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As Trump Tightens Legal Immigration, Canada Woos Tech Firms - samsgro https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/nyregion/trump-legal-immigration-canada-tech-jobs.html ====== horsecaptin Isn't his ultimate goal to create an immigration system in the US that is more like the Canadian one? ~~~ craftyguy Uh, Canada seems somewhat open to immigration. Donald seems like he is willing to kill immigration to 'woo' voters. But I'm interested in why you think his ultimate goal is similar. ~~~ horsecaptin They're open for now but have the ability to close things down and switch the type of people (based on occupation, ability to integrate into Canadian society) as needed. A few months ago there were stories floating around about how much Donald Trump likes Canada's immigration system. If you search for "donald trump's opinions on canadian immigration system", the top results are some of those stories. ~~~ craftyguy > A few months ago there were stories floating around about how much Donald > Trump likes Canada's immigration system. Donald's opinion changes arbitrarily, just as folks suffering from the early stages of dementia are prone to do. So that's not really a great example.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Former Twitter Employee Says Fake Russian Accounts Were Not Taken Seriously - rayuela https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-03/former-twitter-employee-says-fake-russian-accounts-were-not-taken-seriously ====== NN88 Twitter didn't care. They let it happen because they're broke.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Splash Screens Are Evil, Don't Use Them - Alupis http://cyrilmottier.com/2012/05/03/splash-screens-are-evil-dont-use-them/ ====== BetaCygni So what's the alternative? If you've got an app that loads slowly, what are you supposed to do?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Clojure's missing piece (2017) - tosh http://nathanmarz.com/blog/clojures-missing-piece.html ====== vemv As one can see in two other top-level comments in this thread, the choice of an all-caps DSL is off-putting. It would be more idiomatic to have a hiccup-like API, where data is passed - not code, not syntax. And the keywords should be namespaced, so meaning is self-documented (and one gets superior IDE support). ~~~ yogthos A vendor my team works with actually open sourced something along those lines. They provide a FHIR (medical data format) repository, and we need to do mappings between this format and data models used in our other systems. They worked with us to make a data driven DSL on top of Specter. [https://github.com/HealthSamurai/ironhide](https://github.com/HealthSamurai/ironhide) ------ fmjrey Funny this is being posted as I just started to use specter for extracting entities from XML documents we receive. I never used it before but now I see the value of: \- paths as data \- navigators as transducers First I started using plain clojure code, then played with using xml-in [1], then created my own transducers and channels to build a dataflow-like pipeline manually, and finally started using specter because I wanted paths to be a data structure I can use to build the pipeline programmatically instead of manually. For that I needed a way for paths to become tranducers (which specter traverse-all does [2]), and I also needed paths to be a sequence of literals or "interned" elements [3] such as keywords or symbols, but not functions created on the fly. That way I can create a tree from a sequence of paths, using something similar to this SO answer [4], and build the pipeline. I'm almost there, I should end up in a situation where I can specify a list of paths to extract from an XML document, and the dataflow pipeline needed will be built automatically, with an input channel for the parsed XML, and output channels for each given path. If you use clojure.data.xml instead of clojure.xml, my hope is to have a one pass XML parsing of larger-than-RAM XML docs. [1] [https://github.com/tolitius/xml-in](https://github.com/tolitius/xml-in) [2] [https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter/wiki/List-of- Macros#tr...](https://github.com/nathanmarz/specter/wiki/List-of- Macros#traverse-all) [3] [http://www.yourdictionary.com/interning](http://www.yourdictionary.com/interning) [4] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49515858/clojure- convert...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49515858/clojure-convert-file- path-to-tree) ------ Expez Specter is a fantastic solution to a problem you should aim to avoid. ~~~ islon How do you avoid having complicated, nested data structures in your software if your business is complicated? ~~~ augustl One answer to this is to have your raw "source" data stored as flat as possible (Datascript, RDF, ...). Then you generate nested structures (you could call these "views") as much as you want from this data. That way, you don't have to write to nested data, because that's the pain point imo. ~~~ fnordsensei If you control the source, that's fine. I get externally generated documents containing an annoying mishmash of XML representing metadata and XML representing rendering logic. Sometimes the same stuff even represents both of these things. I take them apart to something flatter as early as possible, but the complexity is nevertheless unavoidable. (changing the upstream representation would involve changing an entire industry as well as a standard) ------ js8 Is this something like Lens in Haskell? ~~~ thaumasiotes > If you have a Haskell background, I'm sure you're screaming to yourself > "Lenses! Lenses!" I actually didn't know about lenses before I made Specter, > but they are certainly very similar. I'm not on expert on Haskell, but what > I do know is it explicitly distinguishes between navigators that go to one > element (Lens) vs. zero or more (Traversal). I fail to see how that > complication adds any sort of expressive or performance benefit, but perhaps > a Haskeller out there can educate me. ~~~ involans It is useful to be able to speak of Lens and Traversal to distinguish intent. All lenses are Traversals, but not vice versa. What you have here is of course the Traversal system without the other optics. ~~~ Tarean It's also useful for stuff like 'get' to look differently. user ^. id txt ^? _JSON . key "foo" txt ^?! _JSON . key "foo" First one gives exactly one result. The second one is the equivalent of returning null on failure. The third one throws an exception on failure. And because of the somewhat peculiar implementation of van laarhoven lenses we get subtyping so it doesn't get in the way. ------ lbj Calling this the missing piece is no understatement. I'd love to see the design challenged by rhickey and integrated into core. ~~~ nickik Its has already been rejected from the core ~~~ corporateguy6 Mind elaborating as to why? ~~~ cbcoutinho Because Rich wants to keep core small [https://groups.google.com/d/topic/clojure/qN1UPMVQmaM/discus...](https://groups.google.com/d/topic/clojure/qN1UPMVQmaM/discussion) ~~~ zackmorris I've never used Clojure but am extremely interested in ClojureScript and Elixir (or some hybrid of the best of both) running under a JavaScript-like syntax so that developers can build from their existing contextual knowledge. So far the closest language that I've found is Skip: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18077612](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18077612) My comments: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18080968](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18080968) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18086937](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18086937) I'm not familiar with several of the functional programming terms brought up so far, but I think the gist of them is that all data structures need deterministic iteration. So for example, I can understand how returning a copy of an immutable map might result in a new map whose values are in a different order than the original. But that isn't acceptable. Either the map's order is determined by aspects of its values (it's deterministic), or it's not. This might even need to be true for structures like sets that aren't thought of as having order. This is a pretty serious situation for not just Clojure but a whole host of FP languages. Maybe this determinism is as important as immutability or process isolation. It certainly should rank higher than the need to minimize bloat. My vote is for Clojure to address it, even if it doesn't incorporate Specter. ------ thom My last project relied very heavily on zippers. I generally find that even something like Specter wouldn't be helpful here because quite often the branching is highly conditional on data (e.g. find all Foos and give each one a reference to the next Bar in the sequence etc). Of course it can quickly become complicated to rewind when making a complicated excursion in a zipper - I'd love to hear what the state of the art in this stuff was (presumably from a Haskeller). ~~~ lmm Maybe you want some kind of histomorphism? (Perhaps even a zygohistomorphism if you're alternating between Foos and Bars) ~~~ whitten For those, like me, who might not be familiar with those terms, this StackOverflow question strives to answer it: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36851766/histomorphisms-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36851766/histomorphisms- zygomorphisms-and-futumorphisms-specialised-to-lists) Oh, and what is a zipper as a data structure? ~~~ cstrahan I'll preface: this is more of an interesting connection, rather than a direct answer to your question. Zippers can be seen as (or at least isomorphic to) the derivative of a type with respect to one of its type parameters. This is described in Conor McBride's paper "The Derivative of a Regular Type is its Type of One-Hole Contexts." [http://strictlypositive.org/diff.pdf](http://strictlypositive.org/diff.pdf) If a video is more your speed, Kenneth Foner gave a great talk titled "`choose` your own derivative" that takes the concept of derivatives of types and takes it a step further. You can skip to the 11 minute mark to watch his explanation of zippers as derivatives here: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79zzgL75K8Q&t=11m](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79zzgL75K8Q&t=11m) With that said, the standard go-to paper for Zippers would probably be "The Zipper" by Gerard Huet: [http://gallium.inria.fr/~huet/PUBLIC/zip.pdf](http://gallium.inria.fr/~huet/PUBLIC/zip.pdf) ------ vbuwivbiu I only wish it didn't use shouty CAPS for the navigation ------ purple_ducks Always found it odd that a data oriented language didn't have XPath equivalent. ~~~ amelius Perhaps a stupid question, but what language isn't data oriented? ~~~ zimablue The meaning of data oriented in this context is that it's idiomatic for functions to receive and return plain data (primitives like map, list). In most languages it's idiomatic to receive and return mostly your own defined classes. ~~~ amelius Ok, thanks for the explanation, but I don't see why languages where you use more heavy machinery to define and check the types of your data would be less "data oriented" than languages where you use mostly primitives. ~~~ aasasd If you have a limited set of types, you can make extensive use of higher-level functions that compose frequently-needed operations on those types, and add your closures in the mix. If you have extensible types instead (OOP and such), you either have to program to these types, recreating the generic transformations for each type, or you'll need functions that can do those transformations on arbitrary types―presumably via internal mechanisms―thus circumventing strict type checking. ~~~ lmm Or you need to be able to produce appropriately parameterized transformations on user-defined types without compromising safety, such as typeclass derivation? ------ agumonkey The birth of specter. Very interesting article. ------ knubie Is it possible to use these functions on their own like 'map-values' without the traversal DSL?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Massive Botnet "Indestructible," Say Researchers - headShrinker http://it.slashdot.org/story/11/06/29/2240245/Massive-Botnet-Indestructible-Say-Researchers ====== kevin_morrill Comments are at <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2712628>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Avoiding quasiparticle decay may allow control&stabilization of quantum matter - bookofjoe https://www.nature.com/articles/s41567-019-0535-3 ====== bookofjoe >Scientists Find Evidence a Strange Group of Quantum Particles Are Basically Immortal source: [https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-find-evidence-a- stra...](https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-find-evidence-a-strange- group-of-quantum-particles-are-basically-immortal)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
XKCD: Meeting - dceddia http://companyname.website ====== frikk I'm curious as to why/how this post thinks the URL is (companyname.website)? It's obviously from the comic, but I'm curious about the mechanics. edit: derp. the url points directly at companyname.website and my Chrome build has a bug that prevented me from seeing that. ~~~ dceddia As an XKCD comic, I thought this one was just ok, but what made me post it to HN was when I went to check the availability of companyname.website and found out it redirected to the comic :) ~~~ p4bl0 I did the same thing this morning with the intention of recreating the web page from the first panel of the comic, but someone beat me to it to make this redirection (which have to admit I find less cool than my (and I guess many others) idea). ~~~ josu Someone? Didn't Randall do it? I believe that it's part of the joke. ~~~ p4bl0 Maybe I don't know, the whois info are hidden. ------ amirouche I don't understand the joke. ~~~ probably_wrong Explain XKCD usually does a pretty good job at explaining what's going on: [http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1493](http://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1493) (bla, bla, obligatory notice about explaining jokes and dissecting frogs here) ~~~ anonymfus It explains jokes on all panels of the episode, but I cannot find a joke connecting panels together. ~~~ drostie So, XKCD is not actually all that _funny_ in itself. Trying to "find a joke connecting panels together" is the wrong way to digest XKCD. The joke in this case is the same as most of the Beret Guy jokes: He has some sort of alien view of the world which has mired him in a 9-year-old's mentality, so that when we see him appear we are seeing an overly literal concept of what the adult world is about. The humor is not "ha-ha" funny so much as a mind-state of vague bemusement. This may be the reason XKCD has been so successful. By offering a comedic "buildup" which is insufficient to generate a "release" of hysterical laughter and all of the neurotransmittery goodness that comes with that, you are left trawling the archives for more and more humor. ~~~ thaumaturgy > _This may be the reason XKCD has been so successful. By offering a comedic > "buildup" which is insufficient to generate a "release" of hysterical > laughter and all of the neurotransmittery goodness that comes with that, you > are left trawling the archives for more and more humor._ I dunno about that. One of the things I appreciate most about xkcd is its whimsy. Seeing things from a different point of view, or having a bit of absurdity pointed out, is fun. ------ troymc Is this Scott Adams' way of telling us that he has taken over XKCD? ------ jebus989 Randall's been sitting on this since 20 Nov 2014? ~~~ ixwt I imagine he has a large amount of comics in reserve so he can work on comics such as [http://xkcd.com/1491/](http://xkcd.com/1491/). ~~~ jedberg Actually. he rarely has comics in reserve. He has a notebook of ideas and sketches, and each day a few hours before a comic is set to go up, he picks one and draws and inks it. I've watched the process firsthand, and I was surprised as to how little lead time there is. When he knows he'll be busy he gets a few in the hopper, but it isn't his standard SOP (at least it didn't used to be). ~~~ Kiro Do you know him? ~~~ jedberg We've met a few times, but I learned this when I was escorting him around the Bay Area for a day during his book tour.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Microsoft shows off universal translator that preserves your voice - mrsebastian http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/122083-microsoft-unveils-universal-translator-that-converts-your-voice-into-another-language ====== nextparadigms Microsoft has been showing off a lot of these lab projects lately. I guess they think it helps with their marketing. The problem is they've not just started working on these types of projects. Their R&D has always been doing stuff like this, but either they never seem to come out in products, or if they do, it happens a decade later. So other than marketing bragging rights, this is all pretty pointless if they don't show up in products at all, or not for a decade. ~~~ maigret There is some point in what you write, and I wouldn't have downvoted you. But there are counterexamples, like the Surface for example. ~~~ corin_ In reply to ocdprogrammer's dead comment: > _And where is Surface ? Is it available to buy somewhere ?(I never saw a > single trace of it in europe) I have a feeling that Surface is already > either too expensive or too obsolete._ I can't speak to what happened to it commercially, but it definitely _was_ available to buy - I organised a demo of it at a trade show in 2010. Since then haven't really paid attention to it, I know a second version of it came out, but no idea how well it did or is doing. ~~~ king_magic I do Surface development. Surface v2 isn't that great, TBH. Lots of hardware issues. Lighting is still a huge problem. ------ politician I believe something similar was developed at CMU under the name ABBY. I wonder if they are the same; nevertheless, the CMU tech was impressive - real-time translation with voice characteristic preservation. We wanted to use it to develop a plugin for Skype for international business, but it didn't pan out. A missed opportunity in my opinion. However, now that Microsoft owns Skype, maybe we can expect an announcement soon. ------ ecocentrik The samples in the article don't do a very good job of demoing the technology. You can download an mp3 of the talk: <http://msrvideo.vo.msecnd.net/rmcvideos/160725/dl/160725.mp3> forward to 19:25 for a demo of english and mandarin the full explanation of the system starts at 12:00 ~~~ ck2 The mp4 has video <http://msrvideo.vo.msecnd.net/rmcvideos/160725/dl/160725.mp4> ------ Revisor _For example, Microsoft’s standard model of Spanish will have a default “S” (ess) sound, but the training process replaces it with your “S” sound. This is done for every individual sound (phoneme)_ I don't think it can work as a phoneme for phoneme replacement; there must be a different heuristic at work. Different languages have different phonemes and one of the most telling things of a non-expert non-native speaker is that they don't get the sounds right. Eg "E" is pronounced differently in English, German and Czech. Japanese speakers don't differentiate between "L" and "R". Spanish "C" is in some contexts different to "C"s in other languages. Etc. Obviously you can't pronounce a sound that you don't even know exists. I would love to hear more examples. ~~~ chimeracoder > Obviously you can't pronounce a sound that you don't even know exists. It's possible that they could interpolate those sounds. For example, Bengali has a sound that's halfway between a 'd' and a 't'. Using some statistical heuristics, it's possible that they could approximate that letter using your pronunciations of 'd' and 't' (and knowing how bilingual Bengali-English speakers who pronounce 'd' and 't' similarly to how you do also pronounce that letter). ------ runeks Impressive technology. But this doesn't really solve the problem of accurately translating from one language to another, with all the ambiguities of language, does it? I mean, as far as I can tell, the really hard part is completely transferring the meaning of something spoken/written in one language into another. Sometimes it's obviously just not possible (like certain jokes, etc.). Most of the time though, it's just very hard to do with software. ~~~ dualogy Sure, this is hard to do with software but given that 99% of people are way worse at 99.5% of the planet's languages... a we have a massive improvement right there. ~~~ maigret Or they just all speak English? Living in another country that speaks another language, my translation skills are only rarely needed. ~~~ freehunter This is really frustrating to me. "Learn German! It's the language of business in Europe!" Now when I'm in Germany, people speak English to me even when I say "auf Deutsch, bitte." Somewhere along the line, I must have picked up an accent in German, because some people even assume I'm from France and start speaking French to me. I'm B1 level in German (used to be B2, but it's slipping) and have no use for it outside of academic pursuits. About the only language that is useful to me living in the northern US is French (being that my company does business in Quebec). Sometimes Spanish is helpful (we also do business in southern Florida). But the problems with learning these languages is it's not French you need to learn, it's Canadian French. It's not Spanish you need to learn, it's Mexican Spanish (/Cuban Spanish/Latin Spanish/Caribbean Spanish, however you want to classify it). Good luck finding excellent self study (like memrise.com) classes in regional dialects. ~~~ mc32 >...it's not French you need to learn, it's Canadian French. It's not Spanish you need to learn, it's... Is that level necessary? It's not as if a Qubequois would _not_ understand Standard French, or that a Cuban would not understand standard Spanish/Castillian. At least, I would hope it's not like that. It would be as if we'd need some translation to understand British English (coming from NAm). There is a bit getting used to an accent and some lexicon, but nothing that isn't overcome within a few interactions (with some exceptions). ~~~ freehunter It's not that they need to understand me (which I doubt they would have a problem with), it's that I need to be able to understand _them_. If I'm introductory in a language, all I'm really going to be doing is listening for keywords and piecing the meaning together with a small amount of grammar knowledge. That doesn't work when their words are different or sound different than what my brain is looking for. Also, there are some people in the world who will pretend they don't understand you if you don't speak their language perfectly (looking at you, Finland!) ------ binarymax Makes me think of Iron Man, when Gweneth Paltrow clicks on the 'Translate' button in the terrorist video, and it was the original voice but translated into English. I never thought it would actually be possible, but this looks pretty interesting. ------ shasta This technology, once perfected, will usher in a new era of fraud and crank calls. ------ sbornia I don't understand the samples in the article. The English audio says something, and the Spanish audio translates to "Welcome to TechFest 2012, were today you will see first-hand how Microsoft Research is studying the key technological tendencies that will define the XXI century." which is completely different. ------ bproper Listening to the two audio samples in the report, I would say the voices don't sound very similar and the translated one sounds very mechanical. ~~~ razzaj Not only that; I think the contents do not match; I am no spanish speaker but i detected some words that do not exist in the english version. so unless i have missed something... ~~~ mrsebastian Hey! I'm the author of the story. I think Technology Review got them mixed up (which is where I got the audio samples from). I first saw it in the TechFest keynote: <http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/dl.aspx?id=160725> I think Technology Review has an English clip from Mundie, but then translations of Rick Rashid speaking in the keynote. Sorry about the mix-up :( (And I wish I spoke another language...) ------ treenyc While the technology is very impressive, as a native Chinese/English speaker, I can tell you that the mixture of Chinese and English demonstrated is only useful for bilingual speaker like myself. Also watching the demo of this presentation in contrast with Apple's keynote I can really see a world of difference on how two companies communicate with their customers. ------ nod (Pet peeve) This is not a universal translator! Until you show me a translator that can learn a _new_ language, you're just building a common multi-language translator. ------ eridius I know it's Microsoft, but why are they using Windows Media for web video in 2012? I don't want to install Flip4Mac just to watch the demo. ~~~ ot There is a link to the iPod (MP4) version in the MSR page, I'm watching it right now from Chrome/Mac: <http://msrvideo.vo.msecnd.net/rmcvideos/160725/dl/160725.mp4>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask YC: Who would you pay to read? - pchristensen Along the same lines as yesterday's discussion, whose writing would you pay to read? Keep in mind that for high quality, sporadic writers, payment might mean more frequent writing.<p>Here's my list (going alphabetically through my Google Reader list:<p>Definitely:<p>- Steve McConnell's stuff is always backed by research and therefore much more valuable than most thoughts or ideas ( http://blogs.construx.com/blogs/stevemcc/rss.aspx )<p>- Dan Weinreb is rational, thorough, a bit of a legend in my niche, and I'm a bit of an ITA fanboy ( http://dlweinreb.wordpress.com/feed/ )<p>- Bill Simmons (sports writer) is hilarious and my only remaining connection to sports spectatorship ( http://sports.espn.go.com/keyword/feed?query=Bill_Simmons )<p>- pg ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/PaulGrahamUnofficialRssFeed )<p>- yegge is funny, and pay-per-post would be a bargain! ( http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default )<p>Maybe/Conditional: - pmarca if he would stay on topic ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/pmarca )<p>- defmacro if it caused more documentation and features to be written for weblocks ( http://www.defmacro.org/rss/news.xml )<p>- Ted Neward is new to me but climbing the charts (http://blogs.tedneward.com/SyndicationService.asmx/GetAtom )<p>- Jeff Moser is coming on strong ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/Moserware )<p>- Kevin Kelley is on the bubble ( http://feeds.feedburner.com/thetechnium )<p>Based on previous writing more so than current:<p>- raganwald from a couple years ago - the Ruby stuff means less to me than his older topics ( http://feeds.raganwald.com/raganwald )<p>- Joel a couple years ago, not Joel now ( http://www.joelonsoftware.com/rss.xml )<p>That's 12 out of 172. 5 were conditional and 2 would be mainly to access archives. So about 2-5% of authors I read are people I'd pay to read. What about you? ====== danohuiginn "for high quality, sporadic writers, payment might mean more frequent writing." And more frequent writing might mean lower-quality writing. There are certainly writers I'd pay to write less - to get the same ideas not buried under so many words. If a magazine had its staff writers produce, say, a maximum 500 words a day, the quality would skyrocket and I'd pay much more for it. Look at the quality of the New Yorker - it's not because they have the best writers (although they do), it's because they let them work for months on a single piece. ------ bokonist Mencius Moldbug - <http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/> \- it's hard to tell if he's crazy or a prophet, but it's definitely the most intellectually fascinating blog I've ever come across. ------ alex_c +1 for pmarca. Also <http://particletree.com/> if it was updated more often - but I guess they're going for quality over quantity, which is fine by me. Thanks for the post, will add some of those to my reading list. ------ alaskamiller Tipjoy sounds more and more awesome by the day ------ mattmaroon Very interesting question: Scott Adams Violent Acres Mark Cuban if he hired a copy editor. I have a low tolerance for typos/grammar and that guy is off the charts. My friend Mike May: <http://mikemay.blogspot.com/> , though I would have to pay per post since he doesn't write often and I'd feel ripped off with a subscription model. I'd pay to not read TechCrunch, but I'm too afraid of missing something. ------ danohuiginn Since I'm already paying with my time, what's the difference in paying a bit extra in cash? So almost everybody I read frequently and carefully is somebody I'd pay to read. In technology: Mark Pilgrim, pg, danah boyd, Ian Bicking, probably dozens more. Outside technology, there are too many to even begin listing. ------ projectileboy Malcolm Gladwell almost always has something interesting to say. ------ technoguyrob Steve Pavlina of 2005 and 2006 had some dazzling productivity and personal management articles. ------ mindcrime Blogs? Nobody. I pay to read the authors that I'm willing to pay for, when I buy their books. Out of the OP's list, I've bought books by Steve McConnell, Paul Graham, Ted Neward and Joel Spolsky. ------ yan Well I buy books fairly often, so I'm paying to read them. In terms of blogs, I'd be willing to pay something to subscribe to the simple dollar, probably bruce schneier's blog, boing boing. There are others, I'm sure. ------ nikiscevak Malcolm Gladwell (New Yorker) John Hollinger (ESPN) Paul Graham Warren Buffet ------ gruseom Andrew Sullivan ------ justindz Since you were non-format-specific in your question: Neil Gaiman Haruki Murakami William Gibson Neal Stephenson Banana Yoshimoto ;-) ------ edu PG. So I bought Hackers & Painters.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Gloves Are Officially Off: Google Vs. Apple - edw519 http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/20/the-gloves-are-officially-off-google-vs-apple/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo ====== blhack _“We discovered something really cool, it’s called the Internet.”_ Ouch. Also, bad form for injecting "READ MORE! <http://techcrunch.com?> into my copy paste, techcrunch. ~~~ Seiwynn This is why I am beginning to consider NoScript essential for web-browsing. ~~~ stanleydrew You know Google Chrome has noscript functionality built in right? ~~~ ramchip "This is why I am beginning to consider heated outside mirrors essential for driving in cold weather" "You know the Toyota Prius II has heated outside mirrors built in right?" (Edit: Oh, I think I somewhat see your point: noscript is the Firefox-specific name for this function. Still, Chrome isn't the only browser to have this.) ~~~ stanleydrew Right, I didn't mean to imply that no other browsers have some kind of noscript functionality built in. ------ alanthonyc It's interesting how Apple's real, live products constantly have to compete against demos. ~~~ jrockway It's also interesting how I can "git clone git://android.git.kernel.org/whatever", edit the code, and install it on my phone. Without any permission from anyone. ~~~ swannodette Which is interesting (much less understandable) for about 0.0001% of the people that have a phone. But yes, you have point. That is nice. ~~~ poppysan <http://gear.ign.com/articles/108/1088942p1.html> ~~~ rictic It is my understanding that very few of those devices are developer devices, where the user is allowed to install their own OS. Otherwise you have to root the phone, which is a violation of the increasingly international DMCA-style anti-circumvention law. I haven't checked this info in a little while though, if most Android devices are sold with root I'm very happy to be corrected. ~~~ jrockway Rooting your phone is not a DMCA violation. sudo simply is not pre-installed, it's an app you have to add yourself, just like anything else. Reverse engineering for interoperability is a DMCA exception, and there are plans to make the language in the law specifically refer to "jailbreaking" phones. Also, at least with Android devices I've worked with, there is no trickery involved to flash a new firmware. You just do it. ------ axiom The moment flash was announced for the Android I realized that my next phone won't be an iPhone, but a nexus one. Sad. History is repeating itself. ~~~ sshumaker Really? You miss flash that badly? Other than the occasional restaurant website, what are you missing? Most flash apps are very awkward on a phone, having been designed for a mouse. And most flash games apparently don't perform remotely acceptably on Android (not enough horsepower in the phone). The remaining reason would be Hulu - but they won't stream to your phone, even with flash - since they don't have mobile distribution rights to the content. ~~~ mixmax I wouldn't be able to live without flash and here's why. If I visit 100 sites a day maybe 5 of them will be dependent on flash in some way. Menus, slideshows, etc. Without flash the site is worthless. I won't remember the 95 sites that work, but each and every one of the sites that don't will annoy me endlessly. Maybe I needed that quote on a new Dewalt powerdrill from the local website programmed in flash. Maybe I really wanted to see the funny link someone posted on twitter. But I can't. Not without flash. The problem is a lot like spam: False positives are a _serious_ problem. If 5 e-mails a day were mistakenly labeled as spam my spamfilter would basically be useless. This is exactly the same. I don't endorse flash, and think it's annoying as hell but until 99.5% of the sites I visit work without flash not having it simply isn't an option. ~~~ extension 5% would be a conservative estimate of the sites I find completely unusable on my phone for reasons that have nothing to do with Flash: text too wide and tiny to bother, centered popups that are bigger than the screen (so I can't close them), essential functionality based on mouseovers, random failures of over complicated JS/CSS, neglected mobile sites that mangle content or don't show it at all, mobile sites that break hotlinking and just take you to the home page, and so much more. The point is, Flash is just a small part of a big problem. Web design still has whiplash from the mobile explosion. But it's going to recover real quick, and when everyone starts making mobile friendly sites, they won't be using Flash. It's on death row and Google is just dragging it out for a cheap shot at Apple. Just grit your teeth and bear it for a little while longer. You'll have to do that anyway, with or without Flash. ------ AndrewO Ok, I think I missed the genesis of whole rainbows and ponies meme. Someone mind clueing me in? I seem to recall first hearing it connected with Django somehow, but I figured it was a reference to something I didn't get... ~~~ ZeroGravitas There are various pony memes, including a Django one, but in this case I believe they're just trying to exemplify openness by using a picture of a toy that lets you complete the design yourself: [http://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Pony-Decorate- Figure/dp/B001...](http://www.amazon.com/My-Little-Pony-Decorate- Figure/dp/B001E3P5F2) Also, I don't think it's rainbows, just colorful hair. ------ invisible I think this is big for online video advertising. The price (I believe) is substantially less than regular TV now. But put in online video advertising being on a TV in front of the average user and you gain a ton of potential dollars. I'd actually be surprised if the only thing that Google TV doesn't ask from you is your zip code for giving localized ads. ~~~ invisible I'd like to clarify I was talking about the price of online video advertising, not the cost of google TV - I think that may have been confusing. ------ stcredzero With the acquisition of SimplifyMedia, it seems like Google's aiming straight at Apple's "Digital Hub" strategy. (Which I doubt Apple is still really following.) ------ TotlolRon OH: Why would thet need all these people on stage? One Jobs does a better job. ~~~ joezydeco I give Google some slack for trying to be different than Apple in this respect but man, you're so right. Maybe it's the democratic way of Google having each manager demo the feature they're responsible for. But it felt like at one point the techno music wouldn't stop as people shuffled in and out of the stage. Did we really need the music bringing all the CEOs out? It just got silly at that point. And was it me or did Vic come off like a douchebag during this second keynote? ~~~ jeduan Vic ended up pretty badly too with Conan O' Brien ~~~ stuntmouse I actually thought Conan gave him too hard a time. Vic came out looking like an affable, though slightly stiff, nerd. ------ joubert "On Android’s upcoming over-the-air music download capabilities versus Apple’s tethered syncing: “We discovered something really cool, it’s called the Internet.” huh? did this guy even say that with a straight face? itunes (i.e. music, movies, tv, podcasts, audiobooks and iTunes U) is available on the device. ~~~ enjo Do this fun experiment: Go buy an iPad and try to figure out how to use it WITHOUT another computer to sync it against. That's what they're talking about. ~~~ joubert many people have used ipods, iphones, and I presume ipads without syncing with a computer. ~~~ blinks You must sync a new iPad (on a computer with iTunes) before first use. I don't know if that still applies for the iPhone (though it probably does, for activation). The iPod is worthless if you don't have a computer, for how would you get music on there otherwise? ~~~ megablast You are right, this is stupid. Apple will do this for you at the store, but I imagine for updates you still need a computer. You do for the iPhone.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
T7.js: alternative to JSX that compiles template literals into vDOM objects - tilt https://github.com/trueadm/t7 ====== chowes What's the advantage of this over using JSX? You can already go JSX->virtual- dom [https://www.npmjs.com/package/virtual-dom- jsx](https://www.npmjs.com/package/virtual-dom-jsx), and the fact that it's "vanilla" JS doesn't mean much as it's ES6 which needs Babel. ~~~ tobr One less dependency is always a good thing. The fact that template strings are part of the standard is a big advantage; any current or future tools that support ES6 will automatically support your templates as well. ~~~ mikewhy > One less dependency is always a good thing I think the parent's point is that to use template strings today one would have to use Babel, which already supports JSX. Thus the number of dependencies is the same in all scenarios: Babel + virtual-dom, or Babel + T7. ~~~ kevrom That's not necessarily true with Babel 6. The new modular approach requires that you explicitly list which plugins you want Babel to use. So for JSX, you'd need to have `babel-plugin-syntax-jsx` as a dependency. ------ kevan I'll probably stick with JSX, but it's nice to have different options if you don't want to be locked into using the React virtual DOM. ------ johnhenry This is fantastic! I tried to make something similar a few months ago and couldn't quite get it to work. ------ dang Url changed from [http://t7js.com/](http://t7js.com/), which points to this.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bitcoin Gains Correlate with Tether Issuance, Researcher Says - chollida1 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-10-03/bitcoin-gains-correlate-with-tether-issuance-researcher-says ====== Fjolsvith Can you say, "Insider trading?"	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Artist Uses 99 Phones to Trick Google into Traffic Jam Alert - kpetermeni https://edition.cnn.com/style/article/artist-google-traffic-jam-alert-trick-scli-intl/index.html ====== ColinWright A wonderful thing, the main discussion is here: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22216821](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22216821) (simonweckert.com, >360 comments) Other submissions from various sources, most now marked as duplicates: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22218181](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22218181) (3 comments) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22223187](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22223187) (youtube.com) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22226498](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22226498) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22227204](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22227204) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22228900](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22228900) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22232116](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22232116) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22233637](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22233637) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22234365](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22234365) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22234692](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22234692) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236117](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236117) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236932) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236944](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22236944) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22238751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22238751)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I want to run an agile project - jester5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u5N00ApR_k&feature=related This is funny.. ====== jester5 lol..	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How does project management work in your small / tiny startup? - akor For some context I work for a tiny startup where I'm the only tech person. I am frequently handed a task that is unclearly defined and I work with the business owner to tease out the spec over time or am expected to come up with the "correct" solution intuitively. We're so small that everybody has too much work to do so I understand the necessity to just hand off the work but because I don't deal with clients my "correct" solution on first pass frequently diverges from what the owner / stakeholder is thinking. In addition the work sort of stacks up with the highest priority task being the one that has a client deadline attached or is a flashy "marketing" feature. There is no clear direction from the owner describing what should go next in the pipeline with a huge list of possible projects both small & large. The critical stuff is often left for me to work out outside of or in between the other requests but almost never has dedicated time to deal with it. We don't really have the budget to hire another tech person and have tried outsourcing work which resulted in almost exclusively terrible / sub-par results (which was partly on us). I also am not clear I'm given the tools to succeed in the sense that I feel like in a larger organization a CEO might tell a manager they want X feature and the manager is required to figure it out but they have more access to work out what a "correct" solution is (via access to stakeholder(s)). I realize there is a lot wrong with this picture and I should probably have already moved on but I'd like to grow as a person and think this is an opportunity for just that. I'm just not sure how to turn the tide in the direction I want. Anyway TIA. ====== muzani IMO, ideally a minimal tech team consists of two people: a full time programmer and a full time manager. To use a gaming analogy, one is the DPS and one is the tank. The programmer moves the needle, makes things happen. But someone has to absorb all the attacks, so that they can do their magic. The job of a programmer is to focus, deeply. The job of a manager is to handle all the meetings, always pick up calls, cut out unnecessary features. Without a manager, you tend to take on more than you need to, because there's nobody around to reduce the number of things that need to be done, or estimate the timeline properly. Sometimes you need stuff from the client - API access, and so on. This is the manager's job to keep following up. ~~~ jackgolding This is how I view managers, iteration managers etc. not only do they "steer the ship" (i.e. set the strategy) they are a shield from the rest of the business. ------ twunde These are very common problems to have, even with large teams that include project managers. The first problem is prioritization. One way to deal with this is to do a weekly meeting to hash out the product roadmap and prioritization. If you do this well, the business will prioritize your work for you. To do this really well, you need a few things. First a rough sense of how much effort a project is. A day, a week? Second, the business should be estimating a rough impact on the business. A good question to ask is how much impact will this have on revenue? You should be working on things that have the biggest impact on revenue with the tiebreaker going to what's fastest to implement. Importantly you need to make it clear what your capacity is. My general rule of thumb is that you should be scheduling a maximum of 3 tasks to do each week. Let's talk about the ill-defined tasks. The short-term solution is to say that every task requires at least one meeting to gather the requirements and design a solution. Until requirements are defined AND accepted by you, you can't schedule the work. You need acceptance criteria. You're going to need buy-in from the business. Talk to your favorite manager/exec and discuss the problems you're having and your proposed solutions. They May have their own ideas and solutions to suggest. Trial it out and adjust the processes as necessary. As a side note, you'll recognize some of these practices as agile practices. In factory terms, you're the bottleneck/constraint and you're trying to protect the constraint so that it's used as effectively as possible. Good luck ------ PeOe We use our own tool [https://zenkit.com](https://zenkit.com) for project management and it works great. You need one person who overlooks the tasks and reorganizes it when there is something wrong. The person organizing the Tech Team (like you) should know at least the basics of the technical stuff you use or what you (can) do. Is some info missing, you can just ask other persons via @mentions. At Zenkit there is a rule, that we need to answer to such mentions as fast as possible. The whole work becomes easier because you don´t need to call someone and you and the whole team can see what everyone is up to. For all these tasks we use the kanban view (like to-do, in progress, done) and many companies set a rule, that one person should only have for example three tasks assigned to him on to-do. ------ goatherders I have tried trello, asana and google keep. And while they are useful the fact that my company is just me means I lean most on post it notes and a notebook. For example my entire sales pipeline is in color coordinated post it's on my office wall. And for now it works great. ------ mabynogy Taskwarrior.