast, put the destination in my phone, and
feel like the trip barely took any time.
------
quinndupont
A related effect I've noticed (perhaps a kind of "expectation" effect) is that
it seems to take much longer when travelling over uninteresting terrain. I've
recently moved from Toronto to a smaller city that seems to be one large
suburb and even though Google tells me the distances I now travel are less,
they _feel_ so much longer. I'm convinced this effect is due to visual
stimulation, a kind of time compression through distraction. This is why I
prefer travelling through a city, even if I'm not always travelling quickly.
------
glaberficken
I've always wondered about this!
In my everyday experience I've always noticed a difference in this effect
between:
1) my normal home<>work commute (15 minutes by bike) I don't feel a
discernible difference in the time it takes (maybe because the trip to work is
downhill and effectively shorter than the return home, which is uphill. the
difference in speed compensating for the effect maybe?)
2) a holiday trip (100-200 Km by car) Here I definitely always feel the return
trip to be much shorter
~~~
Vraxx
I wondered about my return trip while commuting on a bike and later used a
device to track speed, location, etc while riding and found that it was
actually about 6 minutes shorter because it was slightly downhill most of the
way (but not noticeable) and I was travelling faster for the duration.
~~~
glaberficken
yeah definitely, non flat terrain, trips by bike are not the best to measure
this effect =)
------
insulanian
Because the route is cached! :)
~~~
spacemanmatt
I was thinking the jet stream at your tail actually does accelerate the return
trip quite a bit.
------
mkagenius
Funny that yesterday I went to see new apartment for rent, the broker was
taking me to new places - the return trip did seem smaller.
Even as small as a staircase seemed way smaller when getting down. Analogy
could be of writing code with so much hard work (forward trip) and then doing
ctrl-a,delete (return trip!).
This could also be related to time passing fast when you are happy than you
are sad or worried.
~~~
andreasklinger
Also works in coding: `Spike` and `Redo`
------
teh_klev
The other thing I find peculiar, when driving, is why I can never remember any
details about journeys from A to B that take around 30-60 minutes. When I
arrive somewhere those last 60 minutes are just a complete blank.
------
kstenerud
I never knew this was a thing. I haven't experienced it. Does it only happen
on vacation trips? Or does it also happen with, for example, commuting?
~~~
jjaredsimpson
Happens to me nearly everywhere I go. I experience it daily on my commute and
even going to familiar places like family members houses.
The return always seems faster.
~~~
baldfat
I have the opposite experience. I also didn't know it was a thing but I use to
always say the opposite to people and they would agree with me. Hmmmm
~~~
babuskov
Me too. Getting to a holiday destination is always fun, easy and seems short.
Coming back home is boring and seems to take much longer.
------
jpmoral
I only seem to feel this going to and from new places.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Sweden Became a Thriving Base of Neo-Nazi Ideology - wslh
https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3_MSHOVAs4sJ:https://www.haaretz.com/world-news/europe/.premium-1.831763+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=ar&client=firefox-b
======
basicplus2
Full version didn't work, have to be really quick to click on text version
before it disappears!
This will save you the trouble.. Text version...
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3_MSHOV...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:3_MSHOVAs4sJ:https://www.haaretz.com/world-
news/europe/.premium-1.831763&num=1&client=firefox-b&hl=en&gl=ar&prmd=ivns&strip=1&vwsrc=0)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Career advice from Terence Tao - michael_nielsen
http://terrytao.wordpress.com/career-advice/
======
mattheww
Especially good was Gian-Carlo Rota’s “Ten lessons I wish I had been taught”
which is linked near the bottom of the post.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lab-grown food is about to destroy farming - olalonde
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jan/08/lab-grown-food-destroy-farming-save-planet
======
stubish
I find it interesting that they have flour, but don't seem to be interested in
selling it as flour to consumers. Instead targeting the processed food market,
where it will be hidden because the market buying pancake mix isn't the market
that will look at these ingredients favorably. Or maybe marketing will get in;
after all, Quorn is known as Quorn and not genetically engineered mold. If it
works, it could have a huge impact without anyone noticing other than the
farmers. Having driven across part of Borneo, particularly interested if they
can make a palm oil replacement that can compete economically with palm oil.
------
FreedomToCreate
It will take years for society as a whole to accept lab grown foods, and
during the years it will take time to verify what are the side effects of this
new food source.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Huh. People eat McD's now. Burger King is everywhere. I don't think Americans
at least, are all that picky.
------
unmdplyr
This is just sensational/FUD journalism. A few 100 years ago, we were killing
cows by looking into its eyes. Now we do it more humanely by shoving it in a
machine. Did we lose jobs because of those machines?
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Yes of course we did.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Open Source Hardware and the Law - neeee
http://www.publicknowledge.org/blog/open-source-hardware-and-law
======
noonespecial
I know his focus was on cheaters unfairly profiting off the work of the
community and how copyright can stop this but patents can't. But there's
something else that current patent law does automatically do for OS hardware
that I think will turn out to be very important. Once the community creates
and publishes a hardware function, it automatically becomes prior art and can
never be locked away from the community by the (let's face it _truckloads_ )
of bad actors in the commecial patent space.
With the rate the open hardware community is growing, I don't doubt that it
will soon the the dominant force for small scale innovation in the gadget
space. I see this as a key part if the final solution to the "patent mess" we
find ourselves in today.
How much prior art is there on hackaday right now?
------
finnw
I'm surprised the article does not mention _firmware_. It is an essential part
of many electronic devices, is copyrightable, and it is not often feasible to
replace it with an open-source equivalent.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to not fuck up your manufacturing startup - johnnybowman
http://johnnybowman.org/post/153644788496/how-not-to-fuck-up-your-manufacturing-startup
======
Strangework
So wild! Such a surprise to find this on the front page of Hacker News. If it
weren't for the author's username, I might have missed this gem.
I had worked at Edenworks as a software engineer for a few years, alongside
Johnny. I don't pretend to know enough to speak on manufacturing itself, but
Johnny's remarks on software development are spot-on.
When I had come onboard, I had naively suspected a typical software startup
experience; rampant technophilia with an obsession for integrating the
freshest software technologies. If 'Software is King' is true everywhere else,
why shouldn't it be true here?
Edenworks is not a software startup, however, and it's important to realize
that. Manufacturing is an entirely different beast, which makes steady,
deliberate movements (i.e. it doesn't move fast, and it shouldn't break
things). When the main product being developed is a tangible system, redos are
way more costly. Adding flashy software features does not expedite this;
lashing the latest and greatest Javascript library onto the fronted does not
add value... not reliable value anyways.
When it comes to developing a manufacturing process, software should be
flexible and let the process demands come first. The typical workload is more
concerned with running test trials than hacking up something new.
For me, this realization was more emotional than organizational - sometimes
you have to curb your hype. To add real value to the product, I had to watch
my ego. In a manufacturing company, the Process is King.
~~~
m_eiman
_When the main product being developed is a tangible system, redos are way
more costly._
Even when primarily doing software, this can come into play.
I know of a customer who had about 5000 card readers in an access control
system, where bugs in the card reader firmware required a firmware update.
Doing this required walking to a reader, unmounting it from the wall, updating
the firmware, re-mounting the reader. Rinse and repeat 5000 times.
A rough estimate is that upgrading all the readers on the site took about a
man-year of technicians walking around updating things. Let's just say that
when more bugs were discovered, the customer who paid for it all was less than
pleased…
Lesson learned: always make secure remote firmware updates possible on your
devices.
~~~
SixSigma
> Lesson learned: always make secure remote firmware updates possible on your
> devices.
Lesson apparently not learned: get it right first time.
Software isn't special
[http://www.gettingitrightfirsttime.com/report/](http://www.gettingitrightfirsttime.com/report/)
~~~
m_eiman
Software IS special. Compared to hardware, software is (usually) so easy to
update that it's (usually) cost effective to not do it right the first time.
NASA etc is different, and they work differently.
Everyone knows this and act accordingly - which is why we have to live with
ever changing requirements for projects.
------
mb_72
Although my main gig is software, I've also been manufacturing electronic
music gadgets for 15 years. The most significant difference in thinking for me
was, for hardware, always keeping in mind "this item is being shipped across
the world, must work perfectly upon arrival and for hopefully a long time
after that, and is almost impossible to update without the customer incurring
hassle or the company incurring expenses". Contrast that to software where
problems are generally easily able to be fixed and - most importantly - can be
updated almost instantly.
Especially after some recently problems with my hardware business that
necessitated the return of some units for repair, and the hold-up of
manufacturing while we worked out what was wrong, I've come to realise that
the easily-updateable nature of modern day software really gives us such power
and flexibility, it should never be taken for granted.
------
ffwacom
"All of these things take time away from getting shit out the door, but they
ensure you don’t get fucked. In manufacturing, you optimize for not getting
fucked." The language is a giveaway he has been involved in manufacturing
------
Animats
The startup mentioned is an urban indoor farm for lettuce. As a manufacturing
process, it's a good case. One product. Few changes. No need to retool for the
2017 Lettuce. Few operations. (In a manufacturing plant, an "operation" is one
step in the process.) This is the best case for classic mechanization. You
just need to do the same thing over and over while holding the process
parameters within tolerance, and do it cheaply.
This indoor farm, EdenWorks, has a nearby competitor, AeroFarms, in Newark.[1]
AeroFarms claims to be much bigger, and claims a new patented technology for
growing plants on a cloth substrate made from recycled plastic bottles, with
the plant roots in a nutrient-enriched spray mist instead of water or soil.
(AeroFarms may be exaggerating how far along they are. See Google
StreetView.[2]) Welcome to manufacturing, where it's about volume and price.
[1] [http://aerofarms.com/](http://aerofarms.com/) [2]
[https://goo.gl/maps/amxpekwPEGr](https://goo.gl/maps/amxpekwPEGr)
~~~
avn2109
>> "...No need to retool for the 2017 Lettuce."
These indoor farm outfits have nothing to do with lettuce. There's a reason
they're building them in/around NYC, aka in the densest concentration of pot
smokers the world has ever seen, far from Humboldt county's fields and
Colorado's manual hydroponics.
The business model is just to get the automation figured out with some low-
value crop, e.g. salad greens, while waiting for the legislature to
decriminalize. The day Albany finally comes around to the idea, they'll retool
for sticky green weed faster than you can pin up a Bob Marley poster.
It'll take them about fifteen minutes after the governor's signature dries to
get the first pot plants started. The economics could not possibly work out
for lettuce alone.
~~~
michaelt
Do you think this explains the reports of Toshiba [1] Fujitsu and Olympus [2]
growing lettuce in clean rooms? I was under the impression that weed
legalisation was low on the political agenda in Japan.
It might be that these producers expect higher human-labour costs, making
automation more profitable - such as due to rising nationalism reducing the
supply of cheap migrant labour.
[1] [http://qz.com/295936/toshibas-high-tech-grow-rooms-are-
churn...](http://qz.com/295936/toshibas-high-tech-grow-rooms-are-churning-out-
lettuce-that-never-needs-washing/) [2]
[http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/05/13/national/science...](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/05/13/national/science-
health/fujitsu-harvests-low-potassium-lettuce-grown-plant-clean-
room/#.U3N6Uq1dXoh)
~~~
rmah
Japan is a different situation. There is very little arable farmland left
underutilized in Japan. There are millions of acres of farmland sitting
dormant in the USA.
~~~
rlonstein
> There are millions of acres of farmland sitting dormant in the USA.
However in the higher energy cost future the production, processing, and
distribution of that farm product to a far away base of consumers is not
viable. The various direct and indirect subsidies and availability of
relatively cheap fuel, which is itself subsidized, make it possible to get
fresh foods to urban consumers. It seems like a smart play to plan for
arcologies or reuse of decayed urban cores around food production.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
As I understand it, the whole aim of agriculture is reduced energy per unit
output. The reason some US farmland lies dormant is, its slightly less
productive per unit effort.
Further, any other high-tech food solution (electric boxes that grow lettuce
under lights etc) is more energy-expensive. Can't bean letting Mother Nature
do all the work, and just driving by later and picking up the food.
Also there is a surfeit of farmland (read: food production) in the US. Iowa
produces enough calories to feed 2 United States all by itself. The feds pay
to leave 10% of Iowa fallow. Not as a soil-conservation effort (though that is
a result) but instead to control supply. Which is yards cheaper than trying to
support prices. So that's part of it too.
~~~
rlonstein
> Further, any other high-tech food solution (electric boxes that grow lettuce
> under lights etc) is more energy-expensive. Can't bean letting Mother Nature
> do all the work, and just driving by later and picking up the food.
I like the simplicity of that description-- which might be true for grains,
where huge tractors and combines can roll through the fields-- but glosses
over all the work done on a farm for other products. It also ignores that
there are significant risks to letting Mother Nature take her course where as
indoor farming can control light cycle and intensity, watering and humidity,
CO2 level, temperature, and (probably) greatly increase density while (maybe)
minimizing pest control and herbicides.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Economies of scale are hard to beat. The whole point of agricultural science
for a century is reducing costs per yield. One farmer and 1000 acres are going
to beat any room full of indoor-farming boxes and controls, right?
Field applications are really very cheap - a few dollars 'cides per acre
total. And yield 10K's of kilos of product.
------
fencepost
From the article: "A good, defensible manufacturing strategy is one where
you’re applying and protecting (ideally via patent) a faster, cheaper, more
reliable way of doing something in your industry, by borrowing a proven
approach from a parallel industry."
If you're looking for a formalized system designed to help with some of this,
take a look at TRIZ[1][2]. I'll just steal one note from the "What Is TRIZ"
article - "Somebody someplace has already solved this problem (or one very
similar to it.) Creativity is now finding that solution and adapting it to
this particular problem."
A big part of the basic tooling for TRIZ is the results of people going
through a huge mass of patents looking for patterns of problem categories and
how they were solved.
[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRIZ)
[2] [https://triz-journal.com/triz-what-is-triz/](https://triz-
journal.com/triz-what-is-triz/)
~~~
leodeid
I read the wikipedia page and that "what is TRIZ" article, and I still don't
understand what it is. At times, it sounds like an automated program
(especially with statements like "More than three million patents have been
analyzed to discover the patterns that predict breakthrough solutions to
problems"). But at other points, it seems like a human-centric problem solving
strategy, but without the strategy. It describes problems and then solutions
without any discussion of the in-between.
Do you have experience with TRIZ? What "is it" to you?
~~~
amk_
They teach you this stuff in product design classes.
TRIZ is a way of breaking down an engineering design problem into the thing
you want to change, and the thing you can't change (a "contradiction"), then
resolving it. A "TRIZ Matrix" is a reference tool that suggests ways of
resolving conflicts between common design parameters (strength, weight,
durability, manufacturing tolerance, etc.) based on a number of principles
that have been validated over the years, like "nesting" or "prior action".
Over the years, 40 standard principles (and 39 parameters) have emerged. They
all have somewhat cryptic, consultant-handbooky names but make sense when you
see some examples[1].
E.g., you have a beam and you want to make it stronger, but can't make it any
thicker. You consult your matrix for "strength" vs "area" and get some
suggestions such as "use composite materials". Or, applying the principle more
generally, you try to extract techniques from the patent library or
publications that resolve the problem.
[1]:
[https://www.triz.co.uk/files/triz_40_inventive_principles_wi...](https://www.triz.co.uk/files/triz_40_inventive_principles_with_examplesfeb15.pdf)
~~~
pjc50
This reminds me of Brian Eno's "oblique strategies".
------
AbrahamParangi
"Figure out software after everything else" I also work at a manufacturing
startup ([https://markforged.com](https://markforged.com)) and I disagree.
Manufacturing is ancient. Software as a field has been around for 45 years
(give or take). If you're not working at a pure software company, the software
for your particular field is probably in its infancy.
If you're looking to innovate, it is orders of magnitude _more_ fruitful to
look to the software improvements which can be made to your technology because
orders of magnitude _fewer_ man-hours have been spent by humans so far solving
those problems.
"In indoor farming, we see a lot of competition focus on how data will drive
yield increases, yet they haven’t figured out how to regulate air temperature
in their facility." I have to assume that these competitors are looking for
the innovations that will make them 10x more competitive. Startups are dead by
default. Innovation is the only way to survive.
~~~
banjomascot
I disagree with you - Figure out your process and automate with software.
Your software will only be as good as your process. There are mid-market ERPs
that are 30 years old or more (specifically, Dynamics NAV comes to mind).
These software solutions implement the processes that have been honed by
humans for more than a thousand years. It is much easier to innovate
elsewhere. I am curious which specific ERP packages you have found to be
innovative.
~~~
kriro
Figuring out the process is a complex task. A complex task that (imo) is very
likely to be solved better by some sort of AI approach than human tinkering.
That's where I see software innovation in production. Having an efficient
lab/simulation toolkit where you can constantly improve your processes
(probably a human/computer hybrid).
~~~
exolymph
> A complex task that (imo) is very likely to be solved better by some sort of
> AI approach than human tinkering.
Citation extremely needed.
------
dilemma
Process as competitive advantage is an ace point. Most companies fail from
mismanagement.
Competitor teardowns is another good one, but what information do you use for
that? How do you determine who their suppliers are?
~~~
dylandrop
It depends what you're manufacturing, but the obvious answer is probably
either
• visit their website
• buying their product and looking it up the parts online
• talk to your vendors
For the last one, this is particularly relevant if you're buying in a market
with few suppliers.
~~~
johnnybowman
agreed and also trade shows. Simply asking "who are you a supplier for in
Industry X" is surprisingly fruitful.
------
kriro
Very interesting read, especially since I had a production management focus at
university that I've only partly used so far (when developing ERP software not
when running my own company).
"""A good, defensible manufacturing strategy is one where you’re applying and
protecting (ideally via patent) a faster, cheaper, more reliable way of doing
something in your industry, by borrowing a proven approach from a parallel
industry."""
I very strongly disagree with this and find the thought process very
unnatural. Patenting something you copied almost feels like it's against human
nature to me. Humans essentially learn via copy and improve. Thankfully
business practice patents are not valid in some countries.
I also disagree with the thoughts on not focusing on software or at least
think the author undervalues the potential role software can play. I think
some of the major problems in production management are very ripe for
algorithmic innovations. Plant layout planning and job scheduling (basically
most operations research) seem very suitable to AI/learning based approaches.
Non trivial simulations are also very important for well run production
companies (anecdotally, from the ERP development experience).
~~~
huhtenberg
> _Patenting something you _ copied _ ..._
Strawman. That's not what your OP's quote says.
~~~
kriro
The OP describes competition teardown and learning from what they do,
essentially reverse engineering their processes and also applying things from
other domains to your own domains. I think seeking patent protection for your
own processes when you actively recommend tearing down processes of your
competition is a bit odd.
"""borrowing a proven approach from a parallel industry"""
I've translated that to copy+improve. I mean what if that approach was patent
protected? How would you go about borrowing that proven approach?
~~~
coldtea
> _I 've translated that to copy+improve. I mean what if that approach was
> patent protected? How would you go about borrowing that proven approach?_
That's why he talks about borrowing it from ANOTHER domain, where even if its
patented, it doesn't apply to yours.
------
contingencies
Putting aside for a moment the author's experience, our own experience at
[http://8-food.com/](http://8-food.com/) has been somewhat similar in its
difference from conventional startupry but quite distinct in its apparent
relationship to conventional manufacturing.
We are producing a series of vending-machine-like service locations which
automatically prepare and retail hot meals from fresh ingredients. We have of
course the manufacturing process for these machines to keep in mind, but in
addition the machines themselves are essentially miniature factories and so
all of the theory, literature and best practices of the manufacturing economy
proper apply - albeit scaled down in time, space and (usually!) cost - to our
machines.
So far it has been very interesting to read the literature of other
engineering disciplines and to translate concepts between them and our
experience in software. Thus far I believe there are some great processes that
software can teach manufacturing, but also vice versa.
------
edblarney
"It’s easy to find new ways to make shit more complicated. It’s hard to find
new ways to make shit simpler. "
Applies to software just as well :)
~~~
wheelerwj
its just a general life lesson.
"Everything shoukd be made to be as simple as possible, but no simpler."
-einstein
this shouldn't detract from the complexities of manufacturing vs software
~~~
voidlogic
Also
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KISS_principle)
------
kiresays
Do you find merging the software and process/manufacturing side of things to
be advantageous? I'm a process/chemical engineer getting into software and am
wondering if it's worth splitting time.
~~~
banjomascot
In this order:
1) Product (will people buy it?)
2) Process (can you scale it?)
3) Software (now scale it)
------
PascLeRasc
It's always nice to see hardware/not-SaaS content on here.
------
pipio21
Yeah, the main difference is that in the Software world companies like google
make products in beta form and use their customers as testers. They could
improve the product "on the fly".
On the other hand in manufacturing having a big recall for a defective or
incomplete product usually means "instant bankruptcy".
Even big companies like Samsung(Galaxy recall) or Volkswagen(Dieselgate) or
BP(Deepwater oil spill) have to suffer immense loses from "moving fast and
breaking things".
~~~
smallnamespace
The reason this works for Google but not for manufacturers is because
manipulating and transporting electrons is many orders is magnitude cheaper
than for atoms.
------
keithnz
having been through a number of tech businesses who do manufacturing... (
[https://www.taitradio.com](https://www.taitradio.com)
[http://www.compacsort.com](http://www.compacsort.com) and now
[http://www.outpostcentral.com](http://www.outpostcentral.com) ) the key thing
to me is how fast you can innovate which is all about how quick you can try
ideas. As a startup, contract manufacture as much as possible so you can scale
your production up and down. Definitely focus on your processes, kill bad
product lines as quick as possible. Spend the time on making things robust,
keep things as simple as possible as long as possible. Sell and promote your
brand as much as possible.
.... and you are going to fuck things up anyways. But hopefully not in a
terminal way. Some fuckups are learning opportunities, some fuckups are
because you don't learn the right things from previous "learning
opportunities".
------
kylehotchkiss
Hi Johnny! Great to see you on HN... and great article about some of the
challenges with manufacturing!
~~~
johnnybowman
Hi Kyle!
------
unixhero
He forgot to mention: Big clients with aggressive legal stange who promise
millions then strangle and cancel the contract you had with them when you've
sunk 1000s or hours into R&D.
~~~
ju-st
A lesson from history and geopolitics: Never trust more powerful entities.
------
DougN7
Does anyone else get turned off by the needless vulgarity?
------
DoofusOfDeath
I wish HN wouldn't use this language in its headlines. It means I can't read
it when my little kids are nearby.
~~~
j2bax
You could use an extension that swaps out swear words for alternatives like
"fudge". One of my coworkers used one.
~~~
DoofusOfDeath
Thanks, that's great idea. Will check it out.
------
bbcbasic
Any need for the F word?
~~~
tubularhells
Oh for fuck's sake, stop it.
~~~
radisb
c'mon, give him a fucking break.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Neil DeGrasse Tyson Teaches Scientific Thinking and Communication - peter_d_sherman
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kPINNhHGNw
======
peter_d_sherman
Quote:
1:15 - 1:25 (approx):
"Search engines on the Internet _are the epitome of confirmation bias_ \-- and
you're going to use that as evidence that you're correct?"