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Comprehensions and Generator Expressions in Python - kaunta https://johnlekberg.com/blog/2020-07-16-comp-genexp.html ====== sohamsankaran This is a test of a potential bug in the HN API, please ignore.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Mobile friendly Hacker News reader, with built-in memory - arcticmill http://hn.arcticmill.com ====== arcticmill We’ve hacked together this reader for Hacker News that helps us better consume all those juicy news items. It keeps track on what you've seen and read before. Hopefully some of you will find it useful. Cheers	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Project Lovelace–Learn science and programming through problem solving - bazram https://projectlovelace.net/ ====== MrTonyD While I like the idea of this site, I think it is good to understand how it is fundamentally flawed. I do training. And most outside of training don't stop to think about how there are a variety of approaches to training, and a variety of topics, and not every topic aligns well with every approach. And choosing the wrong approach has some very bad consequences - harder learning, poor learning, and less joy in the learner. I read the first problem - rocket physics - and it does a disservice to both physics and programming. Personally, rocket physics is where I would probably take a historical approach to teaching - what did we learn, how did we learn it - embedded in failure and success stories. And there were software failures there too. But I understand that this site isn't trying to teach those things. It is taking it's one hammer (problem based teaching) and applying it to a bunch of nails. ~~~ aliram Thanks for taking a look! We're definitely not experts so we appreciate critical feedback! I agree Project Lovelace basically tries to do one thing (problem based teaching) without much regard as to what scientific topics would be appropriate for the website. Problem suitability is not something I've thought hard about, I guess we just tried to aim for variety and "rocket science" seemed like a fun way to introduce the rocket equation and how code submission works. But it doesn't really teach you anything about rocket science or how to program. It may actually leave you with misconceptions and bad programming practises as you point out. Maybe sticking to purely computational science topics might be better, e.g. solving an ordinary differential equation for the trajectory of a projectile, as it would neccessarilly require scientific code to be written and tested which is what the website does. Do you think this will better align with the approach Project Lovelace takes? Or is it more than just the choice of topic/subjects to cover? The motivation for building the website stemmed from our perceived lack of resources for learning scientific computing, or really how to solve science problems on a computer which forms a large chunk of scientific research. Learning how to simulate the weather is an example we had in mind. We thought a Project Euler approach might actually help a lot since we're big fans, at which point we thought maybe it could be of general interest and started thinking of easier and more varied problems to put up. This may have been a mistake. While the website is purely recreational right now, we may try to integrate it into a science course in the near future at which point it will be critical to address the fundamental flaw you pointed out. Project Lovelace will always be free and open-source though. ~~~ MrTonyD I have only respect for your idea and approach. The tricky part is figuring out where and how to apply it. I think of the time I spent coding "lunar lander" and how I then read a physicist's description about the algorithms that I had implemented. I discovered that all the code I had created was really garbage - it was simplified to the point of fiction compared to anything in the real world. So there is an opportunity cost - what could I have been coding that would have been both instructive as code and for the problem domain too? There are lots and lots of good answers, and probably even more bad answers. First we would have to ask what we want to accomplish from the code perspective as well as from a science perspective. My own personal preference is for mechanics and dynamics - perhaps in a 3D context (so matrix algebra would get involved.) This can be related to real-world things (building failures, game design, etc.) Also both coding and science principles are fairly well understood in that domain (well, it would be relatively easy to explain many of the mechanics issues - such as Feynman did in his well known books. And then there are the recent model failures due to poorly understood energy storage discovered for energy in structures during earthquakes. No models really exist to describe that yet.) And other science areas would certainly work. I don't know "weather", but I'm sure that there are some edge cases where simplified models are meaningful and insightful. The reality is that it is very difficult to create good Training. And if you are trying to do two things at once - teach coding and physics - it is even harder. That is why there are usually prerequisites, so that coding can be taught, and then physics taught. I truly wish you only the best. ~~~ aliram Thanks again for your feedback! Trying to teach both science and programming is definitely very difficult due to the number of prerequisites required, so we'll try to figure out exactly who might benefit from out website. I suspect we'll end up more on the programming side of things as you write and submit code, while the best way to learn science (in my opinion) is to actually wrap your head around the concepts and go through the derivations (+ read up and understand the experiments). Classical mechanics is not something I've thought of much with linear algebra, I'm still stuck in Lagrangians and Hamiltonians with differential equations but 3D mechanics with matrices would be a good problem to think about. Some simple models do exist for atmospheric science, e.g. for describing frontogenesis, but it usually boils down to differential equations. There are plenty of simple climate models (usually described as energy balance models) that are simple to describe and solve.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: I'm visiting SF for 3 days, what do I do? - idiotb Hi HN'ers, I'm visiting SF for 3 days from May 15th to May 17th. What meetups/cafes/events can I go to to network with VC's, founders, tech people, other awesome companies, etc? ====== jowiar Forget all of that. The most interesting people in tech are largely not in San Francisco (and the ones who you find are loud, while the ones who are interesting you won't find). Instead: SF is a stellar place to unwind. Do that. Catch a Giants game. Drink fantastic coffee (Sightglass, Blue Bottle, Epicenter, Four Barrel, Ritual, etc.) Get a Chocolate Shot at Tcho, Ice Cream at Humphry Slocombe, a burrito in the Mission, and Shabu Shabu. Drink a cocktail at Alembic or Comstock. Spend an afternoon peoplewatching in Dolores Park. Shop at the ferry plaza. Walk across the Golden Gate. Take a few days of the best weather that you're going to see for the next 4 months and enjoy it outside. If you're interested in learning, drop in on some things at Stanford and Berkeley - find interesting talks from people who are doing legit change-the- world research that you can sit in on. ~~~ larrys But the OP said specifically: "What meetups/cafes/events can I go to to network" The goal appears therefore to be to network. Not to do interesting sight seeing things. Nor to meet "interesting people" unless those interesting people are specifically for networking purposes. Add: How does a three day visit for networking jive with "Catch a Giants game. Drink fantastic coffee". You can do all that in the city that I live in and in many cities. ~~~ tizzdogg True, it's not answering the OPs original question. I think people are responding to the implied idea that you can just show up in San Francisco and bump into VCs all over the place, and that this is all the city has to offer. SF people love their city for other reasons, and get a bit defensive about this attitude that tech is the only worthwhile thing about it. It's partally a part of the ongoing angst about the changing nature of the city with the influx of so many tech folks. ------ sparkman55 Please go visit some redwoods or beaches or wineries or dim sum or taquerias, too. Our fair city is more than just a tech hub. I think the Maker Faire is that weekend, about 20 minutes south of SF in San Mateo, if that kind of hacking is your thing. ~~~ colonelxc [http://makerfaire.com/bay-area-2014/](http://makerfaire.com/bay-area-2014/) This saturday and sunday ------ paulbaumgart Networking is a two-way street: if you want people to offer to meet with you, it helps to give some indication of what you have to offer them :) ------ alain94040 You'll be missing the startup conference on Wednesday, but the tips page shows what happens the next day, when you are in town: May 15: Hackers and Founders Meetup at the Hacker Dojo. May 15: the Founder Showcase is a great event, and even if you can’t attend the afternoon presentations, it’s worth spending $15 for the evening after- party at NASA that looks to be really cool. Registration here, after-party here. Grab a coffee at Red Rock Cafe in downtown Mountain View, if you are a pennyless entrepreneur working on the next big thing, or at Coupa Cafe in Palo Alto if you think you are ready to pitch VCs. Just sit back and watch… [source] [http://thestartupconference.com/tips-for-first-time- attendee...](http://thestartupconference.com/tips-for-first-time-attendees/) ------ dougmccune Someone else mentioned Maker Faire, and I second that. Even if you don't think that kind of thing is "your thing", there's so much there that's genuinely interesting to any inquisitive person that you're bound to find it fun. The only drawback IMO was that it's massive and crazy crowded, so if you're not a fan of large crowds it can get overwhelming. Also, change your ticket and fly back on Monday so you can experience Bay to Breakers. It's one of the best/most ridiculous events our city has to offer. ------ NathanKP Visit Noisebridge: [https://www.noisebridge.net/](https://www.noisebridge.net/) I stopped in on my last visit to SF and it was amazing... So much activity and fun hackerish things going on. You'll love it I'm sure! ------ paf31 Attend a Haskell mini-conference! [http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/BayHac2014](http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/BayHac2014) ------ bravura Come to Music Hack Day, [https://musichackdaysf.splashthat.com/](https://musichackdaysf.splashthat.com/) It's on the 17th and 18th. You'll miss some of it, but you'll get to meet cool people building stuff ------ jot PG has a guide if you're more broadly interested in seeing Silicon Valley: [http://paulgraham.com/seesv.html](http://paulgraham.com/seesv.html) ------ JSeymourATL Suggest targeting 2-3 individuals, local experts who might be able to help with your business or career goals. Offer to pay for 1 hour of their time for advice & counsel. Most people will be flattered, appreciate the sign of a respect and will waive any fee. Bonus, you'll get some great insights and potentially make a new friend. ~~~ justuseapen Friend speaks my mind^ ------ eksurfus Checkout Steve Blank's guide: http://steveblank.com/visitors-guide/ ------ igaape I suggest doing some online research and find people / companies that interest you and then cold email them and try to set up meeting a couple of people before you get there and then expand your network from there. Its the best way to go about it. Make friends and then friends of friends. 3 days is a short time so make sure you unwind as well. SF has a lot to offer. (Although if I was in your place i'd have prolly not 'Chilled' out either) xD. You can message me if you need any other help. I can try and point you in the right direction. ~~~ idiotb Hey! thanks for comment. I'd be meeting a friend at Dropbox and later on thursday will be going for Github Drinkup. My main goal for the trip is to see tech community as I just graduated from Hacker School, NY. I'm exploring my career options now. ------ zealoustiger If the goal is to relax and "absorb" tech culture, I'd go with everyone else's suggestions. Tech-focused cafes include Creamery, SightGlass, Philz, and The Grove in SOMA. If you have a car, driving around Sand Hill (not in SF) and visiting Rosewood will definitely give you the opportunity to tech eves-drop. If you'd like to meet some real entrepreneurs, engineers, designers, investors in the trenches, download our app (www.weavenow.us). There are thousands of people you can meet in SF if they're also interested in meeting you. ------ bake Thursday night drinks at the Rosewood on Sand Hill Rd. Google it before you go, though. ------ chrisBob Be safe: My wife and I have been to SF twice. The first time a bar fight spilled out into the street while we were walking to church _at 9am on Sunday morning_. One of the guys pulled a knife, but someone talked him down before there was any blood spilled. The second time my wife was about 20' away from a shooting near the convention center. I am sure its a great city, but I haven't had the best experience there. ~~~ fossuser I've found the city to be hugely disappointing, but compared to NY and London it is substantially smaller (maybe that's why). There are only ~800,000 people there. ------ dohertyjf Check out meetup for interesting things happening. You can find people immersed in their laptops at any coffee shop in the city, especially SOMA. But yes, since the weather will be nice you should get outside. Rent a bike, go to the GG Bridge, Twin Peaks, etc. It's a beautiful town. How do I know? I live here and work in FiDi in tech. I've yet to meet a VC at a coffee shop. ------ PaulMest I'll be presenting about time series data at SFRails on May 15th. The meetup offers free pizza/beer and generally has 100-200 people attend. You can find more info about this month's event here: [http://www.meetup.com/SFRails/events/167606272/](http://www.meetup.com/SFRails/events/167606272/) ------ milkers Great!! I will be doing the same between 10th of June and 4th of July. Looking forward to meet with likeminded folks. One of my friends who had done an internship at facebook suggested me to drive towards San Diego, probably there are good views on the way. However what to do depends extremely on your intrinsic purposes. ------ 3stripe There's not a listings/event site that aggregates all of this stuff? (He says with mild surprise from London) ~~~ scott_karana I think OP is hoping to network with HN-type people, specifically. :) ------ e40 Visit Cha Cha Cha on Mission. Fantastic food and drink. My favs, all from the Tapas menu (small plates): fried plantains, chicken Piard, and the best fried calamari in the world. The Sangria is excellent. It's a couple of blocks from BART on Mission and 18th. ------ rms Maker Faire, definitely. Noisebridge: Yes. Maybe the morning session at [http://events.stanford.edu/events/442/44295/](http://events.stanford.edu/events/442/44295/) before Maker Faire ------ Xcelerate I rented a bike from one of the bike shops and proceeded to get lost cycling around San Francisco. It was really fun! I only barely made it back in time for the conference I was presenting at though... ------ lyime Check out this SF city guide [https://hackpad.com/San-Francisco-City-Guide- aAFL7mTH9M2](https://hackpad.com/San-Francisco-City-Guide-aAFL7mTH9M2) ------ caio1982 Rent a bike, ride the Golden Gate to Sausalito for some icecream or coffee and then to Battery Spencer before going back to city, or hang around at Fort Point and at the park nearby. ------ jelmerdejong I really enjoyed just driving around: visit the multiple campuses (Facebook, Google), checking out Steve Jobs old house and neighbourhood. ------ pchristensen +1000 for Maker Faire on Sat the 17th. There's nothing more awesome at any point in the year, anywhere else in the world, for tech. ------ BrainScraps Check out [http://www.sfwat2do.com](http://www.sfwat2do.com) \- always intersting stuff there. ------ feralmoan Check out Tonga Room if you're up for something crazy and unique one night!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: an ethical dilemma in recommending an Android DRM solution fix - rndmcnlly0 An alternative Android app store invited me to sell my apps in their marketplace, which requires integration of a complicated in-house DRM scheme to protect apps from piracy. Upon investigating the docs and sample code for the integration process, I was amazed to see heaps and heaps of unnecessary complexity, brittle design, and many opportunities for mistakes in integration.<p>Somehow the part of me that abhors terrible software design took over, and before I really thought about it, I had sent them a very detailed proposal for an alternative design that both fully integrated with their existing infrastructure and reduced integration complexity from a collection of scattered changes to Java source (which would break compatibility with other marketplaces) to a three-line XML change in an application's manifest (which could even be applied in an automated fashion upon upload to the marketplace), with no need to even recompile existing code.<p>The issue now, after a few rounds back and forth with their team, is that I've come to privately realize a major exploit in my design which would allow the creation of a general-purpose launcher app that would completely evade the DRM scheme I recommended.<p>Should I continue to help this company improve the developer friendliness of their egregious DRM solution? This would (1) make them much more attractive and lead to many more adopters of their marketplace (2) stop a precedent from being set for Android developers having to customize their code for a distinct marketplace and (3) rid the world of a piece of software design that, at best, discourages integration, and, at worst, inspires a new era of terrible DRM design.<p>Alternatively, should I tell them about the exploit, its mechanism, and its implications, and suggest they stop implementation?<p>Thirdinatively, should I just keep helping them fix their stuff (which has its share of existing exploits already), and keep quiet about the exploit, leaving it as an easter egg for the curious few with both a deep enough understanding of the Android framework and experience with this particular marketplace to discover on their own?<p>(Actually this is really two intertwingled choices: {continue helping vs. suggest stopping} and {reveal exploit vs. keep quiet}) ====== ASutton It has to be down to your personal preference. My company runs AndAppStore and, although we don't force anyone to integrate our purchase checking system into their paid apps, I know we'd still appreciate a heads up from anyone who thinks they've found an exploit for it (not necessarily giving a full fix, but a heads up to how the exploit would work so we can look at addressing it if it worked). In your shoes I'd ask for the DRM requirement to be dropped. You know it's not secure, they've shown they're not paying full attention to the DRM solution, and so even if you spent your time coming up with a totally secure solution there's no guarantee that they wouldn't modify it at some point and inadvertently weaken the protection it offers. One thing to remember though is that if your app is available through multiple channels you may end up with lower sales across the board if the problem isn't addressed. The reason for this is if pirates get a way to create a DRM free version of your app then it doesn't matter how secure all your other distribution channels are, the pirates have an easy route to create a cracked version of your app they can redistribute. ------ haseman Continue helping (try to get paid) and tell them about the exploit. Even if it's their project your name will still be on their lips when someone else figures it out. Also... being able to sleep at night is nice. ~~~ rndmcnlly0 Update: I gave them a high-level overview of the conceptual exploit and even sketched a high-level technical solution for the problem (one that I admitted probably only pushes the difficulty up a few more notches, expected with DRM). I guess I'll play the next move by ear. ~~~ haseman I admire your honesty. I find it is, by default, the best policy ;-) ------ some1else Let them know about the vulnerability. Help Google make decent anti-piracy protection. P.s.: Don't forget to charge for your consultation :-) ------ ffpaladin Wow, this really isn't very black and white... I suppose it's like having some treatment for cancer that is ugly and grueling. Then discovering an elegant cure. The cure, however, has some mind-manipulating exploit that is only known to you. What do you do? Cure people from unnecessary suffering of cancer? Or avoid giving people a vulnerability, unknown to everyone else? ------ foobarbazetc I hope you're getting paid for your time. ~~~ rndmcnlly0 Heh, nope. I thought asking for money would only complicate their adoption of my idea for cleaning up the DRM integration process. I'm just trying to save the world from some terrible software here, remember (and trying not to create a bigger mess in the process). ------ Mizza Is this the AppsLib people? I'd stay away, it's disgustingly amateur. Tell them the exploit and walk away. ~~~ rndmcnlly0 Nope, and it's not Amazon either. ------ araneae If you don't consider yourself responsible for the introduction of the exploit, I'd say do what academics do: publicly publish the exploit. If you are responsible in any way, though, I'd recommend informing of them of the problem. You don't have to fix it, just tell them it's there. ~~~ cgranade In defense of academics, it's quite common to first notify the vendor so that they can prepare a countermeasure for when the exploit is published. In general, publishing without making a reasonable attempt to contact the vendor is irresponsible at best and often down right unethical. ------ gte910h No, you should just point it out.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: I've built this promo to help people build their products - s-stude http://mvp.sstude.com ====== dinwal This is like [http://prostart.me](http://prostart.me) but without the long term partnership. Cool idea, but one-size-fits-all does not work. ~~~ s-stude You are right. The problem here is that it's hard to calculate a cost. That's why if we will chat / have a call and do some estimates we can see the total cost. ------ exolymph Cool idea, but the landing page needs some info about pricing. I assume you'll give people a quote based on the idea, but even just stating that up-front would be helpful. ~~~ s-stude Added some initial calculations based on the latest project estimates. ~~~ exolymph Cheers, looks good! I imagine you'll have a lot of takers. ------ andygor It's really nice.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Calculus, rope swings, and the optimal release angle - squeakynick http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/september42014/index.html ====== richcuteguy34 This reminds me of one of their earlier posts about Calculus and monsters [http://datagenetics.com/blog/october12013/index.html](http://datagenetics.com/blog/october12013/index.html) It's amazing to be reminded about how much math you forget after High School and never need to use again :(	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
GitHub Down - jcla1 https://status.github.com/#14102013 ====== brennebeck Is it really necessary to always broadcast Github being down? They have a perfectly good status page for this express purpose. ------ PLejeck It's rather sad that DDoS attacks seem to just be the norm at this point. ~~~ yeukhon Well, a lot of people are part of a botnet but few can spot that. I am always told that ISP is always being attacked. ~~~ PLejeck Everybody is always under attack. The internet is falling to pieces because of botnets, and people forming clans for protection (by which I mean CloudFlare, they're forming CloudFlare) ~~~ yeukhon I wonder if we could ever produce a statistics on the financial loss, power consumption of these attacks. Can you please expand on the cloudflare clan? Sounds interesting! ~~~ PLejeck I'm making light of the fact that we repeated the same thing that happened in history. When people started getting attacked, they formed larger groups to defend themselves. and now we're doing that on the internet with things like CloudFlare. ------ yeukhon Interesting. About 20 minutes ago I just finished cloning down linux kernel to my new vm, which was almost 900MB. I was able to get roughly 1.3MB/s and the connection seen stable. I supposed I was lucky to be serve from a stable server at that time. _EDIT_ I thought about contributing after watching this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLBrBBImJt4](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLBrBBImJt4) Gonna fine some low hanging fruit like style fixing and then move my way up! ~~~ fuzzix Remember kids, if you're just building there's no need to clone the whole history, a shallow clone of remote HEAD with --depth=1 should suffice. ~~~ yeukhon Well, I am contributing to the kernel. But thanks. ~~~ MattBearman Best comeback to a patronising response ever!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Storm Worm Dwarfs World's Top Supercomputers - chmike http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2007/08/storm_worm_dwarfs_worlds_top_s_1.html You may also read <a href="http://tinyurl.com/2dydfa" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/2dydfa</a> reporting about a ciberwar against Estonia in April. ====== wmf Of course, the nodes in an actual supercomputer can send data to each other faster than 384 kbps. ------ chmike You may also read <http://tinyurl.com/2dydfa> reporting about a ciberwar against Estonia in April. It gives an idea what a botnet could be used for.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How to take advantage when a competitor shuts down? - jpn A competitor of ours has shut down (Fotopedia).<p>Seems like a lot of people are upset, especially since they only gave a 10 day notice for users to download their own content.<p>What are the best ways that I can reach out to their customers and invite them onto our platform?<p>https://bonjourn.al<p>Obviously, I don't want to break any rules (no auto Tweeting) ====== olivierduval Maybe you may start to talk to you competitor...? I guess that if they inform their customers that you might be an alternative, this may be a win-win-win deal: \- they wouldn't look like complete a __hole \- their customers would know where to go \- you would have more customers, even if you need to setup an easy migration path from fotopedia to you (in less than 10 days) and maybe have some bonus for these customers (upgraded accounts for 1 to 3 months) You might have a look at what happened when Google discontinued their news service and how their competitor managed to take advantage of this... But maybe the first thing you should do is: understand why fotopedia customers went to them instead of coming to you?? Is this the business model? The design? The features..? And would these customers be a good fit for you? ------ mhoad Here is the approach I would recommend taking if it were me: Get in touch with the team at Fotopedia ASAP (Call them if you can get their details either from the site or via WHOIS). Start a conversation immediately about arranging a deal for them to recommend you as an alternative. Depending on what your model looks like for your own business I would recommend even going so far as to offering a cash incentive for them to do so (Nothing major at all). Creating a landing page specifically targeting Fotopedia users. Offer them a special deal for signing up. Get Fotopedia to send all their users that link in an email to their customers. You might want to also considering running an Adwords campaign targeting their brand name (This may or may not be OK in Google's TOS depending on where you live). Send all of that traffic to that same landing page. But for a couple of hundred dollars you should very easily pick up a large number of new clients this way. Again knowing nothing at all about your own business I would tend to think that this is a bargain compared to your usual CAC. ------ wiseleo Your messaging needs to change. "Attention Fotopedia users: here is how you can use Bonjournal to achieve a similar experience." When looking at your site, I see no indication that your service is capable of offering a similar experience. When Tungle shutdown, a competitor sent an email to every Tungle user. It was an effective email and provided clear guidance of what to do next and why they were capable of handling my business. Let me post it for you. Subject: What to do when Tungle shuts down Hello, We have noticed you are using Tungle.Me, and may be affected by the upcoming shut-down of their service If you're looking for a great scheduling alternative, with an extra edge for your business, check out ____! We know changes can be difficult, so we want to offer you ____ Business subscription - Free for 3 months! ____ can be added to your website, email or used as a standalone contact-page. With ____ you can always share your up-to-date availability, and let anyone schedule time or a service with you - no coordination phone calls and emails, no timezone mess, no registration required. ____ can also help your business grow by engaging your online visitors and turning them into clients. Proactive contact form, phone conferencing, video meetings, credit-card payments, and even email campaigns, are all part of ____. Join over 100,000 businesses that chose ____, and get your Free Business subscription for 3 months. Any question? contact us at ____ ------ jpn Thank you, everyone, for your suggestions. We reached out to some of the founders of Fotopedia and are reaching out to Fotopedia users via Fotopedia as well as Twitter. We also wrote a blog post comparing some of the alternatives, which we hope people will find useful. [https://bonjourn.al/blog/17-fotopedia-alternatives-a- short-l...](https://bonjourn.al/blog/17-fotopedia-alternatives-a-short-list) I've also posted the same question on Quora: [https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-startup-take-advantage- of-a...](https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-startup-take-advantage-of-a- competitor-shutting-down). Thanks again! ------ honzzz There is going to be a lot of "10 Fotopedia alternatives" 'listicles' on a lot of blogs whose authors will target Fotopedia ex-users looking for a replacement; articles like [http://unexploredparadises.eu/fotopedia- alternative](http://unexploredparadises.eu/fotopedia-alternative) You might want to set up a Google alert and try to be on all of these lists. ~~~ doodilin Thanks for this advice! We also ended up creating our own listicle ([https://bonjourn.al/blog/17-fotopedia-alternatives-a- short-l...](https://bonjourn.al/blog/17-fotopedia-alternatives-a-short-list)) ------ sejje Optimize some landing pages for "Fotopedia alternatives" or "Fotopedia shutdown" etc. I imagine some people are looking to migrate off and your service can be there. ------ dbjerome Identify your proven competitive advantages and demonstrate them through your company strategy. Beyond that, focus on creating something great rather than talking to your customers. Make sure your platform is revolutionary, and they will come. As Henry Ford said, "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." ------ sjs382 Twitter is a great resource for this. A lot of their users will be complaining—do a search. Also, try to get news sources that report about the shut-down to recommend your service as an alternative (also via twitter).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Font Awesome 5 - kauegimenes http://five.fontawesome.io ====== StavrosK I quite like Font Awesome, but it strikes me as a bit bloaty to include 200 KB (best case) of files (i.e. all the icons) just to add a few icons. Would the old method of a bunch of small png files in a directory work much better, now that HTTP/2 is here? ~~~ knowuh I just wanted to plug Icomoon ( [https://icomoon.io/](https://icomoon.io/) ) -- They will let you assemble your own custom font icon set using subsets of public glyphs such as FA, and your own SVG images. I Hope this helps someone. ~~~ brookside I use icomoon and it is definitely helpful but I must say the UX for creating icon sets is quite scary to use. Clicking on an icon by default removes or adds it to the icon set, so its incredibly easy to exclude an icon you are using already (meaning next time you publish your font, that icon will no longer render on your page) ~~~ kumaraman Yeah, I've done this countless times, only realising once I have packaged it into my project. I ended up creating a Webpack loader which takes a small JSON file and creates an icon set for my project. I could consider releasing it on Github if there is interest in something like this? ~~~ grawlinson That would be awesome, I'd definitely be interested in having a look. ------ jashmenn The commercial is great! Who helped produce the video? I'd love to hire them for something like this. ~~~ fortawesome Knox Avenue out of Los Angeles. Imagine getting a Sandwich Video made before they were astronomically expensive. Ping me over email and I'll make an intro. Amazingly talented and honestly my favorite human beings I've met in the past month. CANNOT recommend them highly enough. ~~~ rawnlq Out of pure curiosity, what's the ballpark cost of a commercial like this? ~~~ bduerst I haven't worked with this agency specifically, but it depends on a variety of factors - e.g. # of animations, actors/actresses, reshoots, reviews, etc. and how in-demand the agency is. It can usually run you low to mid six figures. ~~~ chronolitus If I understand, Font Awesome paid >$100'000 for a video, in order to ask for $30'000 on kickstarter? Or do you think that this video was cheaper? (good will because of the open source nature of the project, or some other factor) ------ matthoiland This video alone merits my support. Well done. Well done. ~~~ fortawesome Aw, thanks. We had a LOT of fun doing it. ------ tga I like FA because 1) it's FA and looks alright as it is 2) can't beat free, so I don't need to worry about licenses for every single web project A completely redesigned, larger, commercial library might be interesting, but it is a new project and has practically nothing to do with FA 4. ~~~ fortawesome Font Awesome Free isn't going anywhere. Re-design is largely due to changing the base size to 16px which requires a re-design to keep pixel-perfection. ~~~ tga Thanks. Remaking all of FA Free sounds like a lot of work for little benefit, but I imagine it makes sense in the light of all the extra icons you're adding to Pro. ~~~ fortawesome Honestly, the grid system in 4 is quite inconsistent, especially with vertical centering. But that happens over time with an open source project. Things wander each commit. Been jonesing to start over for a while. Super excited. ~~~ tga Looking forward to it! Can't go wrong from a user's point of view, like this we get both FA4 and FA5. ------ spdustin I had submitted an issue about the removal of the non-identifying direct CDN link to FontAwesome in favor of a user-identifying JavaScript embed, and it was closed. I tagged in to another issue to make the same point, [https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font- Awesome/issues/9245#issu...](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font- Awesome/issues/9245#issuecomment-224039112) Still no answer. Am I the only one that cares that the current state of FontAwesome encourages tying your email address (via a unique token) to your site's specific FontAwesome usage? ~~~ fortawesome There are plenty of places to serve Font Awesome from a CDN for free. All the old options are there (and still listed in the documentation). [https://www.bootstrapcdn.com/fontawesome/](https://www.bootstrapcdn.com/fontawesome/) isn't going anywhere anytime soon. (Also, 4.7 was released today with 41 new icons. If you had one of our unqiue CDN links, you'd be able to upgrade without pushing any code.) ------ boubiyeah Using plain svgs nowadays, never looked back. ~~~ KingMob Yes, using fonts for icons was always a wee bit of a hack. The only real major advantage over SVGs was easy sizing for being inline with text. ~~~ fortawesome The implementation with the :before class definitely qualifies as a bit of a hack. No question. Some of the icons themselves represent something of a universal language for websites. Using those symbols in a typeface is similar in some ways to character based languages like Japanese or Chinese. So I might argue that icons as fonts are quite an appropriate use. ------ hacksonx I work for a corporate. A South African based company with inroads' in England and the USA. Should I donate in my personal capacity or ask the company to contribute? Yes, we use fa on our front-end projects. ~~~ fortawesome The licenses follow the person or organization. If it's for a personal project, then you'd want to have one. If for the company, then the company would want one. :) ------ Walf Well at least now I know why they've held back so many useful icons from the free version. This one's a classic: [https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font- Awesome/issues/1958](https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome/issues/1958) ------ chmln I feel the free version has been neglected ever since the commercial versions were born. Also, there are too many unnecessary brand icons (e.g. skyatlas? houzz? most people aren't gonna use those). Donated $5 anyways. ~~~ fortawesome Appreciate the pledge! As it turns out, we get far more requests for brand icons than anything else. And you're right. It is a bit neglected. That's why we're re-doing everything. :) ------ parr0t Have thought for awhile that fontawesome is excellent and was sucked in by the great kickstarter video - you get my first kickstarter backing! ~~~ fortawesome Thanks for the kind words! We had SO much film writing and filming that thing! ------ serg_chernata I love fa, I don't see an explanation as to why it's necessary to redesign the set though. Does anyone know? ~~~ fortawesome 16px grid system is the biggest reason. Currently, FA is at 14px. To do it pixel-sub-perfect, we'll need to do it all from scratch. Oh, and the icons aren't that consistent. It happens over time as you do 40-ish icons per release. It wanders a bit and you lose consistency. We're fixing all that. ~~~ serg_chernata Treading dumb question territory, what's wrong with 14px to demand the switch to 16? ~~~ fortawesome Mostly the base font size on the internet is changing. For instance, old Bootstrap 3 is 14px. New Bootstrap 4 is 16px. ~~~ Nadya It has been 16px as default for as long as I can remember. People _designed_ at 12-14px and it has been trending larger, 18-22px, for quite some time now - at least since 2012-2013. I think larger screen sizes plays a big part in the change, or maybe marketing people realized people dislike small text/prefer larger text? :) Coders have learned that it's best to not touch the default font size, or resize html/body font size. The ugly 62.5% (16-->10px) is also dying out for accessibility reasons. ------ dopeboy Big fan of Font Awesome - I use it for all my client projects. Just pledged $20 on the KS. ------ zachruss92 I'm a huge fan of Font Awesome and have been a user of it for years. I'm quite excited for the new version, and am proud to pledge for the development of FA5! ------ mgkimsal Any idea why there's no FA icon(s) to represent police, sirens, badges? Anything relating to civil authorities? (well, I guess there's some fire stuff). ~~~ fortawesome We normally prioritize from top to bottom based on number of requests and upvotes. For these, there just haven't been enough. I really like that icon category though. We'll add it to the potential stretch goal icon category packs. ~~~ mgkimsal Oh hey, thanks! It was not a complaint, but I wasn't sure if perhaps there were other factors (concern about representing life-saving activities via your icons, for example). There are some security apps a family member is working on, and having some more related icons would help make his app better. We were talking about it this morning, and then this post arrived. Thanks! ------ spoiledtechie They are calling it pro as I imagine their other offshoot didn't work or make any money. It was that black bar at the top of the screen each time you go to the site. This makes sense, but maybe they shouldn't have tried to name it something different in the first place. ------ paublyrne Even pledgers to the $5,000 tier have to choose between mug and t-shirt! Throw in a mug, will you? :p ~~~ fortawesome No, they get 5! They get to choose if they want mugs OR shirts. :) (Seriously, those mugs are going to be awesome. Enamelware lasts forever and we found this fantastic place to make them. They'll probably outlast me.) ~~~ paublyrne You're tempting me now. ------ dwynings Any ETA on when backers will get private repo access? Super excited for this! ~~~ fortawesome We'll add folks when everything clears through Kickstarter. Should be just a week or so after the campaign ends. Already have a huge start on things. ------ arikfr I just wonder how licensing for the pro version works in regards to open source projects? If I buy the license, can I use it for my open source project? Also the option to commission your own icon is really exciting! :-) ~~~ fortawesome I'd say just don't put the commercial version in a public code repo where other folks could easily use it. But if you avoid that, open souce projects would definitely qualify for our $20 non-profit license. And Font Awesome 5 Free will be pretty awesome too. Your pick. ~~~ arikfr "if you avoid" \- you mean if I just include specific icons from the Pro version? ~~~ fortawesome Well, the real problem is that every resource is available for folks to use, even those that aren't intended (typefaces have the same problem). Ping me offline. We'll get you something for the open source project you're happy with where you can use Pro. ~~~ arikfr Super! Thanks. ------ kixpanganiban Just have to say, that Kickstarter video is hands-down one of the funniest I've seen. Wonder how much they spent on that. ~~~ runeks I love how he just stands with his axe for a while in the end, taking in the room, and enjoying the bouquet of his glass of sprinkles. ------ banhfun I don't understand why someone would choose the student license over the small business one. ~~~ okanesen The small business license is only available for a limited time only. ~~~ banhfun Isn't the student one also for a limited time as well? ------ graffitici Really cool video! Can anybody guess how much it may have cost them to make? ------ banhfun Can we get a backer reward to get both the t-shirt and mug? ~~~ fortawesome Yes! Just add an extra $30 to your pledge and we'll take care of the rest during the survey phase! ------ williamle8300 Why are they running a Kickstarter if they actually have a "PRO" business model thing going? Shouldn't they just focus on building their business, instead of raising money? The video is cool-hip-quirky but... I don't get why they need to stick out their hands and ask for a handout here. ~~~ zapt02 They totally lost me when the video announced a PRO version. Sorry, you can't claim to be open source while a few seconds later showing a paid-for version. Shame. ~~~ thunderbong Open source doesn't necessarily mean free ------ gokaygurcan Still no Node.js or npm icons after almost 3 years? Thanks but no thanks. \-- Edit: not trying to be sarcastic or blaming anyone. I'm saying what I feel about Font-Awesome. If you don't like my thoughts, you just have to live with that. As a member of the community, I guess I also have rights to ask for something, which I do, and I guess I also have all the rights to talk about something that I've been waiting for, for a long time. Thanks for the downvotes. I hope you can ever understand what was written in the future before downvoting it. ~~~ fortawesome We prioritize based on number of upvotes. Most everything in 4.7 was over 100 upvotes and some even almost at 300. In FA5 we're adding a good number more brand icons. Entirely possible they make it in. ~~~ gokaygurcan Wow, didn't know that. At least for the 100+ part. Thanks for the clarification.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Is the noidea app the same? - plamb Is it just me or is the noidea app the same as the regular app? ====== pg It's a proper subset of the questions, although the wording had to be changed in a few. ~~~ plamb hmm i wonder if something is wrong with my cache or browser... I'm pretty sure when I click through it's the exact same app. Will post solution if I figure it out. ~~~ pg If you've already started a normal application, that's what you'll see if you use the noidea link. I decided it would alarm people if I made using the noidea link convert an existing with-idea application.