-Neil DeGrasse Tyson
(Truer words were never spoken...<g>)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
You have a better chance of achieving the American dream in Canada than America - joeyespo
https://www.vox.com/2019/8/15/20801907/raj-chetty-ezra-klein-social-mobility-opportunity
======
Bostonian
Steve Sailer has explained that Chetty's mobility numbers tend to be higher
for mostly white areas, because the incomes of low-income whites and blacks
tend to revert to the white and black means. Given this pattern, it is not
surprising that there is more mobility in Canada than the U.S., since a
smaller fraction of Canadians are black.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon was Down - crc321
http://www.amazon.com/index.html
======
gkoberger
A while ago, someone claiming to have worked at Amazon said that downtime
doesn't really affect things as much as you'd think. He said most people
simply just come back later.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5147461>
[Edit: That being said, there's also the statistic that every 100ms of latency
costs Amazon 1%. Imagine what 20+ minutes of "latency" would do.
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=273900>]
~~~
coldtea
> _A while ago, someone claiming to have worked at Amazon said that downtime
> doesn't really affect things as much as you'd think. He said most people
> simply just come back later._
Brick and mortar stores found that out ages ago. They were closed for large
parts of the day/night and the customers just came back the next day.
If people didn't leave Tumblr and Twitter, with their constant massive outages
(at some point in their life), when why would the leave Amazon, a huge
established player, for a few hours outage?
~~~
ams6110
I doubt many would leave Amazon permanently because of a service outage, but
it probably does cost them something in impulse purchases, if the impulsive
desire for the item passes during the downtime.
~~~
ryusage
No, you would think that, but actually if you read the comment referenced
above, what they actually found is that outages seem to have little effect on
revenues. That's why it's so surprising, really. The implication seems to be
that their customers don't actually spend a whole lot on impulse buys.
------
geuis
This is just a small complaint coming many hours after this link was posted.
You linked to perhaps the most top-level URL amazon has available for a
temporary outage. This means a couple things. 1) Hours later, the outage is
over and I'm just hitting the home page. No specific information about what
you were reporting. 2) This specific link is, as far as I know, now no linger
available for other stories. That may not matter I the long run but it bares
mentioning.
------
austenallred
At an estimated loss of $31,000 per minute
[http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9962010-7.html?tag=nefd.to...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-10784_3-9962010-7.html?tag=nefd.top)
I'm blown away that I see Amazon goes down so often. That certainly, in my
mind, doesn't bode well for the brand of AWS.
~~~
gry
Heroku is up: <http://cl.ly/image/0B0U1K3Z342R>.
Conversely, when AWS had issues, Amazon.com was not impacted.
Amazon.com != AWS. I'm curious to know when AWS or Amazon.com innovations
impact each other, or which one leads. I'd rather it be Amazon.com.
~~~
ceol
I think the gp was saying that the _brand_ — as in, the perception of AWS—
will suffer, not the actual services.
Anyone with an ounce of server knowledge would know it's impossible to keep a
website up for 100% of the time, so downtime at Amazon is understandable, but
maybe the average Joe Manager is deciding between Rackspace and AWS and
happens to visit amazon.com during this downtime. "If Amazon can't even keep
their bread-and-butter running, how can I trust them with something like AWS?"
he might say.
~~~
scottbruin
> Anyone with an ounce of server knowledge would know it's impossible to keep
> a website up for 100% of the time
As far as I know Google has 100% uptime, so it's not impossible. May not be
100% for every geographical location but that's partly because of things
Google cannot control nor make redundant.
------
podperson
Somewhat off-topic: my (limited) experience with Amazon Prime video suggests
it's significantly less reliable than Netflix or iTunes (neither of which are
stupendously reliable, but I'd say Netflix is by far the most reliable of the
three). Hulu might actually be worse than Amazon Prime.
~~~
notimetorelax
I don't know if you saw this posted on HN, but Netflix test their system
really well. They use so-called chaos monkey [1] that shuts down random
servers on a whim. This allows them to detect and get rid of dependencies,
i.e. tolerate failures in other parts of the system.
[1] <http://techblog.netflix.com/2011/07/netflix-simian-army.html>
~~~
mistermumble
Isn't Netflix hosted on AWS?
~~~
svedlin
Netflix is indeed running on AWS. Some details about their back-end here:
[http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/12/aws-reinvent-was-
awesome...](http://techblog.netflix.com/2012/12/aws-reinvent-was-awesome.html)
------
rdl
Wow. Something this big means I'll bet it's a networking issue.
I wonder if they lose money for a brief outage, or if people just delay their
purchases. I seem to remember them graphing this somewhere.
------
ketralnis
Do we really need a front-page post every time a well-known site has a hiccup?
It's bad enough getting it every time github does. What are you hoping for
here? A thread full of me-toos?
------
lucb1e
Had downtime yesterdayevening (12 hours ago) as well in the Netherlands.
People from Germany were able to load the website (the .com version; .de
worked at all times), and after two hours I was able to as well. Upon trying
to add something to my cart it returned the same error 500 though, so that was
still down the last time I checked (about 10 hours ago). I'm not sure if or
when this was resolved.
I didn't submit this as story because I didn't think anyone would care, given
the recent call not to post downtimes. Given the #1 spot the story has now, it
seems I should have. So do people care or not?
------
argsv
<http://www.amazon.ca/> is OK.
I get Http/1.1 Service Unavailable on first two requests.
I got 500 with the message "We're very sorry, but we're having trouble doing
what you just asked us to do. Please give us another chance--click the Back
button on your browser and try your request again. Or start from the beginning
on our homepage. "
------
ck2
Comes up for me <http://www.amazon.com/gp/cart/view.html>
------
level09
<http://i.imgur.com/E8vAzKp.jpg>
~~~
simonster
I doubt that works when the site is up either. Many servers these days reject
pings.
------
davorak
Doing fine here, both amazon.com and the AWS console.
~~~
rattray
here=where?
------
michaelburk
I got a 500 error on amazon.com. Now just a timeout.
------
seanp2k2
Can't get into AWS management console either.
~~~
ritchiea
I can't get to the management console or status.aws.amazon.com
------
monksy
Sounds like someone that is oncall is going to have a bad night. Amazon.de and
.co.uk are up.
------
mattbillenstein
There are two types of websites, those that have suffered downtime, and those
that will.
------
ivabz
Seems like Only US market got goosebumps. UK looks fine and up.
------
michaelrbock
And it's back up for me.
------
itomatik
aws console seems fine to me. the amazon.com is down for sure.
~~~
andrewryno
Yeah same here. Amazon is throwing a "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" but AWS
console is fine.
------
DallaRosa
Amazon.com is back up
------
danielovichdk
Use Windows Azure!
------
rapcal
Back online
------
gsibble
Browsing the site is nearly impossible at the moment.
------
tquai
It's a lesson in overengineering. At this point my $5 Pentium 3 server has a
greater uptime than Amazon.
~~~
potatolicious
Your $5 Pentium 3 server isn't the largest retail website on the internet
making $61 billion a year.
Having _seen_ a lot of the code that Amazon runs on, and having seen first-
hand the scale that it runs on, I'll say this: it's not perfect, but it's
remarkably well-engineered, and a hell of a lot better than most snarky HNers
could do.
~~~
hhw
But that's the point. Most people don't need anything that well-engineered.
Compared to more traditional hosting solutions from quality providers, AWS has
terrible uptime and at a much higher cost for the same amount of resources.
Two VPS'es from two different providers in a simple failover configuration
with an anycast DNS solution would be simpler, cheaper, and much more
reliable.
~~~
hhw
Wow, apparently that last comment really hit a nerve, as several people
decided to downvote it, but not a single person actually refuted any of what I
said. I was under the impression that downvotes were more to be used against
trolling or flamebaiting, and not just opinions that people disagreed with.
Considering everything I said is quite easy to verify as being true, this
downvoting just strikes me as kind of intellectually dishonest. I expected
better from HN.
~~~
tquai
Yeah, I think there's a misunderstanding somewhere. Some people think I
believe a $5 computer could handle amazon.com's traffic, which is clearly
preposterous.
I know that almost all of my downtime comes from when I overengineer things.
And I don't need to "patch my kernel" because my OS doesn't have kernel holes
once a week. Linux isn't the only Unix OS out there.
Today, a lot of sysadmins believe that "LAMP" is a synonym for webserver, and
consequently there are a bunch of webservers serving static content on a
machine with way too many moving parts. Complexity is bad.
"Things should be made as simple as possible, but not any simpler." -- Albert
Einstein
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why I Left Google - cangencer
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/jw_on_tech/archive/2012/03/13/why-i-left-google.aspx
======
arkitaip
I think people here are being ungenerous towards the author. Too me this story
sounds genuine and not like a pr move dictated by Microsoft. It strikes me to
be a personal account by someone who's trying to make sense of the past and
actually mourning what he believe is the death of old Google. This deserves
our respect as professionals because inevitably we are all going to find
ourselves in a similar situation, trying to learn from the past and seeking
understanding by our peers.
~~~
georgemcbay
I agree the responses seem a bit harsh.
Also as someone who never worked at Google but has been a pretty big Google
"fanboy" (of the search, Google Apps, Android, etc) his waning enthusiasm for
the brand as an employee seems to have taken a very similar dip to my waning
enthusiasm for them as a user, though due to personal investment his dip was
probably faster and deeper than my own.
I've loved Google in the past precisely because they weren't Apple and they
weren't Facebook. It seems increasingly like they are trying to be Apple and
Facebook rolled up into one, which (most importantly for me) sucks because I'm
not a fan of Apple or Facebook and (most importantly for them) sucks because
they aren't a very good Apple nor a very good Facebook, so they're trading in
their old fans for the hope of new fans that probably aren't interested
anyway.
Larry Page, I am disppoint.
~~~
timr
_"I've loved Google in the past precisely because they weren't Apple and they
weren't Facebook."_
I absolutely do not understand this frame of mind. Why not just like a company
for its products, rather than liking them because they're "not" some other
company?
Life is too short to get caught up in the identity politics of corporations.
Google is a business, not your buddy.
~~~
pragmatic
Trust.
If you invest time/money in something, you want to have a good feeling about
it. I want to know I'm not going to get screwed down the road.
I think of if like a relationship with person. Do you want to be
friends/lovers with a thief/liar/cheater?
Reputation matters.
~~~
timr
_"I think of if like a relationship with person. Do you want to be
friends/lovers with a thief/liar/cheater? Reputation matters."_
It's entirely possible to have good feelings about products, value the
reputations of brands, and trust companies (or not) without getting caught up
in politics. I like Whole Foods because they have really good produce, not
because they're "not Safeway".
You don't have to choose sides in a religious war to make product judgments.
~~~
oblique63
It's not necessarily always about 'choosing sides'. We are at the point where
buying a product from one of these large companies no longer simply means
"buying a product" (like you would produce at a Whole Foods). Popular tech
products are so intertwined with their parent companies, that it basically
implies more of a wager. As a user, when you make a purchase, you place a bet
that in your commitment to use this product, the company behind it won't do
something that will decrease the enjoyment/utility you get out of the product
during its lifecycle. Now this doesn't have to be some new policy/action that
literally occurred after your purchase, but rather something that was not
obvious upon purchase, and might not even have to do directly with the product
itself. Either way, this type of assessment still fits into what you're saying
about evaluating a product on it's own merits, but at a certain point, the
politics behind a product actually DO affect the product's merit, because they
are so intertwined.
In my case for example, I just recently got bit by the fact that iPads are
restricted to syncing with only one computer while I was developing an app for
it. The iPad on its own is a fine piece of hardware, and is a generally nice
product, but this one detail devalued it for me significantly. Can you
honestly say this detail is completely detached from the fact that it is an
apple product? I wouldn't think so, that move is completely expected from
apple; it's part of the locked-down ecosystem you buy into with apple
products. I actually like apple's products 'on their own', because they are
well made and have attention to detail; however, I will [most likely] never
again buy one due to apple's aforementioned politics, which directly affect my
experience with their products as a user. Similar thing happened with
Samsung/T-mobile and my Vibrant which they never even updated Gingerbread;
awesome product on its own, but the service I got with it (part of my
'experience') was poor, and totally determined by the politics behind it.
So while it might be easy to detangle product from company for something as
simple as produce, it gets a bit trickier when looking to purchase a longer-
term tech product. If you're ok with lock-down, and/or lack of updates, that's
great, Apple and Samsung products are totally awesome, they're just not for
me.
------
ChuckMcM
Ouch.
Not enough people think about year 10. You know, that's when you're 10 years
old as a company and you've got a lot of huge successes behind you. Kind of
like teenagers when they realize that finding a job is suddenly not an
'optional' thing in their lives.
James' rant here reminded me of a similar rant I read (internally) at Sun on
its 10 year anniversary. They had published a book all about Sun's first
decade, and somehow excised the fact that Sun had built a workstation called
the 386i. It emphasized the successes, and papered over the mistakes. The rant
was about how Sun, who had kicked DEC in the nuts and had them retreating to
the data center, was walking right into that same data center because
Microsoft was starting to make PC's as useful as workstations. (there used to
be a real distinction there.)
I remember thinking that somehow Sun had gone from bringing technology to the
folks who could use it, to being all about being a more impressive Sun
Microsystems. Sun's "Google+" moment was the day they announced they were
going to merge System V and SunOS.
In my brief time at Google I was exposed to the folks who had become more
about 'The Google' and less about doing cool stuff. I saw many of the same
things James did, and I hear Marissa's 'call to arms' about Social and said to
myself "If she can't say what it is, how can she expect the troops to achieve
it?"
If you read the stuff about Mark and Facebook (and I have to believe that at
least _some_ of it is true.) the man is on a mission. And his mission was to
make a new place in the universe that didn't exist before, he left it to
others to figure out how to monetize it. Google did the same with search, make
it real, then monetize.
But I think at some point the operating committee at Google looked at
monetization of all the things Google has done and if you included search
advertising the in the bar graph everything else looked like zero. And you ask
yourself "We've got all these smart people doing all these projects and not a
single one even comes CLOSE to the income that search advertising does? Give
me one good reason I shouldn't just fire all of them?"
The sad thing is that I saw multimillion dollar a year businesses get tossed
under the bus because they just didn't move the needle.
Ten years on, ask yourself, "What value do you bring to the table?" if you
don't know, that is a big problem.
~~~
6ren
Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" was motivated by DEC getting
killed. He claims that DEC was a victim of a disruption: a new technology that
offered something that didn't seem to be a threat, become successful in other
markets and eventually improved enough that it was threat - then it was too
late. There, the old technology was minicomputers; the new technology was
workstations.
The new technology isn't perceived as a threat because it is not as good and
will never be as good in the old market. It manages to survive in a different
new market (because it really can't compete in the old pond). As it improves,
it never catches up with the old technology - but it becomes _good enough_.
That is, the old technology has also improved, and is definitely better - but
the old market doesn't care for that extra improvement. You can see there are
a few things that have to happen for disruption to occur.
One of the reasons for Google's 20% was to try to prevent this kind of thing,
but it never worked out. Some business types redefine terms, so that
"invention" is a new technology (make something), and "innovation" is a new
business (people want). Google's made a lot of stuff, but most isn't wanted
and didn't create a business. They aren't innovations. Closing down businesses
that aren't making enough to move the needle is the classic mistake of
disrupted businesses: Christensen suggests setting up separate, autonomous
business units (even separate businesses; startups), with limited resources,
that _will_ get excited by small wins - because new disruptions start small.
(YC is pretty much doing it right...)
However, right now, Google is fighting for its life. At the beginning,
facebook didn't seem threatening - or at least not _that_ threatening. Then
again, I'm not sure that Google ever could win this fight; social is such a
different kind of business. Perhaps the best that google could hope for is to
settle back into owning search forever.
My only disappointment is that google didn't manage to transform its internal
inventions into innovations. I'm not saying it's easy or that I could do
better, it's just that unlike winning social, it seems _possible_... and who
knows what new disruptions might have come from that?
As it is, Google seems closer to Xerox: one fantastic invention/business,
invents the future, makes no money from it.
~~~
jrockway
Here are my thoughts as an engineer at Google. These are my own thoughts, not
Google's :)
I don't think Google is fighting for its life; people are not defecting away
from search to use Facebook's search or Bing or whatever. Right now, Google+
is something like, "let's see what happens if we build a social component and
integrate it with our products". It doesn't seem like much right now and it's
certainly not killing Facebook, but that's not the goal; the goal is to have
something in case being able to post pictures and "interact with brands" turns
out to be important in the future. (Do people like ads? I say no; I avoid them
at any cost. But many people like ads and like companies and like products. So
we'll see how that goes! Look at the brand Apple has built. That's
advertising, my friends.)
It's easier to understand if we look at past events. So let's take Picasa, for
example. It was never as popular as Flickr or even SmugMug. Why bother
maintaining it when it's clear that Google "lost" to Flickr? The answer is
because it could later become relevant. Now that people are running around
taking pictures with Google phones, sharing them with GMail and Google+, it's
logical to have a Google-owned picture repository. That way, we get total
control over the user experience and can make a really integrated product.
Take a picture on your phone, instantly share it with your friends from your
computer. Pretty neat!
Google Play is similar. People loved iTunes' integrated payment system, music
store, book store, movie store, app store, and phones. Google had all the
infrastructure for these things (Checkout, Music, Books, YouTube / Video,
Android Market, and Android), but not integrated, so people didn't tend to buy
Android phones to get apps and content. But, time allowed Google to unify
these discrete components into Google Play, and now users have access to
something very much like iTunes. It was a very slow incremental thing, which
people aren't as excited by as "one more thing" style announcements, but now
we have something that's pretty cool and will make Google products more
attractive than they were before. It was worth keeping stuff like Checkout and
Books alive, even if they were not exactly putting PayPal and Amazon out of
business.
So today, Google+ is maybe not the best thing ever. But some day, it might be
a useful piece of software to have, and so we have it. Right now, I think it's
really great as an internal bulletin board that I can fine-tune to exactly my
interests. It may not be as cool as Facebook, but it's still a useful piece of
software that was worth writing. (I've never seen an internal bulletin board
system that lets me subscribe to certain topics and people, after all.) Rather
than ensure that everything we push is an epic success on day one, we're
putting it out there for people to try. Some people don't like Google+, some
do. I use it as a better Twitter; the interface is nicer, I can write more,
and so I use it more than I used any "social" products before Google+. So
there's one data point, though I realize I am not the average user. (Facebook
never excited me and I didn't have an account. Google+ was interesting enough
to entice me into trying social networking.)
Yes, management sounds a lot more excited about Google+ than I do, and that's
fine, Google is not my company and I am more practical :) Worst case: G+ is a
nice internal tool for Apps customers. Middle case: something that's good to
have if we want to play with social ideas. Best case: a new way to use
computers that people love. All are good.
(Remember Google Checkout? It was a nice foundation for Google Wallet. So it's
worth trying things and having products that may not be the industry leader,
because you can always improve them!)
Personally, I'm working on a new product at Google that will make computers do
something that they've never done before, something that many people have
wanted for a long time. I have no idea how it will ever make money, but we're
doing it anyway because people will like it. And no, this is not some rogue
20% project. :)
So to summarize; I'm not upset with Google for creating products that are not
overnight successes. Yes, social is where your friends are, and everyone is on
Facebook today. Clearly Google+ isn't enough to get people to abandon their
friends for a while. But it's worth continuing to develop, because it will
only get better with time. I don't think that means the end of Google :)
~~~
danielhunt
Actually, speaking as an android user who LOVES that I can auto upload my pics
to the GOOG, I absolutely _hate_ that Google has any social platform at all.
Because G+ exists it makes Facebook a competitor. Can I easily share my auto
uploaded pics with my Facebook friends? Not at all. Can I change where I
upload my pics to? (Ie : not picasa) not at all.
Picasa is about lock in. Not about user experience.
~~~
vibrunazo
You can upload all your pics from your phone to facebook with a couple of
clicks from the Android Gallery app. A lock in would be if you were not
allowed to, or at least if they went out of their way to make that harder for
you. But instead they go out of their way to put the share button and inter-
app communication (intents) to allow you to easily share your pics with third
parties.
I understand your frustration, and I too would like some kind of API to let us
better control auto-upload. But "lock in" seems a bit of a stretch. You're
asking to go out of their way, again, to better support competitors. When
there's already a lot of support for them in place.
~~~
Drbble
Can facebook or flickr or whatever poll the pictures directory to support auto
upload, if they (app writers) want too?
------
taylorbuley
> App Engine fees were raised. APIs that had been free for years were
> deprecated or provided for a fee.
From where I'm sitting Google has been pretty rough on independent developers
recently.
I think their lack of caring (or understanding?) indy devs is best summed up
by the Google+ API. Read-only is understandable as they get off their feet,
but you can't even get a user's profile stream (you can only fetch profiles
one by one).
Now that the Buzz API is shut down I have yet to find a way to "share"
anything programmatically on Google. How can you be social without a share
API?
~~~
JS_startup
Google's recent behavior was central in our decision not to embrace their
technologies and APIs. If they're going to either be suddenly shut down or
have prohibitive, anti-startup pricing applied to them then why should we
hitch our wagon to their horse?
------
antirez
IMHO what's sad is that Google+ is not better than Facebook for average
people. Better is, for them, more warm, where you may express more about you
in a simpler way, and so forth. Google+ is clearly designed by people not
exactly in touch (mentally speaking) with the average person using Facebook,
that's why nobody of the non tech guys want to switch to it.
p.s. IMHO Google is going to lose in the email space soon as well, times are
mature to beat it in simple ways, only protection they have in this space is
that there is a big "optimization" part in email that is anti-spam and they
are good at it.
~~~
pragmatic
^ this.
G+ is a worse Facebook (and not in the worse is better sense).
Gmail is getting slow and the recent changes haven't been for the better. In
fact it's hurt usability for common users for the (dubious) benefit of "power"
users.
The unified google interface is rather crappy. I don't know which which i have
to click/hover/etc to get to my account settings.
------
CurtHagenlocher
As a Microsoft employee, I wish this hadn't been posted to a Microsoft-branded
website. Other than that, I thought it was an interesting perspective and I
loved the money quote:
"I couldn’t even get my own teenage daughter to look at Google+ twice, “social
isn’t a product,” she told me after I gave her a demo, “social is people and
the people are on Facebook.”"
~~~
nextparadigms
But "the people" were on Myspace, Hi5, Friendster and other social networks
before Facebook - hundreds of millions of them. So clearly it's something
about the product, too.
~~~
nirvdrum
While that's true, I don't think any of them really had critical mass. Of
those you mentioned, I had precisely one friend on Myspace, none on Hi5 or
Friendster. I had two friends on Orkut. I think Facebook played it smart by
making it an exclusive network on college campuses at first, then opening it
up.
~~~
colonel_panic
I don't think the exclusivity was a long-term strategy, but rather a natural
progression from its beginning as a site for Harvard undergrads. It was really
useful at providing specific needs for college students at the start. It was
easy to find who was in your classes so you could ask for homework help or
invite people to work on a group project back when everybody listed their
classes through Facebook's central app. But after it opened up to everybody
and a whole bunch of apps appeared, there were multiple competing class-
listing apps with no clear winner and you needed to use all of them if you
wanted to see everybody in the class. It became less convenient and most
students no longer bothered to list their classes at all.
Once Facebook understood the appeal the site had to the general population,
they realized that it would be better for them to create an ecosystem where
network effects were optimized for the decentralized user base as a whole
rather than the centralized subnetworks that made the site take off in the
first place. At each step, they focused on what worked for the users at the
time.
Google+, on the other hand, really did deliberately start out as an exclusive
network, largely for people in the tech world, and it hoped to quickly
transform into something with universal appeal. You can draw your own
conclusions about how well that worked.
------
paul
I also miss the old Google.
I think it's a mistake to blame this on ads though. I don't believe that the
G+ crusade is being driving by advertising (though I'm sure it looks that way
to people who assume that everything is about ads).
~~~
rickmb
Really? Please enlighten me, what is Google+ (or Facebook for that matter)
about if it isn't about advertising?
Because as far as I know, every service that isn't about being so great people
would pay for it is about advertising and nothing else.
~~~
vibrunazo
It always seemed to me that social is the evolution of search. And google
knows this very well. Social signals are very important for finding what
you're looking for. The idea of g+ was always to implement something like the
new "google + your world" on a larger scale on all google products. If they
didn't do this, they would fall behind to the competition. They felt forced
to.
Erick Schmidt once said something like "we only want facebook to open their
data so people can search for it, failing that, we'll find other ways to get
it". It was clear from that day, that they were building a facebook
competitor. Not because they were looking for new ways to spam people with ads
(that's an overly simplistic generalization). But because they found it
important to keep their existing business relevant. Independent of which
monetization they were using. Even if google search was a paid premium, they
would need social anyway. It's clearly not "about the ads".
~~~
MatthewPhillips
There's nothing evolutionary about "social signals". It's very, very old.
Since the beginning of time advertising companies have used big data to better
target their ads. Facebook obviously makes this easier, but it is not new. 20
years ago advertisers knew, within a margin of error, what type of car you
drove, how much money you made, and whether your wife was pregnant.
Social signals are less valuable than search terms. Search terms very often
lead to a direct purchase. Social is just another avenue, like TV, to build
brand awareness. It's very valuable, but it's not search-valuable.
~~~
vibrunazo
I think you're misunderstanding what I'm saying. I'm not implying they need
social signals to better target ads. But to give better search results. (as in
google + your world)
The competition was already doing this, Google was threatened. Bing had a deal
with Facebook. Users were already using Facebook to look for information
instead of Google. They tried to outsource social to facebook and twitter.
That proved an unideal strategy. Social was too important for their business
to rely on the good will of another company. _Social is the future of search._
Google saw this coming a mile away and got into social before they could
become irrelevant.
Social is the future of search, this fact is independent of advertising. Even
if Google had a different business model for their search engine. They would
still need social. They didn't get into social because of ads, they did
because search needs it.
~~~
zyfo
> Social is the future of search
Says who? The fact is that arguably the most hardcore googlers are here on HN,
and I would imagine that most of us don't care for, and even dislike, social
search.
That's not enough to prove that social isn't the future of search, but it's
enough to think twice about it.
------
pradocchia
I do miss the old Google. They had some good products. Search was search, and
it was clearly designed to provide the very best search possible.
Unadulterated and honest. Same story with Gmail, despite the ads. No lock in,
no rent-seeking.
Too bad, really. The new Google is obnoxious in a "why-are-you-doing-this?",
Facebook kind of way.
~~~
bo1024
I would put the difference this way. I used to feel like Google was providing
me cool, useful services. Now I feel like Google is trying to figure out ways
to collect my data.
I think they will learn to their cost that trust doesn't grow back.
~~~
gnaffle
This pretty much sums up my feeling about Google, too. It's the same feeling
that made me stop using Facebook.
------
AmericanOP
Google should focus on their product- the search bar.
Google Plus Me should mean I can find anything of mine via the search bar. If
I want to find a file on my computer, I should be able to search for it using
google.com instead of spotlight. I should be able to do this even if I'm not
on my normal machine.
It's not just desktop files. If I want to show my dad pictures of my trip to
Cabo, I shouldn't have to log into Facebook, find the always moving Photos app
button, find the album, find the picture.
I should be able to search 'My cabo pictures' in Google.
The omnibar should really become omnipotent. That would be compelling, cool,
futuristic must-have UX. That's what Google Plus Me means to me.
~~~
jdpage
They have that: Google Desktop. If I recall correctly, it even lets you do it
from your other machines. Admittedly, it's been a while since I've used it, so
I might be wrong there.
(Methinks that it would be vastly improved if they got simply got rid of the
big clunky desktop widget engine. Possibly even got rid of the search box and
just let you use a web view -- as you described above.)
~~~
jurjenh
I'm pretty sure that has been shut down in one of the last few culling rounds.
I agree that it was very useful, it also had a good sidebar that seemed to
learn which rss feeds were likely to be interesting among other things, but I
stopped using it quite a while ago...
------
pasbesoin
An observation from the inside of what I've been seeing/feeling from the
outside.
When Google started killing the "cool" stuff, I perceived (rightly or wrongly)
the writing on the wall as far as attracting and retaining top talent. And
they lost my semi-hesitant... "devotion". I wanted to believe they really did
care about e.g. next generation energy sources, at a time when even our lame-
ass federal government can't get its act together on that front. And Earth,
Maps, various API's (Translate, for example), and the like produced
fundamental changes in various environments and endeavors, both professional
and hobbyist.
Now, sliding into "corporate", lame-ass Google. So sad. Perhaps inevitable;
nonetheless, if so, then "just another".
P.S. As I reflect a bit more, I still have more respect for them than e.g.
Facebook (manipulation) or Microsoft (domineering, monopolistic, and (perhaps
resultantly) now fumbling senior management). But I fear the arrow is pointing
in the wrong direction.
And yeah, this is just one random guy's observation. I guess I've added it
because in the past Googlers (and "Google") seem to have occasionally observed
and perhaps absorbed some of the collection sentiment expressed on HN.
------
Steko
G+'s problem at it's root is that it's a FB clone. They copied the core
functionality and tacked on a few specs that make it, literally, FB+1. The
problem is no one is going to move their whole social network for FB+1 or
FB+2. Google needed to build a product an order of magnitude better to win
social.
There are plenty of colas that are +1 better then Coke but to take away Coke's
base you'd need to be Coke+100.
The obvious solution is to stop trying to make a FB clone and do something
else to get your ad demographics. I think they should stick with their core
advantages and innovate in the vein of their own Adsense product:
(1) Users sign up with Google and volunteer their demographics.
(2) While signed in, Google tailors searches to them.
(3) Google gives the user a tiny percentage of the increased ad revenue. It's
peanuts for most people so make it Google Play credit.
(4) If you're not signed in everything is anonymous.
Test run the whole thing on a smaller scale with Android users that already
have Google accounts and (for many) credit card info on file.
Nielson families give up a lot of personal data about their viewing habits.
This is rewarded with free cable, internet and cell phone service, heck they
may even be paid. Even people that just take an hourlong phone survey about tv
or radio are rewarded with $50+ checks. The reason market research companies
pay this is because the data is extremely valuable to them and their clients.
Obviously every web company wants to get that data "for free" like they do now
but the giant tracking databases and all the personnel behind that certainly
aren't free and create an adversarial relationship that can dilute your brand.
~~~
justinru
I don't think giving users a percentage of ad revenue is a feasible business
model. How/why would that work?
~~~
Steko
Shrug I thought I made the case already.
If Google makes X on untargeted ads and X+Y on targeted ads then it comes out
ahead by offering Y/10 of that money to the user somehow.
Yeah it's peanuts so you make it Google Play credit. For some people maybe
it's only one song a month, for others it might be one movie a quarter.
~~~
MarkMc
Or Google could make a deal with Facebook: If Google makes X without
Facebook's data and X+Y with their data, they can offer Facebook Y/3.
~~~
Drbble
But Facebook is gunning for that X+Y. There are only 12 billion * 24 eyeball
hours in each day.
------
defen
If life were a movie, all the "advice" Steve Jobs gave to Larry Page toward
the end of Jobs' life was completely bogus, and part of a long con aimed at
destroying Google in retaliation for Android being a "stolen product"
([http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/20/steve_jobs_vow...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/11/10/20/steve_jobs_vowed_to_destroy_google_android_called_it_a_stolen_product/))
We all know Jobs was enough of a mastermind to pull it off; but was he that
malicious?
~~~
marshray
He may have truly believed in what he was doing.
After all, this is the guy who believed every computer with a switching power
supply was ripping off the Apple II. [http://www.arcfn.com/2012/02/apple-
didnt-revolutionize-power...](http://www.arcfn.com/2012/02/apple-didnt-
revolutionize-power.html)
------
gamebit07
Today google is doing what MS did some years back. Google wants to be facebook
and some years back MS wanted to be Google(when they started bing).
People at google say "don't be evil", you cant run business without being
evil, google in its early days tried being the least possible evil, but as
Shakespeare said: "lowliness is young ambitions ladder".
But the ambitions of MS were clear from start and they did not even care about
what was evil, they wanted their supremacy all over. By joining MS you have
come to a place that is more evil, more evil than putting ads or compromising
slightly on privacy of users, look at the open source initiatives that Google
takes, agreed google labs has been shut down, app engine prices have gone high
they have dedicated some of their focus working on Social Networks, but which
company would not want to have a chunk and share in what is hot. By the way,
what do you see on MS being done, even they are wannabe in their approach.
free 90 days trial for azure and the sun will rise from west if they offer
anything that is not free/freemium. The point i want to make here is
When you talk about privacy, i am sure you would curse facebook for privacy,
won't you. The only reason that compelled you to leave google, was you did not
get a project that you would like to work on, more geeky, irrespective of what
the company gave you, you should have tried paying it back by being proactive
in your efforts and pointing out the errors. I respect google for what it has
built, i am sure the amount of effort it has put, the horizons that it has
opened the initiatives it has brought remains unsurpassed, yes there is a
tinge of evil air that currently surrounds it, but again as you mentioned
Google learns from its mistakes, and rectifies them.
By joining MS you have done more bad than good, probably you will be given
some hardcore engineering project, but you could have got them as google as
well, with some efforts.
------
whiletruefork
The author states that in his time at Google he realizes it was always a
company funded by ads, but that he did not have to personally feel the need
for Ads in all products. That's a fair point. Where I lost him is his
connection of Google+ with Ads.
I disagree that G+ is an Ads play. It's a play for staying relevant on the
internet. When you think about it, Facebook is a closed system. They want CNN
to post articles into the CNN FB stream. They want people to read those
articles on the CNN page (yes, this currently links to outside FB... that will
change). They want to do this so that you never have to leave FB, and in fact
if you look at the user behavior of 13-17 year olds you will see disturbing
trends that this is the case.
Facebook is a danger to a free and open internet by becoming the de-facto
internet. I concede that this is a stretch, but it is within their power to do
so and from my understanding is how their strategy is lined up.
TL;DR: G+ is only about Ads in the way that Google needs users to serve Ads to
and there is a threat that all users of the internet only go to Facebook and
nowhere else.
~~~
natrius
_"When you think about it, Facebook is a closed system."_
People say this all the time without any justification. As far as I know, all
content within Facebook that has no privacy restrictions can be viewed without
being a Facebook user. Facebook has an API that can be used to both read and
write.
Facebook is stingy with phone numbers and email addresses, which is a
significant failing in my opinion. Other than that, I can't imagine a more
open social network that allows users to control who can see their content.
~~~
MatthewPhillips
So what you're saying is that Facebook is open because you are allowed to
fetch information that Facebook allows?
~~~
natrius
You're allowed to fetch data that _users_ allow, with few exceptions.
------
cromwellian
[http://www.quora.com/Who-is-the-Bing-Director-of-Test-
that-l...](http://www.quora.com/Who-is-the-Bing-Director-of-Test-that-left-
Microsoft-for-Google-twice-over-a-span-of-a-few-days)
Maybe the third time will stick?
~~~
ryanmolden
Is that the same guy (I honestly don't know)? There is no answer on Quora that
I saw. If so, then yeah that post would be viewed in a very skeptical light.
If not, well then unrelated.
Edit: Looking at other responses about his history I doubt it, it sounds like
he previously worked in DevDiv (my home), not OSD (the home of Bing).
------
pessimist
Valid reasons to quit Google, but then he joins Microsoft?
~~~
tikhonj
My impression is that Microsoft is actually _very_ diversified and focused on
technology. There was an article a while back about where the various large
companies (Google, Apple and Microsoft) make their money; Microsoft had the
most diversity by far.
Microsoft is also not afraid to fail or try random things, which makes it much
like the "old Google" in this blog post.
~~~
vineet
Microsoft's diversification is not really a good thing. IMO, it is no use
building lots of technology without being good at any of it.
My belief is that Microsoft will improve, but I would not go there because
they already have their technology goals right. (I would go to Microsoft as an
intrapreneur trying to fix their technology/innovation story).
------
tambourine_man
I dream of a day when the world will wake from this social sharing bad trip.
Facebook is not only making the web worse, by breaking most of its core
assumptions, but it's destroying one of the greatest companies to arise in
recent years.
Google has made accessing the world's information transformatively faster and
easier. Facebook has made blogging more pervasive and closed.
~~~
Karunamon
>Facebook has made blogging more pervasive and closed.
I've got to disagree with you there. Blogging in general refers to longer-form
posts than the average status update field on Facebook is comfortable for.
If you're going the angle I think you are, you could make the same argument of
Twitter.
~~~
tambourine_man
Facebook inspires a shorter writing than a typical blog post, yes.
But Facebook is in a completly different category than Twitter.
Tweets are encouraged to be public. You don't need to fill in a form a agree
to EULA to follow a link.
Anyone can compete with Google because the information they are indexing is
public. Last “App” I did for Facebook required me to give them my cel phone
number to access the information the user consent in giving.
------
MatthewPhillips
Larry Page is killing his company to chase after a market that is less
profitable that the one he currently owns.
~~~
koalaman
Larry Page, like anybody else with any chops in the business, understands that
the internet is about communication, and communication is about identity,
data, and a sharing protocol. If Facebook owns those things, they own
everything.
As long as all the users are on one identity and sharing platform you can
develop all the open social APIs you want but it's totally pointless. We need
at least a duopoly and angry users wanting to share with people not on their
platform for any kind of standards to emerge.
You're thinking ad money, ad money, ad money. And Microsoft and others are
quite happy to feed that theory with there substantial PR budgets and lack of
ethics. But I don't think that's what's on Larry's mind. I might not agree
with his strategy, or particularly like Google+, but I think if you study the
man you would come to the same conclusion.
~~~
philwelch
I'm reminded of the term "architecture astronaut". When you're discussing
business strategy in highly abstract terms, I'm not sure whether you're onto
something or whether you're being a business strategy astronaut.
At first blush, Facebook's got a stronger foothold in "identity, data, and a
sharing protocol". At second blush, they still make less revenue/profit than
Google, which in turns makes less revenue/profit than Apple. And it's hard to
see how that will change without flying up into the stratosphere talking about
ungrounded abstractions.
Facebook gets more buzz and is considered hotter shit because it's newer. It
doesn't mean anything.
What _does_ mean something is that Facebook can provide targeted advertising,
and obviously an amalgam of Facebook and Google could provide the most
targeted advertising. For instance, if I googled something about online dating
but my Google+ account said I was married, the CPC/CPM on Adwords for my
search should be different than if my Google+ account said I was single. If
Google has any business sense, Google+ is about targeted SERPs and targeted
advertising, it's not about vague abstractions that may or may not have
anything to do with turning a profit.
------
bane
" As the trappings of _entrepreneurship_ were dismantled, derisive talk of the
“old Google” and its feeble attempts at competing with Facebook surfaced to
justify a “new Google” that promised “more wood behind fewer arrows.”"
Simply put, Google stopped investing in it's future through building
entrepreneurship in its engineering ranks. This is bad for Google's future
growth prospects, full stop. They've drawn a line in the sand "we're about
ads, not technology innovation!" and that is where the company will slowly age
and die.
Google is no longer about where it's going, but about how it ages.
------
cromwellian
Why does he even bother bringing Wave into this? As a Googler he should know
that Wave was never meant to be a social network. It didn't even have the
subscribe of 'friends', it was an attempt to create a new kind of Email.
He worked at Google but didn't realize that all that innovation, be it GMail,
Android, Chrome, Search, Maps, Google Car, etc was paid for by ads?
------
davemel37
I think Google+ 's mistake, like the author, has to do with a changing
doctrine, but i think it has more to do with a branding issue than an
innovation or technology issue. (it could be both, but i would argue
perception comes before reality when it comes to success)
I think "Google+ is a dud," has less to do with whether social is broken, but
rather with human perception and branding. Much the way Google owned the
category search in peoples minds, Facebook owns the category social in peoples
minds.
Google made two fundamental mistakes. 1\. Using their brand that stands for
Search on something else. The human mind is like wet cement, once a brand owns
a category, that impressions is almost impossible to change. (Ever try to
change someones mind from his political philosophies? almost impossible).
2\. Building a product in a category that is already owned by another brand
without positioning themselves opposite it.
This is classic... Burger King will never take over Mcdonalds market share
because they are trying to convince people that they are better. Since the
category is owned already, they need to claim, "We are different"
When it comes to branding, its all about human perception. Like the authors
daughter said, "Facebook is where the people are." Even if that statement
weren't true, the perception is ingrained in peoples minds.
A good example of competing with an established brand is Coke vs. Pepsi...
coke was the real thing, original coca cola, so pepsi came out and said were
for the new generation. Why be old when you can be young and fresh.
Avis didnt say we are better than hertz, they said, sine we are number 2, we
try harder.
Dominoes didn't say we have better pizza than pizza hut, they said, we will
get it to you faster.
Listerine didnt say we taste better than scope, they said, "the taste you hate
twice a day."
This is branding 101. A brand can only stand for One Thing. (a brand that
stands for everything, stands for nothing.)
If google wants to compete in the social game... They either need to create a
niche of social like twitter, foursquare, and pinterest did, or they need to
use a new brand name, and position themselves opposite facebook, not claim
they are better...
Big executives always talk about convergence, but the Human perception just
doesn't work that way. When you combine two things, people assume you are
compromising on quality on both sides. When you separate things, people assume
you do that one thing much better than everyone else...
Google owned the search brand because that was all they did, Search. The new
ways of trying to get into other businesses like Paul Graham said," is a chink
in their armor."
Just my two cents.
~~~
zmmmmm
Agree totally.
However I think G+ did in fact differentiate itself at the start. They made a
big play out of how circles were there so that you weren't sharing things
publicly all the time. But the nymwars hit and it went horribly wrong at that
point. You can't sell a message that you're the champion of people's privacy
and _then_ kick them off your network for not revealing their identity to you.
They basically lost all credibility as being differentiated from Facebook and
became just "the same" as Facebook but worse because none of your friends were
there.
~~~
davemel37
Very valid point. Brands are built by third party validation, not by your own
claims. If there is incongruity between your message and your product, you
wont be able to get over the initial hump of credibility. Without credibility,
it doesn't matter how well you try to position yourself, no one will believe
you.
Nobody believes what you claim about yourself, but they believe what others
say about you. This is why PR is such an important element of building a
strong brand.
~~~
zmmmmm
> Brands are built by third party validation, not by your own claims.
I actually think what a company claims about itself is tremendously important,
but not because people believe it, rather because it influences how people
frame their ideas. It's like the public are viewing you through a magnifying
lens and what you can influence is where the lens points. What is actually
seen through the lens is then what you really _do_.
So claiming something about yourself that is authentically true and then
behaving genuinely in accordance with that is quite powerful. But you can't
fake it, you have to really do it. Claiming G+ is about privacy and then doing
things like forcing real names and public profiles is extremely harmful (and
not just to G+, but the whole Google brand).
Google has to figure out the good things that are really true about themselves
and then talk about those. If they can't think of anything then they have to
really take a serious think about where the company is heading.
------
kprobst
Social seems to be to Google what mobile is to Microsoft... they might have
good stuff here and there, but nobody's ringing the bell.
------
vineet
I am not a Google Employee - but I do want to defend Google here. Yes, Google
used to be a technology company that empowered its employees to innovate.
However, in the process they built a huge amount of UX Debt.
Bad UX was forgivable a few years ago, but that is no longer the case. Google
has not figured it out yet, but with the web maturing, I am glad that they are
trying to evolve to be a more UX focused company.
~~~
redthrowaway
I disagree. Search used to be fast and clean. Ditto GMail. Even Maps has
gotten slower and more cluttered.
Google's recent UI changes are about _branding_ , not UX.
~~~
vineet
I agree with your points. I categorize them under growing pains. Good UX is
not easy - especially when you have such a large number of users and products.
If you look into the reasoning for many of the cluttered items, you will see
things like "doing X would make it more readable/useful/etc for the general
population".
Perhaps I am just an optimist. My fingers are crossed.
------
InclinedPlane
I think advertising has a lot to do with google's growing pains.
Google clearly has empireitis and that alone is causing them to grow into
something that the google of, say, 2000 would look on and despise. But aside
from that the incentives of being an ad focused company are harmful to what
used to be google's core values.
The problem with any ad-focused company is that your users aren't your
customers. Your customers are the ad companies, and your users are your
product. There's less reason to make a product that people love passionately,
deeply, and value greatly. There's only a reason to make a product that people
use frequently. This is a subtle but hugely impactful distinction. It's the
difference between a newspaper full of hard-hitting investigative journalism
married to solid, thoughtful analysis and an run of the mill tabloid rag. When
all that matters is how many eyeballs are looking at ads then it makes the
most financial sense to maximize that at the cost of everything else.
------
jballanc
Granted these charts are 2 years old now, but 2 years ago when I first saw
them I thought they might be a pretty good indicator of the future for the
respective companies...
Google revenue broken down by product:
[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-02-24/tech/29964449...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-02-24/tech/29964449_1)
Microsoft revenue broken down by product:
[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-02-10/tech/29961217...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-02-10/tech/29961217_1)
Apple revenue broken down by product:
[http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-04-21/tech/29988935...](http://articles.businessinsider.com/2010-04-21/tech/29988935_1_iphone-
revenue-apple)
I know which company I would want to work for if I was interested in the
opportunity to work on and be passionate about a variety of different
projects.
It also boggles my mind that the Apple chart is pre iPad...I would love to see
what that chart looks like now.
------
robocop
This individual joined Google in 2009, and left before he'd been there 3
years. He's in no position to be waxing nostalgic about the "good old days" of
Google.
------
eliasmacpherson
To be very honest I am glad he left google. The googletesting blog went to
shit as soon as he came along. It was very enlightening to read it until he
showed up.
Whittaker reminded me of one of my over enthusiastic handwaving lecturers,
very short on substance. Compare and contrast the articles written by Misko
(Hevery) and Whittaker. I don't think his departure is a manifestation or
representation of anything at Google, and I think it's telling he returned to
MS.
------
jroseattle
Google has really taken it on the chops these last few years. I remember back
in 2006 or whenever the time was when they were the shiznit, and were easily
the most admired company in tech. And I remember thinking, let's see how well
it goes when everyone is NOT cheering you on and you have a tailwind in your
sails. Google is definitely in that situation now.