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Nanomsg postmortem and other stories - profcalculus http://sealedabstract.com/rants/nanomsg-postmortem-and-other-stories/ ====== n00b101 I personally traveled to Slovakia to meet with Martin, Mato and Pieter, a few years ago. I commissioned them to fix some annoyances I had with ZeroMQ. I just want to say that they are all great people, they're very smart and have spent a lot of time deeply thinking about messaging. I was really hoping to use nanomsg at some point, so I'm a bit disappointed to see all this. Really hoping that someone (Drew?) releases a new BSD licensed library. ------ IshKebab Yeah I dunno, the "solid technical reasons" are pretty unconvincing. The reasons are: 1\. Exceptions are awkward because they separate the error handling from the context that is usually required to correctly handle an error (i.e. where it occured). 2\. Exceptions are the only reasonable way for a constructor to fail. You can't return error codes from a constructor. I actually agree with the point about exceptions, and I'm glad Rust didn't use them. That said, the solution is trivial (and the author admits it) - don't use exceptions. The second point is also actually a fairly good one, and again Rust has fixed this - it uses static `new()` initialisers that create object (or not, if they fail). Fortunately we can actually copy this method in C++. Here's an example for a network connection object: class Connection { public: static boost::optional<Connection> connect(string host) { // Try to connect. int connectionHandle = -1; int rc = connect(host, &connectionHandle); // If it fails return none. if (rc < 0) return boost::none; // Otherwise return the new object. return new Connection(connectionHandle); } void send(); void recv(); void etc(); private: explicit Connection(int connectionHandle) { mHandle = connectionHandle; } int mHandle; } Unfortunately as far as I can see there is no Rust-like `result<>` type in Boost or the standard library yet, but it would be fairly easy to write your own. It seems pretty crazy to give up C++ for these fixable flaws. Especially given how many unfixable flaws C has. ~~~ hendzen Your connect method can still throw std::bad_alloc. ~~~ IshKebab You could easily catch that within the method though. But in general I think throwing an exception on memory allocation failure is much better than the alternative, which is - in practice - assuming it succeeds and segfaulting. ------ zellyn Very interesting read: worth the time. See also: [http://hintjens.com/blog:112](http://hintjens.com/blog:112) ------ onli Projects have to drive unbelievers out to work. Well, partly. It does not matter if someone is just not believing in one specific aspect of the project and ignores it. That is fine. But when the group starts to fight over what to do instead and this agreement can't be reached, then a split is necessary to enable common work of the people left. Of course that can't work when the project has no working governance, if the project has not even a clear goal. If a project is only defending against unbelievers without having a consensus of its own. And I think that is what he is mainly describing here, without me being sure that is fully intended. ------ _pmf_ So, what is the spiritual successor of 0mq? I think a lot of use cases that would have been covered by 0mq are now handled by more higher level abstractions like consensus protocols or more heavy weight message queues (which absolutely makes sense), but what would be a modern (i.e. maintained) alternative for the simple "pub-sub via TCP" use case of 0mq? ~~~ PieterH ZeroMQ is a community of projects that has grown and evolved significantly in the last years. It was never threatened by Nanomsg, which we saw as an interesting experiment, and potentially an engine for a pure C stack. We have pure Java, C#, C, and C++ stacks, and a new pure Go stack. Above that, you will see many language bindings, especially PyZMQ and CZMQ, each with a large community on top. CZMQ provides things like actors and CurveZMQ authentication, and has wrappings in many languages. I'm writing a Node.js one at the moment, and did a Java one a few weeks ago. Above that, we have Zyre, a clustering library that is somewhat like Nano's bus pattern, yet rather stronger. It was designed for flaky WiFi networks, and does not lose messages as long as a node reconnects within a reasonable time. And above that, we have a message broker, Malamute, which does pub-sub and workload distribution. All the C libraries have rich packaging (builds for every conceivable platform, and bindings in a growing number of languages), provided by zproject. So you can start a Malamute server (a CZMQ actor) from Python, or Node.js, trivially. We have run Malamute on a $25 OpenWRT router. This stack is small, efficient, and very alive. ------ seiji nanomsg was an interesting successor to the bloated/C++/LGPL zmq, but it succumbed to old ways that don't work anymore. It's 2016 and you can't run an (intended) global-scale open source project by just being "code nerd in chief." If you can't run an open feedback-driven community _and_ if you can't be chief architect (also means communicating plans constantly, not just 'do whatever you want') _and_ if you don't possess technical and professional excellence (also means being responsible with security issues and timely resolving of user issues), then you don't actually have an "open source project," you have a private uploaded code repository other people can see publicly. Gone are the days of 1995 when you could live on an island and upload your new code once per year and everybody would leave you alone and praise you in computing magazines for being a genius. Now you'll have 1,000 issues on GitHub and requests for public appearances and proposals for changes and important security flaws to fix and requests for extensive communication about current designs and upcoming features. The whole "i'm going to do this all on my own, everybody else go away it's my code" doesn't work anymore. Those projects are now destined to fail on their own without open and scalable community leadership. The good projects "get it" and the old guard are toppling as we speak. In another two years, nobody will trust open source projects without a stated scalable community model and codified successorship plan. ~~~ sovande 99.99% of open source project does not and cannot match these expectations and it is so out of touch with reality just to assume so. Most successful open source project (apart from the well known 0.1%) are run by 1-2 maintainers and contribution from the so called community amounts to a few percent of the total work at best - look at the contributors graph of popular github project. Unless projects are able to bootstrap themselves into a business (wordpress) or are eventually supported by a commercial entity (llvm) they will be fireflies that shines for a short while until the creator/maintainer does a reality check and realise how much time and work he has put into this with nothing much in return eacept a mile long issue list on github, lots of unfriendly noise and arguments from the community and insane expectations from users like yourself. ~~~ seiji _a mile long issue list on github,_ If you have enough users to have "too many issues to handle," then you're big enough that you need an official governance and contribution structure. You're also big enough where you'll have a pool of high quality contributors to promote to project-level-oversight status. Nobody is saying "do all this work for free forever," but people _are_ saying: "You have too much work you're avoiding. Why refuse to let other people help?" Once you reach a million users this isn't your private software anymore, it belongs to the community and you need to step up and allow faster development than one person can handle alone. ~~~ sovande > If you have enough users to have "too many issues to handle," then you're > big enough that you need an official governance and contribution structure I'm sure e.g. Ruby on Rails and Bootstrap would like some pointers on how to setup "an official governance and contribution structure" to handle their the long issue and PR lists. > Why refuse to let other people help? Very few if any wants to use their free time to work through an issue list like that. Someone might do it once and write a blog post about it, but unless someone does it all the time it does not help much. Open source might be perceived as a free commodity, but like a public toilet, no one likes to cleanup and especially for free. Likewise, help in the form of P.R.s doesn't much help either unless it is aligned with the overall vision of the project. It more often than not isn't. ------ CrLf What I don't really understand is what's fundamentally wrong with ZeroMQ to warrant such forks. The project has a large user base and is very established. What's unfixable about it? It was pretty obvious to me that nanomsg had very little chance to thrive. For an outsider what's so radically different about _any_ ZeroMQ competitor? ~~~ teraflop The nanomsg documentation (linked from the article) lists a number of fundamental differences between it and ZeroMQ. Some of them are implementation details, but there are quite a few fundamental design/API changes that would be impossible to make in an existing library. [http://nanomsg.org/documentation- zeromq.html](http://nanomsg.org/documentation-zeromq.html) ------ baq once again i see the "no matter what they tell you, it's a people problem" issue. very nice analysis of how to reach this conclusion from a very technical position. ------ skybrian It seems like for side projects that don't have an active community, the only viable approach is to set expectations right up front that it's abandonware. That is, write it, release it, and walk away. No future implied, unless someone volunteers to turn it into a real project. Example: this is what most researchers do - they don't maintain the code after the paper is published. ------ shoover This piece is excellent. The backstory on the zeromq and nanomsg projects is fascinating and generously detailed. The trick of reaching out to gather rejected contributors is good humanity and practically clever. The rule about monitoring contributor entrance and exit rates, I get. But I'm struggling with the implemention of the rule. _In almost every case, it is better to merge even a bad patch than to turn away a contributor for the projects I already struggle to maintain. So I try to get the patches improved, but I merge them even when I can’t. Even bad patches are better than none._ With all due respect to the OP and everyone who have poured blood, sweat, and tears on these projects and as maintainers of others, this point is hard to swallow. How bad of a patch is ok to let through? How complex? How much of a deviation from the original design? Is the contributor going to be around to fix regressions impacting other users? If the patch is complex and taking the software in a different direction, is it a good direction for existing users and will people get on board to do the work to update the rest of the code? I think these questions are vitally important for maintainability, correctness, and performance of software in general. I would guess hashing them out is a significant portion of the actual work in open source projects and are why people fight on mailing lists and say no to patches in the first place. We fight because we care? Working out the answers to these questions is so, so much work, and people just want their patches taken and maintainers just want to get on with their lives, so taking anything that comes along as a means of keeping the project moving may be the only hope in some cases. But I find it hard to believe it doesn't backfire more often, on grounds of user support and principles of software maintainability. To name a couple projects that have had some success with different approaches, I've noticed the Clojure project seems to maintain a vibrant contributor rate while also exercising strict design control from the top. Project leadership takes heat for rejecting, in particular, feature requests, but from what I've seen they will work with you if you will take the time to work out your design in a way that fits the language and the maintainers' vision. Secondly, the Waf maintainer strictly will not merge patches that change APIs, break anything for users, or do much of anything wonky internally, but from what I've seen he will work with anyone introduces new functionality that doesn't break old code and is in line with his view of the project. He worked with me to whip a shoddy patch into shape. I was grateful he bothered at all, and it would have been disastrous if he'd just merged it. Somehow he walks the balance of rejecting bad patches and protecting users while also merging quite a few hit-and-run contributions. The maturity of the project and decoupled architecture finely honed for the problem space may help support this style of maintenance. So at least in those two cases the answer lies in a very skilled balance of engineering and social concerns, but not necessarily any patch is better than none. ~~~ shoover ZeroMQ's Collective Code Construction Contract [1] goes into a lot of my question areas in concrete detail. It puts fair burden on both contributors and maintainers and clearly delineates the roles. Relevant to my post is the focus on identified and agreed problems and the requirements that contributors use the issue tracker and work to consensus on the validity of their observations and solution. [1] [http://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:22](http://rfc.zeromq.org/spec:22) ------ zokier So where does Crossroads fit in all this? ~~~ lobster_johnson Crossroads was Sustrik's first attempt, after ZeroMQ, which he then abandoned (or renamed?) to start Nanomsg. ------ vegabook I wanted to use nanomsg 6 months ago. Google alone, at the time, had it as a better zmq. I had to _really_ read between the lines at the time to figure that it was losing momentum. It was not an easy sense. I'm glad this forthright piece puts nanomsg incontrovertibly to pasture. It's thanks to clear pieces like this that people are able to navigate the open source world and choose technologies which, if they may not be theoretically the best, have the much more important characteristic that they are long lived, alive.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Mobile Browser Cache Limits: Android, iOS, and webOS - rgrove http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/06/28/mobile-browser-cache-limits/ ====== modeless Why do browsers have such ridiculously low default cache limits? Desktop browsers do the same thing; Firefox's default cache size is 50 MB. That's 0.01% of my available storage. I'd be more than happy to devote a whole 1% of my storage to speeding up web browsing, which is after all the primary activity most people perform on a computer these days. That would give a cache size of ~150 MB on an iPhone and 5 GB on my desktop. ------ stuff4ben Would love to see the tests re-run on real data that can be gzipped. You mention that your Sinatra-based tool: _"generates a response consisting of a requested number of pseudorandom alphanumeric and whitespace bytes."_ Then you say that _"gzip had no effect on cacheability on any device."_ I believe that your conclusion that gzip doesn't work is because it's hard to compress random (or pseudorandom) text. ~~~ rgrove Actually, the reason is that the browser uncompresses components before caching them, so compression has no effect on cacheability. The generated data are actually a series of newline-delimited MD5 hashes of pseudorandom numbers, which makes them fairly compressible. For example, 32KB of data gzips down to about 18.9KB, which seems to me like a pretty reasonable representation of typical web content. I didn't conclude that gzip "doesn't work", just that it has no effect on cacheability. Gzip is certainly good for reducing the number of bytes on the wire, though. ------ jsz0 Worth noting the Dolphin browser on Android can use your SD card for caching. ------ pilif I might be wrong, but doesn't HTTP require the Expires header to be set a date less than or equal to one year in the future? If so, the test might have hit undefined behavior. ~~~ rgrove It doesn't require it, but it recommends it: "To mark a response as 'never expires,' an origin server sends an Expires date approximately one year from the time the response is sent. HTTP/1.1 servers SHOULD NOT send Expires dates more than one year in the future." -- <http://www.w3.org/Protocols/rfc2616/rfc2616-sec14.html> In practice, far-future expiration headers used by Yahoo!, Google, and others are often well over a year in the future, and all browsers support this just fine. I did do some sanity checks using various dates in the headers, and I saw no difference between dates of less than a year and dates over a year in the future. I decided to run the canonical tests using the far-future dates since that's what the majority of websites use these days. ------ aristus Nice work, Ryan! Have you checked out browserscope? I keep meaning to write a few test suites for it. ~~~ rgrove Thanks! Yes, I'd love to add some cache tests (and more mobile tests in general) to Browserscope. Looks perfect for it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Sortedchef track nutrients and calories - loblollyboy http://sortedchef.com/ - too much pie and gravy? I made an app that allows you to make meals and drag-and-drop them into meal plans. Nutrient daily % calculated relative to your specified desires. ====== brudgers Link: [http://sortedchef.com/](http://sortedchef.com/) ------ dang Stories without URLs are penalized, so you'd be better off reposting this using the link, then adding your text as a first comment in the thread. Good luck! ~~~ loblollyboy Oh - thanks for the heads up I'll try again tomorrow ------ tiago_simoes Aqui	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Single repo vs. repo for each service? - BhavdeepSethi Recently I’ve been working with having the entire codebase in a single repo way and it’s not really been a good experience. Every time someone modifies code in a separate module, I have to recompile/generate sources to fix the compilation errors. Not to mention compiling takes a lot of time as well. Some of the points in favor of the single codebase approach I’ve heard is that you don’t have to worry about versioning. Since everyone has to pull in the same changes, everyone has access to the same thrift sources as well.<p>I’m mostly accustomed to having separate repository for each service. Personally, I think it makes it more manageable. It goes hand in hand with the SOA approach. A bad commit in another service doesn’t affect you.<p>Yet, I’ve seen the single codebase method in bunch of orgs. I believe Google does this as well? I'm curious to know which one is more common. What are the pros/cons that have factored into choosing one over another? ====== w4tson Devs should never be checking in code that results in a compilation error. Regardless of whether something needs generating. Also there’s a difference between an entire companies code in one VCS and a product with many modules. I’ve had experience with the latter and can tell you some of the pro’s: 1\. A single version for your product. This helps communications with QA, clients and managers. And communication is the game we are in whether we like it or not 2\. Reduced friction in developing features that cut across modules. Lets say I need to add a column to a database and then expose in the Ui. update the sql, added the field in a webservice, make the necessary adjustments in the UI, write the tests all on the same commit. 3\. Increased collaboration. Quite often invisible lines are drawn on development teams where devs are feel they are unable to modify a module because they didn’t write it, they don’t understand it or they just feel that its not a part of their job. With everything in one repo this reduces the barrier to entry Its not a free lunch though. Like you mention build times go up For one. I’m a jvm dev and I find gradle extremely useful in this regard. Features like Muti project builds and concurrent builds are invaluable ------ tdy721 I like to make lots of repos. You can get a combination of both going with git when you merge repos together. They don't have to share history. You can setup remotes that are just paths on your system and make a single repo that contains branches for each service. You'll end up cloning a single repo a bunch of times, and fussing with branches instead of repos. ------ Ameo Ugh - having only worked on personal projects with github up to this point, the thought of complicated series of repos just to work on multiple aspects of a project sounds like a huge hassle.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Cybersecurity Effects of Fourth-Parties on Websites - Reflectiz https://www.reflectiz.com/the-cybersecurity-effects-of-fourth-parties-on-websites/ ====== rikroots I think this article is a useful overview of the risks associated with relying on 3rd party software loaded into a website, which in turn rely on their own 3rd party vendors to make their software work. The one thing that the article lacks is links - to referenced organisations, to primary data sources - which support the assertions made by the article. I'd like to investigate this aspect of site security further, but the only links offered (at the bottom of the page) are to the company's own sales/marketing teams (I assume). I think this is a pity. ~~~ Reflectiz Hey, thanks for your helpful feedback! You are obviously right. We have added a screenshot taken from a scan we performed to demonstrate the role of 4th- party on apps, their parents and so on. Kindly note that we don’t share websites’ identification details taken from scans we run on articles we publish. Please, do not hesitate to contact us for additional questions: [email protected] Many thanks!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: VC funded startup downsides? - mr_puzzled I'm starting to question the whole thought process behind VC funded startups : take money -> grow fast -> get to a liquidity event so investors can make returns. VC funded startups are all about growth growth growth. I feel like there are serious downsides to this mentality :<p>- encourages failing quickly hence is a wasteful process<p>- almost always companies do desperate things to keep growing and changing, hurting users eg- reddit<p>- a steady state i.e zero growth but profitable existence is not encouraged. Such a state of existence is actively discouraged so it becomes : keep growing or die already. A lot of companies that could exist, make a profit and keep users happy instead just die.<p>- It's likely you give up some control over the direction of the company having to balance stakeholders, getting to a liquidity event, growing a business.<p>What are your thoughts? Here's a crazy idea : YC but for bootstrappers. Give each startup $120k and ask them to pay back 5X that once they become profitable. The most valuable thing about YC is the people, network and fellow founders. I think removing the VC factor should be considered, at least for a parallel program. ====== Eridrus > Give each startup $120k and ask them to pay back 5X that once they become > profitable. The devil is going to be in the details of what "profitable" means. If the company just keeps hiring people and growing, are they profitable, or not? You also have to remember that this idea would be competing with bank loans, so you would have to be willing to take significantly more risk than a bank does to ask for get 5X returns. Speaking of which, "5X" returns may sound great, but the timeline for those is somewhat important too. 5X in 3 years is very different to 5X in 20 years. Maybe it's just me, but I wouldn't take this deal. I'm not super interested in VC unicorn money, but as someone in tech, it's really not hard to pull 120k together. And if I thought it was just going to be "profitable", I wouldn't want to be in a position where I am being asked to pay back 600k, since that is a serious drag on my own earnings. So it just seems to be a really weird niche, where I would think my plan has a high chance of failing (otherwise I wouldn't take 120k, since that's very little money), but I also don't think it's going to have huge returns, which means I would be badly aligned with traditional VCs, but I'm also willing to pay back 600k. ------ DoreenMichele "YC, but for bootstrappers" is an oxymoron. You need the high growth to support the YC staff and other assets because not all the businesses will succeed. A support program for bootstrappers would look different. Getting $120k "to bootstrap" is also an oxymoron. Bootstrapping means earning the money as you go so you don't need to take investment money. I am all for the idea of developing more support systems for bootstrappers and small projects that have no goal of growing big. But it would inherently need to take a different format from the YC model. ------ simplecomplex VC is for investors. That’s who it’s good for. It’s terrible for founders, employees, and society. The people who benefit most from “startups” are VCs. Keep that in mind.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Using GitHub Webhooks to rebuild static web sites - markchristian https://writing.markchristian.org/2019/01/26/watchnrun.html ====== Klonoar Alternatively, just... have a git endpoint on your server with some post- commit hooks.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Storytelling: what story should I tell? Part II - abarrera http://blog.press42.com/index.php/2012/11/07/storytelling-video-pitch-part2/ ====== rilinho talking to users is an incredibly important exercise, though its not exactly straight forward how to approach it - i.e. what questions to ask to get to those "golden nuggets" of their problem or way they look at your product or service... Great start delving into this topic, it would be great to see your thoughts about how to approach the user exploration more! ~~~ abarrera That's definitely a great topic. I'll write a piece on that too :) Thanks!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Oscillation of R33 - yread http://airminded.org/2015/09/30/the-oscillation-of-r33/ ====== aaroninsf Fascinating read. NB: it's about purported trolls ('wild men of the ether') of the 20's and 30's believed to be intentionally disrupting local radio reception by tuning to beating frequencies on either side of true; and how that was part of the story of an escaped airship	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why save a language? - gpvos http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/07/opinion/sunday/why-save-a-language.html ====== austerity As the man in the back row, I am not convinced. He reduces the need to save languages to the need to save cultures and leaves it at that, implicitly assuming the latter to be an axiom. To me it's even more obviously false. Plus, he completely fails to consider the downsides of people speaking different languages which are enormous (as pointed out in the Old Testament). Yes, I realize a person can speak more than one language. And I am all for preserving for the sake of understanding. But using humans as storage devices sounds a little selfish coming from a linguist. ~~~ caio1982 What exactly are the downsides of people speaking different languages according to a religious book? Please try not to use terms like efficiency in the answer. And it's not simply like "a person can speak more than one language". It's actually more than half of the freaking world speaking more than one language. If you happen to live in a region (and I'm not saying "country") where people only speak one single language then it's quite possible you're the exception in fact. ~~~ Hermel As a Swiss speaking three languages, I can confirm that every additional language comes at a cost. Only having one language is more efficient. However, I believe there are subtle implied philosophical differences. For example, I perceive German to be more principle-oriented and idealistic in comparison to English, which tends to favor more pragmatic thoughts. As an example, consider the word "Sachzwang", which has no direct English equivalent and roughly translates to "inherent necessity". It is a typical word for a language that thinks in absolute principles. Of course, it is also possible to express this in English, it is just a little less convenient and thus also less frequently done. It's like different programming languages that are all turing-complete, but some allow to express certain things more effectively. From that point of view, having fewer languages would also come with a reduction in diversity of thoughts. ~~~ hyperliner You could say "constraint," per Google Translate! ~~~ Hermel I'd say constraint comes as close as 22/7 to pi. Constraint is passive. Sachzwang forces you to do something. For example, "sachzwangreduzierte Ehrlichkeit" means a level of honesty that had to be reduced due to factual higher-order constraints. ~~~ hyperliner That is a fascinating example. What is a situation and sentence in which you would use it? How would you write it in German? How would you write it in English? ------ Htsthbjig Languages are tools but also barriers of thought. The main reason Americans can't understand China or Russia, or Arab countries and vice versa is language. People in the UK for example, do not listen to Putin 2 hours long Q&A and think for themselves. They listen to intermediaries, like Andrew Wood, because they don't understand Russian. People would be shocked to know what Mr Putin is really saying, compared with what they are being told he is saying. The same happens on the other side, too. The China and Russia media can portray a controlled picture of the rest of the world for most of their population. The printing press changed the world because it made possible for people to read the Bible themselves instead of using the intermediaries interpretation(that sometimes were not in their best interest). Science advanced enormously when the status quo could be criticized(thanks access to books and the knowledge those carried). ~~~ guard-of-terra I assure you that Putin's Q&A doesn't contain any language tricks not available for Americans or UK peope. In fact, Putin's Q&A doesn't contain much of anything. It's not about the language, it's more about shared history or lack thereof. ~~~ DanBC If Ann gives a 2 hour speech in Russian, and Bob does not speak Russian, then Bob needs to rely on Chris or Dave to translate. Bob is at a disadvantage because he has to trust either (or both) of the translators. ~~~ guard-of-terra Even then Bob will need even more people to validate whether any things Ann said are true. Or, more relevant, which things Ann said are ones she deeply cares about, and which ones were inserted just to fill the talk space or pay lip service. ------ anonymfus "A rendering of the visible spectrum on a grey background" image from Wikipedia with added English and Russian colour range names: [http://i.imgur.com/XnmMRQ6.png](http://i.imgur.com/XnmMRQ6.png) Original: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rendered_Spectrum.png](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Rendered_Spectrum.png) ~~~ codingdave This is interesting, but I don't feel it is significant. Names of colors, at least in English, do not typically imply a complete range of color, but major points on the spectrum. We have hundreds of words for different shades of colors, and pseudo-words like, "Yellowish-green". Painters will know the different between Cerulean blue and Cobalt blue, and Wikipedia has a whole category of shades of blue, with varying English names. If we need to limit ourselves to a 1st grade vocabulary to make a point about our language, it isn't a very strong point. ~~~ ehurrell I think it might be significant, or at least hint at a significance worth exploring. Taxi drivers' brains apparently adapt and grow a much better awareness of maps and routes than the regular person, and this might be the same thing happening with painters and their more precise sensitivity to colour. It's worth study anyway. ------ hyperliner The problem I have with this article is that it fails to recognize that language also is an anchor in a _negative_ way. Yes, Hebrew can help form a stronger Jewish community, but a language spoken by 3000 people in the middle of the Amazon can only serve to keep those people hostage forever. What is wrong with teaching those people's kids to speak Hebrew or Spanish or English and let them join a broader, stronger community or nation? The alternative is that those people's children will not be able to prosper because, to highlight the obvious, many of these obscure languages are correlated with impoverished environments. Yes, it helps some academic in some fancy University in the northeast of the United States have "intellectual debates" about the issue while sipping on a starbucks latte, but it certainly does not help those people. The second point is that the nuances that the author has observed don't have to be lost. If there was value in knowing that an object was "on" another object horizontally, or vertically, or slanted (using the example in the article), we could always incorporate those notions into any major language. ------ MichaelGG This ignores the negative impact of keeping smaller groups limited by preserving their language. In Guatemala, many of the "Indians" have their own languages it dialects, some of which are incompatible with each other. There's little opportunity for use of these languages apart from the town they live in. To be involved in commerce, read about current events, or even be treated well, you need to have great Spanish. My parents have a medical clinic in one if these villages. When the government started making some of the classes be taught in the local language, the parents were upset, knowing that this would hurt their children. They viewed it as another way to keep the "indian" population back. And they're correct. So while there may be good reasons to preserve languages (like preserving art, or historic towns), someone should be funding that directly, rather than externalizing the costs on to these indigenous groups. ------ chalimacos What some people who don't see the need to preserve languages are missing is that each living language is in itself a Noah Ark that preserves lots of dead languages and world views. English preserves latin, greek, yiddish... Consider the word "consider". It comes from latin Considerare (cum + sidera) 'to consult the stars'. Each language that dies is a tragedy that kills many precedent languages. Moreover, current status is no guarantee for the future, even English could one day be at risk. I am a Catalan speaker, a language that once ruled the Mediterranean and now is struggling. ------ phlakaton The author claims that real, measurable differences in how people think based on how they speak is too insignificant, because it doesn't constitute a "worldview." I rather think he sells short the importance of seeing actual empirical ways in which language does indeed "speak us". Say there are thousands, maybe millions, of such minute alterations in metaphor or thought pattern – is it really so hard to imagine that the aggregate of these alterations form unique, interesting ways to interpret and respond to the world? Do we not see evidence of this when we read, say, the poetry of different cultures? (It's a rhetorical question – I certainly think we do!) I got a book last year about learning Old English. I haven't gotten very far into it yet, but just the fact that I can go back a thousand years in human history and see where the roots of my language came from is an incredibly cool thing. I am also inspired by the alliterative schemes of old Anglo-Saxon poetry, and have it on the back-burner to see how or how not that could work in modern language (e.g. in Rebsamen's "Beowulf" translation). Similarly, whether or not I actually "speak" programming languages like Lisp, Forth, and APL in my daily work, they are a mine of cool ideas and experiments that I can still draw inspiration from, decades after the machines that they were originally built on crumble back into sand. Which probably emphasizes the "cold storage" value of language, not necessarily the "active speaking" value of it. I think the cold storage value of retaining language is indisputably massive, and projects like the Rosetta Project are really interesting to me for that reason. What's the value of actively speaking it, even when the community of speakers dwindles? Perhaps it is in helping to cement our understanding of the language before it fades away. ------ kiliancs I speak three languages and appreciate the language diversity as each of them provides a unique window to perceive and express the universe. We need, however, a common (universal) language that allows mankind to create a global culture, a global identity (above and including all national identities) and to enable general understanding and practical communications in all matters. This language should be taught everywhere in addition to the local language. We cannot expect to for the different linguistic communities (or the world in general) to renounce to a language, but at the same time the general well- being calls for a common language. ------ sravfeyn Language is a reflection of speaker's model of the world, a different unique perspective on the same world we all live in and hence can provide diverse solutions to the same problems we face. Diversity in thought process makes it faster to decipher that beautiful Nature. So it will be sad if these languages die. Of course, this is not the only reason, but I think is one of the important reasons. I speak three languages, I think in two languages. I go on different paths when thinking in different languages when trying to solve a geometry problem. ------ GuiA Like other commenters in this thread, I find the author's arguments to be weak and tautological and/or based on invalid premises. I don't think we should care about keeping as many languages spoken as possible. Collective human culture is fluid, and subject to evolutionary pressures. If the human species converges to fewer languages because it allows us to do whatever we do more effectively, great. Going against that is just not practical and a waste of time. In France, the modern French language has been pushed onto the population a few hundred years ago, at the detriment of local dialects ("patois"). In the recent years, there have been government initiatives to force schools in certain regions to teach their former dialects. What's the point? Those dialects are close to dead anyway, and take up valuable teaching times. Kids are already graduating high school barely able to write and read French properly- they have very little to benefit from by spending time learning such dialects. Sure, they are important to ~archive~ culturally and historically, and there's nothing wrong with funding a few scholars working on that, but that's it. What is important to preserve is the knowledge that allows one to learn a language. In other words, if German were to disappear, that's fine, and we shouldn't make any efforts at attempting to preserve it. What we should do, however, is document German as much as possible (its vocabulary, grammar, pronunciation, idioms, native works, etc.) such that if one needs to learn German 100 years later, it's possible to do so. The basis for that is two-fold: practicality (if an ancient German text is discovered but no one speaks German daily anymore, at least scholars can still decipher it), and preservation of human culture (but in a way that doesn't go against pragmatism, which the approach described by the author in the article is). The same debate applies to other things, e.g. flora/fauna. Of course, when species are becoming close to extinct because of humans destroying environments, we should do something about it. But species go extinct all the time because that's just how nature works, and how it worked much before we got here. In this light, what's the sense of trying to preserve plants or animals artificially? ------ tzs I don't remember which language this is [1], but I read about some tribal language that did not have any words for relative direction. If you were facing North and I wanted to warn you to watch out for a snake approaching from your left, I'd have to tell you to look out for the snake coming from the West. [1] googling turned up this: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_direction#Cultures_not...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relative_direction#Cultures_not_using_relative_directions) ~~~ desas The Amazonian Piraha tribe have "to the river", "to the jungle", "up the river" and "down the river" rather than directions. ~~~ davidw For that matter, most people here in Italy look at you a bit funny if you talk about cardinal directions, and are more comfortable with "towards Venezia" or "in the direction of Verona" or that kind of thing. The latter is probably handier for navigating towns that are, outside of a very small Roman core (in some cases) not exactly linear in their layout. ~~~ caio1982 It's the same in Brazil, and it's a big place to use relative directions but we prefer it that way too :-) ------ hedgew Many of us "care" about languages – they have emotional significance – but what is the practical value of near-dead languages to society? How would you even measure the impact of lengthening the lifespan of a dying language? If we taught hundreds of children to speak an ancient language that no one else uses, would that make anyone happier? Should we teach children extinct professions just to keep some cultures alive? [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cutting](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cutting) ------ kovrik I think that it's some kind of natural selection among languages/cultures. Languages are just tools. If this tool is effective - people use it. Otherwise it "dies". ~~~ caio1982 It's not just a tool, it's a mechanism to express thought. Different cultures, different people, different ways to put in other people's mind what's inside yours. Also, remember Chomsky, languages usually have an army and navy, so it's not as simple as "natural selection". ~~~ unhammer Actually, the quote is from "an audience member at one of Max Weinreich's lectures" (well, logically that could be Chomsky, but most likely not ;)) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_a...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_language_is_a_dialect_with_an_army_and_navy) ~~~ caio1982 Indeed, thanks! ------ phn This is only tangentially related to the article. I find we (humans) have some kind of emergent "gene pool variety preservation" behavior, even when talking about non-directly-genetic stuff: culture, language, knowledge, ways of thinking, animal species, etc. It looks like we are wired to avoid natural selection over-fitting at a cultural level. ~~~ dalke Indian schools in the US and the Stolen Generation in Australia, prohibitions on non-approved religions (the Edict of Expulsion, Edict of Fontainebleau, the Alhambra Decree, and many, many more), the forceful spread of Christianity in the Americas, the Indian Removal Act of 1830, the Armenian Genocide, the Final Solution, the anti-bourgeois re-education camps of Cultural Revolution, and even the former President's call to "bring democracy to the world" all strike me as good counter-examples to there being some "wired" behavior of the sort you mean. ~~~ phn Those are good counter examples, but they seem to happen in the context of a somewhat direct conflict between two cultures, thus entering a "survival of the fittest" kind of situation. Maybe we only get this protective spirit when we have already "won" :) ~~~ dalke Evolution, which is what I think you mean by "wired" behavior, has no idea that after 100,000s of years of human civilization if a given culture has "won". I don't understand what you mean by "direct conflict between two cultures". The Indian Removal Act was a US act on the one side against the Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee-Creek, Seminole, and original Cherokee Nations. That's at least 6 cultures. And certainly the Indian schools affected a huge number of cultures. Unless you mean that all of the tribal nations are a single culture? ~~~ phn Well, perhaps they aren't two, but that is completely irrelevant to the argument (How do you "count" cultures anyway?). The important part in that sentence was that there were opposing sides in conflict, thus removing any form of will to preserve from the equation. And yes, evolution (particularly in the context of darwinism and derivatives) is what I am talking about, specifically, some kind of mechanism that seems to exist that prevents us getting stuck in a "local maximum". A mechanism that I mentioned because I find it interesting that you can find signs of it at so many different levels, and in many different contexts. ~~~ dalke You were the one who wanted to count cultures in the first place. If you can't count cultures (or other measures of diversity?) then how does any evolutionary behavior manage to do so? I would like to know your historical examples of "signs of it at so many different levels". All I know of occur relatively recently in history, which is a strong indicator that it's a cultural change, and not a deep evolutionary imperative. ~~~ phn I am going to skip the counting part since I think it is borderline pedantic and doesn't lead anywhere. Defining what a culture is, or how you differentiate them is not on the scope of my comment, and the argument was not about cultures specifically. I don't need an historical example, since I am not arguing that this has always been the case, nor that it isn't a cultural change. Going a bit further on my previous comment, and trying to clarify, I think this behavior emerges precisely because of a general stabilization/stagnation of a given population (of traits, languages, behaviors, animal species etc.) in order to avoid over-fitting (the "won" part, if I did not express myself clearly enough) and to preserve diversity. The original comment is just that, a comment. A thought that I think holds some value and is related to the article. I am not trying to convince anyone that this is a defined mechanism by which nature rules and defines itself. ~~~ dalke It is a lot of fun to be rationalist and deep thinker. It lets one ponder great schemes of how ideas work together. Without empirical grounding, it can also lead one drastically astray. You have no examples that your thought is true, nor any mechanism by which it could work, while I have both counter-examples and the observation that any such mechanism is outside of known evolutionary theory. "I am not arguing that this has always been the case" stands in stark contrast to your proposition that "we are wired" to this behavior. ------ pain I can't help but think the social issue of saving is a memory processing issue. (Whether it is language extinction or link rot..) So much falls (fails..) to judgement of point and term of saving, when maybe we need to focus on just saving better and judging why after. ------ LunaSea [http://youtu.be/OvlQXPNwrqo](http://youtu.be/OvlQXPNwrqo)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