------
Tichy
Weird choice to post such an article on msdn.com, of all places.
~~~
sbisker
It's sort of a cultural thing amongst a lot of Microsoft employees, especially
older ones (or in this case, ones that have returned), to run their blogs off
of Microsoft's blogging platforms.
In this regard, Microsoft's culture actually does a very good job of
encouraging its employees to blog from the inside - I've never felt quite the
level of direct engineer access and communication working on Google platforms
as I have on MS platforms, even in cases where Google's platforms are actually
superior. (Chalk it up to Google groups being a little opaque and Google
product blogs being run by product managers.)
~~~
Tichy
So he ran from Google to Microsoft because Google did not live up to his
ideals anymore. I am not actually a Microsoft hater, but I'll take that story
with a grain of salt.
------
talmand
Is it me or does several of his complaints about the overly-aggressive
targeted marketing apply to Facebook as well? He must really hate Facebook
then. Personally, I think all this targeted stuff is not as good as stated by
the people selling it.
I can understand that he felt the need to leave because something changed for
him and his attitude towards his employer. But I seem to remember the big
statement someone made not too long ago that Google+ was the future of the
company and if you didn't like it you were welcome to leave. I suppose he took
their advice.
As for any meaning or message one could get out of this about the future of
Google, Facebook or even Microsoft; I see very little substance. It's one guy
explaining to anyone who wishes to know why he left Google. That's it, let's
not make more of this than what it is.
~~~
talentdeficit
for the most part, facebook can only target you when you're on facebook.
google now targets you across their properties some of which have significant
lock in. it's not as easy to escape google being creepy as it is to escape
facebook being creepy.
~~~
cromwellian
Facebook can target you across any site that has a Facebook Connect or Like
button, and eventually they will turn those Like Buttons and Comment plugins
into display ads.
------
crag
Every company grows up. I'm old enough to remember when Microsoft was cool. I
remember my first copy of Windows 286; all 12 floppy disks worth. I was
excited. Now I fight with the MS sales team over MSDN prices. :)
My point; it's part of the process. Google's grown up. Do I like it? No.
------
toddnessa
This article could easily be paired with the Godman-Sachs article to teach a
business class on the value of having right priorities in business. Often
businesses lose themselves placing the pressures of business ahead of the
priorities that got them to where they are in the first place. Sort of the
proverbial "putting the cart before the horse" analogy. Google should focus on
being itself. It sounds as if they have lost touch with what they really were
in the first place. After all, they were the search engine that changed the
world to such a degree that most everyone now says "google it" in reference to
searching the web.
------
gruseom
I wish Google had focused on being the champions of the open, pluralistic web,
instead of on Google+, which ironically seems like Bing.
------
tmsh
I think the problem with larger companies is that they have something to lose.
So fundamentally, almost at a physics level, they become less flexible. They
have more momentum in a given direction.
The problem with larger _technology_ companies is that technology don't give a
s*. And it's fast. Things iterate quickly. That's just how automation and
computers work.
------
damian2000
There is a ring of truth to this blog post. Especially in Google's seemingly
blind, dogged attempts to beat Facebook at their own game, in the social
space. It reminds me of how MS went after AOL with MSN - and we all know how
that ended up.
------
cinquemb
I thought google used to be a company of innovation (and still had potential
to become better) and now that they find themselves competing with Facebook
just brings them down from where they started.
Rant:
A company with so much money, and still no idea what to do with it. Here's a
hint, use all that brainpower you waste optimizing advertising machines and
make something that solves a problem that many people face using technology?
maybe seek to reach out to a new audience? maybe quit sucking on the corporate
tit that thinks advertising works in its current form? It's barely working for
fb and thats because they dont care about user privacy (facebook actually
sounds like a legal phishing company for advertisers, and i rather be shot
than to put any of their API's on any site i create). Whatever, sheeps will be
sheeps. And google isn't immune it seems.
------
juandg
Smart move to leave Google b/c it was buying its way into social and then go
to Microsoft who's trying to buy their way into relevance #fail
------
ssn
Google is at trouble. They are following Facebook on the web/search front, and
following Apple on the mobile/media front. What are they leading?
------
Mordor
Why didn't they just buy Facebook?
------
chj
when the best a company can do is copying, no wonder people are leaving.
------
michaelochurch
To understand why Google isn't what it used to be, one has to understand what
happened in 2009-2011. This is the era when Google decided to get "real
managers" and they hired a bunch of executives from places like Oracle, IBM,
and Intel. If Google had told them to wipe their fucking feet off before
tracking shitty culture into the place, it might have survived. It didn't.
Google has an immense amount of talent "under its roof". Unfortunately,
there's a necrotic layer of useless and counterproductive middle management
coming up with a series of "innovations" that each have made the company
worse. For a few examples:
* 20% time is dead. It requires managerial approval. More on that later.
* Until recently, people were hired "between levels" on the engineering ladder (which is generally a disaster at Google; see this: <http://piaw.blogspot.com/2010/04/promotion-systems.html>) and then about 2/3 of them were "downslotted" to a lower level. It didn't affect their pay, but it blocked future raises, was a career kiss-of-death, and generally shat all over morale. What's amazing to me is that no one ever said, before this bit of syphilitic idiocy could reach implementation, "This is a terrible idea and you need to stop abusing cough syrup on the job." Fucking California culture, man. In New York, terrible ideas cause buildings to fall down kill people and so we refuse to tolerate them. Unfortunately, Google's executives seemed to lack the insight to recognize an obviously horrible idea as horrible. (Downslotting was abolished last year, but I'm astonished that such idiocy got in the door in the first place.)
* Engineers (not just managers) literally drop everything for 1-2 weeks each year to write "Perf" (for themselves and peers). The high-stakes performance review process is just that important.
* Google is resistant to any change that might improve engineer productivity beyond the rather plodding rate it has now. C++ and Java are the real house languages; Scala's not even on the table. Python is listed as a house language so Google can still hire people but it's rarely used and nearly deprecated in production.
* Managers have free rein to fuck over an employee in Perf if they believe him to be "distracted" or at risk of future distraction by 20% time, even if that employee's performance is otherwise strong. This doesn't make Google any worse or any different from more traditionally managed companies. It does deprive them of the right to market 20% time as a perk without being called out as liars.
* Last summer, it was announced that every employee had to have a 3-word "mission statement" that managers could change, and a 63-word quarterly summaries of their work. This was the infamous "7/20" all-hands in which the deprecation of 20%-time was announced.
* HR ignores severe ethical lapses by influential managers, including a person who was outright proven to be using low performance scores and PIPs (Performance Improvement Plans, which stop transfers) to block transfers.
To make it clear, Google still has some really great people and could turn
itself around if it just fired most of the middle layers. The company still
has an incredible number of immensely talented engineers of whom I think quite
highly, but the company is so horribly managed that I see nothing but a cold,
miserable twilight in its future.
~~~
anthonydchang
You are truly either delusional or an attention-monger that needs to troll to
feel better about yourself.
Like cletus mentioned, many people reached out to offer you constructive
advice. You ignored everyone, thought yourself superior to everyone.
I bet you were just waiting to be the first to comment, no? You did well...not
only did you throw Google under the bus, you also threw California under the
bus. Learn to have a little class.
~~~
michaelochurch
I'm going to take you seriously even though you don't deserve it.
Any rip on a state with 50 million people in it is somewhat in jest. Anyway,
there are a lot of great things about "California culture". When applied to
technology, an open-minded and experimental "Let's try it" mentality is great.
Necessary, even. When applied to management without enough attention paid to
the fact that some of the people posing ideas have bad intentions, some awful
ideas get into implementation and it damages companies. It hurts people. So
more conservatism in selecting what to implement is in order, and discussing
ideas that might be harmful (with thousands of people) until they've been
explored is a bad idea.
The problem with Google is that it's got the conservative New York culture
technically (I mean, even Scala isn't allowed) and the California culture with
respect to hare-brained managerial ideas like downslotting-- the exact
opposite of how things should be.
Put it this way: technological and managerial innovation are utterly
different. If you do a tech demo and it's slightly rough around the edges,
that's fine. You're awesome for having the courage to put yourself out there.
If you're putting forward suggestions that are going to affect the way
thousands of people work, the traditionally sloppy (for tech, I mean "sloppy"
in a positive sense) tech demo is _not_ how you should be communicating.
~~~
apenwarr
I think I agree that the existence of downslotting was a mistake. However, the
problem it was attempting to solve (you got hired at one level, but performed
at a lower level, because you managed to fool people in the interview) is a
real one and there _is_ no good solution for it. So I appreciate that they
tried to find one, and realized their attempt didn't work, and tried something
else.
If management was easy, we could all read a book about how to manage a company
and then all do it optimally. Since that's not the case, experiments are
necessary, and I admire the attitude that leaves them open to things that
might not work. I disagree that it was "obvious" that the downslotting
mechanism would not work - or rather, that it was obviously worse than any
other alternative, because once you have the "not performing as expected"
problem, all your options suck.
And BTW, I'm in New York :)
~~~
michaelochurch
_However, the problem it was attempting to solve (you got hired at one level,
but performed at a lower level, because you managed to fool people in the
interview) is a real one and there is no good solution for it._
These levels are a convenient fiction. Performance is way too context-
dependent to believe that there's some "platonic" level for each engineer.
This ([http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-
trajector...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/the-trajectory-
of-a-software-engineer-and-where-it-all-goes-wrong/)) is the best model I
could come up with for the software engineer trajectory, and even it has a 0.2
to 0.4 point (out of 3.0) swing for most individuals based on technology
choices, interpersonal topologies, motivational flux, etc.
What you mean is "some people don't work out". Right. So there are people you
"manage out" (that is, try to get them to find another job and fire them after
~6 months if they don't get the hint and you absolutely have to) and there are
people you work with to bring them up to speed, or to figure out what's
blocking them. Typical management stuff. What doesn't work is to keep people
around but at a lower level than they were promised in the hiring process.
That just creates a class of miserable, shafted people who hate their jobs and
the company they work for.
By the way, a lot of the idiots on this subthread think I'm airing personal
gripes. I joined _after_ slotting. I'm just pointing out what kinds of
ridiculous results come from an out-of-touch management culture. What drove me
insane at Google was being at a company where the engineers were so good at
their jobs and yet the people making important decisions were so epically bad.
The disconnect was shocking. I was watching an awesome company self-destruct
in front of me.
Also, on downslotting: careers are sensitive things and once you make one
overt move so directly against an employee's interests, you've essentially
lost that person. Loyalty is pretty much binary. Once you make a move like
that on someone, you now have someone whose full-time interest is career
repair, which usually involves getting the fuck out and lining up the next
job. If this is what you want, then fine. (If someone really is a bad fit, for
that person to begin full-time job searching is the best thing.) That category
doesn't encompass most of the company. Downslotting only makes sense as a
mechanism for managing people out, and (1) there are better ways of doing
that, and (2) you shouldn't be managing out over 50% of new hires.
The real reason for slotting, I think, was to put a better job title in the
offer letter than people were actually expected to get, since the upper title
is what was used. This works only because of Google's brand: what keeps it
from doing major damage is that downslotted people have the Google name on
their resumes and can get the fuck out long before they become "problem
employees".
------
yanw
Between attack ads and blog posts it seems like Google is all that Microsoft
have to discuss lately. Not sure if Google is flattered by this obsession.
Wonder why the author chose not to post on his personal blog, a Microsoft
employee bashing Google on an official Microsoft blog rings hollow, specially
with the use of the same generic talking points.
And using engineers as PR people isn’t the most sepathetic thing either.
~~~
vibrunazo
I avoid making generalization and try to stay away of anthropomorphizing
companies. But this isn't the first, nor second, nor tenth time I watch
Microsoft trying to smear the competition. Which doesn't seem to be common
among other companies. It does gives us outsiders the impression that it's
part of their company culture to try to sell more by smearing the competition
instead of by building better products.
How does that work on the managing level? Are Microsoft engineers encouraged
from top down to do this? Is it just a culture that gets passed indirectly
through informal conversation between employees that influences this behavior?
Or is just the PR firm they hired that keeps insisting on the same weapon?
~~~
Splines
> _Are Microsoft engineers encouraged from top down to do this?_
I'm an IC, and while there is bit a "boo Google" going on in the kool-aid, we
don't sit around shaking our fist at them every moment we get.
I try to use the best tools I can, whether it be that made by Google or MSFT
or someone else. I look up MSDN documentation using Chrome, and I wouldn't
have it any other way.
~~~
mayanksinghal
This might just be a one off case that I heard of, but isn't not using IE
shunned at MS? A classmate of mine interned there and was asked to use IE
instead of FF. He did end up not hating the product, but I am not sure if the
reason was love for IE or hatred towards not-MS products.
~~~
awa
No it isn't shunned... i regularly use chrome at Microsoft, Some peers stick
to Microsoft products but I see a lot of people carrying iphone/androids
around and using chrome and FF
------
beatle
Google's Focus On Beating Facebook Is Wrecking The Company, Says This Former
Engineer. Google's Focus On Beating Apple will seal the company's fate.
Google's Motorola acquisition is going to be a disaster for Google.
------
wilfra
On the bright side, now all Google has to do to defend against antitrust
claims is link to that post.
------
iamgilesbowkett
I think it's problematic to find this kind of story on Hacker News. The
biggest problem I have with it is that it's very difficult to write an
automated filter which rejects stories for being excessively corporate and
insufficiently entrepreneurial, at least within the limits of my current
skills. I can understand why people debate the strategies of very large
corporations, it's kind of like discussing football teams, but it's not what I
come here to read at all.
~~~
Steko
No aggregation site is going to please everyone all the time.
Don't click on the stuff that doesn't interest you, problem solved.
~~~
iamgilesbowkett
I have an automated filter site at <http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com/> \--
"don't click on what doesn't interest you" is way inferior to "don't see what
doesn't interest you."
~~~
Steko
That's interesting but I'm not sure what your asking of us to solve your
inability to filter the things you don't want to see. Site would cease to
exist if everything one user wasn't interested in was removed.
Your filters will always turn up some things you want to just like they'll
always filter some things you wish they wouldn't. You'll have to live with
that degraded experience the rest of us have and not click on those things.
Bellyaching about unsolvable problems is just lowering the sites signal to
noise ratio unnecessarily.
~~~
iamgilesbowkett
Actually I made minor progress on it by just banning the msdn domain.
I think I've also figured out a pretty cool product idea from this as well.
However I'm not going to get into it here because people have taken my product
ideas and turned them into products twice now (actually one of them was a
Hacker Newspaper iOS app which looks very, very, very similar to my
<http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com/>).
In terms of what I want, well, any ideas on how to improve signal/noise on HN,
whether via automated filtering or some other method.
------
brindle
So you quit Google and headed over to M$. Hacker News, this should be Wanker
News.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GNU libavl - kia
http://www.stanford.edu/~blp/avl/index.html
======
tzs
Note that it is GPL, not LGPL.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Give me some list of movies about Entrepreneurship and Technology... - gembird
======
hansy
Check out these threads:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=450702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=450702),
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4060887](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4060887)
Also my personal list of favorites that entrepreneurs should watch (although
not necessarily about technology):
Glengarry Glen Ross -
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104348/)
Moneyball -
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1210166/)
The Pursuit of Happyness -
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454921/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0454921/)
Jerry Maguire -
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116695/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0116695/)
Catch Me If You Can -
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264464/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264464/)
------
randallma
Not a movie, but Masters of Doom is a great book about the rise of ID Software
([http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Cultu...](http://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-
Culture/dp/0812972155))
------
FlyingCocoon
This has a nice list. [http://ventureburn.com/2013/11/5-great-movies-
entrepreneurs-...](http://ventureburn.com/2013/11/5-great-movies-
entrepreneurs-should-watch-for-reel-inspiration/)
------
kbelbina
Code Rush. Documentary about Netscape:
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Rush](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Rush)
------
solid8tion
E-dreams. about kozmo.com:
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0262021/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0262021/)
------
feulix
Startup.com
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/)
------
helloanand
I strongly recommend watching Pursuit of Happyness - specially since it's
based on a true story.
------
leoplct
\- The social network
\- The startup kids
\- Jobs
~~~
alejantrot
these, plus:
\- The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires
\- Pirates of Silicon Valley
------
z3bra
Also there is a series called BETA
------
davidsmith8900
\- How America Was Built - (Rockefeller & Mellon)
------
davidsmith8900
\- The CIA Movie With Colin Farrell.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Remember It Reminds You That Your Didn't Pay Your Bar Tab - fapi1974
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/remember_it_reminds_you_that_your_didnt_pay_your_b.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4db5d4c99293191a%2C0
======
fapi1974
There's nothing like a bootstrapping project to get the blood flowing. I got
this app organized in a few months as a way to raise cash for my main project
- about which I've posted here before! Shameless plug - if you want to work
with someone who does what it takes to get things done and fit the criteria
here - <http://bitly.com/e3Pvws> \- then give me a shout!
------
jcr
Wonderful! This might save me from the life long habit of writing down
directions, only to leave them behind and needing to recall them from memory
on the road.
~~~
fapi1974
There are a ton of use cases that come up, and the shopping list/directions
one is one of them. I chose to focus on the bar one because for most of us it
is fairly piquant.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Effect of Chloroquine Diphosphate as Therapy for Patients with Coronavirus - pseudolus
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2765270
======
tomohawk
So, this treatment doesn't look so good for patients with severe cases, but
says nothing about non-severe cases.
> The preliminary findings of this study suggest that the higher CQ dosage
> should not be recommended for critically ill patients with COVID-19 because
> of its potential safety hazards, especially when taken concurrently with
> azithromycin and oseltamivir. These findings cannot be extrapolated to
> patients with nonsevere COVID-19.
From Dr Raoult's study, we see almost the same claim, except that there are
good observed results for non-severe cases:
> The HCQ-AZ combination, when started immediately after diagnosis, is a safe
> and efficient treatment for COVID-19, with a mortality rate of 0.5%,in
> elderlypatients. It avoidsworsening and clearsvirus persistence and
> contagiosity in most cases
[https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-
content/uploads/20...](https://www.mediterranee-infection.com/wp-
content/uploads/2020/04/Abstract_Raoult_EarlyTrtCovid19_09042020_vD1v.pdf)
So, this appears to verify a claim in Dr Raoult's study.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Wind Turbines Have Three Blades - rfreytag
http://www.cringely.com/2016/05/06/15262/
======
Cerium
Three blades is the smallest number that reduces the vibrations due to the
blades crossing the support structure. When a blade crosses the support its
applied force is reduced because the wind is slower around the support. This
reduction in forces creates a yawing torque that can lead to unwanted
vibrations. Much of the structural stiffness and bearing requirements are
related to these effects. Three blades minimizes the effect because when one
blade crosses the support the other two blades are out in a Y shape,
shortening the force differential when compared to two blades.
~~~
mark-r
There's a question then, why are support towers solid? Maybe they should be
made more like the Eiffel Tower?
~~~
jacquesm
Because a lattice tower has much worse properties when it comes to interacting
with the wind. The behavior of the air behind the rotor is as important as
getting quality air to flow through the rotor.
Some early windparks used lattice towers, and some of those survive to the
present but they are now known to be worse performance wise than tubular
towers.
~~~
logfromblammo
A Shukhov tower [0] has minimal wind loading, due to its hyperboloid sections.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shukhov_Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shukhov_Tower)
~~~
jacquesm
That profile is not very well suited to having a windmill on top of it. The
problem is that the nacelle is tilted backwards only a few degrees so you need
a very slender tower (or you'll have tower strikes in high winds).
~~~
logfromblammo
The cooling towers of a nuclear plant follow the same principle. The sides are
formed from straight structural members angled in opposite directions (doubly
ruled), and the gaps are filled with concrete.
The profile of a hyperbolic wind tower may be altered such that the cross
section at maximum height minus blade radius is at a minimum. The largely
conical profile of the existing Shukhov towers were used for power
transmission lines and a radio broadcast antenna.
Check this out: [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/proposed-
hyperboloid-...](http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/tech/proposed-hyperboloid-
energy-skyscraper-uses-simple-math-to-solve-a-big-problem/)
~~~
jacquesm
Interesting! You'd think that the major wind power manufacturers would have
looked at all possibilities. One major immediate concern is that these look
quite ugly and fat compared to the relatively thin and slender supports that
the latest generation of turbines uses. I'd love to see a side-by-side
comparison of these towers and the various alternatives.
[http://cache1.asset-cache.net/gc/78480146-crowley-ridge-
wind...](http://cache1.asset-cache.net/gc/78480146-crowley-ridge-wind-power-
alberta-canada-
gettyimages.jpg?v=1&c=IWSAsset&k=2&d=wW%2BWqJ5Jns5%2FhtycaQeRKiwHOo%2B1W%2FQabqSCG%2F1%2FRWnbLBlDKuH8j9bn4OWw4zSv)
Is one example of lattice towers in production that I know of (but not like
the ones you describe and I have never seen those being used for windmills).
~~~
logfromblammo
As mentioned in Jobs quote near the top of the article, you often find that
people tend to do things in a certain way just because that is what has been
done before. No one bothers to experiment because the old way has always been
good enough.
This is why is is sometimes difficult to avoid premature optimization, because
post-maturity optimization tends not to happen, even when it may be warranted.
I know of no wind farm anywhere that is used for side-by-side comparisons of
wind turbine technologies. It would very likely have to be owned by a
university and supported by public funds.
I have never seen a hyperboloid lattice or diagrid structure in person, but
they are not entirely unheard of for shapes that do not require a lot of space
efficiency in the tower portion, such as for lighthouses, observation decks,
water towers, radio towers, etc.:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adziogol_Lighthouse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adziogol_Lighthouse)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Port_Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Port_Tower)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ciechanow_water_tower.jpg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ciechanow_water_tower.jpg)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_Street_Bridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporation_Street_Bridge)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspire_Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspire_Tower)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canton_Tower)
~~~
hueving
>No one bothers to experiment because the old way has always been good enough.
If you are a manufacturer though, you have all of the incentives to come up
with something more efficient though. Wind turbines aren't controlled by a
monopoly are they?
------
scblock
This is only partially related to my other long post here, but it should be
mentioned. This article appears to be largely about potential to disrupt the
wind industry with outside the box thinking. But in the more than a decade I
have been working in this industry the single most disruptive change in
project performance was targeting low wind speeds rather than high, and
accepting that turbines will have to shut down in higher winds.
The main way this is achieved is to take a huge rotor and put it on a small
generator. More energy is lost at high winds, but the ramp up from no
generation to maximum is much faster. Since most projects spend the majority
of their time along that ramp rather than at rated power this results in large
gains in annual energy.
This means that some sites once considered to be marginal to end up being good
to very good. One area I've been working in saw a more than 25% increase in
predicted energy for the same capital cost with the new turbine types.
~~~
Grishnakh
I'm not in the wind industry and am not a ME, but rather a EE, but why
couldn't you build a big vertical-axis wind turbine and then couple that to
multiple generators, a big one and a small one, with gearing that lets the
windmill drive either one? Then in low winds, you can drive the small
generator at its optimal speed range, and then in high winds, you can switch
over to the big generator and drive it at its optimal speed range (the small
generator is decoupled in this mode).