European Space Agency (ESA.INT) Hacked – Full Disclosure - kmfrk http://tinkode27.baywords.com/european-space-agency-esa-int-hacked-full-disclosure/ ====== beaumartinez These are just account logins (and not "disclosure" on how the break-in was accomplished). I see no real use in this other than to create havoc. ~~~ hyyypr Agreed, so now a whole bunch of script kiddies have access to the root accounts on services from the ESA servers ? And they don't know it yet (given that it's sunday).. ?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
That’s No Phone. That’s My Tracker. - wallflower http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/sunday-review/thats-not-my-phone-its-my-tracker.html?_r=1&hp ====== comex Subjecting a real problem to faintly ridiculous exaggeration and paranoia does not help. (I'm not sure whether to be surprised this made it into the New York Times or not.) > Thanks to the explosion of GPS technology and smartphone apps, these devices > are also taking note of what we buy, where and when we buy it, how much > money we have in the bank, whom we text and e-mail, what Web sites we visit, > how and where we travel, what time we go to sleep and wake up — and more. > Much of that data is shared with companies that use it to offer us services > they think we want. I have never heard of purchase history, bank balance, alarm clock settings (??? perhaps it refers to carriers supposedly tracking waking hours based on usage? that would make more sense, but is no different from dumb phones), or website history being tracked by anyone through a smartphone. "Whom we text" is tracked, but "whom we email" is worth highlighting as an item that _cannot_ be tracked by a carrier without installing malware onto your phone, assuming you use encrypted email. (The credit card company is tracking your purchases, and email providers may be tracking your email, depending on privacy policy, whether you're using a smartphone or not, but that's irrelevant. I guess if you count Gmail's algorithms reading email to offer services "they think we want"... I don't.) > Scholars have called them minicomputers and robots. Everyone is struggling > to find the right tag, because “cellphone” and “smartphone” are inadequate. That "phone" doesn't adequately describe modern smartphones is a valid point, but has literally nothing to do with tracking. > Eben Moglen, a law professor at Columbia University, argues that they are > robots for which we — the proud owners — are merely the hands and feet. > “They see everything, they’re aware of our position, our relationship to > other human beings and other robots, they mediate an information stream > around us,” he has said. Colorful, but ridiculously vague. There are many different types of information and they are all stored differently. With the possible exception of Facebook, there is no entity that sits up high reading all your stuff without a court order, and if you want to have completely secure conversations through email or other means it's easy to do so. > A recent survey by O2, a British cell carrier, showed that making calls is > the fifth-most-popular activity for smartphones; more popular uses are Web > browsing, checking social networks, playing games and listening to music. > Smartphones are taking over the functions that laptops, cameras, credit > cards and watches once performed for us. Also irrelevant to tracking. > Turning it off when you’re not using it will also help, because it will > cease pinging your location to the cell company, but are you really going to > do that? Shutting it down does not even guarantee it’s off — malware can > keep it on without your realizing it. The only way to be sure is to take out > the battery. Guess what? If you have an iPhone, you will need a tiny > screwdriver to remove the back cover. Doing that will void your warranty. If you are really concerned about malware preventing you from turning off your iPhone, you can hold down the home and power buttons to turn it off without going through software. > “Don’t have a cellphone or just accept that you’re living in the > Panopticon.” A third alternative is to wear a tinfoil hat which will stop all the tracking??? > There is another option. People could call them trackers. Okay but if hackers start hijacking peoples' sessions can we start calling them tracker-jackers? Edit: Or more to the point - this is like calling all passerby "government agents" because they can be required to testify in court. ------ _delirium I've been not carrying a phone with me lately, not because of tracking fears, but out of a sort of experiment to see if I _really_ need to be connected in the relatively short distances between my laptop having a wifi connection (which it has at home, at the office, in coffee shops, on trains, etc.). I suppose avoiding this dragnet is a nice bonus, but I wonder how long it'll be until not carrying a phone gets registered as somehow suspicious in itself. ~~~ aashay What are your plans in case of emergencies? ~~~ grecy At what point did that question become relevant to _every_ facet of life? I honestly can't believe it when people ask that question. It's such a scare tactic. ~~~ aashay FWIW my question wasn't meant to be a scare tactic. I genuinely wanted to know what the plan was in case of emergencies. I suppose I could have (and should have, since HN seems to value explicitness and literalism) elaborated to avoid assumption and/or presumption. ~~~ acabal Don't buy in to the fear mentality that's strangling American discourse. People were dealing with emergencies just fine without cell phones... just _15 years ago_. ------ ChuckMcM I'm surprised no one has mentioned putting the phone in a foil pouch. As 'antenna-gate' demonstrated it doesn't take a whole lot to make a phone unable to connect, with a conductive foil pouch you can put your phone in it and no matter what it is not sending out any info about you, but you can easily pull it out and use it. The other thing they don't mention is disinformation. Phones do _not_ use the encrypted GPS channel, they use the regular one. And spoofing it can make you phone think it is somewhere that it isn't. Cell tower data screws with that (since if you cross correlate to cell tower pings you end up with conflicting data sets) but within the range of a tower its eminently doable. The recent 'drone hijack' example had an idea of how much it costs ($1K) to build a reasonably high powered GPS spoofer, to spoof the phone in your pocket would take a very small one (and no sense screwing up your neighbors phone right?). All we need are a couple of cases where the cell phone data "proves" you weren't in the area of a crime and blam! ~~~ darklajid So, I don't know a lot about the internal workings of these phones, but I was under the impression that a phone manages its transmit power depending on the signal strength. IF that's the case: Wouldn't your solution turn the device into a pocket heater that dies a couple of hours early? What is the benefit of this 'clever' solution, if all you really want seems to be to turn it off..? ~~~ mcpherrinm Phones generally "give up" if they have basically no power. I spend significant chunks of time in rural areas with no service, and battery life isn't ever a problem. ------ forgottenpaswrd Well, there is another option: Have an open software and hardware phone that you know what it does and how it does it when you want it. Eventually it will happen. ~~~ aes256 That's not really the point. Having total control over your own phone doesn't resolve the more fundamental problem that, in order to do basic tasks such as make calls or send text messages, you are dependent on a cell phone provier who then, through ordinary usage, is able to collect a terrifying amount of data about you. They can triangulate your location whenever your phone is on and connected to their network (24/7 for most people), and have a full record of your calls, text messages, as well as all the data you send through their network. ------ niels_olson In network parlance, isn't a general processor a "node"? ~~~ bloody_pretzels Node is a really nice word for what the article describes. The word "tracker" doesn't roll off the tongue very well and I think it suffers from the same flaw that the article criticizes about "phone", namely that it focuses on a specific aspect of a multi-purpose device. Node seems a much better choice since it connotes all the important aspects of a smart phone: - Connection to a network for the purpose of information sharing - Being identifiable and addressable - Processing capabilities If we choose to find a more suitable name, I'd suggest maybe "Personal Node" or "Smart Node". ~~~ bigiain I think the problem is they're not a "personal node", they're nodes working for Apple or Google or your telco. The idea of "node-ness" carries connotations (at least to me) of being more useful as part of a network than as individual devices - and that's way more true for the people/organisations with access to data from the whole network of nodes, than the owner/operator of a singe node. I wonder if Google are collecting geo-spacial data about your social graph? I suspect they could, if they wanted to, work out which section of your online social network are people you meet in real life, and which are people you only interact with on-line? ~~~ bloody_pretzels If I didn't misunderstand, you're suggesting that "node" carries the idea of being an autonomous entity that connects to a neutral network (i.e. no node is more privileged than any other). In that case a more accurate term might be "slave node" as opposed to the master nodes operated by carriers which control and monitor the communication flow. But I think that's a subjective view. The internet also has privileged nodes which could be used to monitor and control the network or individual nodes. "Tracker" simply ignores all the service aspects of the device and focuses on a single use for one of the parties involved (costumer, carrier, manufacturer). In that respects it is just as misleading a term as "phone". ------ lurker14 The Times is On It! <https://twitter.com/NYTOnIt>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Datasette-atom: Define an Atom feed using a custom SQL query - simonw https://simonwillison.net/2019/Dec/3/datasette-atom/ ====== Hitton For those who didn't know Datasette[0] either, it's a tool for exploring data. Apparently it's an API above SQLite. [0]: [https://github.com/simonw/datasette](https://github.com/simonw/datasette) ~~~ teddyh A Datasette is a cassette recorder for storing data: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Datasette](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodore_Datasette) ~~~ simonw Fun detail: I named it after the C64 cassette drive as an homage to my programming youth in the 80s. I assumed it would be a unique word I could track on Google and Twitter. Turns out the retro C64 community talk about the Datasette tape player all the time! [https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=Datasette&src=typed_quer...](https://mobile.twitter.com/search?q=Datasette&src=typed_query&f=live) ------ simonw Here's the README for the new plugin: [https://github.com/simonw/datasette- atom](https://github.com/simonw/datasette-atom)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Guile 2.2.1 released, includes sandboxed execution support - paroneayea https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guile-devel/2017-04/msg00034.html ====== paroneayea More docs on the sandboxed execution stuff: [https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/Sandboxe...](https://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/Sandboxed- Evaluation.html#Sandboxed-Evaluation) Includes a great quote: > Sometimes you would like to evaluate code that comes from an untrusted > party. The safest way to do this is to buy a new computer, evaluate the code > on that computer, then throw the machine away. However if you are unwilling > to take this simple approach, Guile does include a limited “sandbox” > facility that can allow untrusted code to be evaluated with some confidence.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Is RSS dead? Take a look at the numbers - cygnus http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/rss-dead-look-numbers/ ====== MichaelCrawford On my own website, I have a "What's New?" link with the date of the most recent new stuff. On the page itself I have a list of the new stuff, with the newest at the top. It actually works pretty well.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hervé This: The world's weirdest chef, building food molecule by molecule - gwern http://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/features/herve-this-the-worlds-weirdest-chef ====== tptacek Some Dave Arnold on Herve This (no love lost): [http://www.cookingissues.com/2009/06/01/molecular- gastronomy...](http://www.cookingissues.com/2009/06/01/molecular-gastronomy- is-just-a-long-four-letter-word/) Arnold considers This a huckster. _This constantly says he invented (along with Dr. Kurti) a new branch of science, namely MG. Never mind that McGee’s seminal work was published in 1984, or that people have been worried about the same problems for hundred of years. This relegates them all to being “precursors to MG.” I actually heard him say once that, “Molecular Gastronomy did not exist prior to 1988, because that’s when I invented the term” – forget that MG doesn’t appear on any of the of the Erice organizers correspondence till 1991. This statement shows This’s strange fascination with semantics. He is basically claiming that the field didn’t exist because the current name that This tirelessly promotes hadn’t yet been coined. Maybe I should rename physics “Fusicks” and say I have invented a new branch of science._ ------ geographomics Puts me in mind of Asimov's short story _Good Taste_.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Arabic Translators Did Far More Than Just Preserve Greek Philosophy - bootload https://aeon.co/ideas/arabic-translators-did-far-more-than-just-preserve-greek-philosophy ====== yuip1238 Translation is made worse when one doesn't have a "synchronizing" mechanism. This is very common in India where the state is quite lazy, where there is zero economic value in the native language.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Wow Squarespace just shutdown a website of a group of doctors - ycombonator https://mobile.twitter.com/drsimonegold/status/1288178446569545734 ====== mariomariomario 1\. Squarespace is a private entity. They have no obligation to leave your website online, similar to how you have no obligation to spend money at businesses you don't support. 2\. The Twitter user in question is pushing propaganda about Hydroxychloroquine, along with clearly false information that is not backed by the scientific community. 3\. Take a look at the Food and Drug Administration official communications on its stance regarding Hydroxychloroquine: [https://www.fda.gov/media/138946/download](https://www.fda.gov/media/138946/download) 4\. Direct quote from FDA official statement linked above: "However, based on emerging and other scientific data, FDA does not recommend using HCQ or CQ to treat hospitalized patients with COVID-19 outside of a clinical trial." ------ themonoid This tweet (and the related website) seems to be from America's Frontline Doctors; they have been accused of quackery. See related HN discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23982139](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23982139) ------ IanDrake Thanks for flagging my comment, thus proving my point exactly.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The commas that cost companies millions - happy-go-lucky http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20180723-the-commas-that-cost-companies-millions ====== pm24601 Short simple declarative sentences solve the "comma" problem. Do not use commas. Do not use complex subjunctive clauses.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ten Things You Should Know About Haskell Syntax - malloc47 http://fpcomplete.com/ten-things-you-should-know-about-haskell-syntax/ ====== ggchappell Very nice article. > 7\. Functions Have Precedence over Operators Yup. The killer for me has always been things like f x:xs Never does what I want. But at least there is only a simple rule to remember. > 9\. There is no Order Oooo, careful there. It may not matter what order I define f & g in, but the following means something else if I reverse the order of the lines: f 0 = 1 f x = x ------ rohshall Fantastic article. Thanks for posting it.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Emojicode – programming language emoji based - dgellow https://www.emojicode.org/ ====== cannedslime Please tell me you did this as satire?!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple will argue that the FBI's court order violates its free-speech rights - reverend_gonzo http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-me-ln-apple-legal-argument-free-speech-20160223-story.html ====== BinaryIdiot Honestly I think this is the best argument above all else. Yeah Apple can technically create the software the FBI wants and while it could be used as a precedent setting case, that isn't guaranteed. But forcing a company to write custom software and essentially work for the government for however long with them directing resources towards this versus other areas of their business? This could seriously hurt their business not just from PR but from a resourcing perspective. I don't think any company should be forced into working for the government. Maybe some exceptions exist for things like physical manufacturing pipelines during war time but this is obviously not that. ------ venomsnake If code is speech will apple admit that they are involved in censorship when they reject app from the app store? Just asking. Yeah - I know that they have right to do it. I just want to see the PR responses. ~~~ BinaryIdiot Meh the PR responses would just be the same if any. Since the first amendment can't protect you from repercussions based on what you say with private companies it would be the same as if Apple hired an employee who then only used profanity or spoke grotesquely at work.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facebook scam post collects almost 100k shares 85k likes in ~19hours - stirlo http://www.traveller.com.au/thousands-fooled-by-fake-qantas-firstclass-giveaway-on-facebook-1lzwj2 ====== stirlo Page is here - [https://www.facebook.com/pages/Qantas- Airline/38377836514044...](https://www.facebook.com/pages/Qantas- Airline/383778365140440) I have reported the page, photo, and post yet likes still keep pouring in. Facebook blocked me for spamming saying it was fake yet hasn't blocked the page despite it obviously being fake. Very Disappointing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Nothing Will Ever Be AAA Again - borism http://dealbreaker.com/2011/08/nothing-will-ever-be-aaa-again/ ====== jpluscplusm Fairly sure we're still AAA here in the UK. Sounds like sour grapes to me ...	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Did Trade with China Make U.S. Manufacturing Less Innovative? - endswapper https://hbr.org/2016/12/did-trade-with-china-make-u-s-manufacturing-less-innovative ====== sharemywin The cost(time and materials) to innovate in software is way smaller than physical things. My bet is a lot of that innovation shifted there.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Intel made a huge mistake 10 years ago - molecule http://www.vox.com/2016/4/20/11463818/intel-iphone-mobile-revolution ====== AceJohnny2 TL;DR: Intel turned down the opportunity to make the iPhone's chip and gain a foothold in the mobile market. A more direct source, from Intel's own CEO (at the time): [http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2268985/outgoing- in...](http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2268985/outgoing-intel-ceo- paul-otellini-says-he-turned-down-apples-iphone-business) Otellini said Intel passed on the opportunity to supply Apple because the economics did not make sense at the time given the forecast product cost and expected volume. He told The Atlantic, "The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do... At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn't see it. "It wasn't one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought." But the thing I don't understand is why Intel gave up on XScale, their ARM- compatible effort (they held one of the few expensive ARM licenses that allowed them to expand the core architecture). How's Atom doing nowadays? Last I heard, Intel had partnered with Dell to make the Atom-powered Venue android tablets. Can't say they're grabbing headlines with them... ~~~ dogma1138 They don't need Atom, as far as mobile devices go they are bringing Core to ARM's power envelope. You can get Core M CPU's today with 3W power envelope with considerable performance lead over most ARM SOC's. Intel has made a bet that it would take just as much time for ARM to reach x86 level of performance as it would take Intel to bring x86 power consumption down to SOC levels. Now Intel can play on both sides with their low power x86 parts, Xeon-D with upto 16 cores and Core-M in 2c/4t configuration. ~~~ agumonkey Single core Atom (2012 Z2480 on Razr I) at 2GHz has significant perceived performance advantage even compared to processors released after. It's way snappier than the Moto G quadcore ARM cpu from 2013. I don't know how much battery life is sacrificed for this though. But I'd be very eager to try a Core M smartphone, since Atom has always been the low-end of Intel cpu architecture. That said I lost track of Intel marketing, maybe Core M is just a rebranding of the same or similar arch. ~~~ mtgx There's a very large difference between a Cortex-A7 in a Moto G and a Cortex-A57 or Cortex a72. The latter are about 3x faster. Atom has barely increased its single-threaded performance from like 300 pts in Passmark to about 540 right now (in Pentiums, in PCs, which cost $160 a pop). Intel is not competitive on price. That's why Atom didn't pan out in mobile. They tried to do it by heavily subsidizing its _high-end_ mobile chips, which typically cost close to $50, to compete against a $15 mid-range Qualcomm chip. That's why some people were "impressed" by what an Asus Zenfone could do for instance, for its mid-range price overall. And if Intel can't compete with Atom on price, then there's NO CHANCE it will ever compete with Core M in mobile. The only reason it even exists in so called "tablets" that go for $1000 right now, is because Microsoft failed to make a good case for ARM-based Windows machines with its poor app support. But that will always remain a niche. ~~~ creshal > And if Intel can't compete with Atom on price, then there's NO CHANCE it > will ever compete with Core M in mobile. The only reason it even exists in > so called "tablets" that go for $1000 right now, is because Microsoft failed > to make a good case for ARM-based Windows machines with its poor app > support. But that will always remain a niche. And outside the Surface those aren't selling well either. (IMO rightfully so, the Venue 11 Pro is the worst device I've seen in years – hypothetical hardware dickwaving aside, even a $50 OEM Android tablet has better UX and usability than Windows 10 without mouse/keyboard.) ~~~ B1FF_PSUVM Asus T-100 TA series work pretty well as Windows 8/10 tablets. ~~~ creshal Yes, because they ship a keyboard and touchpad. But you wouldn't buy the Asus ZenPad instead and try to use Windows 8/10 solely with touchscreen, would you? It's the complete opposite of how iOS/Android tablets operate. ------ osweiller For the past decade plus, Intel has been their own biggest competitor. Atom processors aren't weak and built on an old process because Intel can't make them better, but rather because Intel's greatest fear is undercutting their more lucrative markets. Their very high profit markets. So if you go back ten years and say "what if Intel did _this_ " (which in that case was making a processor for Apple that Apple was paying maybe $20 each for, estimating on the very high side), it is over simplified to just imagine that it's additive. Intel has been rolling on profit margins that the hyper- competitive ARM market can only dream about. It may be time for them to adapt (and arguably they have been), but those 12,000 didn't lose their job because Intel didn't do something different ten years ago. They, and thousands others, might never have had an Intel job in the first place if Intel made different choices. ------ kristianp It's not just intel's (and ipads) fault that pc sales are down. I think the big mistake PC makers are making right now, is that the PCs they make aren't improving from generation to generation for their mass market products. Sure the processors aren't doubling in MHz like they used to, but the rest of the machine isn't improving either. If I go into a shop with $3-400 today and buy a laptop, the machine I get is the same as I would have gotten 3 years ago: 1\. 768 line display 2\. 5400 rpm hdd 3\. 2 GB of ram (4 if I'm lucky) 4\. Similar weight 5\. Similar poor battery life 6\. loads of crapware. The pc manufacturers aren't pushing hardware manufacturers to improve the cheapest spec. Why don't cheap new laptops have greater DPI on their LCDs than 3 years ago? Because manufacturers haven't changed their main production lines. They are saving money on retooling, but on the other hand their product isn't improving, and now they're paying the price. Apple is doing the same thing with their Air line, which is only improving the processor generation, it has the same body and screen as years ago. If manufacturers improved their cheapest line every 3 years, people would see enough of an improvement in their price range to buy a new machine every 3 years like they used to. ~~~ ac29 Exactly the same complaints could be made about the bottom of the smartphone market ($100-200 range). Higher end smartphones may have improved more than high end laptops over the past few years, but mid-range to high end laptops are definitely nicer than they were 3 years ago. You're also a bit disingenuous on your laptop complaints, the best selling laptop on Amazon in that price range has a 1080P screen, 4GB RAM, a decent i3 Broadwell (which is faster and uses less power than its equivalent Sandy/Ivy Bridge processor you would have gotten 3 years ago). Crapware is only a valid complaint if you choose to use Windows and are incapable of taking an hour to install a clean copy when you unbox it. ~~~ pjmlp > Crapware is only a valid complaint if you choose to use Windows and are > incapable of taking an hour to install a clean copy when you unbox it. Assuming you get a Laptop that actually works with GNU/Linux. The only laptop that I still run with GNU/Linux on is an Asus netbook, which was explicitly sold with Linux support. Guess what, it took more than one year for Ubuntu to properly support its WiFi chipset and I was forced to use a network cable if I wanted any form of networking. My first GNU/Linux kernel was 1.0.9 with Slackware 2.0, so it is not I am that dumb in GNU/Linux land. Nowadays I stop bothering and use Windows on all other laptops that I have. ~~~ ajford My 2014 X1 Carbon runs perfectly fine on Debian Wheezy, Jessie, and Testing. Also ran Linux Mint on it (forgot version, circa late 2014). Not a single problem, from touchpad to sleep mode to wifi. Even saw better battery life. ------ hga Beware, for this article includes a gem like this: _Instead, these companies turned to a standard called ARM. Created by a once- obscure British company, it was designed from the ground up for low-power mobile uses._ Nope, their price budget required plastic instead of ceramic packaging, which had a 1 watt power budget. They were sufficiently conservative that it ended up dissipating 1/10 of a watt. The usefulness for mobile applications came later. On the other hand, if Intel turned down an offer from Apple to supply the iPhone CPU, well, that sounds like a mistake. Then again, it's such a different business that it's not clear it would have worked for them, especially given the opportunity cost. So different, their FPGA aquisition Alteria is still having their lower end more price sensitive chips fabricated by TSMC, apparently because Intel is just too expensive for that market. And Apple could well have changed to ARM later, Macs are now on their third CPU architecture. ~~~ bsder > The usefulness for mobile applications came later. True, but not quite the whole story. Some enterprising engineers wrote a cellular protocol stack in ARM assembly language that let everybody use a far cheaper core than anything else. Very quickly, ARM became entrenched in the feature phones. Then, the evolution occurred to smartphones, and ARM was already _in the phone_. ------ ChuckMcM Waaaaay back when I worked at Intel it was pretty clear they didn't stop doing things that worked. And when the going got tough they stuck with what worked. In the 80's Intel had a really remarkable set of of computing products, from high integration "soc" type x86 chips (80186), high end graphics chips, (8276x), embedded chips (8051), and "server" chips (431 series). Plus a memory business and a whole passel of support chips. But the chips in the PC had the best margin _by far_. So the more of those they made, the more profitable they became, and when the chip recession was in full swing in the late 80's and early 90's that is what they kept, shedding all the rest. In the early 2000's when Moore's law ran right smack into the power wall, Intel was betting they could have an "enterprise" line (Itanium) and a "desktop" line (Pentium), and an embedded line (8051). They guessed wrong and for a brief time AMD's Opteron was kicking their butt. But once they realized the writing on the wall they realigned around 64 bit in the Pentium line and got back on track. The problem with the ARM assault is that unlike AMD, which could be killed by messing with other users of the chipset and patent attacks and contract shennanigans, killing off someone making an ARM chip does nothing but make the other ARM chip vendors stronger. And they can't kill all of them at once. And worse, to compete with them they have to sacrifice margin on their x86 line and that is something they have never done, it breaks their business model. Its a real conundrum for them, they don't have a low power, reasonable performance SOC architecture to compete with these guys. And that is driving volumes these days. Further, the A53 (ARM 64 bit) killed off the chance of trying to use 32 bit only ATOM microarchitecture chips in that niche without impacting the value of the higher end Pentiums. One of the things Web2.0 taught us was that it doesn't matter how "big" the implementation of a node is if your going to put 50,000 of them in a data center to run your "cloud." Ethernet as an interconnect is fast enough for a lot of things. It definitely makes for an interesting future. ~~~ dba7dba _The problem with the ARM assault is that unlike AMD, which could be killed by messing with other users of the chipset and patent attacks and contract shennanigans, killing off someone making an ARM chip does nothing but make the other ARM chip vendors stronger. And they can 't kill all of them at once. And worse, to compete with them they have to sacrifice margin on their x86 line and that is something they have never done, it breaks their business model._ Someone who was in IT before MS and Intel showed up said MS and Intel got big even though they did not have the best technologies. They got big essentially with smart alliances and good business practices (which included messing with competitors, some practices that can be called dirty). ~~~ ralfd Recently I talked to a 20 year old kid who didn't know that Apple existed before the iPhone... Microsoft and Intel got big for one and only one reason: IBM chose them as suppliers for the IBM PC. Had IBM used their own in-house chip or licensed CP/M as operating system computer history would have been different (the Kildall link is especially interesting, Microsoft got really lucky here): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_801](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_801) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall) For much of the 80s the Intel chips were inferior to other designs like the Motorola 68K. That is why the Macintosh, Atari (today only known for Pac-Man, but yes, Atari made computers rivaling Apple) and Commodore Amiga used more powerful Motorolas. [http://www.skepticfiles.org/cowtext/comput~1/486vs040.htm](http://www.skepticfiles.org/cowtext/comput~1/486vs040.htm) But the "IBM-compatible" architecture won despite its inferiority through path dependency and the clones driving price down. ~~~ sitkack Sadly, Motorola came out with the expensive part (16 bit bus 68k) late. Had they shipped the 8 bit bus version earlier, I think things would have looked a lot different. Had they followed up with the 68000 and 020 earlier, things would be a whole lot different. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68008](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_68008) ~~~ kjs3 Motorola did have an inexpensive next-gen 8/16-bit chip. It was called the mc6809. That said, the whole _point_ of the 68000 was that it's 16-bits wide, so I'm not sure a cheaper, narrow bus version would have made any difference. ------ btilly The most important part of the article is easily missed unless you've read _The Innovator 's Solution_. Which is the follow up book and spends a lot of time looking inside of organizations to see why it is so darned hard to catch the disruptive train. A company with a profitable niche and a profitable technology will wind up with high internal costs. That's fine in their main business because they have a profit margin to play with. But it is surprisingly hard to trim back that "fat" to go after much lower margin revenue with a cheaper technology. (Fat is in quotes because it isn't really fat. It is necessary for the high margin business.) It is common to try, and to conclude that it is a failure. That is why Intel made this mistake. ~~~ bsder Until Intel isn't producing chips with _way_ more profit margin than an ARM at 100% capacity, it's not a mistake. ARM has volume, but x86 has _profit_. ~~~ btilly It can be a good business decision to run a business for maximum profit and a quick exit. However when you do that with a major corporation like Intel, it tends to make people unhappy. Intel will continue with the high profit margin right until the chips don't sell. And then Intel gets to go out of business. ~~~ coldtea So, just like Apple, with the same "high margin" strategy, their 19th year of record revenues and $600 billion in store? And how exactly would them (Intel in this case) selling commoditized, low margin, products make it better for them? Isn't it even worse, even quicker, for low margin players when their stuff doesn't sell? ~~~ btilly The challenge of disruption is when you have a clear value proposition that everyone agrees on. The genius of Steve Jobs is that every year or three he'd introduce a new product line with a new value proposition and cannibalize his existing products in the process. He's gone, and Apple has stopped doing that. Apple is now losing marketshare. (Android is estimated at 82%.) Their app store is globally under half of the market. They are projecting a year over year decline this quarter. It probably won't be visible to the untrained eye in the next 5 years. It won't be missable by anyone in the next 10. But Apple's best days are behind it. ~~~ coldtea > _He 's gone, and Apple has stopped doing that_ Actually they did just that with the Apple Watch -- which added ~6 billions to their revenues, and even as an early v1.0 eclipsed all "wearables" to date. [http://www.cnet.com/news/thanks-to-apple-watch-smartwatch- sa...](http://www.cnet.com/news/thanks-to-apple-watch-smartwatch-sales-could- hit-11-5-billion-this-year/) [http://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/26/apple-watch- apple-tv-rec...](http://www.macrumors.com/2016/01/26/apple-watch-apple-tv- record-sales/) And their services dept doesn't do that bad either: [http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/04/20/as-a-standalone- co...](http://appleinsider.com/articles/16/04/20/as-a-standalone-company- apples-services-business-could-be-worth-as-much-as-260b-piper-jaffray-says) They've also keep improving the Apple TV (people who haven't followed Apple forget how slow and incremental the rise of the iPod was -- from 2002 to 2007 people gathered at Keynotes to cheer if it got silly features like Wifi or a color screen or some smaller sibling), working on a car, and other things besides. > _Apple is now losing marketshare._ Barely -- from April 2015 to now, they've gone up and down, some quarters winning over Android, others losing. [http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Market- Rankings/comScore-Re...](http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Market- Rankings/comScore-Reports-June-2015-US-Smartphone-Subscriber-Market-Share) Besides I've never understood this "let's pin Apple, a single company, against the whole of the industry put together". They've never had the "most" market share -- just the most of the most lucrative (higher end, high margins) segment of the market. > _It probably won 't be visible to the untrained eye in the next 5 years. It > won't be missable by anyone in the next 10. But Apple's best days are behind > it._ I think I've read that again, in 1997, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012, 2015 etc. A.k.a "Apple is doomed". ~~~ HappyTypist The iPhone meant you no longer needed an iPod. The iPad meant grandma no longer needed a Mac. The Apple Watch requires an iPhone. ~~~ coldtea What kind of bizarro metric is that? The iPod never meant you don't need a Mac. The iPad never meant you don't need an iPhone (and hardly ever meant you don't need a Mac/PC). The idea that a device should replace previous devices was never much of a concern. The only thing that qualifies 100% in that story is that the iPhone was by nature also a portable music player -- and if you had one obviously you didn't need the iPod. Apart from that, all were individual lines, with their own strengths and limitations -- not supposed to replace one another. ------ FullyFunctional I would agree with the analysis, but I think it's missing an interesting fact: The ARM threat was non-existant until DEC Alpha engineers created StrongARM and showed the world that you could make a fast ARM. StrongARM was effectively renamed XScale around the time Intel got hold of the IP. ~~~ jakub_h > and showed the world that you could make a fast ARM. My memory may be a bit hazy, but wasn't one of the demonstrations of the original ARM a program in interpreted BASIC that did in twenty seconds something for which a compiled C program on a 80386 needed thirty seconds? Or something like that? ~~~ FullyFunctional That's demonstrating you can make a fast BASIC on an ARM. What I'm talking about is making a faster ARM cpu. According to Wikipedia, StrongArm debuted at 233 MHz. I can't remember how fast the contemporary implementations were at the time, but I remember that 233 MHz was a _lot_ faster. (For the record: I'm neither fan of ARM nor x86). ~~~ eonwe It seems to have been introduced the same year as Pentium 2 which had clock rates of 233-300 MHz. I don't know about the architectural differences at that time, but at least currently Intel processors smoke ARMs with same clock rate. The difference was probably a lot less pronounced at that time as the architectures were simpler. ~~~ rjsw The Pentium 2 was an out-of-order CPU, StrongARM was in-order. ------ jbb555 " The PC era was about to end." Not bothering to read the rest. This is entirely 100% wrong. The PC era has not "ended". It's just that we only upgrade every few years instead of every year. And grandma now reads her email on a tablet instead but that was never what PCs were really for. PCs are still just as much used as ever. We just use other things too, and don't buy a new one every year. If they can't get this basic fact right then I have no hope for the rest of the article. ~~~ lovemenot I disagree. The PC era ended when the PC was no longer the _dominant_ computing platform. We can argue on dates specific markets etc. Eras are ill-defined, but if you can assert that we once were in a PC era, you must also accept a definition that allows, in principle, for an end to an era. The dominant platform of its era is the one with the greatest user and developer person hours, sales volume, zeitgeist and so on. We are in the mobile era. ~~~ arielb1 PCs are still _used_ more than mobile. It's just that the average person had bought a Pentium 4 PC running XP a decade ago and is not going to upgrade it until it breaks. PCs are now a mature technology, just like cars, and have the resulting long lifecycle. Smartphones are also getting into this stage. ------ amist >Now 12,000 workers are paying the price I guess there are 12,000 other workers somewhere else in the world that now have a job because they get to create what Intel doesn't. BTW, according to past statistics, most of the workers that are now "paying the price", wasn't even Intel's employees 10 years ago. ------ asah Sigh, the author forgets that Intel tried to leave x86 with Itanium, which was an expensive disaster, and they vowed to never make that mistake again. ------ tdsamardzhiev Ugh, in 2005 AMD X2's were wiping the floor with any desktop processor Intel had. The only reason Intel stayed in business was that being much, much bigger company than AMD, so they could 1) outsell AMD on availability basis and 2) ditch NetBurst and come up with newer architecture (which was a glorified version of their mobile/older architecture). ~~~ mrpippy Don't forget the giant (possibly illegal) payouts to keep big customers (Dell in particular) Intel-only. $4.3 __billion __to Dell between 2003 and 2006. [http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/23/technology/dell_intel/](http://money.cnn.com/2010/07/23/technology/dell_intel/) ------ woodandsteel The article uses Clayton Christensen's theory of disruption to explain why Intel missed the mobile phone market and gave it away to ARM. I would just add that I think the same is happening in the Internet of Things. ~~~ zeeshanm Would be interested in hearing your analysis on IoT. ~~~ woodandsteel What I meant is I think that Intel is focused on producing high-profit margin chips, so it is missing the boat on IoT because its chips cost too much, and ARM is dominant. But I'm not an expert in this area, so I might be wrong. ------ fauria According to the article, back in the 1990s DEC was forced out of business because they underestimated the imapact that PCs would later make on the market, leaving Intel as a leader. In the 2000s smartphones and mobile devices outnumber PCs. Intel missed that and so ARM dominates the business. Maybe that same pattern will repeat again with the rising of IoT and wearables, where smaller and cheaper chips become ubiquitous. The development of Edison and Curie processors might indicate that Intel is betting on this, gearing up for the next "disruptive innovation". ~~~ TheOtherHobbes In which case we should all buy shares in Broadcom and learn to program Raspberry Pis. Or possibly more likely - the next transition which will be much messier, with no single winner. The mainframe -> mini -> desktop -> laptop -> mobile -> SBC path was about miniaturisation. The devices all provide general computing facilities, but they get smaller and faster and use less power, while the UI becomes more accessible to non-expert users. I'm not seeing how that translates into wearables, because IoT and wearables aren't general purpose computing devices. They're more like embedded hardware and/or thin network clients. So I don't think that's where the disruption will happen. It's maybe more likely the disruption will happen in consumer AI, where the UI gets simpler still through speech recognition and NLP, and the screen/mouse/keyboard start to disappear. My guess is traditional processors will become front-ends and glue for hardware AI systems, and the companies to bet on are the ones producing the subsystems. The hardware will follow the same path as general purpose processors, but they'll move from "mainframe" to "SBC" much more quickly. ------ peterclary Ironic, given that Intel's long-time leader famously said "Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive." ------ pj_mukh Doesn't this mean Qualcomm should be doing splendidly? But its not[1] :(. What gives? [1] [http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/sep/17/Qualcom...](http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/2015/sep/17/Qualcomm- layoffs-workers-samsung-cost-cutting/) ~~~ mtgx Qualcomm did poorly last year, because of its failed Snapdragon 810 chip. It lost a ton of sales. Otherwise Qualcomm was and still is dominant in the mobile chip market with close to 50% market share. ~~~ Grazester Yep, those things were throttling like mad due to heat issues and performance was not on par with its competition, the A9 and the Exynos processors. ------ corford Early on, Microsoft missed the internet revolution but were big enough and good enough to survive that early misstep. Intel is big enough and good enough to survive their mobile blunder (though, admittedly, they're taking more time than MS did to get back on the horse). ~~~ twoodfin _Early on, Microsoft missed the internet revolution but were big enough and good enough to survive that early misstep._ This has become popular myth, but I don't think it's true. Sure, Microsoft wasn't far ahead of the curve on the internet, or they wouldn't have been developing proprietary online services designed to compete with AOL and CompuServe. But the Bill Gates "Tidal Wave" internet memo was sent in May of 1995! Netscape's IPO was still months in the future, Amazon had maybe a few million $ worth of revenue, and essentially every other web-based company still in business today hadn't been founded yet. IMHO, billg's memo should be seen as an example of great prescience, rather than a belated corrective maneuver. ~~~ corford I guess I'm looking at it from where I was back then (a spotty young teenager). I remember Windows 3.1 needed Trumpet Winsock, then came IE 1,2,3 and they were awful, when IIS appeared it took about a decade to become any good versus Apache. From my point of view things started changing with IE4 and then Windows 98 getting automatic updates. For me that's when MS turned it around (i.e. ~4 years after Mosaic). ------ skynetv2 everyone is a pundit with the benefit of hindsight. Intel made the best decision with the available best information. Moreover, Apple is a notoriously difficult partner that will extract every penny from its suppliers. What if Intel did invest few billions to support Apple and then Apple went ahead and did their own chip, like they do now, leaving Intel with costs that cannot be recouped. Same pundit will say "Intel was stupid to spend so much on Apple." Love it or hate it, Intel still has the right technology and products to appeal to a broad market and make good money. One cannot expect to win every market, you can try if it makes sense and you should know when to walk away. ------ bobwaycott $2 billion in profits is a lot. 12K jobs cut is a lot. I can't help but find it a bit crazy that 12K people who helped make $2 billion in profits are suddenly extraneous. Are that many people really redundant within Intel? ------ ricksplat I think the culture of Intel is such that they'll turn this around - sadly it had to come to job losses first. But it was the same (if less severe) in the late 90s when AMD nearly stole their lunch. ------ spiritomb don't forget that Intel also made a big bet at a critical time on a partnership with Nokia. that was another couple of years wasted .. further behind Intel fell. ~~~ rasz_pl Intel? What about Nokia making miserable 'smartphones' running 24MHz i386??? ------ xiphias I don't think 10000 people have problems finding jobs..if you worked at Intel, I'm pretty sure that sounds good in your resumé ------ hinkley I think in the long run this is one of those mistakes that we will all benefit from. "Monopolist Missteps and Loses Monopoly Position" ------ alanh A very long-winded article with a clickbait title saying… nothing more than that they missed the mobile revolution. ~~~ mkehrt I disagree. This is an interesting article explaining what is happening to Intel and why. But you're not the target audience if you know this already; every piece of information in this article would be novel and interesting to someone outside of tech. ------ a_imho Is there any new information on the 3DXP technology? ~~~ touristtam Do you mean this -> [http://www.anandtech.com/show/9470/intel-and-micron- announce...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/9470/intel-and-micron- announce-3d-xpoint-nonvolatile-memory-technology-1000x-higher-performance- endurance-than-nand) ? ~~~ a_imho yes, I know it is a bit OT, but there were other Intel related discussions, saw no harm in asking. ------ Retric Intel's largest mistake was integrating graphics on their CPU. This cost them more than the entire cellphone CPU market is worth. This ate up valuable chip real estate, RAM bandwidth, thermal overhead etc. Worse it cemented the idea that Intel was crap at graphics while slowing down the PC upgrade cycle. ~~~ dragontamer What the hell else do you think Intel should put on those chips? Note that ~15% of Steam Players are gaming on Intel iGPUs, as awful as they are. [http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/](http://store.steampowered.com/hwsurvey/) ~~~ Retric A pure blank space would work as they save on manufacturing costs and get faster CPU's due to heat limits and more RAM bandwidth. ~~~ chadgeidel No, that's not how it works. Intel had the ability to put more transistors on the same die size with the same power requirements. This was long after they reached thermal/clockspeed limits (with the P4). They started putting additional cores in there and bumped up the L2 and L3 caches, but there was still space left on the die. What do you do with those extra transistors? It would be absurd to "leave them blank" as you are basically throwing money down the drain. ~~~ im3w1l Even more cores? ~~~ masklinn Most non-server systems are barely able to use 2 cores let alone 4, what would they do with 8 or 16? More efficient & powerful graphics built-in are a much better use of the die space. Even more so considering the rise of GPGPU and hardware decoding.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How do you feel about job hunting? - ativzzz I am currently employed and a few weeks ago was considering searching for other jobs for financial and other personal reasons.<p>How do you guys feel about still going through the process now? From the "Who is hiring" post, clearly companies are hiring.<p>Now is obviously a riskier time to switch jobs, would you guys do it? ====== jimbob45 It’s frustratingly difficult for workers to find jobs. Recruiters lead you on for weeks only to ghost you at the last second. Technical tests are now frequently hours-long and give no guarantee of employment, even with stellar results. Discrimination of any type can take place too easily with recruiters as a legal barrier between you and the employer. ~~~ ativzzz Your comment mirrors my experience with external recruiters during normal times so I don't really see myself using recruiters now. ------ itronitron You should stick with your current employer if you can but definitely keep tabs on what is happening in your industry/career path. Most companies listing open positions will not hire people to fill them. They are mostly there as a cheap form of PR/advertising and to make their current employees feel replaceable. I don't think things will return to normal, not in six months, not in two years. Companies will shrink, people with skills critical to their employer's business will die or just quit and they may not be replaced. On the bright side, open offices and the 'sharing economy' are likely ancient history. ------ sloaken I switched back in 2008 as the economy was headed down. I did not notice, just felt I needed to get out. New company laid me off after 11 months, as the market hit bottom. Company struggled with cash flow issues. To be fair, the new VP hated the director and manager who hired me. Director was let go after I was there 6 months. My manager and all her employees were let go when I was let go. Had I stayed with the prior company, not sure what would have happened. ------ ccajas Side question: How is relocation going to work (for the larger companies) when shelter-in-place is in effect?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Python tutorial on Bayesian modeling techniques - gedrap https://github.com/markdregan/Bayesian-Modelling-in-Python ====== markdregan I am the author of this tutorial. If you are interesting in contributing a section to this tutorial, please get in touch. Some suggested topics: survival analysis, mixture models, classification, time series models... Twitter @markdregan ~~~ kriro Looks pretty nice, good job. I think survival analysis is a very underrated tool. I'm working in UX now and there's a lot of test setups were survival analysis makes a lot of sense but isn't used (mothly because people don't know it). ~~~ lookACamel Would you like to expand on that? ------ colund It's a good initiative! However, I think the introduction could be improved by briefly describing the "why/what" of Bayesian modeling before you get into the first Hangouts example. ~~~ markdregan Good idea. It does jump in pretty quick. I'll update this during next revision. ------ zeldron Great initiative! I have a few suggestions, maybe i missed it, but a prerequisite section would be useful both for knowledge and platform, software etc. I am new to python and believe this tutorial would be great for me. However in the case of novice-users as myself, lots of time is spent getting the environment right rather than understanding the code. For example, after downloading and installing anaconda, jupyter and seaborn, i stumble on error message "C:\Anaconda3\lib\site- packages\ipykernel\\__main__.py:89: FutureWarning: sort(columns=....) is deprecated, use sort_values(by=.....)" And here i am stuck, my next step, had it not been this post, would be to investigate syntax changes in python. Maybe I that's not a correct way to address that problem however that is mainly my point. If the tutorial is targeted to beginners as me, a few more pointers to common errors setting the environment up would be helpful! Thank you for otherwise great tutorial and keep up the good work! ------ nl This is great work. I don't have any substantive comments (need to read it in depth for that). I did miss the lack of "next" links, though - not sure if there is a Jupyter-native way to do that. I like the matplotlib style created for this too. ~~~ markdregan Thank you. Next links would be nice and keep the user within the nbviewer mode (which formats the notebooks correctly). I will add these. ------ toddm Nice work, thanks for taking the time to put this together. Bookmarked. ------ lovboat I don't have any Google Hangout chat messages to run the first example of using jupyter. I know that you are not going to share your data, but it should be handy if some fake conversations could be included. People like me like to first install the applications and then run it to see whether it works as claimed. I installed the conda distribution and the jupyter notebook works correctly. (I installed conda in ubuntu and then seaborn, PyMC3 and panda (PyMC3 and seaborn with pip since conda install 2.3 of PyMC3). It works. I should say that the first step is to clone: cd where_you_want_the_data_to_be_copied git clone .... # and now start jupyter notebook with jupyter notebook # go to File/open/ and select the first section. I see that I can edit the markdown. I translated the introduction to section 0, here it goes. Thanks for this tutorial. The graphics are nice. ### Sección 0: Introducción Bienvenido a "Bayesian Modelling in Python" \- un tutorial para personas interesadas en técnica de estadística bayesiana con Python. La lista de secciones del tutorial se encuentra en la página web del projecto [homepage]([https://github.com/markdregan/Hangout-with- PyMC3](https://github.com/markdregan/Hangout-with-PyMC3)). La estadística es un tema que en mis años de universidad nunca me gustó . Las técnicas frecuentistas que nos enseñaron (p-values, etc.) parecían rebuscadas y en última instancia di la espalda a este tema en el que no estaba interesado. Esto cambió cuando descubrí la estadística Bayesiana - una rama de la estadística bastante diferente a la estadística frecuentista que se suele enseñar en la mayoría de las universidades. Mi aprendizaje se inspiró en numerosas publicaciones, blogs y videos. A los que se inician en la estadística bayesiana les recomendaría fervientemente los siguientes: \- [Doing Bayesian Data Analysis]([http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Bayesian- Analysis-Second-Edition...](http://www.amazon.com/Doing-Bayesian-Analysis- Second-Edition/dp/0124058884/ref=dp_ob_title_bk)) by John Kruschke \- [Python port]([https://github.com/aloctavodia/Doing_Bayesian_data_analysis](https://github.com/aloctavodia/Doing_Bayesian_data_analysis)) of John Kruschke's examples by Osvaldo Martin \- [Bayesian Methods for Hackers]([https://github.com/CamDavidsonPilon/Probabilistic- Programmin...](https://github.com/CamDavidsonPilon/Probabilistic-Programming- and-Bayesian-Methods-for-Hackers)) fue para mí una gran fuente de inspiración para aprender estadística bayesiana. En reconocimiento de la gran influencia que ejerció en mí, he adoptado el mismo estilo visual que se usa en BMH. \- [While My MCMC Gently Samples]([http://twiecki.github.io/](http://twiecki.github.io/)) blog de Thomas Wiecki \- [Healthy Algorithms]([http://healthyalgorithms.com/tag/pymc/](http://healthyalgorithms.com/tag/pymc/)) blog de Abraham Flaxman \- [Scipy Tutorial 2014]([https://github.com/fonnesbeck/scipy2014_tutorial](https://github.com/fonnesbeck/scipy2014_tutorial)) de Chris Fonnesbeck He creado este tutorial con la esperanza de que otros lo encontrarán útil y que les servirá para aprender técnicas bayesianas de la misma forma que me ayudaron a mí. Cualquier aportación de la comunidad corrección/comentario/contribución será bienvenida.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
NSA can retain encrypted communications of Americans possibly indefinitely - pronoiac http://www.pcworld.com/article/2042673/nsa-can-retain-encrypted-communications-of-americans-possibly-indefinitely.html ====== pronoiac I had the terrifying thought that this could apply to HTTPS or SSH sessions. That's alarmist, though, right? ~~~ tptacek I assume that this applies to HTTPS and SSH sessions. ------ betterunix I wonder if they might try to claim that this applies to ROT26. It would not be much more of a stretch than their other interpretations of the law... ~~~ jiggy2011 Good point. Where does one draw the line between encryption,encoding and compression for example? What if a communication itself is not encrypted but contains encrypted elements, like maybe a session ID? ~~~ betterunix "Where does one draw the line between encryption,encoding and compression for example?" I am told that the FBI does not actually draw such a distinction when dealing with criminal messages. The term "null cipher" is used to refer to messages encoded in a non-randomized fashion that does not involve any secret key. I was being a bit sarcastic above, but honestly, I would not be surprised if the government tried to claim that base64 encoding counted as "encryption" in this situation. ------ jiggy2011 Isn't pretty much everything moving in the direction of always-on encryption, so this in effects means they can store everything.. ------ lantastic I'm wondering: what is the cost of such retention? If all intercepted data was encrypted, would that not eventually bankrupt the system? While such a wide use of encryption seems unlikely, would it be possible to achieve the same effect by feeding the system with encrypted garbage? Even if it is eventually decrypted, it adds a lot of noise to the analysis effort, further increasing the cost. ------ nobody_nowhere If you read the doc, it says also that domestic communication "reasonably believed to contain evidence of a crime... may be disseminated to Federal Law Enforcement authorities". ~~~ throwaway10001 would that evidence and fruits of it be admissible in court? ~~~ jellicle Yes, of course. ------ confluence Well then let's make them store the entire internet. It's about time that we encrypted everything. Flood the communication channels with encrypted chatter and let's see how long they can keep storing it all. If you really want to fuck with them intersperse your encrypted data with random bits from /dev/random. Even better, just steam random bits non-stop and every so often intersperse it with just a tiny bit of your real data. The NSA knows how fucked they'd really be if everyone used end to end encryption. You can smell their fear. ~~~ RKearney You probably want to use urandom instead of random. /dev/random will block if the entropy pool runs out whereas /dev/urandom will not. ~~~ eru On Linux, yes. Not on the BSDs. ------ cherry314159 This is great! Now to backup my old photos, I'll tar them and encrypt them and email them to myself. I can always try FOI request and get them back! ------ assafs A good deal of encrypted material these days depends on the security of the private key, though -- e.g., HTTPS loses a good deal of security if the server's private key is known. Given the reach of PRISM and related projects, and given that a lot of the internet was using 1024-bit RSA keys for HTTPS, it's a good question wondering how much of those private keys are still ... private. ~~~ Torgo I have always wondered about this. What kind of security do you really get if, for example, your SSL key is distributed to a couple thousand CloudFlare servers all over the world? ~~~ ra Zilch. Cryptographic security depends on good key management practices. ------ tomjen3 And they can and do so for the rest of the world too, but who cares right? Only us citizens have a right to privacy at least according to hn. ------ thomasjames That is good because, provided there is not some enormous leap forward in number theory in the meantime, they can keep working on trying to break 256-bit key RSA encryption "indefinitely" as well thanks to a higher law by the name of thermodynamics. ~~~ grecy Wait 25 years until Moore's Law catches up, and they can break all those 256-bit encrypted things you did back in 2013. ~~~ thomasjames From Schneier in "Applied Cryptography" (1996): "Longer key lengths are better, but only up to a point. AES will have 128-bit, 192-bit, and 256-bit key lengths. This is far longer than needed for the foreseeable future. In fact, we cannot even imagine a world where 256-bit brute force searches are possible. It requires some fundamental breakthroughs in physics and our understanding of the universe. One of the consequences of the second law of thermodynamics is that a certain amount of energy is necessary to represent information. To record a single bit by changing the state of a system requires an amount of energy no less than kT, where T is the absolute temperature of the system and k is the Boltzman constant. (Stick with me; the physics lesson is almost over.) Given that k = 1.38 × 10^−16 erg/K, and that the ambient temperature of the universe is 3.2 Kelvin, an ideal computer running at 3.2 K would consume 4.4 × 10−16 ergs every time it set or cleared a bit. To run a computer any colder than the cosmic background radiation would require extra energy to run a heat pump. Now, the annual energy output of our sun is about 1.21 × 10^41 ergs. This is enough to power about 2.7 × 10^56 single bit changes on our ideal computer; enough state changes to put a 187-bit counter through all its values. If we built a Dyson sphere around the sun and captured all its energy for 32 years, without any loss, we could power a computer to count up to 2^192. Of course, it wouldn't have the energy left over to perform any useful calculations with this counter. But that's just one star, and a measly one at that. A typical supernova releases something like 1^051 ergs. (About a hundred times as much energy would be released in the form of neutrinos, but let them go for now.) If all of this energy could be channeled into a single orgy of computation, a 219-bit counter could be cycled through all of its states. These numbers have nothing to do with the technology of the devices; they are the maximums that thermodynamics will allow. And they strongly imply that brute-force attacks against 256-bit keys will be infeasible until computers are built from something other than matter and occupy something other than space." ~~~ ISL I've seen this argument quoted a couple of times and blindly accepted it as a traditional Fermi-style attack on the problem. This is the first time I've pondered the implementation. Schneier's argument that 3.2K is a limit is perhaps not the best one? Dilution fridges let you into the millikelvin quickly. Optical cooling can readily reach nanokelvin. Power dissipation remains a significant problem, but the power requirement is reduced by ~10^9. From the quantum-computing side of things, it's not that crazy to imagine a 256 bit quantum computer, especially if you have a GDP-caliber budget. Researchers worldwide are working hard on the relevant technological precursors. ~~~ peterwaller I'm under the impression that quantum computers buy you a square root. So instead of doubling the number of bits in your key to improve the strength of a key by a ludicrous amount, you should quadruple them. In addition to this, I don't know how well quantum computers help against (good) symmetric encryption. They help against certain types of PKI because they give you the aforementioned speedup in factoring large integers. However, I think Schneier's argument holds, because brute forcing 2^256 possible keys is.. well, see the argument above about forcing a counter through all those states. (apologies for not citing sources. Hopefully someone more knowledgeable can weigh in) ~~~ archgoon For AES you are correct. The best known quantum attack is Grover's Search Algorithm (but emphasis on 'known' here), reducing the key space to 2^128. RSA, however, is based on prime factors, so it can be broken with Shor's Algorithm, which means it will take on the order of (256)^3 operations. ------ Qantourisc Lets all generate lots and lots of cat /dev/random over ssh ? ~~~ jevinskie Just use /dev/zero, no need to waste more energy than needed. The NSA is unable to tell the difference if the cipher is good enough. ~~~ eru Or, better random without ssh. ~~~ jevinskie With appropriate handshakes! ------ e3pi Mobile App Game: test the forever stored future with ten thousand inviting Voynich manuscripts with buried url tripwire alert beacons and countdown n-folded damascene crypto layerings that annunciate when finally cracked and the hunter bot-spider races along the breadcrumbs, trips the wire, and `hello'! ------ pvnick A bit offtopic, but is there a style associated with the image at the top? Particularly the way that eyeball looks, I've seen that style of artwork a lot when reading surveillance-related stories.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tell HN: Thank You - Mz http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/02/tell-hn-thank-you.html ====== Mz Just wanted to say "Thank You." (I don't know if a mod corrected the title or if I mistyped it initially. If it changes, I will assume a mod did it. If a mod did change it: Oops. Sorry. No offense.)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Michael Hastings, 'Rolling Stone' Contributor, Dead at 33 - mkr-hn http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/michael-hastings-rolling-stone-contributor-dead-at-33-20130618 ====== danso Hastings did an IAMA on Reddit a year ago: [http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/uaha0/iam_michael_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/uaha0/iam_michael_hastings_a_reporter_for_buzzfeed_and/) Here's some tips he gave about pursuing journalism as a career: Okay, here's my advice to you (and young journalists in general): 1.) You basically have to be willing to devote your life to journalism if you want to break in. Treat it like it's medical school or law school. 2.) When interviewing for a job, tell the editor how you love to report. How your passion is gathering information. Do not mention how you want to be a writer, use the word "prose," or that deep down you have a sinking suspicion you are the next Norman Mailer. 3.) Be prepared to do a lot of things for free. This sucks, and it's unfair, and it gives rich kids an edge. But it's also the reality. 4.) When writing for a mass audience, put a fact in every sentence. 5.)Also, keep the stories simple and to the point, at least at first. 6.) You should have a blog and be following journalists you like on Twitter. 7.) If there's a publication you want to work for or write for, cold call the editors and/or email them. This can work. 8) By the second sentence of a pitch, the entirety of the story should be explained. (In other words, if you can't come up with a rough headline for your story idea, it's going to be a challenge to get it published.) 9) Mainly you really have to love writing and reporting. Like it's more important to you than anything else in your life--family, friends, social life, whatever. 10) Learn to embrace rejection as part of the gig. Keep writing/pitching/reading. ------ AJ007 Michael Hastings wrote notable and impactful Rolling Stone pieces such as "The Rise of the Killer Drones." It is with some irony that Rolling Stone publishes more serious journalism than half of the headline grabbing mass news web publishers I see on HN daily. Too bad. ~~~ octo_t Rolling Stone has always been a political magazine. Often with a certain je- ne-sais-quois (see Hunter S Thompson), but political never the less. In the 90s they shifted to a more media-based based magazine, compared to previously and they have endeavoured to move back to being a political magazine. ------ coldtea > _A contributing editor to Rolling Stone, Hastings leaves behind a remarkable > legacy of reporting, including an exposé of America 's drone war, an > exclusive interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at his hideout in > the English countryside, an investigation into the Army's illicit use of > "psychological operations" to influence sitting Senators (...)_ People have been killed or "vanished" for less. Just saying. ~~~ sillysaurus This is a little over the top. His car jackknifed into a tree. In order for your theory to make sense, his assassins would have had to ensure his car 1) hit a solid object, 2) caught fire. ~~~ triplesec nonetheless, these things are not unknown to have happened nefariously ~~~ tptacek If that's true, you should be able to provide an example. ~~~ protomyth I don't believe this was nefarious and I do respect you tptacek, but cutting the break line is not an unknown way to attempt to off someone. It was even in the wheelhouse of these gomers [http://5newsonline.com/2013/03/06/moms-brake- line-cut-over-c...](http://5newsonline.com/2013/03/06/moms-brake-line-cut- over-custody-fight-police-say/) ~~~ tptacek Any cases where _anyone_ murdered a reporter by sabotaging their car, or where the _US government_ murdered a reporter by _any means at all_ would be fine. ~~~ sillysaurus You know it's a bad week on HN when tptacek (or anyone) is downvoted for asking for an example of a far-fetched claim. ~~~ tptacek It was a really dumb question for me to have asked; it's like I dared them. ~~~ protomyth An open-ended question like that about people's foolish ways to try to off their fellows in a single profession[1] is going to generate a lot of examples. Car bombs seem to be an easy way with some folks[2]. Heck, fark.com has many on a weekly basis. Reading the Church Committee stuff gives a pretty good idea of how wild west our government got (and likely still is given the drones). For the record, I still think this incident was a simple accident. 1) en.rsf.org keeps track of attacks on the press 2) Nasrullah Afridi died on May 10 when a bomb exploded under his car after he entered it. ------ 8ig8 I wonder if these conspiracy thoughts would be so prominent if not for the recent NSA news? It seems once trust is lost, everything is questioned. ~~~ adventured Exactly. It's clearly a case of: if they'll do X, will they do Y? The US Government does have a rather sordid history though, it's not like they're saints. From the fake Iraq weapons claims, to the Gulf of Tonkin incident being used to get us into Vietnam. If they'll go to such lengths to get us into wars that kill massive numbers of people (our own included), I do find it hard to believe they won't kill a single journalist (without implying that's what happened to Hastings). "The second Tonkin Gulf incident was originally claimed by the U.S. National Security Agency to have occurred on August 4, 1964, as another sea battle, but instead may have involved "Tonkin Ghosts"[6] (false radar images) and not actual NVN torpedo boat attacks. "The outcome of these two incidents was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by 'communist aggression'." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident) Or this (US military admitting to having sprayed black communities in St Louis with radioactive chemicals in the 1950s and 1960s): [http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/suit- fil...](http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/suit-filed-over- government-test-spraying-in-st-louis- during/article_9bc1fc7d-7093-58a3-b557-0cbac5dc38ab.html) ------ rl3 _" Why don't you give answers that aren't bullshit for a change?" Hastings replied._ This man was a badass. ~~~ B0Z Love her or hate her, Rachael Maddow said of Hastings tonight (paraphrased from memory) "There are a lot of journalists who hope to be or claim to be fearless in their reporting. Michael Hastings _was_ fearless. Most people got the impression after talking to him briefly that he wasn't like everyone else -- you were NOT going to be able to ignore him." He was an infrequent guest on Up with Chris Hayes. I remember fast forwarding through most guests verbal essays to listen to his. He'll be sorely missed... in an era when we need people like him the most. ------ swamp40 38 comments, and no one mentions his problems with addiction: [http://trueslant.com/michaelhastings/2009/04/28/a-case-of- th...](http://trueslant.com/michaelhastings/2009/04/28/a-case-of-the-relapse- for-young-addictauthor/) 4:30am on a residential street - the CIA/NSA couldn't kill me that way if they tried. (The video is horrendous - bad way to die.) ------ nackerwillis This is eerily spooky. I saw this accident this morning on my way to work. They completely blocked off Melrose and Highland with about a 2 block radius. I had no idea this accident was tied to him till I arrived home. I was able to drive around and get a scope of the accident scene and felt something wasn't right. The center divider has about a 3/4 miles worth of trees. I want to know where he 'lost' control. Street has multiple stops along the way... ------ joonix I hate car crashes. It's such a waste of life. We have the technology to prevent these, it's just a matter of investing in getting them into every car on the road. ~~~ paulrademacher I presume you're talking about self-driving tech? ------ CamperBob2 Any details on the car crash? ~~~ meric I don't know about anyone else, but I feel something isn't quite right. "Fearless Journalist Car Crash Into Tree And Dies In Explosion.". [http://ktla.com/2013/06/18/driver-killed-in-fiery-car- crash-...](http://ktla.com/2013/06/18/driver-killed-in-fiery-car-crash-in- hollywood/#axzz2WcYdbrFl) Mythbusters have shown this doesn't usually happen. [http://dsc.discovery.com/tv- shows/mythbusters/videos/crash-a...](http://dsc.discovery.com/tv- shows/mythbusters/videos/crash-and-burn.htm) EDIT: I made up the headline. ~~~ stephengillie The intersection where the car crashed. A median with trees and light posts begins here heading southbound, as well as some trees on the sidewalk west of the street. I don't know which tree was collided with. [https://maps.google.com/?ll=34.083531,-118.338458&spn=0.0013...](https://maps.google.com/?ll=34.083531,-118.338458&spn=0.001387,0.000755&t=h&z=20) Either the reporter was driving drunk (at 4:15am on a Tuesday morning aka Monday night) or this is some kind of conspiracy (body burned beyond recognition). I'm still not sure how a car "jacknifes", unless that's referring to the opposite ends of the car wrapping around a tree. Normally, that phrase refers to a tractor-trailer combination turning sideways around the towing joint. ~~~ nackerwillis I saw this on my way to work this morning. I live close, actually. I went around to survey the accident since it's looked pretty odd. Those tree's span for quite a while, and it took him all that time to "jacknife" into one? To answer your question: He hit the 3 or 4 tree in. ------ mathattack It's a shame to lose such a bold journalist when they are in short supply. There is an irony that the Rolling Stone is the place to house free speech. ------ mtowle "Traffic collision"	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Internet Is Making You a Not Nice Person - donsupreme https://rosakranse.com/2016/09/29/the-internet-is-making-you-a-not-nice-person/ ====== internaut Actually I wasn't that nice to begin with.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A new, non-Apache open-source revenue model - wisnesky https://www.slideshare.net/slidarko/mmadt-a-virtual-machinean-economic-machine?qid=0867e394-3c0c-4e40-9b58-e166e5c4aa57 ====== gardenfelder Slide presentation references [http://www.mm-adt.org/](http://www.mm-adt.org/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Working part time next to study in Tokyo - w8w00rd I only have classes for 24 hours a week at most at the moment and still have 4 months left in Tokyo, does anyone have experience in working part-time in Japan, where would you get a job in development in Japan? my visa is not an issue as long as work + study is not over 50 hours a week total. ====== dvcrn How good is your Japanese? Wantedly is commonly used for hiring, you could check on there and ask companies you are interested in. Besides that, I heard from a few people that found part time gigs through tech meetups that happen pretty often. Since you are only staying 4 months, I think your best bet is through people you know either locally or remotely. Finding a completely new company that is hiring you short term and part time might be a bit hard to find. ~~~ w8w00rd My Japanese is pretty terrible, I'll check out the site.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Stanford Large Network Dataset Collection - betolink https://snap.stanford.edu/data/ ====== themeek A note here that SNAP at Stanford is funded by NSF grants through DARPA SMISC, which is a research group in the DoD looking to learn how to get better at influencing social media groups online for propaganda. (Strategic Communication is the DoD term, well one of them, for propaganda) [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/darpa-social- ne...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/08/darpa-social-networks- research-twitter-influence-studies) [https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=972cbc8...](https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=972cbc835c3702e9758aedcf032fb4ec&tab=core&_cview=1) ------ Smerity If you're looking for even larger graph datasets, the team at WebDataCommons[1] extracted hyperlink graphs from Common Crawl[2]. They're available at both page and domain levels of granularity. The page level hyperlink graphs are 3.5 billion web pages and 128 billion hyperlinks for 2012 and 1.7 billion web pages connected by 64 billion hyperlinks for 2014. [1]: [http://webdatacommons.org/hyperlinkgraph/](http://webdatacommons.org/hyperlinkgraph/) [2]: [http://commoncrawl.org/](http://commoncrawl.org/) ------ turnersd Sad to see the beeradvocate and ratebeer datasets were removed before I could grab them. [https://snap.stanford.edu/data/web- BeerAdvocate.html](https://snap.stanford.edu/data/web-BeerAdvocate.html) [https://snap.stanford.edu/data/web- RateBeer.html](https://snap.stanford.edu/data/web-RateBeer.html) ~~~ ised [http://jmcauley.ucsd.edu/cse255/data/beer/Ratebeer.txt.gz](http://jmcauley.ucsd.edu/cse255/data/beer/Ratebeer.txt.gz) [http://jmcauley.ucsd.edu/cse255/data/beer/Beeradvocate.txt.g...](http://jmcauley.ucsd.edu/cse255/data/beer/Beeradvocate.txt.gz) ------ amit_m All of these datasets seem to be some kind of unweighted graph with no additional information (except community information in some cases). Does anyone know where one can find richer network data sets? i.e. a graph in which the vertices have some attributes. ~~~ achompas Not sure I agree. For example there's a patents set: [https://snap.stanford.edu/data/cit- Patents.html](https://snap.stanford.edu/data/cit-Patents.html) with included patent classification data. You can also join the WikiTalk set: [https://snap.stanford.edu/data/wiki- Talk.html](https://snap.stanford.edu/data/wiki-Talk.html) against Wikipedia data. You can obtain more node attributes for these (and others) easily by joining against public sets. ------ zzleeper Are there any large datasets out there representing n-partite networks? So instead of people connnecting w/people I see e.g. devedges between developers and languages, or products and users, and so on.. ------ alistproducer2 I'm just getting into machine learning so I'm looking forward to practicing on these datasets. Thanks for sharing. ------ elihu The availability of real-world signed network datasets is really great, I've used the Stanford Large Network Dataset Collection in the past to test predictive accuracy in reputation systems. (Looks like they added a new dataset to the "signed" category -- wikipedia requests for adminship.)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Distraction free writing and the simplest blogging platform in one - akos http://throwww.com ====== colmmacc I really like the design and look of throwww, and I don't mean to pick on it - but every time I see these minimalist low-friction writing engines, I feel like a very big thing is missing; facilitating editing, and encouraging a greater purpose for text. Something I'm reminded of every time I reach the bottom of a pg essay, or every time I look back on the writing I'm most proud of, is that time was taken to consider and craft the text. Crucially, the text - and its ideas - was shared with others, feedback was gathered, and the text further refined. Low-friction composition is important; it's a huge boost to have a simple clean slate with which to begin. But often once that initial effort is over with, good writing becomes a work of careful refinement. Here's some things I haven't found in any platform that would be great; 1\. Full revision history. Every keystroke I've made, every tiny little edit should be saved. Everything. In order. Everything. This is a small data problem. 2\. Once I create some text, I'd like to be able to share it privately with my trusted testers and feedbackers. They should be able to highlight text and make notes in-place. If I trust them enough - or they are an actual nominated human editor - they should be able to edit the text. 3\. Some guidelines for good clear writing are automatable. An editor could tell me when a sentence is getting very long. An editor could detect obscure or imprecise words and suggest alternatives. An editor could detect repetition of mundane words or phrases. You get the idea ... the point is that real work can be done here. 4\. It would be nice to be able to make margin notes, and to track goals. It is common to sketch out in advance the purpose or goals of a text; the outline and key points to be included. It'd be neat to be able to check them off as progress is made. Or in summary; it'd be nice to see a tool that took as its goal that writing itself can be made more effective, rather than merely prettier. ~~~ keithpeter " _1\. Full revision history. Every keystroke I've made, every tiny little edit should be saved. Everything. In order. Everything. This is a small data problem._ " A 'replay' function would be good as well. I have a feeling that what I _actually_ do when editing is different to what I like to _think_ I do. This feeling is based on some screen videos I did a little time back. ------ sfard Woah just happened to come across this! Thanks for sharing, akos. I built (and am continuously working on) throwww. Let me know if you have any questions. Also here's kind of a mission statement of sorts <http://throwww.com/a/1> ~~~ ameen I wrote a post last night and "saved it" so that I'll continue to work on it later. Its non-existent now. So, drafts don't exist? What does the "save" button do then? ~~~ 6ren Looks like you need to bookmark the url that is generated when you save. It's probably still in your browser history (with the same title of as your post). ------ avolcano Pretty minor detail, but got me thinking. I like that the site has a Markdown video tag using the following form: \|video\|(http://youtube.com/watch?v=abc) Haven't seen that in any other Markdown implementations (always hate having to copy the embed code in for Tumblr's half-assed version of it). Is it new to Throwww or is it from another Markdown variation? ~~~ sfard I added it in addition to markdown. It's a python package I found a while back. ------ benrhughes I really, really like the interface. I'd love to use it for my blog, but I'd want a self hosting version. I've been burnt too many times by hosted/proprietary writing platforms. If you're not keen on self-hosting, I'd want: \- the ability to export to an importable format (eg, wordpress's WXR). Exporting html/text is all well and good, but I need to be able to migrate \- other stuff I'm sure you've thought about, like custom domains, custom URLs (eg /this-is-the-post-title) etc \- discoverability of other users/"blogs" on the network Nice work though. I really like it. ~~~ sfard Hey benrhughes, thanks for feedback. I put together this update on where throwww is going. I think you'll like the direction :) <http://throwww.com/a/45r> ~~~ benrhughes Excellent, looks great. ------ ankit84 Why would someone publish his writings when the website does not even publish Privacy Policy and Terms of Use? * Who owns the content ? * Are they going to keep there for lifetime? * How would you make money and let us write? In future they can monetize on my content. btw, let me admit, I created one for linkback <http://throwww.com/a/41k> ------ vjeux Would be nice to randomize the url id so that you cannot see all the posts that have ever been written just by doing +1 on the number. Also, I usually stick to Wordpress because you can embed code. Any plans to allow syntax highlighting? Thanks! ~~~ sfard A front-end dev friend of mind asked for code-embedding/syntax highlighting too! I'd be happy to add it if I can come up with an elegant implementation. Is there a "markdown" for code that you know of? ~~~ Shank Github uses Pygments: <http://pygments.org/> I don't know what language you're using, but here's a Ruby library for it: <https://github.com/tmm1/pygments.rb> Edit: Scrolled down and saw Django. Pygments is native to Python, so you might be in luck if you want to use that. ~~~ sfard Awesome, thanks. Will definitely add code support in coming days/weeks. ~~~ lighthazard <http://alexgorbatchev.com/SyntaxHighlighter/> is a great place to start. ------ mediocregopher This is great! I've been thinking about writing down some of my experiences and thoughts lately, but didn't want to go with some full-blown blogging platform. I considered just having a github repo where I would just push up my .md files, but this is even easier. My only concern is my ability to get content back for archiving. Is there a way we could export the articles to some simple format? Either markdown or even just a plain text file? ~~~ sfard Thanks! I made throwww for the exact same reason. Nothing quite fit my use case. As for your concern. A few users have requested a "download" feature to archive their posts. The features I'm planning on adding in the short term include "Download" support. Probably XML or RTF options. * RSS * "Discover" page with curated/voted posts. Kind of like user pages (e.g., throwww.com/u/sfard) except with content from several users * subdomain user support (i.e., username.throwww.com) * Potentially "groups" ------ akos I shared my thoughts about some features I would love to see in the future: <http://throwww.com/a/2r4> ;) ~~~ sfard favorited. ------ temiri Wow, very handsome. I like it--I was just wondering what platform I could use to share thoughts that are a bit longer than a tweet but maybe don't merit a full blog post with all the bells and whistles. My only gripe is that when I clicked on my profile it said, "This guy hasn't written anything yet." which was slightly off-putting as I am not actually a "guy." ~~~ sfard Wow, I just realized how androcentric that is. I just changed it. ~~~ temiri Cool, thanks! ------ xSwag If you're interested in these new blogging services, check out Medium[1] which is built by the same guy who build Blogger, and Feathers[2] which is also in the "distraction free blogging" space. I like this trend of minimalism and clean layouts but I do not like the same idea being repeated over and over again without good execution (How do I view posts? Where is the post index? Where is the submit button? Where is the privacy policy and ToS? How will you attain user engagement with such an app? Who owns the content?). More importantly, what does your application offer that other applications in this space do not? [1]<http://medium.com/> [2]<http://feathe.rs/> ~~~ avolcano Considering that both of those are in private betas, I can't say either is really relevant to someone wanting to use a service right now. Kudos to sfard for actually launching something. ~~~ sfard avolcano, your comment makes me so happy. Nothing wrong with other blog platforms. I wont bash them. I'm just building throwww as something that I hope has value for people. ------ boomlinde Seems to me like a web browser is the last place you'd be able to pull off distraction-free anything. ~~~ dkasper you could use one of the various strategies for disabling access to distracting websites (hosts file, rescuetime, et al) while you were using this if it's really an issue. I think "distraction-free" was referring to the fact that the interface doesn't distract you with a bunch of bells and whistles though. ------ mrtbld I like it. But I was a bit surprised to see a commenting system in it. This isn't what I expected after having read "Why I Made Throwww" [1]. A blog-like commenting system is not what I would associate with simplicity, nor "the purity of just a message". Also, a little idea for easy improvement (IMHO): display the length of the text, i.e. the number of words and/or the time to read (e.g. based on a naive average of 250 words per minute [2]). [1] http://throwww.com/a/1 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reading_%28process%29#Reading_rate ------ laacz What I always check first for these tools, is support of partial unicode. And almost always I am faced with total ignorance of such. It's 21st century, guys. Post: <http://throwww.com/a/3nr> Screenshot (Chrome, win64): [http://www.flickr.com/photos/laacz/8357406754/in/photostream...](http://www.flickr.com/photos/laacz/8357406754/in/photostream/lightbox/) ------ sfard Hey everyone, thanks for the feedback. Based on what I've been hearing lately, I wrote a small article about throwww's direction. <http://throwww.com/a/45r> Comment if you want anything you don't see. Not promising it'll get built, but it might be something I haven't considered. Thanks again. ------ seanMeverett Looks great! The problem with all blogging platforms though is that we always focus on making the writing experience better rather than making the audience experience better. Give me this simplicity, plus a built in way for me to get eyeballs and I'm all yours! ------ cowsaysoink Very cool, this could be what svbtle should have been. If you implement the things like trending and subdomain user blogs (with things like domain hosting add-ons in the future) I could see it being a very useful blogging alternative. Nice work. ~~~ sfard Thanks, here's where throwww is going. You might like. <http://throwww.com/a/45r> ------ cheeaun Looks very clean. I wonder how do I upload images? Or is this only for pure text blogging? ~~~ Hemospectrum There are a handful of very popular sites for uploading _and hotlinking_ relatively small (under 2MB) images. Right now, imgur.com is probably the best-known. ~~~ cheeaun I think it would be better if the site handles all that for me. Having to switch to another site for uploading images is kinda 'distracting' to me. ~~~ sfard Agreed. Throwww was never originally supposed to have image support, but it seems pretty needed now. I'll add to to-do ------ hartator Pretty awesome, I love the simplicity. Curiosity. What have you used technically? ~~~ sfard Thanks. Django + Postgres + Javascript. ------ duck Very sweet interface and love the look. What is the market for these type of services though? Who uses them and why? I can't seem to think of a lot of use cases personally and hardly ever see anything linked from one. ------ zeynalov Add full-screen button for complete distraction-freeness. And there are some server errors, not sure why <http://throwww.com/a/337> ------ nicholalexander love the user page and writing experience. quick thoughts: formatting would be a distraction include "media box" (music/img/url/vimeo) would be nice to get lost inside of throwww following threads, authors, subjects... or else make twitter serve as the navigation through different "throwww's" maybe instead of downloading the posts, they "evaporate" within... 2 days? temporality is cool and goes along with the name. ------ akhilrex I used this tool only to share my comments <http://throwww.com/a/3h8> ------ pseingatl OK, I give up. I don't see any save button. I don't see any way to post. Lost one test file already. ~~~ usaphp Scroll down my friend. ------ baby I don't like the textarea field, if I write too much it scrolls and hide what I previously wrote. ------ Diamons Personally, I found the lack of an interface he most distracting part. It just didn't feel right. ------ pgsch everyone can delete other people's posts? (in anonymous mode) ~~~ sfard No... only your own. ~~~ milesokeefe If you guess someone else's url and they haven't logged in, you can in some cases delete their post. ------ drudru11 yet another paper plane logo :-)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Startup Quote: Dennis Crowley, co-founder, Foursquare - raychancc http://startupquote.com/post/4602710953 ====== raychancc Stop sketching and start building. \- Dennis Crowley (@dens) <http://startupquote.com/post/4602710953>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Moving our privacy advocacy forward to protect Australia and you - trulyrandom https://fastmail.blog/2019/02/28/aabill-and-fastmail/ ====== Ultramanoid > _FastMail’s business is not directly affected by this legislation_ Well, they have declared themselves that after the passing of this asinine law, they've lost customers, potential new customers have decided against signin up, and they are frequently asked to relocate to a different jurisdiction. They seem to be very directly affected by this in a business sense. Edit ： Extremely satisfied customer myself, by the way. And I take e-mail for what it is, privacy limitations and all. But worried nonetheless with this sort of thing. ------ jgowdy I don't get how this blog post helps anything. It seems like they're saying, we did what we can and we will keep trying but we're convinced most of you will just come to peace with it because there aren't a lot of better options (have you actually tried importing mailboxes of any size into ProtonMail?). No thanks. Much respect to the FastMail crew, and as an American I understand what it's like to have your government passing these kinds of laws. But this is WAY beyond what we've done in the US, in that it requires employees to accept being subverted. That's a bridge too far my friends. US access to international email is offensive, but mandated subversion of employees is ridiculous. I really hope for Australia to moderate their laws a bit, just like I hope the US will. But I don't think it makes sense to say "oh well" and keep using a provider in the law in question. Really sucks for the hard working people at FastMail, but I have to say no and recommend that others do the same. Employees of FastMail, has the company considered more internal controls to try to pick up on employee subversion issues? Even if I was conceptually okay with government mandated employee introduced back doors, how do we know the extent of the exposure? What if someone else gets in the same way? It's just way too much to write off in my opinion.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Challenges of Buling a Proptech Solution - OlaSola https://themasters.io/blog/posts/3-challenges-of-building-a-proptech-solution ====== mattyg23 Hey, I'm Matt, co-founder of HeyAgents.com.au ([https://heyagents.com.au/](https://heyagents.com.au/)) I'm new to this forum, but here to learn and help provide value and advice to other proptech founders!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The moral standards of wikileaks critics - JJMalina http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/01/wikileaks ====== cafard How was Eliot Spitzer more a threat to Wall Street as governor than he had been as prosecutor?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Randomness and Why I am No Longer a Fan of Coworking Spaces - rcavezza http://foundersblock.com/anecdotes/randomness-and-why-i-am-no-longer-a-fan-of-coworking-spaces/ ====== andrewjshults It seems that the new trend in "co-working" in NYC at least is towards startup focused spaces (e.g. Dogpatch Labs, General Assembly). Granted, the turn over may be even lower than the average co-working space (no numbers, but at Dogpatch NYC it's 6 months+ before you need to start looking for other space - there is actually going to be a fairly large turnover in the next month or so) but there is something to be said when everyone in the space is working on a company rather than just projects. It'll be interesting to see how these spaces develop, but from my experience at Dogpatch NYC, personally, I find them to be a great place for an early stage company.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