Obviously, this would be much more costly because of the additional big
generator and the complication of the drivetrain. But it'd let you harvest a
bunch of energy when it's really windy. And with a vertical-axis mill, not
only would this be better for wildlife (lower overall speeds), the generators
would be on the ground, not way up in the air, and driven by a shaft from the
mill through its tower, so servicing would be easier and the weight and size
of the generators and the drivetrain wouldn't be an issue.
~~~
brandmeyer
I think you've misunderstood the innovation. The innovation in using a
generator that is smaller than the blades and tower are capable of supporting
isn't in the light-load efficiency of the generator. Its in the lower capital
cost of the electrical system.
------
mapt
* I don't understand his explanation of starting torque. You can jump-start that problem by other means in the alternator. Torque and power should be decoupled anyway by blade pitch.
* There is such a huge difference between a 12m blade and a 60m blade that I don't see how the comparison is at all relevant. We played with smaller turbines for _decades_ before we reached this sort of price efficiency.
* Betz' law explicitly disavows picking a number of blades: "Assumptions: 1. The rotor does not possess a hub and is ideal, with an infinite number of blades which have no drag. Any resulting drag would only lower this idealized value. ..."
* Betz' law is a three-dimensional consequence of convervation laws, not an observation about turbulent blade interactions. "Consider that if all of the energy coming from wind movement through a turbine was extracted as useful energy the wind speed afterwards would drop to zero. If the wind stopped moving at the exit of the turbine, then no more fresh wind could get in - it would be blocked. In order to keep the wind moving through the turbine there has to be some wind movement, however small, on the other side with a wind speed greater than zero. Betz' law shows that as air flows through a certain area, and when it slows from losing energy to extraction from a turbine, it must spread out to a wider area. As a result geometry limits any turbine efficiency to 59.3%."
* We already have a good idea what a moderate redesign of the fundamentals of a wind turbine looks like; It points downwind, it's huge like the existing turbines, and its two blades bend. They just need to solve the tower strike problem. [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401583/wind-power-for-pen...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/401583/wind-power-for-pennies/) [https://www.technologyreview.com/s/528581/two-bladed-wind-tu...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/528581/two-bladed-wind-turbines-make-a-comeback/)
~~~
brandmeyer
> I don't understand his explanation of starting torque
That's because Cringley doesn't, either. The starting torque is entirely
provided by the wind, not the grid.
~~~
beat
I think what he's talking about (not bothering to re-read) is the power
required to magnetize the alternator components in the first place, so the
alternator works at all. They use electromagnets rather than permanent
magnets, because electromagnets are much cheaper, especially at that size.
This is a fixed power requirement, so if the alternator can't generate more
than that fixed power need to operate, there's no point in running.
~~~
brandmeyer
Magnetizing power (and other constant-term losses) are a very small portion of
the rated turbine power in a doubly-fed induction generator (DFIG).
Edit (one more thing): At this scale, permanent magnet (PM) machines aren't
much more efficient than DFIG machines. It turns out that eddy current losses
in the stator back iron remain as a significant term in both machines. But for
a DFIG machine, the eddy current losses at light load are reduced by quite a
bit relative to the losses produced by a PM machine. Since real-world wind
turbines end up operating at partial load for much of their life, the effects
basically wash out, or are even a net negative for the PM machine.
------
calinet6
This is a classic example of sub-optimization (and even if it's hand-wavey
pseudo-science and may be wrong, the general concept is still interesting).
Each individual wind turbine is optimized to be the "most efficient" it can
possibly be.
But not in the context of the environment, which requires complex control
systems and methods to reduce damage in non-optimal conditions.
And not if you take cost and efficiency of the whole system into account;
where four times as many small turbines with less complexity run more often
and produce more overall output.
But hey, each wind turbine is "optimal." Interesting.
Most complex systems have this property. Even (especially?) your business.
~~~
nkoren
This kind of thinking contributed to American rocketry being trapped in a
local maxima for decades. There are many reasons it became trapped, but one of
the primary reasons was that rocket scientists would insist on optimising
rocket engines at the expense of every other aspect of the vehicle.
"The logic of rocket equation is brutal and inexorable", the NASA rocket
scientists would say. "As the performance of the rocket engine decreases
linearly, the propellent requirements increases exponentially. Therefore it is
imperative to have the highest-possible performance from your rocket engines.
The combustion of liquid hydrogen / oxygen is the highest-efficiency chemical
reaction, and therefore liquid hydrogen is the only propellant we will
consider using for our engines."
All of this was correct, but also _wrong_. It was wrong in a whole-systems
context, because:
A.) Liquid hydrogen is much lower-density than traditional rocket fuels like
Kerosene, requiring far larger and heavier structures to carry the same amount
of energy, and larger and heavier engines and plumbing and everything else --
and the structural mass of a rocket _matters_.
B.) Liquid hydrogen will boil off and leak through anything, requiring massive
amounts of insulation (again, adding weight), and far stricter operational
protocols around the fueled vehicle.
C.) Liquid hydrogen is so cold that it will embrittle and shatter ordinary
metals and requires much more exotic and expensive metallurgy.
and finally, D.) The alternative, kerosene, gives you less efficient engines
but also much lighter-weight vehicles -- and sure, per that inexorable logic
of the rocket equation, you need to use more fuel for the same amount of
payload, but kerosene is _cheaper than milk_ so who fucking cares?
Anyhow, the upshot of this is that US rocket scientists spent literally tens
of billions of dollars developing hyper-locally-optimised rocketry schemes,
most of which failed outright. For the remainder, for every dollar of kerosene
they didn't have to buy, they probably spent upwards of $1000 on exotic
aerospace hardware. Finally, they gave up and just bought kerosene-based
engines from the Russians.
So then there's Elon Musk. And of course there's a ton of brilliant rocket
science in the Falcon, but much of the reason for SpaceX's success is because
it doesn't optimise _solely_ on the rocket science. They optimise for cost as
a whole, and consider factors like design, manufacturing, operations,
reusability, etc. to be relevant to the question of cost.
For example: the Falcon 9 would undoubtedly be more efficient if it had a
hydrogen-based upper stage. But doing that would cause it to lose most of its
commonality with the lower stage, requiring an entirely new design,
manufacturing, and operations workforce. Which would cost several orders of
magnitude more than the extra kerosene required to fly a "sub-optimal" rocket.
The reason they've already cut the price of launch by about 80% vs. (say) the
Space Shuttle is because they optimised the _whole system_ , keeping the
unique part count and operational complexity as low as possible.
I still sometimes hear old-school rocket scientists grumble about how the
Falcon is a less optimised vehicle than the Shuttle, though. They just don't
get it. Never will.
Anyhow, that was a tangent. Fascinating to think that wind turbines might be
amenable to a similar class of disruption.
~~~
masklinn
> Anyhow, that was a tangent
It's also untrue, US rocketry kept varied propulsion types throughout its
history including both RP1-only and LH2-only as well as mixed stages, HTPB and
Aerozine. Your painting of rocket scientists as some sort of confederacy of
dunce unable to get a grip on tradeoffs is not only inane it's insulting
bullshit.
~~~
HCIdivision17
I started reading _Ignition!_ and it is a _hoot_. I really get the impression
that the rocket fuel scientists fixated, not because of personal issues
(though hilarity ensues there), but because the search space is damn large (at
least while still discovering how fuels interacted). Or worse, it just takes a
damn long time to even properly test. So when you found something promising,
you really dug into it.
~~~
nkurz
Yes, it's a fantastic book. Not necessarily a good role model for future work,
but it perfectly captures the spirit of rocket science at the time:
[http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf](http://library.sciencemadness.org/library/books/ignition.pdf)
Everyone who grew up idolizing rocket scientists should read it. If you have
problems with missing pages or broken figures, try a different PDF viewer. The
PDF has something odd about it that confuses some in-browser viewers.
------
neilk
Erm, I don't know if I trust Cringely when it comes to this sort of thing. He
sold a reality show to PBS, "Plane Crazy (1998)"[1] with the promise he could
design and build a small plane in 30 days that was unlike any other that had
ever been built.[2]
His engineer just flat out refused to produce any plans for this design. He
tried to make something like his plane happen anyway, going without sleep for
weeks, and had a meltdown on camera. The show eventually had to be about him
giving up on his cherished design and building a throwback to biplanes, with a
family of artisans who are experienced in building them.
I had the feeling that Cringely was trying to channel Steve Jobs and it didn't
work out. (Note: Jobs drives _other_ people to do impossible missions without
sleep, not himself, and doesn't display his work until it's ready, giving the
appearance of effortless superiority).
Anyway as for this wind farm idea, the evidence of his friend's alternative
propeller design is interesting. But let's also note that that this friend
chose not to pursue wind farms, maybe for a reason.
[1]
[http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/1998/pulpit_19980724_0005...](http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/1998/pulpit_19980724_000578.html)
[2] EDIT: I am not an aviation person, and my memory of this is poor, but from
Googling I see apparently he wanted to make it out of unusual materials, have
foldable wings, and put the engine behind the pilot. I have a memory of his
design requiring the pilot to straddle the drive train to a front-mounted
propeller. I don't know how problematic that is, but I remember it as being
presented as a major problem.
EDIT 2: To be honest I feel a bit bad now about this being a top-voted
comment, as Cringely learned a lesson on camera that many startup people learn
behind closed doors – confidence is great, but trying to innovate in too many
directions at once will kill you. Maybe that means that he is more cautious
now, so perhaps he's _really_ sure this thing will work. On the other hand, it
was the first thing I thought of, that maybe he doesn't have a great track
record with aviation iconoclasm.
~~~
rhaps0dy
> His engineer just flat out refused to produce any plans for this design Do
> you know why? I'm thinking maybe it's because it was dangerous for the
> pilot?
~~~
neilk
Sorry, I'm relying on my memory of a show I saw like 20 years ago. I know
nothing special about aviation. But I just found a contemporary thread about
it here from other homebuilt aviation enthusiasts.
[https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.aviation.homebui...](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.aviation.homebuilt/0uMOHlci8DQ)
------
Houshalter
Slightly relevant, here's a really weird wind turbine designed by a computer:
[http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YZUNRmwoijw](http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YZUNRmwoijw)
~~~
NicoJuicy
The note on the video is quite funny:
Note: I have since discovered I used the wrong viscosity for air on this
experiment, so the results aren't valid for use on the earth. (Maybe Jupiter.)
~~~
Houshalter
Ah, well. It's still interesting. The design of the turbine is really crazy
and not what I would have expected in any environment. So I suspect if he
corrected the parameters, it would still come up with a crazy and clever
design for Earth use, that humans wouldn't think of.
------
lorenzfx
I'm not saying he is wrong, but he makes some bold claims without giving any
proof.
Some examples:
> Twelve blades is a nice number.
Why twelve? Why not 50, it's a nice number as well.
> Lipps turbines can operate in faster winds [...] turbines could be allowed
> to run 24/7 in any wind with no computer
So even in the strongest winds turbines with 40 feet blades do not need to be
stopped?
> using permanent magnet generators instead of alternators, but those are more
> expensive > Use permanent magnet generators leading to [...] even lower
> cost.
Which is it now?
> what matters isn’t power efficiency per turbine so much as power production
> per acre of wind farm.
Isn't it rather electricity production efficiency in terms of invested
capital?
~~~
amelius
I get the feeling that the best answer to the question is that empirical
testing (perhaps by simulation) points out that three is the optimal number of
blades.
This leads me to the question: is it possible to determine a good rotor design
by using optimization techniques such as simulated annealing or genetic
programming? Or are the simulations too costly?
~~~
Bartweiss
I can help with this a bit.
The simulations are quite difficult - flow simulation is well-established, but
it's a big step from that wind farms. You need to simulate many turbines
interacting at a specific site, under a variety of conditions. That's not the
problem with modeling single turbines, though.
Rotor design is hard to simulate productively for the same reason that
Cringely's analysis is flawed: many of the biggest factors are unrelated to
everyday running.
\- Even blade counts create resonance patterns that stress your tower.
\- High solidity designs suffer more stress in storms (even while stopped), so
they break more
\- Noise interferes with putting rotors near houses or over pastures
\- Storage is difficult and consistency is valuable, so expanding the
operating range up to high winds is less useful than expanding it down to low
winds
And so on. If you model pure efficiency, the sims are pretty easy. If you
model real value, you either can't do it, or you get a search space so jagged
that finding maxima is hopeless.
------
Jedd
Looks like a fine opportunity to ask - whatever happened to vertical axis wind
turbines?
They sounded like they had a bunch of advantages, not least a much higher
tolerance for extreme wind conditions, less stress on long (suspended) blades,
possibly less gearing issues in translating motion back to the ground - but
presumably they had / still have distinct disadvantages?
~~~
knodi123
Even sexier (and less field-tested) than vertical turbines are windbelts.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windbelt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windbelt)
> Prototypes of the device are claimed to be 10 - 30 times more efficient than
> small wind turbines. One prototype has powered two LEDs, a radio, and a
> clock (separately) using wind generated from a household fan. The cost of
> the materials was well under US$10. $2–$5 for 40 mW is a cost of $50–$125
> per watt.
------
dzdt
We all love the story about the clever little guy who thinks outside of the
box taking down the big giant corporation who does things the way they have
always been done. Cringely trys to tell this as such a story, or could be, or
could have been. But there is really no evidence backing it, just his desire
to tell a good story.
------
nabla9
One graph is worth thousand words.
Rotor power coefficient vs. tip-speed ratio.
[http://i.imgur.com/PONHerZ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/PONHerZ.jpg)
~~~
55acdda48ab5
You have a computer with servos and winches fly parafoil kites to generate
power from wind. This is definitely the theoretically optimal answer. It's
also very low capital intensity.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-qUaO-
xzrY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-qUaO-xzrY)
~~~
jessaustin
Lots of omitted details there. A kite can pull its tether from one location to
another location of lower potential energy, but how does it get back to the
higher-energy location? If we're talking about a circular train on a circular
track, half of the kites must continually have either a lower-drag
configuration or a lower-wind altitude. That's plausible, but that's a lot of
additional mechanisms, plus a lot of "cancelled-out" wind traction, plus a lot
of friction as the train rolls around the track. Will there be power left over
for electricity generation? Probably, but it isn't clear that it will be worth
all the trouble. If a reasonable prototype exists, it should have been in the
video.
------
Animats
In the 1970s and 1980s there was much more variety in wind turbine design.
There were two bladed machines, multi-blade ducted turbines, Darrieus rotors,
and other exotic technologies. Outputs were in the 50KW range. Pacheco Pass in
Northern California had examples of most of those. Some didn't work too well.
Loss of blade accidents were common in the early days, with blades thrown
considerable distances.
The three-bladed machines won out commercially. Machine size went up because
output vs cost decreases with size, at least up to 1-2 MW. Lots of little
machines were a pain to install and maintain.
Wind generators used to be AC generators synchronous to the grid. But with
higher power semiconductors available, putting a big AC-DC-AC converter on the
output to sync it to the grid is becoming popular.[1][2] This allows
generating some power during low-wind conditions, and provides much more
adaptability to wind gusts. When the wind speed changes, the blade pitch is
adjusted to compensate, but on big turbines, this takes tens of seconds. Being
able to adjust electrically in milliseconds avoids power grid transients.
The push for permanent magnet motors in wind turbines is more about converting
to direct drive and getting rid of the gearbox. Wind turbine gearboxes are a
huge pain, wearing badly for reasons that were only understood in the last few
years.
[1] [http://www.theswitch.com/wind-power/](http://www.theswitch.com/wind-
power/) [2] [http://new.abb.com/motors-
generators/generators/generators-f...](http://new.abb.com/motors-
generators/generators/generators-for-wind-turbines/doubly-fed-generators)
~~~
Ericson2314
Pacheco Pass or Altamont Pass?
~~~
Animats
Right, Altamont Pass. The Veg-E-Matic for birds - a long, narrow valley filled
with row after row of medium-sized wind turbines.
~~~
Ericson2314
Indeed it is.
------
vanderZwan
Relevant Low-Tech Magazine entries on wind-power, and small windmills:
_Urban windmills harm the environment_ [0]
> A small windmill on your roof or in the garden is an attractive idea.
> Unfortunately, micro wind turbines deliver hardly enough energy to power a
> light bulb. Their financial payback time is much longer than their life
> expectancy and in urban areas they will not even deliver as much energy as
> was needed to produce them. Sad, but true.
_Small windmills put to the test_ [1]
> A real-world test performed by the Dutch province of Zeeland (a very windy
> place) confirms our earlier analysis that small windmills are a
> fundamentally flawed technology
(Note that the picture shows that almost all windmills tested had three
blades)
_Wind powered factories: history (and future) of industrial windmills_ [2]
> In the 1930s and 1940s, decades after steam engines had made wind power
> obsolete, Dutch researchers obstinately kept improving the – already very
> sophisticated – traditional windmill. The results were spectacular, and
> there is no doubt that today an army of ecogeeks could improve them even
> further. Would it make sense to revive the industrial windmill and again
> convert kinetic energy directly into mechanical energy?
Unlike this story, which certainly sounds interesting but shares no real data
to back it up, Kris de Decker thoroughly digs through sources to write
articles backed up by available data as best as possible.
[0] [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/09/urban-
windmills.html](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/09/urban-windmills.html)
[1] [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/04/small-windmills-
test-...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/04/small-windmills-test-
results.html)
[2] [http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/history-of-
industrial...](http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/10/history-of-industrial-
windmills.html)
------
_Codemonkeyism
As a kid I always found it interesting that (some?) Spitfire had 4 blade
propellors and the main adversary, the [Edit] Bf109 had 3 [1] and wondered,
shouldn't there be an optimum?
[1] Not sure both changed the number of blades during WWII.
~~~
rusanu
You mean Bf109 I think. The P-51 started 3 and then moved to 4. Ditto P-47.
FW-190 and F6F stayed at 3 whole time afaik. Tempest started with 4. So it
varied. But there is a trend of the early (1939) designs to have 3 and the
late (1944) designs to have 4. I guess available power from the engine plays a
big role, as engines got more powerful they started fitting 4 blades. Using
the extra power on 3 blades would require longer blades (which is
problematic), spinning them faster (again, problematic as tips reach sound
barrier) or increasing the pitch (I guess there are aerodynamic limits for
that).
~~~
6stringmerc
This is a really cool write-up. Another thing that might be of interest was
the performance of the aircraft. There's a guy in Texas with 6 non-flying
109s, a couple P-51s, and some other stuff for sale as a lot. He's a former
stunt pilot, flew in the movie 'Battle of Britain' and several others.
In his words, the 109 handled much better at the limit than the P-51. The P-51
could dive and go very fast, but with poor control. In his opinion the 109 was
the superior aircraft.
Not sure if it relates at all to the prop discussion, but maybe in the grand
scheme of engineering? Those warbirds are fascinating pieces of hardware to
me.
------
tantalor
You mean like one of these?
[http://www.windpowerninja.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/02/old...](http://www.windpowerninja.com/wp-
content/uploads/2009/02/old_wind_turbines.jpg)
------
justinph
Small turbines do exist. One was installed on This Old House recently:
[http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/tv/ask-
toh/video/0,,20961006...](http://www.thisoldhouse.com/toh/tv/ask-
toh/video/0,,20961006,00.html) (jump to about 15:00)
But, it does have three blades.
------
Aelinsaar
I like the idea of wind turbines, but in practice I think PV is the way to go
(long term). I realize that for now it's a blend of technologies, but PV
doesn't kill millions of birds and bats. I grant you, it's better than burning
coal, but still we can do better eventually.
~~~
Houshalter
House cats kill 1,000 times more birds than wind turbines. Even cell towers
kill more. It's nonissue.
~~~
mikeash
They won't kill the same kind of birds, though. For example, there's a new
rule raising the number of bald eagles which can be killed by wind turbines to
4,200 per year. I'm guessing that house cats kill few bald eagles.
It may still be a nonissue, of course, but the comparison with cats doesn't
tell the whole story.
~~~
Houshalter
Fair point, I was just responding to the idea that wind turbines would kill
all the birds, which isn't realistic. As a percentage of the bird population,
it's negligible.
I don't see any reason why bald eagles would be more likely to be killed by
turbines than other species of birds. If only 0.01% of birds are killed by
turbines, then they would only kill 1 bald eagle a year out of thousands.
Regardless, this is more of a reason to invent solutions for repelling birds
from turbines. Maybe we could come up with noises or lights that repel them.
Or drones, or a water cannon robot. But I'm not certain it's even an issue.
~~~
mikeash
The current rule is something like 1,200/year. There are about 143,000 bald
eagles in the US. The 4,200 number is set at a level which they think the
species can sustain. I don't know why bald eagles would be more likely to be
killed by turbines, but apparently they are:
[http://www.fws.gov/midwest/wind/wildlifeimpacts/index.html](http://www.fws.gov/midwest/wind/wildlifeimpacts/index.html)
"Not all bird species are equally vulnerable to wind turbines. Eagles appear
to be particularly susceptible."
~~~
Aelinsaar
Not all birds fly the same way, in the same regions, at the same altitudes.
Balds eagles tend to soar and hunt in places we like to put wind turbines.
Small birds tend to move smaller distances, often in about 100m around a water
source.
------
scblock
There is a lot of bad information here, and it appears there are others in
these who are also better informed than the author. Let me just hit up a
couple of points that are fundamentally wrong, though.
\- "Conventional wisdom says wind farms should have their turbines placed in
such a way that they don’t interfere with each other, the fear being that
placing one turbine too closely in the shadow of another will reduce the
efficiency of the showed turbine." True, and this is why we have wake models
based to predict the losses from other turbines and optimize placement.
\- "The rule of thumb, then, is that turbines be placed no closer than seven
diameters apart. Keep that number in mind." Not true. You may find that a 7x7
array is relatively common in offshore applications, but a typical onshore
application is more likely to be between 2-4 diameters apart in a row, with
rows 7-13 diameters apart front to back.
\- "Oh, and turbines are placed seven diameters apart. That’s it, no CFD."
Wrong. But CFD is generally computationally complex, so we usually use models
with reduced fluid dynamics equations to make it possible to iterate quickly.
See previous comment about wake models.
\- "In some cases wind farm automation can cost as much as the turbines,
themselves." I'd like to see these magical cases. A typical 2 MW turbine costs
$2 million to purchase, and about $3-3.5 million total as part of an overall
project of 50 turbines. SCADA is a minor fraction of this, as is operations.
\- "Shorter blades are stronger than longer blades, so the Lipps turbines can
operate in faster winds." This is a non-issue. There are very few sites in the
world that require even the highest wind speed turbine designs; most of the
world is less windy, and the majority of sites benefit from using turbines
designed for lower winds.
\- "Use permanent magnet generators and the turbines could be allowed to run
24/7 in any wind with no computer control required at all, leading to more
production at even lower cost." Computer control of turbines is a non-issue,
and the cost is minimal relative to the raw materials cost of the machines.