New US $100 bill to debut Tuesday - daegloe http://money.cnn.com/2013/10/07/news/economy/new-hundred-dollar-bill/index.html ====== skue It absolutely makes sense for the Treasury to generate new bills with technology/features that stays ahead of counterfeiters. But changing bills every several years can also produce unintended consequences. If new bills are constantly arriving while multiple generations of older bills remain in circulation, it's hard to know what exactly what we should be looking for with each bill. For counterfeiters, the best time to start generating old bills is probably right after the introduction of new ones. I'd like to think the government took this into account… ~~~ capecodcarl I've always wondered what incentive counterfeiters even have for trying to copy these new bills. I have several $100 bills from around 20 years ago that I keep in a safe as an emergency reserve and they're still legal tender as far as I know. Why wouldn't counterfeiters just continue to counterfeit the older bills? ~~~ alexeisadeski3 I think that the anti counterfeiters are planning decades ahead with each revision. Even the older Benjis are still very hard to counterfeit - all of these new changes are targeted almost exclusively at North Korea's advanced counterfeiting program. So decades ahead. ~~~ Wingman4l7 Are you referring to the Superdollar? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superdollar) ~~~ alexeisadeski3 Yep! :) The North Korean (supposed) counterfeiting operation is pretty fascinating all around. ------ fsckin Maybe in 20 more years we can switch to polymer banknotes with unique sizes for each denomination. ~~~ minikites We can't even get rid of the penny and the nickel, people would lose their mind if money changed size. ~~~ cclogg We got rid of the penny in Canada. Seemed pretty painless lol. Everything is rounded to 5 cents now. Also, I think we're a lot more guilty of changing our money's 'look' lol. USD looks quite old in comparison. ~~~ MartinCron I visited Canada a few weeks ago and was extremely impressed by both the lack of pennies and the polymer notes. Keep up the good work, neighbors! ~~~ alexeisadeski3 The polymer bills can melt in the dryer, or so I've been told. The hundreds smell like maple syrup - and that's not a joke. ~~~ sjtrny Rubbish. They don't melt in a clothes dryer. They're designed to withstand temps of well over 100 degrees Celsius (Ps why do Americans not air dry their clothes?). I've never heard of anything going wrong with the notes here in Australia. You can also get them wet without any issue, a far more common occurrence. The Maple Syrup thing is a joke. ~~~ alexeisadeski3 It's not a joke. It's a controversy. Haven't met a single person yet who doesn't smell maple on a fresh stack of hundreds. Speaking of rubbish, you do know that cloth notes aren't damaged by water, right? The polymer bills are a cost saving measure, and they're inferior (in term of resilience) to their cloth counterparts. ~~~ sjtrny Polymer bank notes last two and a half times longer than cotton based ones [http://www.bankofcanada.ca/2013/04/publications/press- releas...](http://www.bankofcanada.ca/2013/04/publications/press- releases/bank-canada-unveils-new-5-and-10-polymer-bank-notes/). They may not be damaged by water but they do get wet which is a pain. ------ VLM Critique it as a startup rollout: 1) We had the same bills from my grandpas age till mine, and suddenly over the past 20 years we're up to revision 4.0 or so. Confusing the endusers to no end. Although the API has remained constant what you get per bill has dropped quite a bit over those 20 years. Maybe the new 4.0 version should get me more groceries for my $100 rather than less each revision. 2) Same spokesman for each revision confuses upgraders. You got Franklin? Yeah I'm using Franklin. No dude thats the old version of Franklin, has some security bugs, you gotta upgrade before the economy gets powned. Can't they put something contemporary on it, like the Miley Cyrus bill or the 'Bama Bill? Or embed the year, like I got me an "2013 buck" because it has 2013 written in big ole automotive style letters? 3) They're doing a great job at rollout of focusing on the new features, but ignoring the old features. I need to know the API to verify the new bills are legit. A smart counterfeiter would focus solely on the new features and just print on toilet paper or something, half the public would probably buy it. A REALLY smart counterfeiter would start producing a run on version 5.0 $20 bills and most of the public would assume its actually upstream's product, seeing as upstream ships a new version about as often as Detroit ships a new model car now. 4) I'm not kidding around here, why do they use sequential serial numbers when a pub-key crypto signed serial number with a VERY private key would let us look at a bill and verify its a genuine signed serial number? Maybe not prove the bill is legit and uncopied, but at least you'd know its a copy of a good signed bill. They could publish a list of destroyed currency and rotate aggressively such that counterfeits would only circulate for awhile.. Unless of course the destroyed currency was the counterfeit and the cancelled one in your hand is the legit one... maybe thats why they don't do this. 5) As far as .coms go this startup needs a new art director. I'm not asking for kittens but lose the eye in the pyramid and flowery decorations and inkwells and eagles and try a QR code in one corner for vending machines (hey when the 70s stagflation hits and you want to buy a condom for $100 from the local vending machine, you'll be sorry...). 6) This seems to be the only branch that hasn't sold out naming rights. I halfway expect to see "Larry Ellison Bucks" and "HP 20s" at some point in my life. The "3com three dollar bill". As a startup they're leaving money on the table by not selling naming rights. At the bankruptcy Oracle will probably pick up the product for pennies on the dollar and freak out the GPL linux guys who'll fork into a bitcoin implementation on mariadb. 7) I don't think they're getting the tech news buzz they need. They need to send out fat stack of free samples to hacker news readers like me to create buzz. They should send out so many free samples that I can freely share them with friends. 8) Open source the code to generate? Why can't I print some at home to pay my debts, just like .gov does? Information just wants to be free. Speaking of which it needs a license I'm guessing not BSD or GPL not some CC:SA variety? 9) Is the new API compatible with existing players like "wheresgeorge.com" (are they still around?) ~~~ Osmium Regarding 4), as a thought experiment, I was wondering earlier how you'd authenticate the "trillion dollar coin." Hypothetically, it's possible to mint a one trillion dollar coin to get around the debt ceiling crisis[1]. It's an absurd idea anyway, but what if that coin was made and then lost. Someone says they've found it, but how do we know they're not lying and have just made a forgery? Assuming that all details of the coin (its exact elemental composition, dimensions, etc.) are publicly known, I thought a possible solution would be to take an electron microscope and image the grain structure[2] of the coin in a specific region (e.g. the eye of the statue of liberty? if that were on the coin). Then hash that grain structure (in a similar way to how one "hashes" fingerprints), sign that hash with a very-private-key, and laser etch the signature onto the coin. Since it's not possible to recreate exact grain structures, it'd be impossible to forge your coin :) Alternatively, you could probably introduce some specific radioactive isotope to definitively age the coin, such the time since the coin was minted could be definitively measured, and any attempt at forgery revealed, though I'm not sure how to make that work in practice. There are probably other solutions too, though I can't think of any off hand. There must be things people do already to authenticate high-value "natural" objects such as gemstones? Like a laser-etched serial number? I don't know... An absurd scenario I know, but an interesting thought experiment. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_dollar_coin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trillion_dollar_coin) [2] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_structure](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grain_structure) ~~~ VLM insert hypothetical hack proof perfect RFID cryptocard into a cavity of the coin and solder it up except for a small hole for RF to pass thru? Unless someone knew the secret private key they'd be unable to replicate it the crypto code? Hey crypto card, if you actually know the correct private key, you can hash this HN article number "6511347" OH OK dude here is the signed hash "342351315215154" OK let me test that... holy cow it worked. The real hack would probably be a legal one to embed some kind of national treasure into the coin to make it seized by .gov, so anyone that walks up with one can have it taken away or is counterfeiting. My guess is a little spec of moon dust in a glass capsule that can't be privately owned. Or a little piece chipped off the Washington Monument. ~~~ Osmium >insert hypothetical hack proof perfect RFID cryptocard into a cavity of the coin and solder it up except for a small hole for RF to pass thru? Then, hypothetically, why not have the "coin" be the cryptocard in the first place? and forgo this whole lump of metal thing. Probably because it's not robust in the long term. What happens when the RFID cryptocard, eventually, fails? I like the moon dust idea though :) ~~~ thaumasiotes Hypothetically, it's because the authorizing statute specifies that the coin must be platinum (or put another way, the statute only authorizes the minting of "platinum coins"). ~~~ VLM I haven't done much hi-temp thermocouple work... anyone know how easy it is to solder to platinum with "real" or lead-free solder? Electroplate a round cryptocard PCB and solder it together? I know solder sticks very well to gold after some unfortunate accidents (keep the solder away from the plated contacts when assembling, etc) so this would work for a "gold" coin. ~~~ Osmium You can solder _with_ platinum directly, in a manner of speaking (it won't be 100% platinum, and it also requires much higher temperatures than ordinary solder). ------ dkuntz2 It looks like they threw everything they could think of onto the bill. It looks terrible... ------ runamok I thought this might be of interest to the HN crowd. According to my girlfriend the color changing tech comes from JDSU, a local bay area company. Here is some (fairly dry) info: [http://blogs.jdsu.com/perspectives/archive/tags/Anti- Counter...](http://blogs.jdsu.com/perspectives/archive/tags/Anti- Counterfeiting%20Technology/default.aspx) [http://www.jdsu.com/en- us/Authentication-Solutions/markets/b...](http://www.jdsu.com/en- us/Authentication-Solutions/markets/banknotes/Pages/default.aspx) [http://www.jdsu.com/en-us/advanced-optical- technologies/Page...](http://www.jdsu.com/en-us/advanced-optical- technologies/Pages/default.aspx) ------ teek And maybe one day the we'll actually write the numbers on our coins so they can be friendlier to visitors... ~~~ eropple You mean like how the quarter says "QUARTER DOLLAR"? And how the nickel says "FIVE CENTS"? ("ONE DIME" is kind of dumb, I'll give you that.) ~~~ tanzam75 Most nations put Arabic numerals on their coins. ------ just2n How much money do counterfeiters cost us, anyway? Even if they have, to date, inserted only $70,000,000 of counterfeit bills, the impact to inflation is minimal, and really it only hurts a few individuals here and there who aren't able to circulate the bills. But how can you measure this impact, and, if we don't fight it, what would its projected potential impact be? Then I'm curious about these questions: 1\. Is this the most cost efficient method to deal with it? It seems a bit silly, to me, as this is a game of cat and mouse, and those tend to be very expensive in the long run, if you want to win. 2\. Would it be worth investing in a digital solution such that a bill could be copied, but only one copy of that bill can ever be recirculated, so you could "back up" your money, digitally, then re-print it somewhere else, but you could never spend it more than once, as a general solution to counterfeiting? 3\. Would either of these actually save more money than just ignoring the problem? 4\. 100% digital? Maybe not online as a requirement, but definitely tap your card to transfer funds to someone? Why do we still have paper bills anyway, with multiple demonstrated cryptographic protocols that could replace them entirely? ~~~ gbhn I don't understand why we still mint a $100. It's the prime counterfeiting target, is mostly used overseas, and is too big for real commercial value. It seems like just having the $20 be the largest bill would overcome all these problems. ~~~ secabeen $100s have plenty of commercial value. Any time you're exchanging physical things of high value, cash is key. Cashiers checks, etc., can and are forged. Also, gamblers regularly walk around with 10s of thousands of dollars on them. ~~~ mjn That's one thing I like about Danish money; the 500 kr note (~$90) and 200 kr note (~$35) are both common and regularly used. Makes it much more convenient to use cash for things like groceries or restaurants without having to carry around a thick wallet full of wads of $20s. Sure, many people use cards too, but you don't have to if you prefer cash. ~~~ nickbarnwell The greatly increased CoL in Denmark also somewhat necessitates the prevalence of larger denominations. ~~~ mjn I don't find much difference in CoL between the Bay Area and Copenhagen. If anything it's slightly cheaper in Denmark (more expensive restaurants, but cheaper rent). If you're comparing median U.S. CoL, sure, but even in high-CoL areas like San Francisco and New York City, $100 bills seem rare, despite the fact that >$100 tabs at NYC restaurants are not exactly rare. The difference seems to be that Americans are wary of larger amounts of cash, so use a card for anything nontrivial (or among older people, a personal check), while Danes can go either way, depending on personal preference. I'd blame it on the difference in mugging rates, probably. ------ Amadou Obligatory stories of a Taco Bell employee refusing to accept a $2 bill and a Best Buy employee having a guy arrested for paying with $2 bills. (plus more currency anecdotes linked from the bottom of the article) [http://www.snopes.com/business/money/tacobell.asp](http://www.snopes.com/business/money/tacobell.asp) ------ LandoCalrissian I would have never have thought $100 bills would be more common than $20 bills. ~~~ ajb They are not more common in general use. They're more common in suitcases full of notes. ~~~ hclee It can contain much more dollar value at same sized locker. ------ elnate As someone who lives in a western nation outside the US, I never use non electronic currency. Why do you still carry around so much easy to steal paper money when a debit card is so much more secure? ------ ucha Maybe a silly question... but what prevents counterfeiters from making false copies of the old bill if the new bill is harder to counterfeit? ~~~ mcpherrinm Presumably the old one will be taken out of circulation as they go through banks, so in a few years anyone with a large quantity of "old" bills will be heavily scrutinized for fakes. Canada's old bills had a pretty big forgery problem, and nobody will accept old 50s/100s. ~~~ _delirium This is particularly true outside the US. In much of Asia, banks (and anyone else who might accept dollars) strongly prefer crisp, new US bills, and heavily scrutinize or reject old bills. ------ viraj_shah "The bills took more than a decade to develop.." I wonder if they had a dedicated team to work on this for 10+ years. Meanwhile Mars rovers can be built in less than 5 years. Hilarity. Source: [http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-57606401/new-$100-bil...](http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-57606401/new-$100-bills- to-start-circulating-tomorrow/) ~~~ lliiffee I have to disagree. The potential downside for a flaw in the new bill could be rather catastrophic damage to the economy. The downside of a failure with the Mars rover is that the rover just doesn't work. Thus, it makes sense to be dramatically more conservative in designing a new currency. ~~~ viraj_shah Alright, I was quick to judge and there is no way of knowing how many people worked on it or what technology is included. However, 10+ years is a heck of a long time to work on the bill and I'm not sure taking more time on something necessarily insures that it is the best. But I will concede on the grounds that this is one of those situations that you can't just iterate on. It works or it doesn't and the consequences of failure are incredibly high. ~~~ dagw There are many definitions of "work on". Perhaps the first 5 years was just a couple of people spending a couple of hours a week keeping up with the latest state of the art since they knew that eventually they'd probably be replacing some bill in the next decade or so. ------ adventured I'm convinced that one of their goals is to discourage counterfeiting by making our bills as ugly as possible. /s ------ mariusz79 If the US defaults in 10 days, there may be only few of these bills in circulation. It may be a good investment :) ------ hawkharris There's no denying that Franklin was a genius, but should our society honor a slave owner by putting his face on currency? That's a serious question. I think Franklin's legacy is clouded by some moral ambiguity: his innovations were incredible, he fought for abolition and yet he didn't walk the talk. Is that a mistake we should overlook in remembering him? ~~~ thurn We should be careful to avoid presentism, applying modern moral standards to somebody who lived over 200 years ago. By the standards of his time, Franklin was unquestionably a great man. ~~~ hawkharris You can justify almost any instance of slavery or genocide by arguing that the perpetrators acted according to the standards of their time and communities. ~~~ agwa He's not justifying Franklin's slaveholding, he's justifying Franklin as a person. It's silly to discount everything great Franklin did because he held a position on slavery that was no worse than the prevalent opinion of the time. Most of the "bad" people in history (e.g. Hitler, Pol Pot) acted worse than the standards of their time. Nobody's justifying them or their actions with this logic. ~~~ hawkharris I agree that no one should discout Franklin's inventions and great ideas. That's why I was careful to mention them in my comment. But I take issue with forgetting about this one aspect of Franklin's character because he was simply following the standards of his time. The question is, standards for whom? Affluent white people? The standards certainly weren't acceptable to black Americans. I know that I may sound nit-picky, but I think it's important to apply our current sense of morality to this period in American history. When we gloss over the uncomfortable details, we gloss over some of the lessons. ------ moneyrich4 can i get a code for beta access plz? ~~~ VLM Just download a torrent and use your own copies; I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that plan?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Use work-computer at home or have your own computer? - BobCoder My own computer has become unbearably slow and old. I am torn about buying a new computer or use the computer that has been provided by my company. The computer I have been provided with is very good and would be same one I buy for myself if I choose to do so. It is also very expensive which is why I am not sure if it is a waste of money to go buy a new one when I have already been provided with one. My main reason for buying a new computer for myself is the practicality comfort of not having to bring a computer back and forth from home to work every day (+ cable management).<p>I have thought about buying a cheaper computer but I am not sure that is a good option for me. I am into concurrent and parallel programming and the projects I work on at work require much memory => highend expensive computer needed.<p>What do people on HN do? ====== moocow01 BUY YOUR OWN... or at worst buy and don't pay in full if you need something high end. Id even go as far as to say that you should try to perform all your employment-related work on your own computer if you can get away with it. In most companies, company provided computers are or can be heavily monitored with the flip of a switch. Anything you potentially do could be used against you in a review or change in relationship with the company. Not only that but an employer can lay claim to anything you do being that it is their property your using <\- this one even applies in California. Im usually a cheap ass but on this one spend the money. ------ informatimago You should have your own. Anything that is done on your employer's computer is OWNED by your employer! So actually, you should have your personal computer at work, to perform private tasks. Well, no, you shouldn't, you shouldn't perform private tasks at work. ------ detaro Also check your companies' rules and local laws: A work device they probably can take back whenever they want, clone it, might be allowed to look through all files on it, they might have to give its contents up for law suits or audits... Here in Germany many companies prohibit private use of devices or accounts because they want/need the ability to check their contents without having to worry about breaking privacy laws while doing so. ~~~ greenyoda In the U.S., that's also true. If you ever get fired or laid off or suspected of leaking confidential information, they'll want their machine back on the spot. You won't have a chance to get your own files back. (If you refuse to give it back, they can prosecute you for theft.) At that point they'll have access to your browsing history and any other information that forensic software can find. Same is true of a company-owned cell phone. Also, you should also avoid using your employee e-mail account for personal stuff, since that content is also your company's property.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Entrepreneurs and Risk - jasonlbaptiste http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/running_small_business/archives/2009/08/entrepreneurs_a.html ====== wglb One person's calculated risk is another persons sheer terror. If you have been employed by a midwestern insurance giant for 20 years, your idea of risk might be heavily influenced by gartner, and you think in terms of "best of breed" and look for approaches that are "mature". If you are familiar with the field, and familiar with what you can do, you dive into building the key part yourself--something that never existed before and therefore has infinite gartner risk. And you are going to build your business on this? My point is that the article shows how a different point of view about the risk of something if you are running your venture.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tech workers say poor leadership is number one cause for burnout - Raj7k http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech-workers-say-poor-leadership-is-number-one-cause-for-burnout/ ====== throwawayamzn7 I know of a team (~20 devs, a handful of managers) in the middle of a fantastic experiment in burning out the developers. First, a new remote senior leader took over. He doesn't visit the team or understand them well. He puts pressure on the managers to deliver projects that make his bosses happy by looking sexy, even if they cause more operational issues for the customers. Operational issues = oncall hell, so more devs burn out and quit. The experiment is going great. Phase two began recently. Of the three remaining managers, one quit and one was fired for not brown nosing to the remote senior leader enough. (Push back on bullshit projects? That can't be allowed). The single remaining manager is the ultimate brown noser who happily causes his devs on call hell in order to make senior leadership happy. The devs are all looking elsewhere for work. The general mood is in a freefall. People are taking long vacations away in cities that also have lots of tech jobs. It's all a fantastic experiment in how to implode a software organization. I really hope to meet the control group some day- they won't believe how lucky they are. ~~~ lovich What is with companies denying remote work but then bringing in some level of management that works remotely? I've seen happen it in a few places and it feels like animal farm half the time ~~~ 0xJRS Worked a job at a startup once that had a 40hr "butt-in-seat" policy. The PM would be the one to record the exact time you sat down, the exact length of your lunch, and the exact time you left. This also included breaks. There would be a report to management every Friday and then a 1 on 1 with the manager if he didn't "like" what he saw. ~~~ 0xJRS Oh, our manager _and_ our CTO lived 2 states away and were flown in every tuesday through thursday. ------ vladgiverts There are so many articles that blame leadership for all that ails a company. To me, it seems a bit like saying "most program crashes are caused by runtime errors". While both are true, there are deeper explanations that can be more helpful in starting a discussion. In the case of crashing a program, maybe it's because of a misused raw pointer or a type error in an untyped language. As soon as you frame it that way, you immediately see possible paths forward to improve the situation. In the case of burnout at companies, I've found it has more to do with the mindset of the top leaders (who other managers down the chain tend to emulate). The mindset is that the company is "a machine", which makes the rest of us "cogs" (or pick your favorite machine part). The leaders may be perfectly nice and considerate people in general (or not), but regardless, the company-as-machine mindset leads them to set aside their humanity in the interests of the company. All of sudden everyone on the team needs to be replaceable, have predictably high output, etc. Those might be fine concerns for a business, but they end up blinding managers to the flesh and blood human beings in front of them and they start to see employees as the means to the greater business ends of output, productivity, growth, etc. I believe this is an issue of human development that affects most companies eventually. Only companies with really developed leaders who, when faced with serious pressure, are able to see people as the unique and complex beings that they are and not make people feel like they somehow don't matter at a fundamental level. ~~~ shadowsun7 This opinion is nice but not actionable. That means that it is less useful if you are in the role of an employer, wanting to reduce burnout in your org. See my comment below for _actual mental models you can use_ to prevent burnout in your organisation.[1] I personally find JD-R more useful, because it prescribes a model of 'jobs demands outstripping job resources', which then implies that you as manager can seek ways to increase job resources to help your employees cope. This at least suggests a direction for trial and error. Adopting the attitude of 'all people are unique and complex beings that matter' may be nice, but it doesn't prescribe action. Therefore, it isn't as useful as 'think of burnout as JD-R or COR and perform experiments according to those models, pausing each quarter to see if burnout-related turnover has decreased'. [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17850532](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17850532) ~~~ vinceguidry In absence of leadership, the tool firms use to solve coordination problems is management. A leader from this perspective is simply a better manager. Better at all the tasks of coordinating human activity, reading when people are feeling down, better at inspiring them, better at breaking apart complex tasks into routine ones that the ICs can more easily understand. But leaders are practically impossible to reliably hire at rates the business owner can realistically afford, and if the whole zeitgeist of business starts paying more for effective leadership, then that just makes the problem a hundred times worse. Leadership isn't teachable, but management is. Learning management will teach you the rudimentary skills of coordinating people to accomplish a goal, but it won't by itself make you a leader. Firms can hire more managers, that solves the problem, I call a team with more than one competent manager, 'well-managed'. But good managers, like good leaders, wind up getting overworked across projects and so they just miss things. A leader doesn't miss anything, they're laser focused on the overall business goals of the project. ~~~ vladgiverts I agree that leadership isn’t “teachable” in the same sense that a skill or piece of knowledge is. But it can be supported and cultivated. It’s what I do for a living as a leadership coach. I don’t actually instruct anyone how to lead, but rather give them them the opportunity to discover it for themselves. I’ve seen pretty meaningful shifts for people on the timescale of 3-6 months. ~~~ dsajames Leadership is very teachable. The military and other large organizations that need leadership that can't be gotten off the street invest in it. Few orgs want to teach it because it costs money and the ROI is poor if the subject jumps ship. The military doesn't have this problem to the same degree for obvious reasons, but for companies that require common skill sets, it's a tough decision. ~~~ vladgiverts It depends what you mean teachable. When a leader is when faced with a serious challenge, the crux of great leadership is being able to set one’s own ego aside and act from a place of groundedness and a clear and objective view of reality. When human beings are in a difficult situation they all too often try to comfort themselves by seeking praise/affirmation, stability/safety, connection/relationship, etc. And in those moments we see everyone around us as a means to the end of getting one of those things that we feel is missing for us. Our ego _is_ our personality. We’re fused with it and most of the time aren’t even aware that we have these impulses. Great leaders are the ones who develop an awareness of their inner world and are able to set it aside when they need to act. Can you teach this? Sort of. There are people who do. You can call what people like me do as a kind of teaching. But it requires someone more than just instruction and practice. The person doing the “learning” has to be willing to let go of parts of themselves that had been with them for most of their life. I’ve found mere desire to be a better leader is not enough. People’s psychology is riddled with land mines and powerful defense that won’t let them abandon a deeply held belief just because someone taught them that it was somehow counterproductive. The people that make the leap are usually feeling “stuck” or having some kind of recurring breakdown that they just can’t bear anymore and don’t know what else to do. ------ Sacho Here's the primary source for the survey in question: [http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech- workers-...](http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech-workers-say- poor-leadership-is-number-one-cause-for-burnout/) How useful is a survey like this? The survey does not define burnout to employees, leaving them to guess at the definition. Can employees reliably self-diagnose burnout and differentiate it from similar conditions - i.e. actual depression? Can they also reliably indicate __the cause __for the burnout, especially if the symptoms can overlap with the cause? Let 's say you have burnout because of work overload, but you normally don't mind doing tons of work, just hate your boss. When the feelings of exhaustion/anger come up, will you point them at the work load or at your boss? Perhaps you could relabel it as a survey on workplace discontent, but even then, I don't think it's really well made. The problem with statistical data like this is that we can see the primary source and temper our enthusiasm for the accuracy of the survey, down the broken telephone line, it will be taken as gospel(see the wage gap/sexual harassment statistics as examples). ~~~ JohnBooty > The survey does not define burnout to employees, leaving them to guess at the definition. This sort of self-reporting is accepted in psychology. The way you determine a subject's happiness is to ask them how happy they feel. Think about how a more rigorous alternative might work. 1\. We come up with some more precise definition of "burnout." Perhaps we define it as "an average of X 'frustration' events in the workplace over Y days, combined with a steadily declining sense of 'enthusiasm'" 2\. OK, great, but now we need precise definitions of 'frustration' and 'enthusiasm.' Is 'frustration' the momentary frustration we feel when the compiler complains about something? Is it a barely-restrained feeling of wanting to smash one's keyboard over somebody's face? For how many seconds should that feeling be experienced to qualify? Likewise with 'enthusiasm.' Same problem we had in step 1. 3\. Alternatively, we could monitor people's cortisol levels, blood pressure levels, and have them spend their workdays in an fMRI machine or something. Although even that would have limitations; that seems more likely to measure acute symptoms than something chronic like "burnout." > Can employees reliably self-diagnose burnout and differentiate it from similar conditions - i.e. actual depression? With a sufficiently large sample size this wouldn't matter. As you say, surely x% of respondents will confuse depression with burnout. However, the value of x% will surely be nearly the same at all companies. ------ DrinkWater Poor Leadership is also the number one cause for parting ways with a company. For me personally, there was never another reason to leave a company. I never experienced a toxic environment or had colleagues i couldn't stand. It was always the leadership ~~~ blitmap You've never experienced inconsiderate coworkers? Like coworkers who talk loudly on the phone in a nearby work area, coworkers with hygiene issues, coworkers who don't carry their weight or respond well to training? ~~~ rejschaap All of these issues should be addressed by the manager. ~~~ paulie_a Or potentially addressed directly. I've had a couple occasions where I literally told a sexual harassing manager to "go fuck himself" twice. (He was harassing the women at the office) At another company I was politely confronted about a comment I had made, we talked it out. It was unintentionally insulting and we acted as adults and I realized why he brought it up. ------ kabdib I left my last job largely because of this. Exec-levels couldn't decide on a technical direction for the next big version of a major consumer product, then chose a _very bad_ strategy, which took nearly a year to change to something sane. Well, at least less crazy. Meanwhile, the competition is not stupid and is not crazy and is not waiting for us to get our act together. Suddenly we have a year to do the thing that the worker-bee level Cassandras were saying was the right thing to do in the first place. Maybe 14 months to bring up hardware, port or write three major hunks of software, get third parties ramped up on development, write tools and do the million things you need to do to ship. Oh, and the team writing the OS we're mandated to use has been ordered not to talk to us and has gone dark, removing our access to their releases and documentation. So there's a meeting of all the software folks, and management tells us "Okay guys, the next year is going to be hell. You'll be allowed to take vacation, probably, we'll tell you when." I'd seen this coming and was sitting in the back of the room with an offer letter in my pocket, trying not to be angry because a bunch of people I like working with a lot are getting shafted. I should be elated at the offer (which is quite good), but instead I just feel sad. I leave. Six months later one of my friends working on the project sends me a picture of his front lawn. He has been unable to find the time or energy to mow it and it is 18 inches high. Eventually they ship (late, of course), to lackluster reviews. My friend has since moved on; most of the people I know there have. They don't like talking about that year-long deathmarch, followed by a year of patching the living crap out of things in the field and struggling for market share. Meanwhile, the competition's product does very, very well. Last I checked, the latest crop of execs there were gunning for the same crazy. Maybe technology has moved on sufficiently and the specific crazy is possible now, but I have numbers indicating things are pretty much the same. I don't know which side to cheer for. Where do they get these lunatics? ~~~ bittcto I believe they hire those “lunatics” because it’s believed that engineers can’t understand business. As an engineer that has started businesses this is BS. It’s really easy to learn business skills, sales and marketing are not difficult, finance is laughably easy. But so long as the companies are being formed to sell equity to VCs you will see them led by frat boys who the VC frat boys recognize... and they will abuse engineers. My solution- stop working for anyone who isn’t technically competent or at least recognizes engineering needs enough to get out of the way and support being efficient. ~~~ ganoushoreilly I half agree, the reality is sales is a tradecraft honed over time. If it were as easy as implied, many more of the _Tech_ founders here on HN would have had their businesses succeed. The truth of the matter is, the us vs them mentality is just as damaging as one side being arrogant. The only way for a good team to work is for each to recognize strengths and weaknesses and for leadership to keep things level headed. ~~~ kabdib I remember being at a startup full of engineers, and us trying to hire a salesperson. Years at big companies taught me contempt for marketing and sales. But there's nothing like finding _good_ marketing and _good_ sales when you're six months to financial destruction . . . ~~~ bittcto Yes, and early in my career I was a technical sales person for a product I built... paired with a pure sales person. I don’t mean to say there was no value to his skills— but I am saying that it was not hard for me to understand enough about sales to hire a good sales person. They would of course be a better sales person than me. The problem is people think your CEO should be a sales person and that’s s mistake. Sales is a process that’s easy to replicate. Creating a novel software application isn’t. Ate hnicwl CEO can hire a great chief sales guy. A non-technical CEO can’t hire a CTO and often ends up undermining the product. I would have no problem being hands off with the sales department. I have yet to meet a Non technical CEO who doesn’t think he knows how to design products. ~~~ shanghaiaway Have yet to meet a technical CEO who does not think they know sales, marketing, design, etc. ------ dunkelheit Misleading title: the original survey question is "What is the main source of employee burnout at your current workplace?". Positive answer to this question doesn't mean that the person answering the question is himself burnt out. ~~~ Raj7k So, I took this title from NextBigWhat. I haven't manufactured this by myself ~~~ bartread [EDIT] Removed previous comment as the parent apparently missed the [via] link at the bottom of the article, the same as I did. ------ shadowsun7 This is a woefully inadequate article, and a woefully inadequate survey. So what if 'poor leadership' is the number one cause for burnout? That insight isn't useful. As an employee, I'd like to figure out how to avoid burnout. And as a employer, I'm not sure how to reduce burnout — get better leadership? How do I do that? But it turns out there are good ideas we can try that may be found in the academic literature. Context: I was writing up my process for preventing burnout recently ([https://commoncog.com/blog/nuanced-take-on-preventing- burnou...](https://commoncog.com/blog/nuanced-take-on-preventing-burnout/)), and I took some time to look into the academic literature for burnout, to see if it highlighted anything I'd missed. I'll give a quick summary: 1\. The standard test for burnout today is something called the Maslach Burnout Inventory [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslach_Burnout_Inventory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslach_Burnout_Inventory), and it measures burnout along three metrics: exhaustion, inefficacy, and cynicism. a) Exhaustion: described as wearing out, loss of energy, depletion, debilitation, and fatigue. b) Inefficacy: described as reduced productivity or capability. c) Cynicism: negative or inappropriate attitudes towards clients, irritability, loss of idealism, and withdrawal. 