\- "This is because they use alternators that consumer electrical power to
energize their windings so there is no point in turning-on the alternator
(energizing those windings) until there’s enough wind to generate a net
positive amount of electricity." This is only a little bit correct, and mostly
not. Wind turbines by design generally need to be connected to the grid to
run, but winding energization is not why they don't start generating until
there is enough wind. Turbines are generally on all the time, and typically
consume anywhere from 10 to 50 kW at idle. And I don't know why he's using the
term "alternators" to describe the turbine generators. The most common
generator type is a doubly-fed induction generator, but squirrel cage
induction generators, permanent magnet generators, and synchronous generators
are often used. Usually turbines are connected to the grid through power
converters which allow them to run at various speeds while remaining
electrically synchronized with the grid.
\- "Remember the diameters are smaller so instead of hundreds of turbines
we’re talking about thousands of turbines for the same wind farm. Imagine a
field of mature dandelions." This is actually a problem. When you can get 100
MW with a 50% capacity factor by building 50 machines in one township in
Nebraska, why would you want to build 1,000 machines instead? How is that less
complex?
\- "Try breaking into the industrial wind power business without at least $1
billion in capital. It can’t be done. The incumbent companies like it that
way, too." Manufacturing is capital intensive. News at 11.
\- "Lipps wind farms could be closer to cities and therefore have lower
transmission losses, further increasing power output." Wind farm placement is
about where the wind resource is. It's an economic decision.
\- "The result of all this not starting and then stopping is that throughout
the year an average workload of 23 percent is reached by inland wind farms, 28
percent for coastal farms and 43 for off-shore." I have to assume his "average
workload" here (a term I've never heard in the industry) is equivalent to
capacity factor, which is the ratio of actual energy produced to the maximum
possible. Most new projects in the windy areas of the US have predicted
capacity factors of greater than 40 percent. High wind losses are typically
very low, and online time is typically very high.
\- "China will build the heck out of those smaller blades." China is also
building the heck out of the larger blades. China has more wind capacity
installed than any other nation.
\- "And no insane cows, either. Cattle can’t be pastured under wind farms
because the motion of the turbine blades and especially their sound drives
cows crazy." Tell that to these cows
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/ashcreekphoto/7793429362](https://www.flickr.com/photos/ashcreekphoto/7793429362)
(did he even do an image search before posting that? I've built wind projects
on cattle ranches.)
Why does this post use such an old, crappy US wind map? Why not the newer DOE
wind maps available at
[http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/wind_maps.asp](http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/wind_maps.asp)
I'm sure I could go on, but this is just a fundamentally misinformed article.
It's trying to make an aerodynamic argument (which I am not qualified to
judge) using a mess of bad or incorrect information.
~~~
notdonspaulding
Came here to point out that I live next to a dairy farm smack dab in the
middle of about (100) 1.5MW turbines. Cows aren't particularly intelligent
animals to begin with, but they certainly don't suffer from fainting spells
just because they graze under a huge turbine.
Other (industrialish) things cows don't mind: \- Tractors \- Feed grinders \-
Silage conveyors \- Automatic Milkers \- Being lifted to a horizontal position
to have their hooves trimmed. \- Having their eggs artificially inseminated.
I was unsure about the credibility of Cringely on the topic of turbine blade
count right up until I read this statement. Then I was sure about his
credibility.
------
tantalor
The 2016 tag is not really necessary; this was published today.
------
toolslive
"why... very often the turbines aren’t turning at all?" Someone told me that
demand varies and it's easier to shut down a windmill than a nuclear reactor.
------
tlb
More blades and closer spacing between windmills optimizes power / land area.
But what matters is power / capital cost.
~~~
mark-r
He tried to touch on that - making the blades shorter but in greater quantity
will drive efficiencies of scale in manufacturing and shipping. And smaller
turbines lead to cheaper towers. Hard to know if he's right without crunching
actual numbers though.
------
_Codemonkeyism
I'm interested in the results when Cringely builds his farm. For example
support costs from thousands instead of hundreds of turbines. How many on one
pole are best. Also building costs over time e.g. when costs go down due to
robots planting poles etc. which favors farms with more poles above those with
fewer poles.
------
yason
I don't know much about wind turbines and the behaviour of moving volumes of
air with regard to airfoils but there's one point I picked off of the article.
If I were to put my money either in the most advanced big-farm wind high-tech
or in something that is decentralized, mass-produced, and well-abused by all
kinds of groups of people, it would be the latter.
The article mentions that one billion is not enough to enter the game. That
surely excludes a lot of the smartest and brightest people who might come up
with new innovations and the billion-scale investments also seek conservative
returns, further culling new ideas.
------
stcredzero
This comment on the post is pure gold!
_Fascinating! It’s not about asking questions, it’s about asking the right
questions! The first framing question is efficiency from blade to outlet, but
it’s really about effciency from capital markets to factory floor to farm to
outlet._
That should become a mantra. It's about efficiency from capital markets to
revenue per customer.
------
elcapitan
I would have guessed that it's a trade-off between efficiency and mimizing
public outrage in densely populated areas (yes, outside the US that can be an
issue). Three blades, when the turbine is not working, block less from the
view than a large number of blades (which converge towards giant white
surfaces).
------
at-fates-hands
Here's a much better Wind Resource Map than the one in the article:
[http://www.tindallcorp.com/site/user/images/USA_Wind_Map_for...](http://www.tindallcorp.com/site/user/images/USA_Wind_Map_for_Tindall_Transp_2.jpg)
~~~
scblock
[http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/wind_maps.asp](http://apps2.eere.energy.gov/wind/windexchange/wind_maps.asp)
has this map plus state by state maps available for download as relatively
high resolution PDFs.
------
coldcode
The more worrying part of this is that you need 1H capital to even try to get
into this business if all you do is build the monsters. So that means few
competitors (or even one) which makes monopolist behavior and unimaginative
thinking likely.
------
manmal
It seems Steve Jobs was inspired by Socrates:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method)
------
xutopia
In some parts of the world they use 2 blades so they can lay down the system
when the wind is too high (think tornado/hurricane season)
------
trhway
The less number of blades - the higher efficiency, should be an odd number to
avoid standing wave and symmetric too. Thus 3.
------
mrfusion
Why can't the blades be staggered so they don't follow in each other's wake?
------
eonw
this is one of the best articles i have read recently. I too am a big fan of
always asking why and trying to buck the trend of "thats just the way it is".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to get a developer job when you're blind - miki123211
https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/blind-developer-sighted-team/
======
JoeMayoBot
This is inspiring. As then author said, he gets tired of people making a big
deal of it. I've heard this sentiment in other types of communities where
people get tired of teaching others about their struggles and responding to
other peoples curiosity. Sometimes, education is the best way to make people
aware of your circumstances and I appreciate anyone that takes their own time
and energy to do so.
Accessibility seems like a rare requirement in software projects. Probably
because people don't think about it as often. Other times, the company might
already be small and the person specifying the requirements might not know
that accessibility is a thing that they can ask for. I'm beginning to think
that it should be considered an integral part of the UI and not an extra
requirement.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Under the hood ReactJS - bliashenko
https://bogdan-lyashenko.github.io/Under-the-hood-ReactJS/
======
daliwali
There was a previous discussion on how do you know when someone is addicted to
over-engineering, and looking at this giant UML diagram, I think this might be
the case.
The amount of complexity I'm willing to accept is proportional to the the
difficulty of the problem. In this case it's manipulating web pages, which
shouldn't be too hard. This isn't a knock on React in particular, but it seems
all the major vendors are competing on complexity. React has "fibers", Ember
has a "virtual machine", Angular has their own overblown architecture (I don't
know anything about it, and don't want to).
Now that the DOM API is implemented in a standards-compliant way across most
browsers, it should be the perfect time to use it. I don't like the current
mess that is front-end web development, and more of the status quo isn't going
to get any simpler, quite the opposite.
Shameless plug for my own DOM utility:
[http://simulacra.js.org](http://simulacra.js.org)
~~~
Ralfp
I am sorry but this sounds like Dunning-Kruger effect on your part. You have
created library that you think the problem, but which seems to have limited
adoption in the wild. What experience in the field you have? Have you wondered
how much you don't know about problems and scenarios that view layer has to
handle?
I've been in same situation once with my OS project. I've did something small
that I've been certain does what all those other heavier solutions do. But
when users came I've learned that there's unimaginable number of edge cases
and scenarios that are common enough to require annoying amount of work.
React.js is not "DOM utility". Its battletested view library running one of
busiest social sites in the world. It's highly performant, capable of handling
thousands of components at single time, and handles countless edge cases, like
maintaining input state while user is typing in it and its moved around DOM,
normalizing events between browsers, maintaining scroll between large redraws
or jumping user to components #fragment.
Ember.js and Angular are complete app frameworks that implement view, layers,
services, data, communications testing, tooling and more. Those are solid
options for people writing dashboard applications (think intercom or Podio),
even if they are losing ground in public-facing sites to more elastic stacks
like React or Vue.
~~~
aaron-lebo
But React is bloated. Check it out in comparison to something like Mithril
which does everything it does and more in a much smaller and faster package.
~~~
Ralfp
Last time I've checked Mithril it had no event normalization, JSX, scroll
control and input state preservation. Does it have those now?
I've did Mithril for 6 months year an half ago, before that Ember.js for two
years and Angular.js for year even before that. I've eventually settled with
React.js because it was just view library, with everything else up to you.
~~~
brlewis
JSX and input state preservation were already there a year and a half ago when
you were using Mithril. It does not automatically normalize events, though I'm
not sure how important that is in 2017. I don't know what you mean by scroll
control.
------
beefsack
I've read the first few pages, and am really appreciating the level of detail
this goes into.
Fantastic work and a great resource for people wanting to dive into React's
internals.
------
AriaMinaei
I wish the code we write write everyday carried enough semantic meaning in it
for such visualizations to emerge naturally from it.
Great work by the author nonetheless.
------
jbucaran
This is helpful to me because I want to learn how to explain (complex)
systems.
Incidentally, this complexity is what led me to build my own little vdom
utility
<[https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp>](https://github.com/hyperapp/hyperapp>).
I'll be drawing inspiration from this chart to explain it.
------
hardwaresofton
At this point I'm sure I and others sound like a broken record, but if you're
new and just jumping into frontend component-based frameworks, please don't
start with React.
There are simpler ways to get reasonably fast re-usable components on your
project that introduce less accidental complexity.
Carefully consider which thing you actually need:
\- A view library that uses components as the main building block (this
usually means you already have other concerns like data modeling and routing
taken care of)
\- A full SPA framework (which people often get from the react ecosystem, i.e.
React + Reflux/Redux/etc + React-Router)
Based on which one you need, there are other simpler (in the case of view
libraries), and more coherent (in the case of full framework) choices.
~~~
rohannair
React is a view framework, and knowing the internals of React is a completely
unnecessary set of knowledge for the majority of developers using it to build
products with.
~~~
hardwaresofton
As with anything, the longer you use a library, the more you must know at
least some of it's internals to use it efficiently/axiomatically/well. Even
something small like the class/className attribute thing is an implementation
detail that leaked through, which will bite and likely confuse a beginner for
3 seconds if they didn't throughly read the docs.
Other libraries don't have that problem (because they didn't accept that
trade-off in that fashion).
IMO Libraries that beginners should be shown should not be ES2015-in-every-
example, and introducing transpiled DSLs for generating DOM elements.
------
rhapsodic
I don't know how long it will take, but I'd bet that within a few years
everyone will be hating on React like they hate on jQuery now.
_" Seriously dude, you're still using React? That slow, bloated pig that
creates a call stack 75 frames deep to change the label text of a button?
Sheesh, get with the times, and use _____.js! It rocks!"_
------
indexerror
Fantastic. Thank you so much for this.
------
scottydelta
this link seems broken: [https://bogdan-lyashenko.github.io/Under-the-hood-
ReactJS/pa...](https://bogdan-lyashenko.github.io/Under-the-hood-
ReactJS/part-2/book/Intro.md)
~~~
bliashenko
fixed, but it's still nothing there. I work on a big scheme for Fiber, it's
far from 'ready'...
------
pps
This is super cool, thanks, I'm eagerly waiting for comparison with fiber.
------
Jpoechill
Detail. A+
------
gfxl
Nice work, but some parts make as much sense as Lorem ipsum text. One of my
favorites so far:
> An instance of what should be created (03)? Component… right, but which one?
> Well, it’s a good point. No, not <ExampleApplication /> that’s 100% :) We
> actually should instantiate some internal class. Let’s check out the next
> scheme at first.
~~~
bliashenko
thanks, fixed that.
------
sAbakumoff
Wow, you really spent a lot of time of this, but why? What's the purpose? How
do React shenanigans can help me to be a better developer?
~~~
pknopf
You don't learn anything by studying other architectures?
~~~
adzm
For even more fun, compare with inferno
~~~
e1g
FWIW a React lead said Inferno is how they would've designed React if they had
to do it from scratch, and it's author joined Facebook to push React efforts
forward.
~~~
mst
So does that mean inferno is both theoretically better and already dead? :(
~~~
e1g
Hehe. I think it's Open Source at play: X publishes an innovative method, Y
iterates with a cleaner version benefiting from lessons-learnt, X says
"awesome, let's join forces!" and they live together happily thereafter.
Inferno passed over to another lead who's pushing it forward.
IMO this is a good outcome: there is some marginal value in yet another
"React-like but faster" library, but the same energy could help a lot more
people if applied directly to the source of the madness.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tired of capitalism? There could be a better way - djrobstep
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-theory/wp/2015/09/30/tired-of-capitalism-lets-try-basic-income/
======
mindcrime
This reads like it was written by an undergrad who just took Socialism 101.
Flagged for being tripe as much as for being off-topic.
------
AnimalMuppet
I was done after the first sentence: "Capitalism is a coercive economic system
that creates persistent patterns of economic deprivation."
Objection, your honor. Assumes facts not in evidence.
I mean, I suppose that could possibly be a reasoned opinion. But you're going
to have to do a _lot_ better than merely stating it as fact if you want me to
believe it.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Agreed. The bell curve in the western world starts considerably above the rest
of the world. What is relatively deprived in America, for instance, is already
head and shoulders above most of the planet.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
Which doesn't mean that it's impossible to build something better. But if you
want to build something better, you have to understand what's good about what
you're trying to replace.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Should I keep building my current business or seek new ideas? - valachio
Some background info about me. I'm 22 years old, college dropout, based in Toronto. Over the past 2 years I built a solid Internet business.<p>I will call my current business "B".<p>B is currently making $500k / year profit. If I keep building it full time, it will make several millions a year. However, B is not a very impactful business, nor will it ever scale into a billion dollar company. It's a great lifestyle business, not much more.<p>As I built B, my ambitions broadened. When I think of what I really want to do with my life, I realized my dream is to build the next great company (e.g. Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google). I also realized I don't even care if I succeed or not - as long as I am chasing the dream, I believe my life will be fulfilled.<p>As a result, I stopped working full time on B in April 2019, I explored a bunch of new projects, ranging from other Internet projects, a video game, to a chair (yes, designing a chair).<p>I got deep into some of these ideas. The video game for example, I spent 4 months full time on it (Nov 2019 - April 2020). For awhile, I thought I was going to fully commit to building video games for many years to come. Then eventually the idea fizzled out after I thought more about it. I realized a video game company wasn't the right path to my ultimate goal, so as of now, it's been a month since I touched the game and pretty much abandoned the project.<p>I'm currently in "The Search" phase once again. And it feels really bad. Life feels directionless when there is no vision. I wake up each morning feeling lethargic, instead of energetic and excited to work on a project.<p>I'm scared of getting trapped into a cycle of working on new projects that go nowhere.<p>My question boils down to this - Should I keep building B full time and hope to indirectly discover a new idea along the way, or should I directly focus on exploring new fields, new opportunities and new ideas?<p>tl;dr Got a solid business going but I dream of building a much greater business. Not sure if I should spend my time focusing on current business or looking for new ideas.
======
pettycashstash2
Don’t abandon cash cow. Keep operating if you can. Diversify into other
investments that will allow you to continue exploring new ideas. What did
Edison say - I dint fail I only discovered 1000 ways that don’t work.
Something like that but you get the point
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nicholas Tse, a HK actor, has some surprising insights on running startups - chewxy
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STgR9hlYFDw
======
rosenjon
I really like the part where he talks about how companies have forgotten that
employees are human beings. So true in so many cases.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wired already written about PRISM last year. - Dnguyen
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/03/ff_nsadatacenter/all/
======
captn3m0
>According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA
made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to
cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by
not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in
the US.
This sounds alarming.
~~~
lostlogin
I find the idea that they listen to so much far more alarming than that they
have the ability to break encryption.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CleanRL: RL library focusing on experimental research (beginner-friendly) - vwxyzjn
https://github.com/vwxyzjn/cleanrl
======
vwxyzjn
Hi everyone,
Author here. I have created a yet another reinforcement learning library.
[[https://github.com/vwxyzjn/cleanrl](https://github.com/vwxyzjn/cleanrl)]
This repository focuses on a clean and minimal implementation of reinforcement
learning algorithms. The highlights features of this repo are:
* Most algorithms are self-contained in single files with a common dependency file common.py that handles different gym spaces. * Easy logging of training processes using Tensorboard and Integration with wandb.com to log experiments on the cloud. Check out [[https://app.wandb.ai/costa-huang/cleanrltest](https://app.wandb.ai/costa-huang/cleanrltest)] * Easily customizable and being able to debug directly in Python’s interactive shell. * Convenient use of commandline arguments for hyper-parameters tuning.
Currently I support A2C, PPO, and DQN. If you are interested, please consider
giving it a try :)
Motivation:
There are two types of RL library on the two ends of the spectrum. The first
one is the demo kind that really just demos what the algorithm is doing, only
deals with one gym environment and hard to record experiments and tune
parameters.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have OpenAI/baselines, ray-project/ray,
and couple google repos. My personal experience with them is that I could only
run benchmark with them. They try to write modular code and employ good
software engineering practices, but the problem is _python is a dynamic
language without IDE support_. As a result, I had no idea what variable types
in different files are and it was very difficult to do any kind of
customization. I had to see through dozens of files before even able to try
some experiments.
That’s why I created this repo that leans towards the first kind, but has more
actual experimental support. I support multiple gym spaces (still working on
it), command line arguments to tune parameters, and very seamless experiment
logging, all of which are essential characteristics for building a pipeline
for research I believe.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Guide to Slack import and export tools - larrik
https://get.slack.help/hc/en-us/articles/204897248-guide-to-slack-data-exports
======
tvanantwerp
As head of IT for a company using Slack: FINALLY.
Don't get me wrong--it's not like I _want_ to read your messages and very
likely won't. But there are times when I have no choice. A few years back, a
group of interns started privately harassing other interns via Slack. Only way
to see it was to boot an offending intern from his work station and go into
his Slack to see what was happening. We had to make all intern accounts into
multi-channel guests after that. Compare that to our email, where I can go
into anyone's messages immediately if need-be. This is all very standard
corporate IT stuff that you need for HR and legal reasons.
Edit: I'll say this is still not an ideal solution. I don't go into private
communications unless I have to, and I'd rather have the option to review
specific DMs / private channels than dump everything. I really don't want
_everything_ ; that's more than I care to see. Also, to clarify, I'm in the US
and our employees are well aware that communications on company-operated
platforms should not be considered private. I _want_ them to be careful how
they communicate in writing, not because they should be worried about me, but
because they should be worried about Slack getting hacked/leaked. With the
recent Facebook news, I should have thought that sort of concern was obvious.
~~~
peterkelly
If two people want to have a private conversation, they'll just find another
means by which to do it. In the long run, abusing your privileged access to
conversations intended to be private (however justified you may consider it to
be) will just breed mistrust among employees. I would quit a job that treated
me as a child which must be supervised in such a manner.
~~~
tedivm
I hate to tell you this but if you would quit a job for this reason you
probably can't work in the US. The US has laws about corporate compliance, and
it has requirements for things like dealing with sexual harassment. There is
no such thing as a "private conversation" that takes place over a corporate
network.
For example, in the US sexual harassment is taken seriously. If a company gets
a complaint of sexual harassment on Slack they are legally obligated to look
into it, and if they refuse to the individual managers could personally be
held liable for it. This includes situations where the person being harassed
isn't directly in the conversation- the above example of harassment over slack
could have evidence of coordination in a different private channel than the
ones the harassment target is in.
~~~
humanrebar
> There is no such thing as a "private conversation" that takes place over a
> corporate network.
It's a tech issue, cultural issue, and a legal issue, but it's harmful that we
seem to be forgetting the wisdom of discretion as life become more digitized.
If the law or culture says "no expectation of discretion", they're just wrong
and likely hypocritical.
It's healthy, normal, and appropriate to tell specific things to specific
people. If we're worried about abuse, there are other solutions to those
problems, like letting the harassed share the conversation later, which they
can already do, with screenshots if nothing else.
~~~
tedivm
Discretion still has its place, but that's different from privacy and
compliance.
Most admins aren't going to spend all day reading other people's
conversations, and good companies have explicit policies as to when they will
do so. The thing we're discussing here isn't whether companies should spy on
everything their employees do- it's about what happens when an issue does
occur where they do need to look into things.
I would not work for a company where I thought my managers were looking over
my shoulder at every single thing I was doing, but at the same time I would
not refuse to work for a company just because they _could_ look into my
conversations if I was accused of wrongdoing.
People are also ignoring another aspect of this- if a company does get sued by
an outside party they have to make internal data available through discovery.
These laws about corporate compliance also exist to make it so corporations
can be held accountable.
~~~
humanrebar
> Discretion still has its place, but that's different from privacy and
> compliance.
It should be, but often digital tools obliterate discretion in the service of
compliance or even just monitoring employee work habits.
> I would not refuse to work for a company just because they could look into
> my conversations if I was accused of wrongdoing.
A healthy workplace needs to solve the underlying issue, here. But there are
simple ways (i.e., asking or ordering the employee to send you conversation
transcripts) to get the information needed. Managers and compliance officers
are reluctant to let the investigated employees know they're being
investigated, which I understand, but I don't think throwing out discretion-
oriented communication is worth the benefits there.
~~~
MadWombat
> But there are simple ways (i.e., asking or ordering the employee to send you
> conversation transcripts) to get the information needed.
Are you serious? So, someone accuses an employee of abuse and you casually
stroll by and ask them to send relevant conversations your way? And you expect
them to comply without cheating? Why don't we try this approach with other
misdeeds, for example, when someone complains about theft, we just ask thieves
to come by the police station with the stuff they stole. Do you think that
would work?
------
drinchev
Looking at all positive comments here, this is generally a bad news.
Not sure how much compliant this is with the law, but in this case the law
should be more protective towards employees.
I imagine the following situation
I write on a company-owned piece of paper - "My boss is an idiot". Then take
this piece of paper put it in an envelope ( owned by the company as well ),
write the name of my colleague and seal the envelope. Then put the envelope on
the recipient's desk.
I bet it would be illegal for my boss to take that letter, open it and read
it.
P.S.