2\. The MBI is a descriptive model, which helps you identify burnout, but we need a developmental model as well (e.g. what are the various stages of burnout?). The early models of burnout described the pathway as three stages: 1. job stressors (an imbalance between work demands and individual resources), then 2. individual strain (an emotional response of exhaustion and anxiety), and then 3). defensive coping (changes in attitudes and behavior, such as greater cynicism). Or, to put this simply: first your job demands too much of you, then you feel anxious and emotionally exhausted, then you cope by becoming cynical about work, and then you quit. 3\. Maslach found that development of cynicism is the biggest predictor of burnout-related turnover. If you're cynical about your job, you're pretty likely to think about quitting or to actually quit soon. ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19426369](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19426369)) 4\. If you look at the literature today, however, you'll find that most burnout research has converged on two development models: the Job Demands‐Resources (JD‐R) model ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_demands- resources_model](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Job_demands-resources_model)) and the Conservation of Resources (COR) model ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_resources_theo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_of_resources_theory)). I'll leave you to read the respective Wikipedia articles, but the takeaway from both of them is that burnout results from when the resources provided by the job are outstripped by the demands of the job. As a CEO or manager, your best bet to reducing burnout is to increase the list of job resources described in JD-R, that is: > physical, psychological, social, or organisational aspects of the job that > are either or: functional in achieving work goals; reduce job demands and > the associated physiological and psychological cost; stimulate personal > growth, learning, and development. Examples are, career opportunities, > supervisor coaching, role-clarity, and autonomy. As an employee, your best bet to reducing burnout is to increase personal resources (which are different from job-provided resources in the JD-R model). But the problem here is that the research doesn't yet know if there are effective techniques in increasing personal resources. Why? Well ... 5\. There are only two decades or so worth of research into burnout, and the research was primarily centered around the care-giving professions. Consequently, early models of burnout were thought to stem from social exhaustion (e.g. nurses and doctors dealing with death, or grief); in a 2016 retrospective review article ([https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4911781/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4911781/)), Maslach herself write that this is an active field of research, and they don't yet know if you can train someone to be more resistant to burnout. There are some interesting research directions, though. I found this paragraph in an undergrad paper from Australia (where apparently half of the nurses there leave the profession prematurely, mostly due to burnout): > Rather, failure to recover consistently from such work stresses (in non-work > time) is a crucial determinant of chronic (maladaptive) fatigue and burnout > evolution (Winwood et al. 2007). When such recovery is effected > consistently, physiological toughness (Dienstbier 1989,1991) and enhanced > stress resistance is developed, with improved performance at work, better > sleep and reduced maladaptive health outcomes (Dienstbier 1991).While some > individuals may achieve this spontaneously, far more may beneﬁt from speciﬁc > training to do so effectively and consistently. The Winwood paper may be found here: [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17693784](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17693784) but it's unclear if they've found a set of techniques that work for most people in most professions. I'm still reading up. PS: I have a technique that I use myself, but it's unclear that it would work for everyone. I wrote it up here: [https://commoncog.com/blog/nuanced-take-on- preventing-burnou...](https://commoncog.com/blog/nuanced-take-on-preventing- burnout/). It's certainly protected me from burnout in startupland over the years. But, as I've mentioned, I'm interested in the research because the goal there is to find a set of general techniques that would work for most people. My technique has a sample size of one. ~~~ padolsey Thank you for writing this all up. I found this all really interesting but one question remains: what should we do when we have burnout? It's easy enough to say "just employ one of your coping mechanisms" but presumably there are real resentments underlying the situation? I guess this is the crux really. Is burnout merely an arbitrary expression of exhaustion and overwork, which carries thoughts and resentments that may seem 'real' but are really just manifestations of stress? Or are the resentments in any way real? If they're real, I personally feel they need to be tackled in a way beyond mere coping. ~~~ zoomablemind The resentment may come from mismatch between personal and job goals. It could be anything, projects, salary, bosses, colleagues. It may be clear from the beginning, or pop mid-course. With no resolution to the mismatch, it leads to self-repression of the resentment, then to cynicism, and indeed it saps away emotional energy to manage this. So, it's important to be aware of how the job vs personal goals match. Making the job expectation known to the superiors may as well help keeping the balance. Btw, brown-nosing is a form of negotiation, sure it's not the only way. Otherwise the burn-out will be more self-inflicted. Also, there're cases that may have no practical ways to balance (culture fit). In this case setting to oneself a limited time-frame to attempt finding the balance (improving the job goals). Then declare 'mission accomplished' and move on (taking the side of personal goals). Low and time-wasteful work-load (9-5) may as much lead to burn-out as the sweatshop slavery kind. But both environments have those that would flourish there. ------ titzer Number one by a hair. 23% leadership vs. 19% overwork. Interesting to see the per-company breakdown. I wonder about the sample size. Blind seems like a promising avenue for getting sentiment analysis inside of companies, but there is a pretty serious sampling bias, as many who sign up for Blind might already be feeling disillusioned. ~~~ imglorp Overwork is also leadership: they're setting the unrealistic schedules and they're communicating expectations that people meet are supposed to meet these schedules. By contrast there are other places where management goes around at quitting time and throws everyone out. ~~~ bittcto I’ve seen many software companies where for months on end each week more than a weeks worth of new work is added to the product, without changing the deadline, because “management” keeps deciding therecare new features that are critical and they can be just slipped right in. If you tell them they are going to increase the time it takes or lower quality, you’re “not cooperative” or “not a team player”....or they tell you they will take the quality hit... but when there are any problems in the delivered product it’s the teams fault, of course. ------ BrandonBradley Where is lack of vacation time categorized into this? There are too many answers. ~~~ 0xJRS That would be added to management ------ greenleafjacob 91% of employees who have blind installed. Selection bias. ~~~ stephengillie That means it's young engineers at FAANG saying this. ~~~ tehlike It also means employees who are not necessarily happy. ------ yourbandsucks More interesting result: broken out by company, the "poor leadership and lack of direction" answer ranges from 15-35% of the vote, and it's the companies with a very public lack of direction that top the list. Meanwhile, Facebook and Uber get great scores on the measure. ------ alpeb Tech leadership is extremely hard. You either get at one extreme the MBA trained to think producing sugared beverages is equivalent to producing software, and at the other the formerly great coder that couldn't metamorphose himself to be able to manage people. Having all the required qualities is extremely rare. ------ TAForObvReasons Original source: [http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech- workers-...](http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech-workers-say- poor-leadership-is-number-one-cause-for-burnout/) ------ tabtab There's not enough bottom-up feedback in selecting and rewarding managers. Top-down-only evaluations skew behavior. An org should survey EVERYONE about their boss(es) every 6 months or so, and the bosses should be held accountable for improving their weak areas. ------ beeskneecaps I have seen evidence that Blind is a major source of toxicity at many companies. I would recommend not installing the app as it only serves to make you feel burned out. ------ CommanderData The five keys to a successful team based on Google research. [https://www.inc.com/michael-schneider/google-thought-they- kn...](https://www.inc.com/michael-schneider/google-thought-they-knew-how-to- create-the-perfect.html) "Google’s “Project Artistotle” investigates why some teams work better than others. Its analysis shows that the combination of individuals making up the group is unimportant. Instead, a team’s “group norms” – its “traditions, behavioral standards and unwritten rules” – are essential to how well the group performs. _Teams are successful if their group norms lead to equal speaking time for all individuals within the group and an awareness of others’ emotional states._ These factors produce a situation in which members of the group feel comfortable, or “safe,” and therefore more willing to contribute. Google’s data show that what Harvard business professor Amy Edmondson called “psychological safety” within the group leads to an increase in the group’s collective IQ and therefore its effectiveness and productivity." "1\. Dependability. Team members get things done on time and meet expectations. 2\. Structure and clarity. High-performing teams have clear goals, and have well-defined roles within the group. 3\. Meaning. The work has personal significance to each member. 4\. Impact. The group believes their work is purposeful and positively impacts the greater good. Yes, that's four, not five. The last one stood out from the rest: 5\. Psychological Safety. We've all been in meetings and, due to the fear of seeming incompetent, have held back questions or ideas. I get it. It's unnerving to feel like you're in an environment where everything you do or say is under a microscope. But imagine a different setting. A situation in which everyone is safe to take risks, voice their opinions, and ask judgment-free questions. A culture where managers provide air cover and create safe zones so employees can let down their guard. That's psychological safety. I know, not the quantitative data that you were hoping for. However, Google found that teams with psychologically safe environments had employees who were less likely to leave, more likely to harness the power of diversity, and ultimately, who were more successful. Engineering the perfect team is more subjective than we would like, but focusing on these five components increases the likelihood that you will build a dream team. Through its research, Google made the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle proud by proving, "The whole can be greater than the sum of its parts." _Teams are successful if their group norms lead to equal speaking time for all individuals within the group and an awareness of others’ emotional states._ I think this is tricky if a problem and observably true. The teams I've been involved with mesh easier when each are able to commune easily and this normally means equal chances speaking time. Whenever I've seen an imbalance I can safely say it is because the person had obvious narcissistic personality traits which were always destructive long term. ~~~ crispyambulance > But imagine a different setting. A situation in which everyone is safe to take risks, voice their opinions, and ask judgment-free questions. A culture where managers provide air cover and create safe zones so employees can let down their guard. That's psychological safety. That's all really nice, but it does conflict with #1 and #2. Being able to "take risks" means that sometimes there's failure and consequences that lead to projects NOT getting done on time, NOT meeting expectations. Also, there's a fine line between having members with "well-defined roles" and silo-ed divisions where people literally don't talk other teams unless there's a "hand-off" (yep, people still use that word). On the other hand, to have a really good team, you need folks that will actually listen to outsiders who might not be formally or organizationally qualified. You need people that will jump in and do stuff even when it's "not their job". I am all in favor of the intent of these rules, but applying them takes a level of nuance that the vast majority of organizations simply can't pull off. That's OK. ------ liftbigweights Nah. Tech workers burnout for the same reason nurses, cops, accountants and everyone else burns out. The drudgery of the work not meeting your expectations ( cool hacker vs office code monkey ), the open-ended nature of the work ( you will be doing this for the next few decades ), the awareness of time ( or how much of it you are wasting away at work ) and the pittance you get relative to what the company gets. Goodness. I can't believe it's already labor day weekend. Where does the time go. ~~~ indigochill Maybe in some cases. Having been through leadership ups and downs within the same company (and even same team!) however, for my case it really is about leadership. When I'm happy: We solicit projects from stakeholders on other teams without development resources. They negotiate among each other to decide task prioritization (our manager facilitates). We'll consult on the scope of requests. Usually stakeholders overestimate the work involved and we can make them happy right from the start by promising delivery in a fraction of the time they expected (while still leaving plenty of time for the inevitable unexpected. Projects are usually things that have been a pain for a long time, so people are happy when they're fixed but they're not usually urgent. Is it mundane? Sure, usually. Although we do have the latitude to spice things up if we can fit something cool in within the allotted time. When I'm unhappy: Executives have knee-jerked into another hairbrained scheme that they'll drop in six months (if we're lucky, without another round of layoffs). Nevertheless, it's all hands on deck so we're yanked off everything else to support the "new vision". I do also think sometimes about the value of programmers vs. what they're paid, but I also know that if I think I can do better I'm always free to try. I personally prefer the security of a steady job and freedom from business operation headaches. Maybe one day that'll change, but we'll see. ------ bartread Could we _please_ change this headline? At the moment it's pure clickbait. "91% Employees Experience Burnout" implies that 91% of employees suffer from burnout, whereas - firstly - there is no data in the article to indicate that this is the case. Secondly, the question that comes closest to the 91% answer is "What is the main source of employee burnout at your current workplace?", to which 9.7% of people answered that "Burnout isn't a problem at my company." This leaves 90.3% (and a rounding error!) who think that burnout is a problem at their company and think they know why that is. This _does not mean_ they themselves are suffering or have suffered from burnout. I'm not trying to minimise the problem of burnout, but I would strongly suggest if we're going to have a serious discussion about it we should get our facts and our data straight and not base that discussion off a poorly written and researched employee engagement puff-piece. ~~~ Sacho The headline is clickbait, it does not match the headline of the primary source: [http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech- workers-...](http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/08/20/tech-workers-say- poor-leadership-is-number-one-cause-for-burnout/) It is also contradicted by the primary source's previous survey: [http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/05/29/close- to-60-p...](http://blog.teamblind.com/index.php/2018/05/29/close- to-60-percent-of-surveyed-tech-workers-are-burnt-out-credit-karma-tops-the- list-for-most-employees-suffering-from-burnout/) ~~~ bartread Nice spot. That tiny [via] link at the bottom is a really sneaky pattern. Didn't even notice it. ~~~ Raj7k Same here for me ~~~ bartread Fair play: I've removed my comment on the other sub-thread. ------ bittcto The cause is that “leadership” is generally people who don’t understand technology, and the solution is to stop hiring such incompetence. No car company would allow a CEO who doesn’t understand how cars work, let alone one who has no respect for those who design cars. But most tech companies are lead by tech illiterate MBA types who disdain engineers, and so engineers are managed by people who don’t understand engineering. I’ll give you a particular example but this is not the exception, this was the norm in %85 of the dozen tech companies I’ve worked at: At Amazon my boss was a guy trained to be a prison guard, who was selling pot on campus on the side, who got his job managing engineers because of a political connection. He had difficulty operating Microsoft Office. He was borderline computer illiterate. After a re-organization my bosses’ boss was replaced with a woman whose previous career was literally managing state DMV offices. Hey it’s management, right? Notably both of these people resented the fact that we were getting paid close to as much as they were (yet they with no skills, not even good management skills were still getting paid more!) At that point between me and Bezos there were no engineers in management and nobody who respected engineering (and that included Bezos, this was early enough I worked a lot of tickets with Bezos involved, saw him literally stop us from fixing a problem in October only to go ballistic the day before thanksgiving when the problem surfaced again.) Meanwhile Amazon has this propaganda campaign about how they “raise the bar” in hiring- and it’s true I’ve seen brilliant engineers not hired because of the objections of the “bar raiser”— only that person was the woman whose qualifications was a history keeping he nose clean working for the state! ~~~ seanf Amazon is getting close to a $1T market cap which makes this look more like an argument for hiring non-technical managers. You didn't provide any examples of poor management by the prison guard or DMV manager, other than some jealously about salary. Other than the bad feelings, did they get results? When Bezos went ballistic the day before Thanksgiving, did you still fix the bug in time? If not, did it really negatively affect the bottom line? Did whatever you instead had to work on in October help the bottom line more than the Thanksgiving bug? ~~~ blindwatchmaker > When Bezos went ballistic the day before Thanksgiving, did you still fix the > bug in time? This is the kind of line of thinking often pursued by poor managers. ~~~ smhinsey Yeah, I think there is a certain mindset for whom "going ballistic" seems like a smart power move that you can use to get results, but in day to day reality, I see it as the ultimate failure to maintain control over the situation. Guys like Bezos can get away with it, but that doesn't make it smart. ~~~ blindwatchmaker It's not even the going ballistic part that gets me, but the sequence of events. Management refused to allocate the time to fix tech debt/bugs, this decision comes back to bite them in the ass, GP takes the typical tack that tries to deflect blame away from shitty management decisions. "Could you, the devs, have fixed this bug under severe time pressure just before a critical sales period instead of when you first identified it?" -> if yes, no problem. Spiritus sancti, management is absolved of their sins. ~~~ bittcto The fix was a hacknand as for “on time”, no we were already three Sadat’s into the heavyvsakes week, literally hours before thanksgiving when Bezos decided to cancel everyone’s thanksgiving because of his own incompetence. I call it incompetence because prioritizing a new feature over a bug fix is almost always wrong. And Bezos surrounds himself with yes men so if he under estimated the bugs impact because a yesman was saving face that’s still on Bezos. ------ jobserunder Unmentioned reason: too much personal employee debt. What's worse than working for a bad boss/company? Working for a bad boss/company and carrying 50k in debt. ------ serversystem Goes with the theme that for actual passionate tech workers the reason for burnout is other people and not the tech itself. Hence adage that don't make your hobby your job is nonsense by itself. ~~~ russdpale This has been my finding. My wife is one of these super doer employee types, and I see her constantly frustrated by the people above her, and the failing processes that they implement that make her job more and more difficult. ------ stonewhite This reminds me of the phrase: "If everything is urgent, nothing is urgent". Therefore, if everyone is burning out, no one is really burning out or, we somehow extended the definition of burnout to something that can be applied to even the most minute set of complaints. ~~~ hackits block twitter, facebook, instagram, hackernews, and reddit. BOOM no longer burnt out! ~~~ zahrc Oh dear... If you do not have a clue of what you are talking about, you'd better be off saying nothing.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The cult of rotary mixers - richardwcollins https://www.residentadvisor.net/features/3275 ====== antris I've been playing records for a few years and have had the pleasure of playing with a DJR400. Some personal additions to the article I'd like to share: 1\. The physical feel of the device is amazing. Every knob feels and looks both smooth and incredibly sturdy. It's like the difference between driving a Mazda and a Porsche. Madza might be more versatile, practical, and cost- effective. But which one of them is more fun to use? 2\. Simpler design. Sometimes less is more, especially at DJ gigs. The article kind of hints at this, but part of the feel is not just the quality of the parts but how little (visible) parts the device has. Just compare how the Xone (one of the most respected lines of mixers) looks: [https://i.pinimg.com/474x/35/52/dd/3552dd4fbb206be6a4425523e...](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/35/52/dd/3552dd4fbb206be6a4425523e9a26b10 --dj-animation-dj-sound.jpg) to the DJR-400:[http://www.electronique- spectacle.com/media/DJR400.jpg](http://www.electronique- spectacle.com/media/DJR400.jpg) Yet the tools in DJR-400 are just fine. I definitely wouldn't want a DJR-400 for a 10-hour minimal techno set, but for blasting out house music in a packed club there might not be anything better at that price point. 3\. You can do amazing tricks with the above mentioned Xone mixer (you could argue that it's almost a musical instrument of its own), but the way of operating reminds me more of a computer than an analogue device. There's a reason why so many DJs still prefer vinyl. The digital XDJ stations are even "worse" in this aspect with their LCD touchscreens and endless configuration options behind menu trees. After a long day sitting on a computer, the last thing I want is to feel like going to stand next to another computer. 4\. If a problem occurs on an analogue device there are only a few things that could have gone wrong; there's some dust where there shouldn't be, some cable is loose, there's problems with electricity or some part is physically bent. But with these increasingly digital tools it's more like debugging and fixing a computer with proprietary software. There's an endless amount of error modes and although the reliability of the high-end models is still excellent, it's just another thing to keep in the back of your mind when you're trying to focus on your music and expression. The new rotary mixers are a statement against this trend of increasing digitalisation that has entered the mixer market, too. ~~~ jen729w > After a long day sitting on a computer, the last thing I want is to feel > like going to stand next to another computer. Utterly tangential, but this is why some of us still love shooting 35mm film. ~~~ ghostly_s ...or why some of use shoot on manual-forward digital lines like the Fuji X-Series. :) I basically never look at the menus, and have never once felt like I had to 'debug' my camera. ~~~ jen729w Yes! Have you seen the Leica M10-D? Oh man I’d like that. [http://en.leica-camera.com/Photography/Leica-M/Leica-M10-D](http://en.leica- camera.com/Photography/Leica-M/Leica-M10-D) No screen. It has a wind lever! (I asked in the shop, it just functions as a thumb-stop. Shame it doesn’t have a true Leica fabric shutter...) ------ GarvielLoken I thought this was gonna be about blenders :( ~~~ scotty79 I expected it to be about Kitchen Aid. They have cult like following. ~~~ MisterOctober Same here. KA stand mixers are a de rigeur status item / badge that says "Hey, we've attained a certain socioeconomic status but we're not flashy about it! We just wanna make some pizza dough." I'm a victim of this cult myself, and like everybody else I know who has one, ours gets used probably three or four times per year, max. It's such a cumbersome appliance to deal with that most of the time, I just use a fork and mixing bowl. edit : also the noise is awful -- can't use it after bedtime unless I wanna wake the bambino ------ weinzierl One feature that faders have is clear visual and haptic feedback - a thing that is not as clear with knobs. For rotary controls not only are the markings smaller if they exist at all but you have to deal with angles instead of distances, for which we know from studies of pie charts for example, our brains are not well equipped for. Then there is the problem that for haptics you need a marking on the circumfence which you can't see in every position, so you need another marker on top - I,ve rarely seen this design. I assume a blind person could use a fader easily but not necessarily a knob. Where all of this becomes relevant is when we consider digital controllers. If we accept knobs without any visual and physical markings at all we gain an important feature - we can save and recall pot positions. Visual feedback can be regained with a display or a ring of LEDs around the knob or both. With a physical fader all of this is hard to achieve. You need motorized faders, which exist, but are expensive and have a bunch of disadvantages. ~~~ laumars I think you've covered the real crux of it. Any DJ worth their salt can switch between faders and rotaries but faders do offer an additional visual feedback plus are a little easier for doing some turntablism effects (which is why I tend to favour faders when given an option between the two). However rotaries really come into their own on digital mixers / MIDI controllers. ~~~ mxfh First it signal's "I don't do superfluous effects and scratches even if I wanted." The boutique type mixer has a whole different niche market than most comparably mass market mixers. Also with faders it's easier to do audible mistakes (especially when not sober) since smooth linear motion seems harder to control, than a mapping to rotary motion. And they're harder to accidentally move, (and kids stay away from them, since they dont know what to do). Let just look at the recently announced Denon Prime 4 all in one solution. Looks great on concept, specs and useful features, but still manages to look like a flashy plastic toy in. ~~~ thirdsun > First it signal's "I don't do superfluous effects and scratches even if I > wanted." I wish that included the kind of DJs that can't resist driving their isolators hard every 30 seconds. ------ empath75 All mixers use almost all rotary controls — the only non rotary controls on most mixers are the channel faders and the cross fader. The primary advantage of a channel fader not being rotary is that you can see at a glance where it’s at, and quickly move from one setting to another to a rough level of precision. When you’re doing hip hop or certain kinds of house mixing (think your classic Chicago house style like Bad Boy Bill), that’s essential. You’re just banging through records a couple minutes at a time, and your hands are off the mixer all the time in your record bag or whatever. I used to be a progressive house or trance dj, though and I was playing 10 minute records with 3-4 minute transitions and I tended to have my hands on the mixer all the time making minute adjustments, so a rotary mixer with the finer control made more sense. All the nonsense about sound quality is just bullshit. Nobody at a night club gives a shit about sound quality, as long as like your record needle is clean and you aren’t doing obvious bullshit like pushing the sound into the red. I was a DJ for five or 6 years— I played everything from dive bars to mega clubs for thousands of people. I’ve talked to hundreds of DJ’s about djing, including very well known names. I’ve never once had a conversation with any of them about audiophile stuff in the context of a club. Some of them are into it in their home studios, but when you’re talking about mixers and turntables— it’s only about user interface issues (or the quality of the effects add ons) ~~~ jjulius There has been a renewed focus at parties over the last few years, particularly within the minimal techno scene and especially in the Romanian subset of that genre, on quality sound at parties. Granted, those parties and that music are designed specifically for "the heads", so they're few and far between in the larger picture of club culture, but they do manage to throw a lot of festivals (see: Sunwaves) with thousands of people that have impeccable sound. ~~~ timc3 20 years ago UK raves/festivals used to advertise what systems they had as much as the DJs playing. It’s not a new thing. I remember deciding that I would rather go to certain places not based on who was playing but that they had a Turbosound rig. ------ l33tbro Audiophile stuff is so often a bunch of baloney, but a vintage Bozak or Urei rotary actually does sound superior to modern mixers in a pretty noticeable way. Even for colder electronic stuff like minimal techno, I think the discrete components make things sound rounder and just more pleasant. Maybe the best rotary mixers being built today are by a guy in Adelaide, Australia (1). You'll have to wait 3 months (at least) for him to build it. (1) [https://condesaelectronics.com/product- category/mixers/](https://condesaelectronics.com/product-category/mixers/) ~~~ cellover This reminds me of the best Midi sequencer in the world that is being built by Sequentix: the Cirklon (1): a no compromise hardware sequencer hand built and built to last, with unique features. The waiting list is around 6 to 10 months! (1) [https://www.sequentix.com/shop/cirklon-hardware- sequencer](https://www.sequentix.com/shop/cirklon-hardware-sequencer) ~~~ laumars I've never spent more than £150 on a MIDI controller and have taken mine on the road on many occasions for live performances too. ~~~ enneff The Cirklon is not a midi controller, but a sequencer. There is nothing else on the market with its same feature set and build quality. It is a wonderful device and there’s a reason they are so crazily popular. ~~~ laumars It’s still just a MIDI controller at its heart. But in any case MIDI sequencers aren’t a new thing. You could achieve the same thing with an Atari ST. Your point about build quality is the crux of the matter. These things are essentially just clocks and like with clocks you could buy a £5 budget wrist watch or a Rolex. People who wear and use their watch daily will justify the price tag of decent watch because it’s sturdier, prettier and they can afford it. But that doesn’t mean one watch tells the time differently to another. And equally a sturdier built MIDI sequencer doesn’t make a blind bit of different to the sound quality of hardware it triggers. Which was the point I (and the former poster) was making. Now I’m not criticising those who do want nice audio equipment - we do the same thing in IT with dev laptops and give a whole plethora of “reasons” why. Like I said earlier, if you’re going to use something regularly then why wouldn’t you want to use something nice? ~~~ enneff Just because it can send MIDI messages does not make it a "MIDI controller". In fact, you can use it entirely without sending MIDI messages at all (with its control voltage interface). You're drawing a long bow. It's not just about the build quality. It's about the interface. It's a very elegant and thoughtfully designed sequencer and there's nothing else quite like it. The Rolex comparison is ridiculous, because Rolex watches don't even keep good time. They're overpriced jewellery. The Cirklon is not even expensive for what it is. ~~~ laumars > _Just because it can send MIDI messages does not make it a "MIDI > controller"._ Technically it does. In the very literal sense. Perhaps what you meant to say is that this is more than just a MIDI controller? In which case I'm still waiting for you to example how (without referencing "build quality", which was never in dispute). > _In fact, you can use it entirely without sending MIDI messages at all (with > its control voltage interface)._ VC is just what people used before MIDI was a thing. Does anyone actually still use VC or does this device just support it for compatibility with 40+ year old hardware? In any case, citing VC as a reason it's not a MIDI controller isn't a hugely convincing argument given the two are equatable and MIDI superseded VC decades ago. > _It 's not just about the build quality. It's about the interface. It's a > very elegant and thoughtfully designed sequencer_ Personally I'd still class that as part of the built quality if you're just listing off qualities like "elegant". But I will concede that there is a lot of profession gear out there with software that would make most techies scratch their head in confusion. > _and there 's nothing else quite like it._ But what is it about that sequencer that is so unique? I’ve not played on that device so happy to take your word for it if you had but from what I’ve seen on their blurb it doesn't sound like it offers anything I wasn't already doing on my Atari ST in the 90s - let alone any of the hardware I've owned since. Honestly, I'm not trying to be argumentative here. I fully embrace people buying nice hardware if want. And I agree that 1.5k isn't significant for high end gear. But my point was that you can accomplish the same thing for a fraction of the price (with no dip in sound quality either) if you're not fussed about build quality. You claim you couldn't - and you might be right about that. But whenever you're pressed to give examples you just keep coming back to build quality, which was the one thing that was never in question. > _The Rolex comparison is ridiculous, because Rolex watches don 't even keep > good time. They're overpriced jewellery._ I don’t buy watches so you’d have to excuse my ignorance there but I do feel you’ve completely missed the point of what an “analogy” is meant to be (ie they’re not a literal like for like in ever detail). ~~~ enneff > But whenever you're pressed to give examples you just keep coming back to > build quality, which was the one thing that was never in question. Huh? This is the first time I've been asked to give any examples. The build quality is fantastic, but it's the workflow (the interface design) that makes the Cirklon special (and so sought-after). There are plenty of other sequencers that can get you the same result, but music is all about the process of getting there. > VC is just what people used before MIDI was a thing. You should look at what's happening in the modular (specifically Eurorack) scene. Control voltage is back, with a vengeance. Most Cirklon users I know primarily use its CV interface. It seems like you're just really out of touch. Look up some reviews or youtube videos if you want to learn more. > I'm not trying to be argumentative here. You're failing ;-) ~~~ laumars > _There are plenty of other sequencers that can get you the same result, but > music is all about the process of getting there._ Yes, I completely relate to that. I tried for a long time to make Linux DAWs work for me but I just hated the process. > _You should look at what 's happening in the modular (specifically Eurorack) > scene. Control voltage is back, with a vengeance. Most Cirklon users I know > primarily use its CV interface._ > _It seems like you 're just really out of touch. Look up some reviews or > youtube videos if you want to learn more._ Yes, does sound like I'm out of touch. Thank you, I will do. ------ H1Supreme This article has surfaced some of my current frustrations with the DJ Mixer landscape. I've been DJ'ing (mostly mixing at home) for 20 years now. Started with a cheap Gemini, and got a Pioneer DJM-300 shortly after I used that DJM-300 from probably 99-2014. It was an absolute tank. Aside from two crossfader replacements, it didn't have any issues. If the RCA's didn't get smashed in as result of a drop, I'd probably still use it. Since then, it seems like anything under $1000 is going to have extremely poor quality potentiometers and channel faders. Even with big names like Pioneer, their low end mixers are almost guaranteed to have scratchy pots and faders in under a year. And, brands like Numark will have scratchy pots in two months. Which, is hard for me to understand. I built two mixers for my eurorack modular setup probably 5 years ago, and used alpha pots (which are considered cheap, and cost $1/piece). No scratchy pots at all; and they get considerably more usage than my DJ setup. I've been passively looking for something to diy, but none of the offerings are aimed at a 3-band EQ DJ setup. I'll probably break open my current mixer and replace all the pots, but it's sad that I need to do such a thing. Especially considering the retail cost of parts will be $10. ~~~ dds-dds Just on the off-chance my long search for the _right_ mixer helps anyone else: I own the Formula One FF-4000, which can be switched from fader to rotary by just a few screws and then swapping the board. (Provided you bought the optional board). (1) The sound is beautiful, the EQ/Filter is extremely smooth, though some prefer more bite to their EQ's (a la Technics SH-EX1200), this EQ is quite transparent. The build quality is high and solid, the pots feel weighty in a good way, plus I find the FX routing to be intuitive and flexible (which is one of my bugbears about DJ mixers). Yeah OK, they're not as cool as the DJM-400;) but for my setup it's a joy to work with. They build to order, so it can be a few weeks wait, well it was for me. Luckily I live close by their workshop and got chance to go in to check on the build. Oh, they also make a 6 channel version too. (1) [https://www.funktion-one.com/products/ff4000-dj- mixer/](https://www.funktion-one.com/products/ff4000-dj-mixer/) ------ hugozap Rotary knobs are great, I created a react component inspired by them. [https://github.com/hugozap/react-rotary- knob](https://github.com/hugozap/react-rotary-knob) ------ vidanay And to think....all I want is a 6/12 channel stereo mixer with 3.5mm jacks so that I can combine my PC's and ham radio(s) signals into one common set of speakers. ~~~ bichiliad This may just do it, and it has one of the smallest formfactors I've seen in a mixer that supports 18 channels. ~~~ bichiliad Ugh, forgot to share the link: [https://reverb.com/item/6503874-midiman- micromixer-18-18-cha...](https://reverb.com/item/6503874-midiman- micromixer-18-18-channel-mixer-12-channel-3-stereo-pairs-ultra-compact-low- profile-mixer) ------ janci By the title I expected the article to be about kitchen blenders, as they are called mixers in my mother tongue. Do native speakers have this confusion? ~~~ yesenadam Yes, I thought that too hehe, Australian here. My friend uses a Thermomix in our kitchen to do everything - I can hear it now - they're absolutely a cult. :-) ~~~ taneq We had a Thermomix, it died (started coming up with errors) and it was out of warranty so obviously I disassembled it. You would not believe how many cockroaches were living (and had died) inside it. Ick. ------ perilunar Growing up my mum had a Kenwood. Massive beast of a machine. Fully analogue controls. Sounded terrible, but very loud. Could take your arm off if you weren't careful. Even had a mincer attachment. Not really sure how you would make a non-rotary mixer TBH. ~~~ fipple Do you mean a Kenmore? Because a Kenwood would be an audio mixer like this article is talking about :D ~~~ unwind See [https://www.kenwoodworld.com/en-int](https://www.kenwoodworld.com/en- int), they're a pretty high-end brand.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why Telling a Story is the Most Powerful Way to Activate Our Brains - speeder http://lifehacker.com/5965703/the-science-of-storytelling-why-telling-a-story-is-the-most-powerful-way-to-activate-our-brains ====== Tycho I've been trying to learn a lot about investment finance in the last 18 months. I find that I probably learn more from light, non fiction texts like Barbarians at the Gate and Liar's Poker. Why? Because all the strange abstractions of finance are easier to grasp when you have a sense for why they needed to be created. You get the story behind them. ------ maebert Sometime I'm going to write a piece "Why you should not follow links that include the word 'brain'". ~~~ agilord That'd really block away the potential cognitive interest, wouldn't it? At least you could name it like "Why this is the last link you will follow that contains the word 'brain'." ------ jonsen Wired for Story: The Writer's Guide to Using Brain Science to Hook Readers from the Very First Sentence: [http://www.amazon.com/Wired-Story-Writers-Science- Sentence/d...](http://www.amazon.com/Wired-Story-Writers-Science- Sentence/dp/1607742454) ~~~ jessriedel Ugh. I got into a spirited disagreement on HN a few months back sparked by how much I hate when magazines like _Wired_ feel the need to entice me to read something mildly analytic by interweaving it with a human story. The author can't just talk about a law and its potential for unintended consequences, or even just the law and specific examples of people it hurt. He had to tell me a full narrative about Bob Jones and his green bicycle that means so much to him and the overcast clouds on the fateful day he had his front tire stolen when he was already late for work! I find myself skipping from paragraph to paragraph looking for actual analysis. ------ purplelobster If you're selling a product, is it best to tell a story of why it's useful or just to show what it does and let the product do the talking? Personally, if I go to a site and I have to sign in/up to get to the application, then I'm less likely to do it than if I was immediately logged into a guest account, perhaps with some pointer bubbles explaining what to do/what you can do. ------ agilord I'm pretty sure that there are harmful and undesired things that activate the brain too, so I'm not sure that activating the brain is the ultimate goal. Why not concentrate on why stories are powerful? E.g. exploring their strength of making connections and emotions... ------ mattryanharris Google does this quite frequently with their commercials for products like Google Hangout, search, e-mail, calendar, and more. They seem to show ways on how to use the service rather then telling you all the stats about it. ------ elchief Anybody got a good "storytelling for dummies" reference? Thanks!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How much of your personal capital $$ have you invested in your startup? - youngdev 1. How long have you been bootstrapping your startup?<p>2. Roughly how much of personal money have you invested in your startup?<p>3. Are you profitable, if not then at what point do you make the decision of pulling the plug and not invest your personal money anymore? ====== zackmorris 1\. 20 years 2\. I was $50k in debt in 2007, now just $35k, so somewhere between 100% and infinity.. 3\. Depends on the definition of profitable. I probably get about $5,000 in app royalties during a good year. By the time I get the money though, it's already gone to other things. I'm being facetious but only slightly - it seems to me that a lot of hackers have been doing this their entire lives and it's going to be a while before they are profitable. I've been bootstrapping since Nov 2010 (repairing old Macs and contracting) and there has been a tidal wave of change washing over the industry with new freelancing matchup services and funding opportunities like kickstarter. I feel like I've been ramen profitable for about a year and really feel close to a breakthrough in the next 3-6 months. If I could just find a nontechnical benefactor, it would sure be a lot easier. What's kept me going is the thought of working at a day job for years, only to break even (been there, done that). There are more important things in life than money. I garden now and ride my bike instead of drive. I think perhaps society is starting up as well. ------ soho33 not sure if our website would be considered a "startup" since all 3 partners are doing it part time but we all invested around $5000 over a span of a year and by the end of first year we were profitable and didn't need to invest anymore. being a technical cofounder i did all the coding so the only expense was the server costs and also the design company to put together a nice layout for us. so overall, not much overheard. ------ kkt262 1\. How long have you been bootstrapping your startup? 5 months 2\. Roughly how much of personal money have you invested in your startup? Exactly $250 3\. Are you profitable, if not then at what point do you make the decision of pulling the plug and not invest your personal money anymore? Yes, we are profitable. ------ ntmartin 1\. How long have you been bootstrapping your startup? 2 months 2\. Roughly how much of personal money have you invested in your startup? £50-100 3\. Are you profitable, if not then at what point do you make the decision of pulling the plug and not invest your personal money anymore? Yes, profitable. ------ leslyn 1\. We incorporated 11 mos ago 2\. Went live in Nov and have spent a total about $3300 so far (over half on SU impressions) 3\. Not profitable - still playing around with trying to figure out a revenue model that will actually work! Not sure about a cutoff... Originally committed $10K in my head ------ zeynalov I started with 19 euros. 1 month of working on it. First month (after 65 days after starting building) 2.000 euros profit. This was 8 month before. Now it makes 50k-70k monthly profit. But my startup isn't a simple product, every month I work on it, I make it more perfect and revenue grows. ~~~ youngdev Wow, those are some impressive numbers. What do you do if you don't mind me asking. ~~~ zeynalov I made a traditional offline business online. For now it's local, for now it's like "beta" version but in 6 month we will go global. Then I'll open a SHOW HN topic and send you a message ;). ~~~ bonsai Send me a message with site url too :) ------ tstegart We've been going for about four months now. We have put in about $2250 and expect to put that same amount in again before we start collecting revenue. The plan is to be self sustaining immediately after we collect revenue, but we'll see how that goes eh? :) ~~~ makatiguy 1\. How long have you been bootstrapping your startup? - We're on our 4th month but I started working on this project in the middle of 2011. 2\. Roughly how much of personal money have you invested in your startup? - About $30K, in addition to salaries I've given up to do my start-up. 3\. Are you profitable, if not then at what point do you make the decision of pulling the plug and not invest your personal money anymore? - No. Not even thinking about that.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Computational fashion on your laptop - mgl http://www.rhymeandreasoncreative.com/portfolio/index.php?project=continuum ====== mgl Really interesting stuff, see also: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rhymeandreason/continuum...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rhymeandreason/continuum- computational-couture)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