Looks like with e-mails the law is more protective towards employees :
[1] : [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-privacy-emails-
echr/europ...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-privacy-emails-
echr/european-court-rules-companies-must-tell-employees-of-email-checks-
idUSKCN1BG0YA)
[2] :
[http://www.internationallawoffice.com/Newsletters/Employment...](http://www.internationallawoffice.com/Newsletters/Employment-
Benefits/Luxembourg/Castegnaro/Reading-employees-private-emails-exposes-
employer-to-criminal-liability)
[3] : [https://www.womblebonddickinson.com/uk/insights/articles-
and...](https://www.womblebonddickinson.com/uk/insights/articles-and-
briefings/right-private-life-work-monitoring-employees-communications-was)
~~~
imglorp
Ah, Europe might be different. In the US, if your employer owns the platform,
they have the right to all the messages for compliance. We view this as "if
you have something private, don't do it on corp channels." This is usually
fine unless you're harassing someone or engaging in something against corp
ethics.
[https://www.privacyrights.org/consumer-guides/workplace-
priv...](https://www.privacyrights.org/consumer-guides/workplace-privacy-and-
employee-monitoring)
~~~
thomasz
It really depends on national legislation, as well as individual contracts
with unions or work councils. At least here, as a rule of thumb, as long as
private internet use is permitted, the employer can't legally monitor traffic
outside of very specific circumstances. AFAIK you can't get around that by
prohibiting personal internet usage without generally enforcing that
prohibition.
~~~
chimeracoder
> At least here, as a rule of thumb, as long as private internet use is
> permitted, the employer can't legally monitor traffic outside of very
> specific circumstances. AFAIK you can't get around that by prohibiting
> personal internet usage without generally enforcing that prohibition.
This isn't relevant here. ECHR has ruled that employers _do_ have the right to
read emails, as long as employees are notified in advance (which can include
blanket notification as part of their employment agreement). ECHR has
jurisdiction over all ECHR countries, which is a superset of EU countries and
includes several non-EU countries, like Norway. Other European countries, like
Germany, Switzerland, and the UK have also affirmed this right.
Email being roughly analogous to Slack, in the eyes of the law, there's little
room for doubt that employers in Europe have the right to read Slack messages
on the company's Slack account.
~~~
detaro
The ECHR has ruled that it is not a violation of human rights, that does not
override national law that limits employers if it exists.
~~~
chimeracoder
> The ECHR has ruled that it is not a violation of the convention on human
> rights, that does not override national law that limits employers if it
> exists.
It doesn't override national law, but national law is pretty consistently
clear that employers have this right as well - that's why the case was before
the ECHR in the first place.
~~~
detaro
You claimed that specific rules the poster you replied to mentioned aren't
relevant due to the ECHR decision, and that's just not true. E.g. here in
Germany, an employer needs to explicitly forbid private e-mail to be allowed
simple access to employee mail, which is why basically everyone does that,
often allowing private internet use to access webmail instead. (I've also seen
employee agreements where there's different rules for specific folders: a
private archive folder is never accessed, work-related folders can be easily
accessed and e.g. looking at new mail in the inbox is allowed if it's done
under supervision and e-mail that's clearly recognizable as private isn't
opened, since private mail was hard to avoid in the specific case)
This is something were you likely can not make useful blanket "in Europe"
statements.
------
larrik
Previously, you could only see employee DMs if you turned on Compliance
Exports, at which point you could download all of them _going forward_. Now it
sounds like everything you've ever written could be downloaded at any time
without notice.
So, all of those communications you had with co-workers based on the promise
they would be private until you were notified future ones wouldn't be anymore?
Now it's ALL available to your employer.
Surprise!
(This is presumably due to GDPR)
~~~
mindcrime
Meh. Nobody should be surprised by any of this in the slightest. If your
employer provides / pays for any kind of communications tool, the only sane
position is to assume that they can - and probably do - monitor every single
byte you send.
~~~
froindt
I think there's some middle ground, some grey area where whether it's alright
is murky. It's kind of pulling the rug out from under people when the policy
of a 3rd party provider abruptly changes and suddenly tons of messages become
available to the company.
There are a number of things I might mention to a coworker over a private IM
which wouldn't necessarily put my employment at risk, but would be awkward for
management to suddenly have access to.
A couple made up examples:
"I'm super sick, but $boss is really pushing me to get the report out. I just
want to go home and be sick all alone."
"I hate management's decision to reduce vacation days. No wonder we can't keep
people around here."
"Did you see Tom's email? It's kinda awkward that he thinks he's a strong
contributor to the group..."
~~~
Null-Set
As a company policy I sure hope your IT doesn't make emails available to your
management.
~~~
froindt
No they don't, but I work at a large megacorp. At a small 10-20 person non-
technology company startup, the admin on Slack is likely to be the owner or
general manager. It could be another 5-10 people before a person is hired on
as full-time IT.
~~~
stedaniels
If the owner or GM has enough time to dip into Slack DM's, or even emails, the
company has bigger issues.
------
alexandercrohde
Jesus, nobody here has any clue what they're talking about.
Slack has allowed companies to read private messages for well over a year. It
has been called "compliance exports" and you as a slack user could always see
if you had them turned on, as well as which individuals had access to read
your private messages. Source: CTO of a unicorn confirmed he had used this
feature to read private communications (private rooms and DMs), source 2 -
used this page myself at multiple companies
Employers had to pay for this privilege. It's super unclear to me what the new
policy is-- it looks like there's still no privacy but it happens via API.
~~~
hjnilsson
How fine-grained is the tool? Do you select a channel and export only the
contents of that? Can you select only two users and only get messages between
them? Or is it blunt and you simple download all data (the text makes it seem
that way)?
I ask, because if it's the latter it borders on illegal to click on that
button (and get ALL private conversations), at the very least it needs to be
heavily regulated within the firm who can click it and how the downloaded data
is stored / accessed.
~~~
wrs
It is incredibly blunt, at least for compliance exports — all you can do is
export _the whole workspace_ — and once exported it's just a ZIP of thousands
of JSON files. There is no tool to look at it with. When I had to do an export
I found a PHP script somebody had written to turn the JSON into thousands of
HTML files, but otherwise it was grep and jq.
~~~
hjnilsson
That sounds less promising, I had hoped you could select a single channel and
export it. Or even better give permission to a user to be able to export one
channel. We often have Slack channels shared with clients etc. and they have
asked before to get a transcript of chats for reference. If you had fine-
grained control, you could give that access to the project manager for the
client in question, without having to share the access / have a central
moderator handle all requests.
------
jedberg
You can tell who here has worked for a large American company and who hasn't.
If you've ever worked for a large American company, you know that nothing you
do on company equipment or with a service the company pays for is ever
private, and you should never assume it is.
I'll be honest, I always thought Slack DMs were viewable by the admin. As a
Slack admin myself, I always assumed I had that ability. Never used so, I
never found out I was wrong, but just always assumed it was there.
To me this is a no-op: Anyone who worked for a large American company should
have assumed that this ability was always there or could be there in the
future, or at the very least, your employer could have always required you to
log in and show them your DMs.
~~~
Cacti
It is very odd. We've had corporate monitoring of practically all employee
electronic activities for decades. It's enshrined in legislation and tested in
case law. The capabilities are built into practically every major business
software. There are whole industries built up around it. Yet suddenly everyone
is losing their mind over some corporate IMs just because it's Slack?
I feel like I'm on Reddit, not a site ostensibly catering to _computer
professionals and experts_.
~~~
bbarn
The difference is their privacy policy has been changed retroactively against
the good faith their users had. That's the problem. Of course if it's
corporate it's usually monitored, but when Slack championed the user and only
catered to the company when forced (via compliance reports which told you they
were enabled) and now suddenly switches to a model where past contracts are
broken, people have a right to be upset.
~~~
jedberg
Yeah, it kinda sucks that they changed the privacy policy, but if you had
actually read it, you'd have seen the part that says that they can change it
any time for any reason.
And also, all they've done is give the corporation the technical ability to do
something they've always been able to do -- read your private chats. It's just
that before they had to do more work to do it, but they've always had the
right to do it, regardless of what Slack's privacy policy said.
------
MarcScott
IMHO I don't think this is a fair title change. What is important here is the
fact that access to DMs have changed. Not that the general import/export tools
have changed.
If Google changed their TOS to suddenly make everyone's search history public,
would the title read "Google changes TOS"?
~~~
savanaly
I agree, and this is the first time I can ever recall disagreeing with one of
HN's admin title corrections that I noticed.
------
iamleppert
Part of the reason why Slack has been so successful vs. other corporate
messaging solutions is that it encourages employees to bring their “whole
self” to work.
It’s perhaps the most important thing at work to feel like you can communicate
easily and without fear of reprisal from managers and in my opinion had a lot
to do with my extensive use of Slack.
It felt like, for the first time, the communications platform wasn’t “owned”
by the strict hierarchy of the company. I created my own channels, and felt no
fear when I communicated with co-workers. I wasn’t doing anything “wrong” ever
in my communications, but, let’s face it: there are things that you don’t want
your boss to know, especially if like the majority of people, you’re working
for a bad boss that has to be “managed” himself.
If Slack continues in this manner, while it may make sense from a liability
and business perspective, employees aren’t going to trust the platform anymore
the first time a manager reads a private conversation and uses it against
someone. And generally I’ve found it’s not hard to figure out you’re being
spied upon.
I’m not sure what the solution is, but definitely if Slack allows managers
private access (without a court order or similar serious situation where such
access would be warranted), they can no longer claim they want employees to
“bring their whole self” to work anymore.
Oh well. It was nice while it lasted.
~~~
tapsboy
I agree. It feels like Slack broke our trust. I don't have any records, but do
remember slack in it's earlier days promised of not sharing private
communication to the employers and sending the logs directly to govt agencies
or 3rd party audit agencies.
------
duxup
I think if the employer provides the tool, it is their data.
I know there are different traditions in other places where they consider
something like work email to be more of an employee owned or privacy issues. I
always thought that was a bit wonky and it is easier to identify who owns what
by ... who owns it.
~~~
6d6b73
>I think if the employer provides the tool, it is their data.
Not really. Just because the employer pays for the office building doesn't
give them access to my private conversations with other members of the team.
~~~
duxup
I guess it depends on where and lots of details and such as to what exactly
you're talking, but provided you're all employed by the same person... it's
their team too.
------
Arubis
For companies, yeah, this makes sense. It was nice when this wasn't true, but
never really expected nor required.
Unfortunately, Slack also gets used for a lot of OSS communities. Arguably
this was already a poor fit, but now it's even more obviously a mismatched
relationship; it's unclear whether one could just start paying for a Slack
account and immediately pull all DM history for something that didn't come
with the expectation of corporate ownership.
#freenodeforlyfe, I suppose.
~~~
zifnab06
Rocket Chat is something I've been looking into. It's...well pretty amazing so
far. Open source, self hosted, bridges to slack fairly reasonably, and gives
IRC style permissions. Slightly nicer for the "I'm not always logged in"/"We
need a log bot" issues IRC has had.
~~~
ianmiers
If it's self hosted, then DMs cannot be private from the company/organization
since they literally have root on the box.
------
dumbfounder
Let's clarify a bit, this is for the employer owned Slack workspace. If you
have the client and have your employer workspace and then another random
workspace that is not owned by your employer, then they can only see the
messages on the workspace owned by the company.
And this is meant for backups really, it's not going to be easy to just follow
random conversations of yours on a daily basis. If they want to go back and
dig up some dirt they can though.
That said, if you are worried about it, and working on a computer owned by
your employer, you should just assume everything you do is logged. Because
some do that.
~~~
cirgue
> Let's clarify a bit, this is for the employer owned Slack workspace.
My company doesn't use slack, but it is a little crazy to me that this wasn't
already the case for employer-owned workspaces.
------
DanBlake
Technically this was possible before this.
Since the email to each slack user is an @company.com address all you need to
do is take control of the employees email address, reset the slack password
and login as the target user.
~~~
reustle
> Since the email to each slack user is an @company.com address
Not necessarily
~~~
gburt
It turns out administrators could change the email address anyway. :)
~~~
vuln
Right?
------
postit
In the end that's your responsibility to maintain professional level when
using internal company tools.
Not surprisingly the three persons who forwarded me this thread with comments
like: "shit", "is this legal or allowed?", or even "I'm screwed if they read
my messages" \- are the ones who are always trash talking colleagues, pairs
and the company itself.
------
deltaprotocol
Reading the comments it seems nobody is concerned about this broad access
leading to sexual harassment of women who are constantly exposed to glances
and stronger forms of abuse and may vent in a private channel, or may have
discussed intimate concerns with friends (now past conversations are also
available). Nobody paints the picture of the boss reading girls logs? This is
pathetic. US, land of the well paid slaves.
------
phillipwills
Always assume any communication on your work network can and will be
monitored... If you want a private discussion, best to do it in person or on
your own devices, not using any company resources.
~~~
acangiano
Traveling all the way to Lanchasire seems excessive. Surely you can just have
the conversation in person. ;)
------
kingnight
As an owner of a free slack that has thousands of historical and unaccessible
messages by the users, how can I delete these stored but not unaccessible
messages to protect them?
It seems unconscionable that Slack retains messages but provides no way to
remove them without paying.
------
keeler
Use slack-cleaner[1] to nuke messages you've sent. You need to generate a
legacy token[2].
[1] [https://github.com/kfei/slack-cleaner](https://github.com/kfei/slack-
cleaner)
[2] [https://api.slack.com/custom-integrations/legacy-
tokens](https://api.slack.com/custom-integrations/legacy-tokens)
~~~
Spoom
I suspect that if they allow admins to download DMs, they also probably soft-
delete messages, so deleted messages would still show up in the exports. Can
anyone confirm?
~~~
wrs
For compliance exports at least, preserving deletes and edits is an option you
can set.
------
nkcmr
I have never really understood the notion of needing communication privacy in
the workplace. To be honest, without having seen this story, I would have
assumed this was a feature of Slack already!
I can't remember where/when I heard this advice but it seems relevant and
helpful for this matter:
"Write/speak all communication in the workplace as if the CEO themselves were
CCd on the email."
It has served me well.
~~~
ben509
Work is stressful and communication can reach straight into your brain. People
go through periods where they're not handling stress very well, and they will
often express ideas that, divorced from the context of the stress and bad
feelings they have at that point, don't reflect what they really believe or
intend to say in public.
~~~
moduspol
I think that part's easy to understand. The tougher part is why one would put
that communication in text, enter it into a company-provided system, and then
be offended / dumbfounded when it's accessed by one's superiors at that
company.
We all get stressed sometimes, but we don't all do that.
------
tptacek
How is this possibly news? Besides the fact than Slack has let owners read DMs
through compliance export since forever, most company Slacks authenticate via
mail (usually Google mail), _which your employer controls_.
This is no different than company emails, which (I hope this isn't surprising)
your employer can also read.
Don't have personal conversations on your company Slack!
~~~
kuschku
> Don't have personal conversations on your company Slack!
You may be discussing unionization on your company Slack, though, and the
employer may now use that against you. There’s a lot more than strictly work-
related content, and strictly private content. A huge grey area is inbetween,
and the employer shouldn’t be able to access any of them (and as the ECHR
ruled, the employer may now)
~~~
tptacek
If you’re worried about that, don’t use company Slack. But you should know
that federal law protects employee organizing, especially for unions; if your
employer retaliates, you can bring a claim against them.
------
darkstar999
I had a toxic manager who would screenshot DMs and post them publicly.
Just consider any work communication of any form to be public.
~~~
cirgue
If someone is determined to be an ass, technology isn't a barrier.
~~~
drngdds
Technology helps asses act like asses more effectively.
------
orbitur
So my longstanding "never write anything in corporate correspondence that I
wouldn't want revealed some day" principle seems like a great one.
Seriously. It's not your platform, they are not your emails, they are not your
chatlogs, and you should never act as if what you put in will remain private
and yours to control.
------
thefifthsetpin
Yesterday, a private channel existed where your employee Jim may have
mentioned to his friend and coworker that he had a date with his male partner.
Today, that data became available to you. You were planning to fire Jim, but
now there's a risk that it would look discriminatory. Do you risk a wrongful
termination lawsuit and dragging your company's name through the mud? You
could check his slack messages to assess that risk, but if you do find
something then you're in an even worse situation.
This seems like the same minefield as asking an employee to login to his
facebook. The main difference is that this time, slack did it to you -- you
were not given a chance to opt-out.
~~~
jimktrains2
Wait a month and then do it while making sure you have a clear case. I believe
similar advice is given if there is an OSHA check -- since you can't know why
you were checked, it's best to wait before firing anyone for non-
blatant/egregious, even if it's with cause and evidence.
> This seems like the same minefield as asking an employee to login to his
> facebook.
How is this like facebook? It's a corporate medium, just like email would be,
or like a company-run XMPP or IRC server.
~~~
thefifthsetpin
It's like facebook in that the employees had a guarantee of privacy (insofar
as most private communication is private; obviously the recipient can expose
the message, or someone can coerce you to login to your account). Some people
are waving this away with, "oh, probably the employee signed some contract
saying that it wasn't private" but even if that's often true it's of course
sometimes not true. Certainly I've never signed a contract with that kind of
clause, but I've generally worked for small companies.
I suppose there's nothing preventing a company from using facebook as a
corporate communication medium. That'd of course not a good idea since they
don't have access to some of what goes on at facebook. The same thing was true
for slack. Some companies used slack without considering that the data wasn't
really under their control, which was perhaps not a good idea. This change is
akin to facebook recognizing that blunder, and "fixing" it by making DMs
between employees available to their employer.
~~~
jimktrains2
> It's like facebook in that the employees had a guarantee of privacy (insofar
> as most private communication is private;
Nope. You could be compelled to show your DMs on a work system.
There is no such thing as privacy on a work system.
------
xwvvvvwx
Very surprised to find that this was not already the case.
In general I think you should assume that all communication on a work provided
tool are not private.
Private conversations belong on whatsapp / signal.
------
crescentfresh
On a semi-side topic: Canadian dev here, I always immediately hard delete
e-mail correspondence (both inbox and sent) with HR on anything that I feel
private about, as I don't want the guys in IT reading it. I know they don't,
but I also know they _can_.
For example, I might trust the head of IT but I might not trust that new
intern or "new guy" they just hired.
What do you guys do when it comes to HR correspondence at your places of work?
~~~
unit91
Well, there's nothing I can really do about it. When I hit "delete", my
company email doesn't actually get deleted. It just disappears from my view. I
believe the stated policy is they delete after 3 years post "delete".
If I worked in or near the office, I'd walk over to HR and request printouts
instead of emails, but since I work remotely, I'm stuck.
------
sirmike_
Bear in mind my opinion is coming from the US ITOps perspective, outside of
this my opinion may not travel as far pun intended re:the rest of the world.
There are a lot of out of touch concerns here in regards to privacy. I think
this basically shows the diff between INDependent devs and employEE devs.
At any point in time a company who owns and pays for all IT related accounts
and services can look, monitor, export disable, enable, delete, log or secure
__their __systems as they need to either by compliance requirements, legal,
policy or for any business or nonbusiness reason at anytime.
At the least you do not have a right to privacy to at the best limited privacy
when communicating on a company provided communications platform.
Most companies worth their salt have this written down in their company
handbook or manual etc. Most companies also have reasonable "you may use
company systems for limited private exchanges"
This is even more true when the company has government or gov facing clients
or does business in certain market sectors like Finance.
It is good to see the new kid on the block (Slack) is growing up and getting
more focused on its core business clients: companies/b2b.
The same goes for company provided laptops, equipment.
I think it is also super important above all that the vast majority of people
and companies enter into these things in good faith and reasonableness. We
just do not live in a world where the honor system can be the only safeguard
for these things. And of course with all things businessey -- the more money
is riding on top of something -- the more important it is to be wise in
regards to risk in and out of business matters.
------
decebalus1
I was always under the impression this was already going on. I don't see the
surprise here: there shouldn't be any expectation of privacy with regards to
conversations between employees happening on company virtual grounds.
Heck, in my previous company when we wanted to talk about something off-the-
record, we'd even physically go off campus due to the sheer amount of walls
equipped with 'ears'.
~~~
Piskvorrr
Never mind the walls: what about the people equipped with literal ears?
------
089723645897236
This is a good thing. People need to realize work chat is a paper trail...
~~~
alexandercrohde
A one-way paper trail in favor of the company. If a boss tells me I'm fired
for being "too black" and then deletes my slack (and I don't have a
screenshot), I'm not going to have any leverage to get proof unless I can get
a subpoena (which I wouldn't be able to, most likely)
~~~
bdowling
I think you’re wrong. A subpoena would probably be granted for a situation
where you know that the relevant evidence exists and exactly where it is. But
it might not come to that in the scenario you describe, since the employer
would also know that a third party has this incredibly damning evidence and
would likely try to settle.
------
ggregoire
I'm always surprised by the amount of DMs people send in Slack. I've worked in
2 companies using Slack and, in both, about 80% of the total messages were
DMs. It seems crazy high to me. I wonder if people just send all day private
stuff unrelated to work, or if people have trouble with trust and transparence
on the workspace..
~~~
simonbw
I don't find that surprising. Most of the communications I have at work are
with a specific person, not with a whole channel. It's not because I don't
want other people to know what I'm saying to someone, it's that I don't want
to _bother_ them with stuff that isn't relevant to them.
~~~
ggregoire
How do you know you bother them? Your comment makes me think to daily meetings
in SCRUM. Sure most of the stuff people are working on or that blocks them is
not relevant to everyone else, but we do it because it's good for the whole
team to share and stay up-to-date on what is going on. As a tech lead/manager,
I apply the same logic for my communication. I use DMs only for stuff that
shouldn't be discussed publicly.
------
forgotmypw
I've always assumed everything I type on a work machine is property of my
employer, and thus can be reviewed, copied, etc.
I find astounding how many companies use a third-party messaging system for
all their communications.
Do they not realize that anyone with access to Slack's data can read their
stuff? That's over 1,000 people[1] if you only count Slack employees!
Do you really think that competitors or blackhats are above blackmailing or
paying one of them for a data dump?
[1] As of March 2018, according to this Mashable article:
[https://mashable.com/2018/03/10/how-slack-uses-
slack/](https://mashable.com/2018/03/10/how-slack-uses-slack/)
------
dbalan
This is going to be a problem for open source communities that use a semi-
public slack as the communication platform. I don't think the users expect the
DMs to be public to the project admin.
Its not necessarily bad. Bit it might be time for those communities to move.
------
thanatropism
My employment contract says something to the effect of "using internet
facilities for work only". I mean, duh. I have a cellphone with a 4G signal
that I pay for.
What next, employers are going to be able to choose the color of elevator
buttons. Tyranny!
------
mayneack
I read the message retention policy as a true delete for anyone not wanting to
get their previously private messages grandfathered into a newly non-private
policy.
Slack warns you for a channel that setting the retention policy is "truly,
permanently deleted. These messages can't be restored or recovered, even by
Slack"
[https://i.imgur.com/63x2oee.png](https://i.imgur.com/63x2oee.png)
[https://get.slack.help/hc/en-
us/articles/203457187-Customize...](https://get.slack.help/hc/en-
us/articles/203457187-Customize-message-and-file-retention-policies)
------
kerkeslager
This should not be surprising to anyone. You're giving your data to a
corporation who has every incentive to give it to your employer. The only real
surprise here is that they weren't doing this earlier.
~~~
fjsolwmv
That's backwards. You're working for an employer who has every responsibility
to monitor business communication. Slack can't "give" something they were
never supposed to control in the first place and only have by accident of
architecture. This fixes an old bug.
~~~
kerkeslager
> You're working for an employer who has every responsibility to monitor
> business communication.
Setting aside for a second the unusual ethics being proposed here: it's
trivial to bypass official channels if you want to say something you don't
want your employer to see. It's fairly standard practice to not put anything
you don't want someone else to read in text at all, but rather to pick up the
phone--it's too easy for someone to copy/paste a Slack message or Forward an
email. This can't be a responsibility of employers because very few employers
can live up to that responsibility.
------
brazzledazzle
They had compliance exports and I wish they'd stuck with that since turning
them on notified everyone that your employer could now see everything and
prevented them from exporting anything private prior to that.
I know why they did this but a compromise could have been found. With this
ability someone can dump everything and just read through it with users none-
the-wiser. If users read the previous documentation they'd even believe they
were safe from snooping and would be notified when it started. At least with
compliance exports the users were informed and had privacy.
------
iamdave
I'm finding myself in a situation where this is actually kind of welcome news
involving a workplace bully who operates via DM.
I'm moving on very soon, but I've shared many of our interactions with
management, management has even seen first hand how he openly insults other
engineers.
Instead of doing anything about it, management announced we had been acquired
and over the course of about 12 days slowly resigned leaving us with the new
company.
New company promoted the bully.
Hopefully others speak up as I have and this new feature can help some people
get relief from the guy.
~~~
bspn
I don't understand how this feature changes anything? If he operates via DM
them you and his other victims can pretty easily share the evidence with
management today. I don't think this feature is going to a be a magic cure-all
where management pro-actively monitors communications for this type of
behavior - it will still require individual(s) to escalate a complaint that
management can then investigate.
~~~
iamdave
In our unique case, it would have meant we could have exported old DMs from
users who have since left the company after a recent merger.
I'm using my example to think forward: an employee leaves due to workplace
conflicts, and later (not to intimate this is the path I'm taking, I'm merely
walking out the door, as my issue was a mere personality conflict not
something that I can seek damages over) pursues civil action, a responsible
export and archive policy from HR the way IT departments may sometimes be
required to retain email messages for a period of time can be a benefit if the
departed employee cites their interactions with an abusive manager for their
departure and subsequent litigation.
Other commenters have referenced this as well.
------
jgh
I'm glad that this isn't going to affect the free tier users (rather, they'll
need to provide legal reasoning for it and consent) since there are a bunch of
communities on slack.
~~~
neposesame
Could this be backdated upon upgrade to enterprise i.e the admin is able to
access private conversations prior to upgrade from free tier?
------
neves
If you publicize that you can read the messages, no problem.
I had a boss that liked to spy in the private messages of the employees
without their knowledge. A bunch of interns started to privately create
offensive nicknames for a fat employee. They didn't used the name in public.
The read and started to use to use the nicknames in his conversation.
Well, this guy also publish jobs ads for our old tech stack with a false
company name to see if any of his employees were applying.
Talk to me about lack of ethic.
------
EGreg
I think Gitter is architected differently and doesn't allow this. Your private
chats aren't in the context of some company, but the network.
Again, look at this everybody! We are relying on some third parties merely to
facilitate our conversations! And they are relying on the "SAAS" developer who
hosts all the conversations (not open source) to determine one-size-fits-all
rules.
This is nearly 2020, why is it still the norm?
------
tootie
There's actually a Slack competitor called Symphony that exists solely because
it allows thorough auditing/monitoring/spying on all communications. It's ugly
and is missing a ton of features. It's used by a bunch of financial services
firms that have a lot of compliance rules they can't enforce with Slack. This
move is probably to start getting Slack into that space.
------
MarcScott
I had just assumed this was the case anyway.
I used to be a teacher, and have recommended Slack to an old colleague as a
way facilitate staff communication at their school. Additionally my current
organization quite often works with children at workshops and the like.
For an admin not to be able to look through DMs is a serious safeguarding
issue, so I'm happy this is now possible.
------
baxtr
That’s probably a very good reason to fall back to WhatsApp or whatever else
for things I don’t want my employer to read.
------
downer72
This is basically the end of Slack for me. It's over. I'm done.
I am now anti-slack. I am an opponent of slack.
You had me, but now you lost me.
------
mulmen
The surprising thing to me is that this was not already a feature of Slack.
Isn’t the ability to view employee communication a very basic requirement of
corporate communication platforms? Does anyone have an expectation of privacy
on any corporate infrastructure? I certainly never have.
------
reagent
I have a rudimentary tool (written in Ruby) that can be used to delete your
history across channels & DMs that might come in handy:
[https://gitlab.com/reagent/slack-purge](https://gitlab.com/reagent/slack-
purge)
------
intopieces
I thought this was a feature all along. From an HR and legal perspective, this
is necessary, right? My emails on the company server are subject to discovery.
I was coached at onboarding on what I could and could not say in an email.
Down to, "when it doubt, schedule a call."
------
gitpusher
Good. If you have to say something work-inapproriate, don't use your work
communication tools.
------
jeznag
Old news
[https://www.theverge.com/2014/11/24/7255199/slack-alters-
pri...](https://www.theverge.com/2014/11/24/7255199/slack-alters-privacy-
policy-to-let-bosses-read-your-messages)
------
mbritton72
Glad this is happening. It's not fair to use DMs to form alliances against
colleagues in order to increase one's bottom line. That is exactly what I've
observed in agencies that run on Slack. If life is a game, this is a backdoor
worth closing.
~~~
aquadrop
Your problem is with people, not slack, they can just go to skype or whatever
tool they want.
------
mbrumlow
I am mostly worried about the bait and switch. If this feature was only
applied to messages after the announcement then that would be fine. I am sure
many of you have had conversations over slack thinking well it was okay
because nobody could see them.
------
rsuelzer
I can't seem find the article where an employer was sued for failing to inform
authoritied about a monitored work email that indicated one of their employees
was about to commit suicide. I'm not sure what ever happened in that case.
------
ljubo_opaki
[https://gph.is/1maiw0M](https://gph.is/1maiw0M)
This sucks so much.
Does anybody know if deleted messages get deleted for real? Or only just
marked as deleted in the database?
This couldn't be an early April Fools joke, could it?
------
Dirlewanger
I dislike Slack as much as the next guy, but I honestly thought this was
already the case. It was in general for work emails, why would it be any
different for another office communication tool? Shouldn't be a surprise for
anyone.
------
foobaw
You should never talk about extremely personal / private stuff via DMs anyway.
I don't really care if my employer could read my DMs because they're mostly
work-related small talk anyway.
------
reificator
Like everyone else I'm more shocked that this wasn't available by default.
I'm not sure if this applies to the last (work) Slack I was part of. The
company blocked it over a year ago and presumably deleted it shortly after. I
just checked and it is deleted now.
As far as I know, since it was setup by a middle manager (who lasted two
weeks) and then blocked, it was probably on the free plan as well.
I'm not really concerned for myself, as I always assume all my interactions on
a work machine are monitored, but people did occasionally send me things that
they probably wanted to be off the record. Not sure if I should warn them that
there's a (small) chance that their messages could now be read.
------
gaius
Whenever I’ve been a SA I wouldn’t let a manager access an employee’s email
without written authorisation from HR. How does that work here, what are the
safeguards?
------
technological
I think this holds true for all slack teams I joined online. Online i mean,
like golang slack or any other community created slack team I joined. Is this
correct ?
------
brokentone
As a basic user of the platform (where my employer has Slack Enterprise Grid),
I've always expected this is the case and planned my communication
accordingly.
------
paulie_a
Personally I assumed that capability was always available. So it was
interesting when I received a private SMS about this story from a coworker.
------
amriksohata
Goodbye slack, time to delete you like Facebook too
------
RRRA
So how does one delete his previous history before he was made aware of this
change?!
in other news, I guess this means shadow IT is back in style! :P
------
sakuronto
After dropping IRC supoort, this makes two controversial changes in a very
short span of time. Did something change at Slack?
------
guelo
Based on experience I have somewhat related advice for employees: don't
connect your personal phone to the office wifi.
------
kawsper
This might break EU law, at least e-mails marked private are considered
private, so your employer can't snoop in those.
------
dep_b
I always assumed they could. As I always assume that basically everything I
trust to a computer system could be public.
------
astro_robot
Do employers have the same tools with email?
~~~
joshenglish
Yes. You can access Outlook365 and Exchange via APIs as well as Google Apps
for Business.
Plus Calendars, etc. Anything that uses LDAP locally and now through the 365
APIs.
~~~
mistermann
How does it work, an outlook 365 admin(?) Can read anyone's email that they
want? Do they essentially just log onto the normal Hi as that user?
~~~
softawre
As a manager, if I fire somebody or they leave, I get access to their mailbox
via Outlook365 for like 3 months, just in case I need to grab something from
it.
So there must be a way to assign ownership of a mailbox to another user.
~~~
Inverte
Yeah, you can attach mailboxes to other users with Powershell.
You could also just create a mail rule that sends a copy of every email
everytime someone sends and receives one and they wouldn't know.
------
asow92
If you don't trust your employees enough maintain private discourse, why would
you hire them in the first place?
~~~
lolsal
Some companies have more than 10 employees.
~~~
asow92
what if your company hires more than 1000? Does that mean you should
compromise your values and integrity?
------
thrillgore
I'm disappointed, but not surprised. If you are on a company network, assume
everything you do is logged.
------
billions
Controlling thoughts reduces creativity
------
eecc
Illegal in any country with just about decent employee protection. Looking
forward to the lawsuits in EU
~~~
jasonlotito
EU court of human rights disagrees with you.
[https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Press_Q_A_Barbulescu_ENG....](https://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Press_Q_A_Barbulescu_ENG.PDF)
------
sergiotapia
I've always assumed that was the case. Company stuff is company stuff, don't
assume otherwise.
------
jcims
This will open up Slack to industries that frown upon creating communication
channels between employees that cannot be recorded.
[http://bizblog.blackberry.com/2015/07/chatrooms-in-
finance-w...](http://bizblog.blackberry.com/2015/07/chatrooms-in-finance-
whats-all-the-fuss-about/)
~~~
thefifthsetpin
Nah. Slack was already open to them. You just had to enable the compliance
audits. This is mostly interesting only because it's retroactive. A fact which
of course wouldn't matter for anyone that wasn't already using slack.
------
gumby
It's hard to see how this is bad -- they have/should be able to have access to
your other work-related communication and work product (modulo the weird rules
around things like salespersons' "rolodex"es).
It's so easy to have private channels these days it's hard to see how this
should even inconvenience anyone.
~~~
yiiii
Because it is illegal in many countries to access somebody's personal
communication even if it uses eg. a corporate email address?
~~~
Jenssen1234
It's not, not in Europe, not anywhere. Saying it a couple of times doesnt make
it true. Your boss can read your emails and most likely already does. This is
exactly the same with any internal messaging and it's perfectly legal in the
workspace.
~~~
enzo1982
The European Court of Human Rights recently ruled that an employee's
communication may not be monitored without prior notice and without specific
reasons. [1]
[1] [https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-rule-of-
law/-/echr-m...](https://www.coe.int/en/web/human-rights-rule-of-law/-/echr-
monitoring-an-employee-s-electronic-communications-amounted-to-a-breach-of-
his-right-to-private-life)
~~~
gumby
Wherever you work in the USA there's a note in the employee handbook saying
that the company may monitor any communications using company equipment for
any business purpose, which is completely consistent with that ruling (and,
even if it applied in the us, would render it moot).
~~~
enzo1982
No, "we may monitor your communication for any business purpose" would not be
consistent with that ruling. There's no chance "any business purpose" would
qualify as a legitimate reason for monitoring communications.
From the PDF press release linked on the COE site:
"The national courts [have not] carried out a sufficient assessment of whether
there had been legitimate reasons to justify monitoring Mr Bărbulescu’s
ommunications."
"Neither of the national courts had sufficiently examined whether the aim
pursued by the employer could have been achieved by less intrusive methods
than accessing the contents of Mr Bărbulescu’s communications."
In other words: You need a legitimate reason for accessing your employees'
communication and you need to consider less intrusive ways of achieving your
aim first.
So your boss is not allowed to just read your mail whenever he likes. Or maybe
he is, if you're working in the US. But European courts, especially the
international ones, are very strict about privacy and protecting personal
rights.
------
cvaidya1986
This will help the regional manager detect any secret employee after work
house parties.
------
mbrumlow
And with that slack is not something I will be using. Way to mess up a good
thing.
------
akerro
*can access.
In some countries it's illegal for employer to read employees private
messages.
------
benatkin
It's an email replacement. Seems like an obvious choice to me.
------
anotheryou
Does this affect the basic plan?
If upgrading to Plus, does it include past messages?
------
Overtonwindow
Is this available for Gsuite as well? My former office had employees mocking
others for their age, gender, etc. No way to show management without revealing
I'd found a way to spy on them.
------
isatty
Why was the title of this submission changed?
------
emodendroket
I had assumed they already did this.
------
geggam
pidgin / adium OTR has been around for a long time.... for a reason
------
vernie
I'm surprised that Slack was so widely adopted without this capability already
available.
------
taylorcooney
Slack...the big brother you never asked for!
------
dugluak
with or without my consent?
~~~
darkstar999
Without.
~~~
dugluak
how is it legal. Even the law enforcement needs to provide a warrant in case
they want to search my apartment.
~~~
EpicEng
Not if you're living in one of their cells.
Your employer pays for slack and it is a work related tool, just like your
emails. If you want to have private communications then send a text. BTW they
can also search your desk because, you know, it's not yours.
~~~
dugluak
what about, lets say, conversations in the company owned cafeteria? can the
employer record them without your consent and use as evidence against you?
~~~
EpicEng
Depends on the state I would assume, but of course IANAL. Some states have
single party consent, and you're certainly not in a private area. You'd have
to look into the eavesdropping laws where you live. You realize that many
buildings have security cameras, right?
I'm still very confused as to why you believe that your communications over a
company owned platform should/would be private.
~~~
dugluak
because I dont see the difference between having direct conversation vs having
electronic conversation in the office premises. why would there be different
rules for them?
~~~
Tyrannosaur
Because one of them is almost literally a paper trail and the other is
ephemeral?
~~~
dugluak
But if you record the ephemeral, there is essentially no difference.
------
MisterBastahrd
This is the greatest advertisement for IRC ever.
~~~
darkstar999
No it isn't. They would own the IRC server and see everything.
~~~
ben509
I think Off the Record encryption on IRC is done entirely by the clients, so
the server can only store an encrypted blob. It also has forward secrecy.
There's no reason you couldn't do the same with a slack client, of course, but
your employer could see you had encrypted chats.
------
xstephen95x
So then employees just switch to Signal for DMs...
------
BLanen
I don't know why people assumed they couldn't.
Before this, they would've been behind, at max, a subpoena, right?
------
colemorrison
Wow. Ya know, for every case this might "help" solve (workplace harassment and
the like), I just can't help but say ultimately it will hurt far more.
"But employers/managers/execs will operate more responsibly with more data
about their employees!"
Will they really? I think they'll be able to operate more "powerfully" with
respect to controlling employees... but with that power I wouldn't be
surprised if the abuse outweighs the positive utility.
Additionally... this is going to kind of kill the culture between people
(ESPECIALLY REMOTE) using slack. Do you really want to talk about your
weekend, or forge any type of bond over chat now? Why would anyone every do
anything rapport building over slack now?
Yeah yeah "but managers/employers won't be that extreme, you're being
extreme." There's a lot of cases in the past where I've thought "sure an exec
or manager wouldn't do X" and then sure enough, there it is at the top of HN,
and the company is going under.
So...someone else on here speculated correctly. It's clearly a selling point
for employers since they're the main target to increase revenue. Unfortunately
I guess that means using it for interest groups goes out the window though.
~~~
always_good
If this is what finally makes you behave appropriately on work comms and start
communicating out of band, then they are doing your future a favor. It should
have been common sense.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MemcacheDB, Tokyo Tyrant, Redis performance test - _pius
http://timyang.net/data/mcdb-tt-redis/
======
codahale
These benchmarks don't seem to take HotSpot compilation into account, which
means some of those numbers are for interpreted Java bytecode and some of
those numbers are for native code and you don't know which are which.
The behavior of the DBs as far as resource consumption is interesting, but the
numbers are meaningless.
Further reading:
<http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-jtp12214/>
[http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-jtp02225.ht...](http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/j-jtp02225.html)
~~~
Periodic
I had a physics professor who used to drill into us during our labs that, "a
number without an error estimate is meaningless." I didn't really get it at
the time, and thought he was just being curmudgeonly.
Now I understand how important it is. What's the error in these tests? The
standard deviation? What was done to limit the error?
It's great to see people putting numbers behind their claims, but let's get
some real science back into computer science and do some serious data
analysis.
------
Maro
You can get 100,000 ops/sec out of BDB even in transactional mode (MemcacheDB
uses BDB), look at the various BDB flags. Also, when storing larger values,
you should increase the BDB pageSize parameter (default: 4096 bytes),
otherwise BDB will allocate external pages (default: if key+value is larger
than 1007 bytes) and you will experience severe performance degradation.
Also, the Keyspace KV store can do ~100,000 ops/sec as described in hour
whitepaper at <http://scalien.com/whitepapers>
~~~
henryl
Perf is only that high for BDB because it is in process. Tokyo tyrant has to
communicate over the network layer.
Also, how often are any of these databases actually _syncing_? For TT, not at
all until you terminate the process or call it manually.
~~~
Maro
The 100,000 number is for a performance benchmark over a LAN with grouped
commits.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Open-Source Version of Quartz Compositor Look-Alike? - mucholove
Hi!<p>Reading about Quartz on the Mac I became super interested in Quartz Compositor and how the Mac renders windows. The linked article says the Mac is a able to render windows with holes whereas Windows (at least at the time) couldn't do that.<p>I know nothing about this—but I'm curious to explore this concept.<p>Is there an Open Source library similar to Quartz Compositor to learn from?<p>Good article on Quartz Compositor:
http://web.archive.org/web/20100609024323/http://macdevcenter.com/pub/a/mac/2005/10/11/what-is-quartz.html?page=3<p>Only result on Github that references Quartz Compositor directly:
https://github.com/jcampbell05/OpenCompositor
======
ktpsns
Of course there is: the X11 Windows System. You might enjoy
[https://magcius.github.io/xplain/article/x-basics.html](https://magcius.github.io/xplain/article/x-basics.html)
~~~
mucholove
Fantastic tutotial! Thank you! Will save me loads of time :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: DigitalOcean Droplet Issues? - codegeek
So one of my droplets in NYC1 region was not responding to pings and had 100% packet loss. Anyone else had this happening around 40 mins ago ?
======
sergiotapia
Internet is miami is borked in general right now. strange
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IPFS Companion 2.2.0 brings window.ipfs to your Browser - lidel
https://blog.ipfs.io/35-ipfs-companion-2-2-0/#hn2
======
asymmetric
Is it possible to completely/selectively prevent websites from _knowing_ I
have IPFS running in my browser?
Or does this extensions have the same issues as Metamask[0], which means
there's no way to hide the fact that one has the extension installed?
This is a pretty important privacy feature, because I'm pretty sure the
presence of such an extension massively increases the accuracy of targeting.
~~~
kybernetikos
I agree, and looking at their site, they don't seem to have taken steps to
avoid this problem.
I wonder if we could have a standard api, like window.requestAPI('ipfs' or
'eth' or whatever) returns a Promise, and the user gets a 'page is requesting'
bar like we do with location requests.
That way, you wouldn't be leaking information about your browser capabilities
to pages that you don't wish to use those capabilities on.
~~~
diggan
The reason why window.ipfs is so great is that it opens up for a very easy
migration path for when IPFS is embedded directly in the browsers.
So as a application developer, you would check if window.ipfs exists on the
page, and if it doesn't, load js-ipfs and then the rest of the page can
function the same way, no matter how ipfs was loaded on the page.
Unless we can be sure that when browsers implement IPFS,
window.requestAPI('ipfs') would be the API, going the route we're taking now
is the safest bet, unfortunately.
(Disclaimer: I work on IPFS)
~~~
kybernetikos
It's a pity that people aren't more concerned about the problems of leaking
information to potentially hostile websites and polluting the window object
with their project specific objects.
As the earlier poster mentioned, Metamask had this exact problem and it's been
widely commented on. Of course the metamask problem is worse than the IPFS
problem, as it marks a user as a potential target, whereas IPFS by itself
probably doesn't do more than mark them as someone interested in the
distributed web.
Your argument for why you do it seems to be a non-sequitur. Whatever you
choose for how IPFS Companion exposes the api can be exactly the same as how
the future browser exposes it. In fact as an early mover, you have an
opportunity to do something positive and set a good direction for the built in
functionality that comes later.
It's not a problem that there is consensus on how to solve yet, but I believe
a standard solution built into browsers for exposing apis with capabilities we
may not wish some sites to observe is needed. Polluting the window object with
a host of api objects is likely to be a bad idea long term.
------
fogzen
Dat+Beaker is way ahead of IPFS in tooling, developer mindshare, consumer
friendly UI, etc. With $250 million it's pretty shocking they don't seem more
worried/focused on that.
~~~
StavrosK
Can dat be accessed without that browser? I haven't found something like the
IPFS node, and that's what made me not want to run dat.
Also, ZeroNet seems more advanced than both in terms of things that actually
work today.
~~~
carussell
Hashbase exists, and in theory most Dat web apps could do a read-only version
for legacy browsers, but since the tooling isn't there, you'd have to work out
something by hand. The Dat ecosystem has pretty bad support for polyfills and
bridging to the HTTP web right now. Many Dat demos I see today just fail hard
over HTTP, maybe with a best-viewed-in message if the dev took some effort,
but in principle it doesn't need to be that way.
------
johnhenry
I'd really love to see something like this show up as a proposal with the W3C
(or the WHATWG -- I'm not entirely sure who's the authority on this?).
~~~
diggan
Yes, this is definitely something we're planning to once we get closer to a v1
of all the parts. Today it's probably a bit too early but specifications are a
core part of our general pipeline (but we can still get better)
The goal is to end up with standardized implementations so we can have
multiple implementations and a open protocol.
(Disclaimer: I work on IPFS)
------
amq
How do I know that the embedded mode works? It says "IPFS resource loaded via
Public Gateway".
~~~
lidel
Keep in mind that HTTP gateways are provided just for convenience. Due to
WebExtension API limitations embedded node can't act as a local HTTP gateway
and extension falls back to public gateway. I imagine it was what you were
experiencing.
Use window.ipfs property to play with pure IPFS (without HTTP gateway):
window.ipfs.id(console.log)
window.ipfs.add(Buffer.from('hello')).then(console.log)
window.ipfs.cat('/ipfs/QmWfVY9y3xjsixTgbd9AorQxH7VtMpzfx2HaWtsoUYecaX').then((data)
=> console.log(new String(data))) More info: [https://github.com/ipfs-
shipyard/ipfs-companion/blob/master/...](https://github.com/ipfs-
shipyard/ipfs-companion/blob/master/docs/window.ipfs.md)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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