FCC to be led by Ajit Pai, staunch opponent of consumer protection rules - jawngee http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/01/fcc-to-be-led-by-ajit-pai-staunch-opponent-of-consumer-protection-rules/ ====== rashkov Is there a sympathetic view of Ajit Pai that anyone could offer? I can understand how he would be opposed to the pro-consumer agenda of Wheeler's FCC. To be sure, there might be a better way of solving these problems using a free market mechanism, instead of top-down regulation which is antithetical to the libertarian/conservative ethos. For example, previous HN discussions have surfaced how some european countries have a deregulated last mile, giving the consumer a nearly zero-friction way to switch between ISPs. I just can't imagine Pai doing anything like this. I can only anticipate him enhancing the monopolistic powers of the big ISPs. ~~~ entee I'm quite opposed to the guy's ideas from what I've read so far, but here's one perspective: [http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21Benkler.html](http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21Benkler.html) Some of the ways to look at it is that if providers can sell a fastlane to Netflix they can reduce prices for the consumer. Other arguments that have been advanced include having a fast lane for medical devices or emergency services. I could see an argument in favor if the rest of the marketplace was highly competitive and you could just switch to a different provider if the provider you had was behaving abusively. That's not the case in most of the US where you have a duopoly at best for fast internet. Personally, I find this guy's proposals to be bad policy for individual consumers, but they're pretty great for ISPs. They would argue that in the end that's great for consumers too, but as far as I am concerned, that remains to be seen. ~~~ gshulegaard > if providers can sell a fastlane to Netflix they can reduce prices for the > consumer. Historically, this is not shown to be how companies act. The implicit assumption here is that a supplier has some sort of benevolent desire. But the reality is that if a company can increase revenue, they will do so without redistributing it to the benefit of their customers or even employees. > They would argue that in the end that's great for consumers too, but as far > as I am concerned, that remains to be seen. We have seen it, and it's not great for consumers. Trickle-down economics is a fallacy. It's also been debunked by Economists very thoroughly. ~~~ entee I'm with you, I think it's not going to work, but these are the kinds of arguments people make. In some ways it's a question of whose freedom are you defending? The person who put the cable in ground or the person that cable goes to. Both want complete freedom to use that cable as they see fit, but those freedoms can be in tension. How do you choose? This is one of the issues with "freedom" based arguments, in anything but a trivial system freedoms collide and somebody has to make a call. Ajit Pai seems to lean toward the cable-layer. I lean toward the cable-user. I think he's wrong, but I'm not willing to question his motives. I think he also wants the best for all, and disagrees that putting the consumer first works out better in the long run. ~~~ gshulegaard I thought about how the best respond to your comment. I think your intentions are pure, but you conflate a lot of different issues together that it's kind of difficult to respond. So let's start with the economics. At the heart of Capitalism is the idea of Perfect Competition[1]. There is no ethical considerations in an Economic model, only a core set of assumptions one of which is that each individual acts in their own self-interest. But just because everyone acts selfishly doesn't mean that there can't be a benefit to both parties. In fact trade rests on the idea that two parties can engage in a mutually beneficial transaction[2] (and it is trivial to come up with an example). In a Perfectly Competitive market, a seller can't charge a high price because another seller will undercut their price. Likewise, a buyer can't demand a lower price, because no one will sell to them at a lower price. There is an implicit "equilibrium" where the seller maximizes their profit and the buyer maximizes their utility. So in a way, you could say that the buyer and seller "freedoms collide", but that precise collision should result in an mutually beneficial transaction of sorts. At this point you might be thinking that if competition means market equilibrium, then why does HN want regulation at all? Well the trouble with Perfect Competition is that it is an impossible ideal: > there is no actual perfectly competitive market in the real world [1] This is because of all the conditions required for Perfect Competition. Some of my favorites are: * A large number of buyers and sellers * Perfect information * Homogenous products * No externalities Some examples of real-world American failures pertaining to these examples: * A large number of buyers and sellers -- Internet providers. There are few providers outside of Time Warner and Comcast. * Perfect information -- Health care. When was the last time you saw hospitals post surgery prices online so you could pick most affordable option? Oh wait, an Oklahoma Surgery Center did that [3] and you know what happened? Californians flew out to have surgery because even with travel it was far cheaper than their local alternatives. * Homogenous products -- Coke vs. Pepsi. You could argue they are homogenous (both soda pop), but most people would disagree. Moreover with recipe protections, it may very well be impossible/illegal for Pepsi to make an exact clone of Coke or vice-versa. * No externalities -- Pollution (e.g. Global Warming). Pollution is often a cost to society as a whole and not on a corporation. If dumping your factory run-off directly into the river is cheaper than properly disposing of it, most companies would choose to do just that (e.g. the Mississippi pollution levels [4]). Well so if Perfect Competition is impossible, then what should we do? This is where Government regulation comes in and where there is often a debate. But from an Economic standpoint, I think it is pretty safe to say that we should do everything we can to _maximize competition_. That's why most of HN is fond of Tom Wheeler. By and large his policies protected net neutrality and ensured that ISPs couldn't artificially favor one service over another thereby reducing competition. How could a Hulu compete with a Netflix if Netflix just shelled out massive amounts of capital to buy "fast lanes" with contractual non-competes with all the major ISPs in America? But that was my point. The argument that ISPs will "reinvest" this new revenue into improving service for their customers is a fallacy. ISPs will only invest in things that increase revenue...not because they _want_ their customers to have $10 cheaper internet service. [1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perfect_competition) [2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade) [3] [http://kfor.com/2013/07/08/okc-hospital-posting-surgery- pric...](http://kfor.com/2013/07/08/okc-hospital-posting-surgery-prices- online/) [4] [http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med- fit/health/mis...](http://www.stltoday.com/lifestyles/health-med- fit/health/mississippi-river-is-second-most-polluted-u-s- waterway/article_bce8579e-7449-11e1-9b27-001a4bcf6878.html) ~~~ entee Ha! I'm not sure who you're trying to convince, I keep saying I agree with you! I'm merely phrasing things a little differently. A fully free market with no regulation or intervention, as you point out, is frequently impossible. Especially with in infrastructure where natural monopolies abound. Free markets have a tendency to become monopolies or abusive without efforts to maintain competition, and as you point out we have to encourage competition. But this requires making tradeoffs. The person who put the cable in the ground feels they are free in this (theoretical, but non-existent) free market, to charge whoever they want whatever they want to use the cable. The person using the cable has no choice but to accept those terms because there isn't effective competition. Wheeler chooses the freedom of the consumer to choose versus the freedom of the provider in order to favor competition among providers. I agree with this balance, Wheeler was good, I don't like this new guy at all so far. My original objective was to try to explore the other guy's point of view, to give some of the arguments they would give in favor. I find them unconvincing, but those are the arguments those opposed to net neutrality give. ------ givinguflac "Pai consistently opposed consumer protection regulations during the 3-year chairmanship of Democrat Tom Wheeler, who left the FCC today. Pai opposed net neutrality rules and, after Trump's victory, said those rules' "days are numbered." He also opposed lower rate caps for inmate calling, rules designed to give TV consumers cheaper alternatives to rented set-top boxes, rules that protect the privacy of ISP customers, an update to the 31-year-old Lifeline phone subsidy program to help poor people buy Internet service, a speed increase in the FCC's broadband standard, an investigation of AT&T and Verizon charging competitors for data cap exemptions, and preemption of state laws that restrict expansion of municipal broadband." Sounds like a real winner. ~~~ 6stringmerc It should be an interesting comparison with Pai, an obviously experienced and qualified individual for the FCC post with perspectives that many find offensive, and DeVoss, who is obviously an inexperienced and unqualified individual for the Secretary of Education post, to see which actually gets more done. ~~~ shostack In this case I think many would prefer the least effective one. ------ neduma I dont want to sound like a broken record but if you want to help protect Net Neutrality you should support groups like ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Free Press who are fighting to keep Net Neutrality. [https://www.aclu.org/](https://www.aclu.org/) [https://www.eff.org/](https://www.eff.org/) [https://www.freepress.net/](https://www.freepress.net/) also you can set them as your charity on [https://smile.amazon.com/](https://smile.amazon.com/) ------ wfo Nearly everything Trump will do, every appointment he will make, every order he will sign will be very bad for the vast majority of Americans and the country as a whole. He is not an honest, earnest, free-market loving Republican with good intentions and a desire to see the country succeed. I don't know why there's this sense that in the tech community we are immune. We have a beautiful free and open technical world, where everyone has equal access to information and commerce, where large companies cannot use their power to obliterate startups so startups can thrive, where competition is healthy and the consumer wins. Don't fool yourself into thinking it doesn't depend on a favorable government to exist. Don't fool yourself into thinking Trump won't do his best to get rid of it. ~~~ ricardonunez I think so, he is big in old money. Oil, coal, bringing factories back, etc., sparking innovation was not one of the things he campaigned. He is going to make immigration more difficult, and people will not have confidence in coming here. Other countries are already investing on it, so they will take advantage. ------ nova22033 He worked for Jeff Sessions...no no surprise there.. ------ JustSomeNobody This is bad for consumers. Everything I have read of what this guy has said, it's like he purposely opposes anything pro consumer. ~~~ wmeredith He supports his paying constituents: big telecom. ------ guelo I wonder if Netflix will survive this as Comcast will be able to just cut them off and offer customers their own service. ~~~ wmf Comcast is already extorting as much money as they want from Netflix; it's not clear that Comcast would benefit from cutting them off. ~~~ guelo Without netflix it would stop a lot of cordcuting. ------ gm-conspiracy Can somebody explain to me what the reclassification of internet from "information services" to "common carrier" accomplished (besides cellphone companies buying consumer satellite tv companies)? ~~~ wayzel When VOIP and other communication services started to sprout in the 1990s the FCC let them coast without taxation for about a decade. They then reclassified all such services as common carriers so that they could be taxed as such. Common carriers must pay into various tax funds such as LNP (which funds citizens' rights to port their phone numbers between carriers), NANPA (which maintains the North American Numbering scheme), and USF (which subsidizes telephony buildout or services to areas that the private market would otherwise ignore). Most consumers see these as various charges as a roughly 20% up-charge on their bill. ~~~ 1_2__3 You're referring to only one aspect of common carrier status. There's a whole host of regulations that apply - or not - if you're a common carrier. And I'm sorry are you honestly claiming that those cost 20% of an internet bill? Because of so you're gonna have to cite a source for that one. Between your selective choice for what you claim is CC status, combined with a claim that a $50 monthly bill is $10 attributable to CC, makes me think you're pushing an agenda rather than sharing facts. ~~~ wayzel I should have been more clear: those taxes relate to communication services (VOIP) that interconnect with the public telecommunications network, e.g let you call phone numbers. They are not taxes for Internet access. And yes, there are a large number of other more restrictive regulations. Sources here: [https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-335228A1.p...](https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-335228A1.pdf) (warning - PDF) ------ ricardonunez Any large corporation in favor of net neutrality like Amazon and Netflix, should join Google and make fiber happen nationwide.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Raw Gadget is a kernel module that allows to emulate USB devices from userspace - SomeSnail https://github.com/xairy/raw-gadget ====== XMPPwocky A key bit of information that might clear up some confusion - USB gadgets are the main _peripheral-side_ USB interface in the Linux kernel. When you plug an embedded Linux device like a phone into something, it could use USB gadgets to expose internal storage as a mass storage device, create a tty and expose that as a USB ACM/CDC device, etc- and using the gadget mechanism, allocate USB endpoints to each of these functions, and enable or disable them at runtime. So, this project seems to be allowing a Linux device to emulate arbitrary peripherals to an external USB host. Prior work in this area: see Facedancer. Neat. ~~~ Vogtinator No, this allows userspace to act as a USB gadget connected to the Linux kernel it's running on. ~~~ XMPPwocky It sure doesn't seem to. That's why they have a separate subproject for it- [https://github.com/xairy/raw- gadget/blob/master/dummy_hcd/RE...](https://github.com/xairy/raw- gadget/blob/master/dummy_hcd/README.md) But you certainly could know more than me about it! Why do you think it's exclusively for acting as a USB gadget connected to the Linux kernel it's running on? ~~~ Vogtinator It looks like I'm only partially right: dummy_hcd is just for the local kernel, but raw gadget is just yet another interface to the UDC, so like usb functionfs just without sanity checks. I found documentation about this in the submission to mainline: [https://lwn.net/ml/linux- usb/461a787e63a9a01d83edc563575b858...](https://lwn.net/ml/linux- usb/461a787e63a9a01d83edc563575b8585bc138e8d.1579007786.git.andreyknvl@google.com/) ------ lmilcin This is really fantastic. I am currently building my own keyboard with my own controller and it will be much easier for me to first implement mock controller in userspace before I try to get it right on external device. Especially because I will want to put some complicated functionality in it like steno. ~~~ jrockway I don't think you need that for this. The keyboard firmware likely consists of three big chunks, the USB code, the matrix scan, and the processing of the matrix scan data into keystrokes. The USB stack is likely a peripheral on your microcontroller, which they have in theory already tested. The matrix scan will need to be tested on real hardware. The processing code should be abstracted enough from USB and matrix scanning that you can just compile it for your host machine and write tests the usual way (given matrix state x then y, output state should be foo). For final integration tests, you can use an additional microcontroller to be the key matrix. Instead of wiring up keyswitches, wire the microcontroller to the matrix pins, and have it accept commands over the serial port to set the matrix to a certain state. This way, you can do a full end-to-end test on your real hardware. The only place USB gadget emulation might be helpful is in writing the code that switches the keyboard from compatibility mode (6KRO) to the NKRO mode. It's been done a million times, though, so there is plenty of library code to just copy. ~~~ lmilcin First, this is going to be my first USB device. Second, I plan to put some more complex functionality. I intend it to be my last keyboard so I want to be able to map every key however I want (the whole point of having my own controller). I also want it to have built-in steno which is much more than just matrix scanning. While I could achieve all of that with OS driver and plover the sad reality is that I am unable to install my own software on my corporate PC and I would like to have consistent environment at my home and office. ~~~ jrockway All I'm saying is that the interesting part of the code will run just fine on your host machine, so you don't need any complicated tricks to develop and test it. Obviously in production it will run on the microcontroller, so you get the functionality you desire without OS drivers. Do keep in mind that /usr/share/dict/words is about 10x larger than the flash on microcontrollers. This is why most people do the steno conversion in software, not on the keyboard itself. ~~~ lmilcin I plan to store configuration data on an SD card for convenience. If it wasn't clear yet it is my personal project, I don't plan to make product from it. ~~~ ihuman If you're not designing your own microcontroller, you might want to check out the Proton-C. It has 248kB of usable flash memory, which could be enough to store a stenography-optimized word list in addition to the firmware. It was made to be flashed with the qmk keyboard firmware, but I don't think there's any requirement that you have to use qmk. [https://qmk.fm/proton-c/](https://qmk.fm/proton-c/) ~~~ jrockway I used an STM32F103 for my last keyboard, and you can buy four for the price of a Proton C. I am still not sure why they chose the F3 series for the Proton C, as it doesn't seem to be a chip that's commonly used in the maker community. I am somewhat surprised they didn't bite the bullet and just port QMK to the nRF52 (since everyone wants bluetooth out of the box), actually. The F103 is also interesting in that it is well-supported by Rust and Tinygo, if C isn't your thing. I picked it because QMK supports it (and works great), but I'm actually planning to write the firmware in Go and ditch all the things that bug me about QMK. However the USB stack is not there and I dread writing it. I might pull a QMK and just have ChibiOS run my Go code ;) ~~~ ihuman The F3 series includes support for "analog peripherals," so maybe they decided on that line so they could support the speaker? If that's correct, then that's a pretty niche feature for them to focus on. There are forks of qmk and the pro-micro that support the nRF52, but as far as I can tell nothing has been merged into the main qmk yet. ------ zokier Bit of clarification is apparently needed. The loopback USB emulation is already in mainline via CONFIG_USB_DUMMY_HCD What this new module provides is new userspace API to the gadget subsystem, making the dummy hcd much more practical especially for testing USB driver code ------ codebeaker Could this be useful to "mock" A USB device for integration testing hardware (or specifically writing specs against not-plugged-in-hardware)? ------ vrsfvwae5tbh Could this be used to emulate a usb keyboard from untrusted code and break out of a sandbox? ------ TorKlingberg Neat. Can you clarify what "emulate" means? Would this let me implement a USB gadget on a Linux board with a device-side USB port, without writing a kernel module? ~~~ Vogtinator That's already possible using usb functionfs. ------ Vogtinator Arguably this can be implemented already using usbip to localhost. That's already part of mainline, so does not need any out of tree modules. ------ RyanMathewson Does anything like this exist for Windows? I was recently looking and couldn't find anything.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Mys – an attempt to create a statically typed Python-like language - eerimoq https://github.com/eerimoq/mys ====== BerislavLopac I was once toying with the idea to create a statically-typed Python-like language, and I had the perfect name for it: Typhoon... ;) ~~~ HhE3334R7hf1lLF Alternate idea: a language called Typon in which the compiler paves over typos of keywords and symbol names. ~~~ alanbernstein Like a whole language built on the fuckit principle. ~~~ BerislavLopac I thought that was Perl... ;P ------ sitkack Given that the OP is the github project owner, are you aware of [https://chocopy.org/](https://chocopy.org/) ? You might want to also look at Shedskin, [https://github.com/shedskin/shedskin](https://github.com/shedskin/shedskin) which converts implicitly typed Python programs to C++ ~~~ viraptor And at mypyc [https://github.com/python/mypy/tree/master/mypyc](https://github.com/python/mypy/tree/master/mypyc) ~~~ eerimoq This looks promising indeed. Thanks for sharing. ------ nicoburns Question for the OP seeing as this is a Show HN: how does this compare to Nim ([https://nim-lang.org/](https://nim-lang.org/))? ~~~ nepeckman Not OP, but a big Nim fan. I think Nim has made a mistake by marketing itself as Python inspired. I know why it does so; Python is a very successful language and as a niche language, Nim wants to associate itself with an established one. But in my experience, Nim has a very small overlap with Python. It is whitespace significant, prefers short words to symbols for operators, and has a robust stdlib. But if you look at the actual language semantics, or even the keywords, Nim is not really related to Python. I'd go as far as saying Nim is more similar to a Lisp than it is Pythonic (which works fine for me, as I prefer Lisp to Python). All of this to say, the OPs language seems much more Pythonic. The key words, the built in functions, the class system, all seems designed to match Python as closely as possible. ~~~ elcritch It took me a couple of weeks to realize Nim’s semantics are really different. Despite that Nim feels like an alternate reality of Python 2 -> 3 that went more lispy and a bit Pascal-ish. It gives me the old Python 2.7 vibe. Though I’d still prefer ‘def’ to ‘proc’ but that’s pretty minor to me. It’s interesting to see how well the typed Python syntax maps to a static implementation of Python. The speed should probably be a lot faster than CPythin too for many cases. ~~~ sullyj3 The really nice thing about proc is that emphasizes that they are in fact procedures, rather than mathematical functions - a distinction that becomes more relevant as FP gains mindshare. ------ toxik > We don’t need a GC because RC L = [] L.append(L) ------ dukoid I am working on something similar, although with a different focus (mobile coding): [https://github.com/stefanhaustein/tantilla](https://github.com/stefanhaustein/tantilla) P.S.: Might make sense to try to get to a common type-safe language spec? ~~~ eerimoq Nice job. I don't understand the question. Can you rephrase it? =) ~~~ dukoid It might make sense to try to support the same subset of Python in both projects. On the other hand, this might make experimentation harder... And there seem to be many differences, for instance I am trying to move towards async/await... But there might also be areas that could be easy to get consistent, e.g. how local variables are declared... p.s. And I wasn't aware of Cocopy either. Having a list of similarities and differences of all three might be useful... ~~~ eerimoq I like the idea. If our languages are similar it could even make sense to stop developing one of them and focus on the other, but that's probably far fetched. I'll have a look at yours to get a better understanding of what it looks like and where it shines. Maybe we meet again =) ~~~ dukoid Do you have any objections against using google drive for an initial list of similarities / differences? I think the comment function could be useful.... ~~~ eerimoq Please do, but I won't promise I will contribute a lot, so don't be disappointed. =) ------ mlthoughts2018 Cython is a great tool for this. It’s a superset of Python with full static compilation support for native CPython or for pure C or C++ extension modules. [https://cython.org/](https://cython.org/) ------ anentropic There is also [http://strlen.com/lobster/](http://strlen.com/lobster/) Rust-like borrow checking with a Python-ish syntax, compiles to C++ or Wasm ------ hpvic03 Similar and relevant: Crystal: [https://crystal-lang.org/](https://crystal-lang.org/) Sorbet: [https://sorbet.org/](https://sorbet.org/) ------ scottrogowski I love this. I have nothing else to say except that I want this to happen. Python is an amazing language which is missing two things - static types and speed. I starred your repo and am looking forward to seeing it progress. ------ dec0dedab0de This looks cool. Is there anything specific you're trying to do with Mys that another language didn't do? Nim comes to mind as being in a similar space. Small nitpick about the title: Python _is_ strongly typed. ~~~ aidenn0 I would call Python untyped ~~~ striking You would be wrong. Try adding a string and number together. That's a type error. Unlike in JS or C, where a lot of these conversions are implicit and only warn if anything. Python determines the types at runtime, but it is very clear about what few operations you're allowed to do on any given set of types. ~~~ aidenn0 I can import this with no errors, so Python is untyped: def foo(): return 1 + "2" Another example showing Python is untyped: x = 1 x = "2" x clearly has no type. No variables in python have types. ~~~ striking >>> 1 + "2" Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> TypeError: unsupported operand type(s) for +: 'int' and 'str' [https://dev.to/jiangh/type-systems-dynamic-versus-static- str...](https://dev.to/jiangh/type-systems-dynamic-versus-static-strong- versus-weak-b6c) ~~~ aidenn0 What that article calls "dynamically typed" is commonly referred to as "untyped" in PL research. The program '1 + "2"' is a perfectly valid python program with well defined behavior (it signals a TypeError). This demonstrates that you can in fact add integers to strings in python. Of course whether or not you can add integers to strings is completely orthogonal to whether or not a language is typed. Both typed and untyped languages may overload the addition operator. ~~~ SloopJon For those downvoting aidenn0's comments, I was surprised to find that "untyped" is indeed a common term that includes what many people (myself included) call dynamically typed. See the three top-voted answers to this Stack Overflow question, one of which includes a citation from TaPL, a standard text (emphasis added): "A type system is a tractable _syntactic_ method ... Terms like 'dynamically typed' are arguably misnomers." [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9154388/does-untyped- als...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9154388/does-untyped-also-mean- dynamically-typed-in-the-academic-cs-world) I still prefer the term dynamically typed, because there are useful distinctions about value types to be made among such languages, such as those described in striking's link. ------ dpc_pw > Data races will occur when multiple threads uses a variable at the same > time, which will likely make the program crash. ... or let the attacker execute arbitrary code. ------ trumpeta Isn't Dotty basically statically typed Python? They added whitespace syntax recently and thanks to Scala native it should be possible to have a LLVM backend somewhere down the line. ------ Nasreddin_Hodja Why not to just use Cython? ------ pmoriarty Strongly typed? You mean statically typed? See _" What to know before debating type systems"_: [http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/2010/08/what-to-know- before...](http://blogs.perl.org/users/ovid/2010/08/what-to-know-before- debating-type-systems.html) ~~~ azhenley > _Type inference is generally a big win._ I see this claimed a lot, but haven’t seen any evidence. ~~~ aw1621107 Might depend on what "win" is supposed to mean in this context. If it's intended to mean "languages with type inference are more productive", then sure, evidence would be nice. If it's intended to mean "type inference helps cut down on the need for explicit type annotations", I don't think evidence is really necessary. ------ tabtab Before making Yet Another Language, I'd like to see a good analysis of the options and trade-offs they offer: what does each design choice make easier and harder. There is probably no free lunch, but maybe we can find a better lunch by balancing things carefully. ~~~ eerimoq For me it's pretty simple. I love Python. I like speed. I like embedded. This is an attempt to take advantage of Python's type hints to create fast and hopefully small binaries that can be executed on embedded devices limited amount of resources (both CPU and RAM). There are probably other languages that would serve the same purpose, but oh well, I can't resist creating another. =) ~~~ h8hawk Have you look at mypyc? [https://github.com/python/mypy](https://github.com/python/mypy) Its a compiler that support subset of python and mypy's team including Guido work on it. It would be great if this kind of efforts have been done on more realistic project. ~~~ eerimoq It compiles statically typed Python modules to CPython C extension modules. I do not know the details, but it sounds like that's a major difference to Mys.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Mathematics is art (all the mathematicians say so) - adamnemecek https://medium.com/@fjmubeen/mathematics-is-art-all-the-mathematicians-say-so-d0d569f89976#.6g5zbk2uf ====== MrQuincle I'd politely disagree. I like the intro in Mumford's text. "The study of mental objects with reproducible properties is called mathematics." This is in contrast to science, which is the study of physical objects with reproducible properties. And it is in contrast to art which is not about being reproducible, but about being unique and personally colored. Mumford's text is called The Dawning of the Age of Stochasticity [https://t.co/nbILzRf8ml](https://t.co/nbILzRf8ml)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Court has confirmed coordinated raids of Zwiebelfreunde in Germany were illegal - rendx https://blog.torservers.net/20180704/coordinated-raids-of-zwiebelfreunde-at-various-locations-in-germany.html#update ====== freeflight A small remainder: German police also confiscated donor lists for anonymity projects like Tails [0] In that context, I consider it highly unlikely that this data wasn't already shared with all kinds of institutions. Sure, CCC and Zwiebelfreunde can do a bit of legal dance and make German police pretend nothing like that ever happened, but one would be naive to take their word for it. [0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17483393](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17483393) ------ throwaway77384 I mean, I am really, really glad that at least it's been declared illegal, as the whole thing is just insane (and reeks of the typical authoritarian overreach as is custom in Bavaria), but the fact it happened in the first place is still deeply disconcerting. ~~~ lallysingh They'll probably do it again. ~~~ mg794613 I'm not a German, but Dutch. Doesn't this generate a lot of media attention and precedence? I thought these kind of actions were especially sensitive in Germany? ------ kodablah Are there any consequences to prevent this from happening again? I am unfamiliar w/ German approaches to illegal police activities (even if barely illegal and retroactively determined), but I know in other countries the absence of any consequences allows these things to repeatedly happen. ~~~ xashor Effectively there will be no consequences. Technically Zwiebelfreunde could file charges against the judge who signed the orders or the police who executed them, but effectively they will not be prosecuted, let alone convicted. Nearly all illegal police activity in Germany had no real consequences, because there is a „high trust” in them by ruling parties. Some examples from the last year: [http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/g20-polizei-soll- recht...](http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/g20-polizei-soll-rechtswidrig- granatpistole-eingesetzt-haben-a-1176695.html) [https://www.hessenschau.de/panorama/durchsuchung-des-asta- st...](https://www.hessenschau.de/panorama/durchsuchung-des-asta- studierendenhauses-war-rechtswidrig,rechtswidrige-durchsuchung-asta-100.html) ------ komali2 They're requesting in writing that no analysis was done, because then when they get the equipment back and see that yup, analysis was done, they can then I assume sue for... Something? How's that work in Germany? ~~~ clubm8 > _They 're requesting in writing that no analysis was done, because then when > they get the equipment back and see that yup, analysis was done, they can > then I assume sue for... Something?_ I'd assume if you're involved in a lawsuit against the police, and they make a factual claim like "we did not analyze items not listed in the warrant", that there's some sort of perjury type charge there. While the police are allowed to lie to you, that's usually restricted to interrogations ("your partner has already flipped") not lying to the lawyer for the person suing you. ~~~ testvox This isn't how it works in the United States at least. The police are allowed to lie to you, your lawyer, the media, anyone they want to, as long as they are not under oath. They may be held civilly liable for lies that cause damages but only after overcoming their qualified immunity. Lieing to the court even when not under oath could lead to a contempt change. ~~~ clubm8 >This isn't how it works in the United States at least. The police are allowed to lie to you, your lawyer, the media, anyone they want to, as long as they are not under oath. That seems like you're playing semantics. A __contempt charge __is a type of criminal charge. My contention is that if a lawyer, during discovery, asks the police a question like "did you analyze the data" and they lie they'd face issues. So it looks like we're in agreement :) ~~~ mg794613 You are in spirit in agreement, but I don't think he played on words. Just stating (how awful, personal opinion) how it is in the US. ------ nmcfarl Google Translate of the German court text quoted in the blog post: The challenged search and seizure orders and confiscation orders of the district court of Munich were unlawful. As far as they were still valid, they were therefore to be lifted. Moreover, their illegality was ascertained. The applications for surrender of the confiscated objects were also to be granted in this respect. The measures can no longer be considered covered by the Code of Criminal Procedure. The investigating authorities are right to bring proceedings against the persons responsible for the calls made on the websites cited. However, the assumption made by the investigating authorities that evidence can be found during the search of the data subjects or on the confiscated data carriers is not justified in the known circumstances. There is no sufficient probability of finding relevant data. There is no evidence that those affected, their association onion friends e.V. or the grouping "Riseup Networks" belong only to the environment of unknown offenders. It is also not immediately apparent that they can find information on the perpetrator environment or the perpetrators. The only connection point is the fact that the unknown perpetrators had set up an e-mail account at "Riseup Networks". However, "Riseup Networks" offers (as intended) anonymized Internet services. The account can be set up anonymously (on recommendation). E-mail traffic via the configured account is encrypted. Therefore, there is very little chance of getting information about the perpetrators and acts via "Riseup Networks" and its database. In addition, there is the additional factor that according to the information available so far, those concerned with their association "Zwiebelfreunde e.V." can not be equated with "Riseup Networks". The link exists, as far as can be seen, only in the support of the network by collecting donations ~~~ atVelocet I think the translation from deepl.com is a bit better: "The challenged search and seizure orders and seizure confirmation orders of the Munich District Court were illegal. If they still existed, they were therefore to be repealed. Moreover, their unlawfulness could be established. The requests for surrender of the confiscated items were also to be granted in this respect. The measures can no longer be regarded as covered by the Code of Criminal Procedure. The investigating authorities are right to take legal action against those responsible for the calls on the websites cited. However, in the known circumstances, it is not justified for the investigating authorities to assume that evidence for these proceedings can be found during the search of the persons concerned or on the confiscated data carriers. There is insufficient probability of finding relevant data. There is no evidence that those affected, their association Zwiebelfreunde e.V. or the grouping "Riseup Networks" belong even to the environment of the unknown perpetrators. It is also not immediately apparent that they contain information on the perpetrators' environment or perpetrators. The only connection point is the fact that the unknown perpetrators had set up an e-mail account at "Riseup Networks". "However, "Riseup Networks" offers (as intended) anonymized Internet services. The account can be set up anonymously (on recommendation). E-mail traffic via the configured account is encrypted. Therefore, there is very little probability of obtaining information about the perpetrators and crimes via "Riseup Networks" and its database. In addition, according to the information available to date, those affected with their association "Zwiebelfreunde e.V." cannot be equated with "Riseup Networks". The only connection, as far as is evident, is to support the network by collecting donations." Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator ------ tinus_hn It’s a good thing people are willing to risk this much to make an important point.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Offline Cookbook: caching and serving offline-first - jaffathecake http://jakearchibald.com/2014/offline-cookbook/ ====== pavel_lishin I wonder if there's a support group for AppCache survivors. Someplace people can meet, and talk about how AppCache has hurt them. Someplace with a nice, strong cell signal, and complimentary wifi. ------ aboodman I expect people will try different things with SW, but that the pattern for offline will end up being basically what appcache implemented. That's because there's really only one way to do it: you split your app into a client/server model, where the client (the ui resources) are updated transactionally in the background and swapped into place when they are ready, and there's a local datastore that serves as a cache of the truth and a queue of pending changes. ServiceWorker is more flexible and powerful than appcache, and you can do other (non-offline related) things with it. That's great. But the fundamental model for building an offline-capable applications is well-understood and unlikely to change. It's the model that all mobile applications frameworks use, what desktop apps used before, and what appcache implemented. ~~~ jaffathecake [http://jakearchibald.com/2014/offline-cookbook/#putting- it-t...](http://jakearchibald.com/2014/offline-cookbook/#putting-it-together) \- here I cover the techniques I used to create a very simple timeline-based app, sort-of Twitter-like. AppCache can only do one of those patterns, the one that handles static assets, and of course you open yourself up to appcache's quirks such as master entries. AppCache can just about handle static assets. Just about. That's not enough for most apps. Look at the patterns in the article and their use-cases.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What Is a Thought Experiment, Anyhow? (2006) [pdf] - lainon https://philpapers.org/archive/PIGWIA-2.pdf ====== GregBuchholz The parent article is about 99% fluff, but for people interested in Philosophy of Science, John D. Norton (from the article) has a treasure trove of interesting stuff. [https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20120702103247/http://www.p...](https://web- beta.archive.org/web/20120702103247/http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/jdnorton.html) [https://web-beta.archive.org/web//http://www.pitt.edu/~jdno...](https://web- beta.archive.org/web//http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/*) Unfortunately our universities are big failure when it comes to properly maintaining and archiving their websites. I guess the librarians have not been involved when it comes to matters of IT. Anyway, you have to search for his stuff on archive.org. For thought experiments, check out things like: Thought Experiment Anti-Thought Experiment Pairs [https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20120703003926/http://www.p...](https://web- beta.archive.org/web/20120703003926/http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/TE- antiTE/index.html) and his papers on Maxwell's demon: [https://web-beta.archive.org/web/20140309110028/http://www.p...](https://web- beta.archive.org/web/20140309110028/http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/Goodies/exorcism_phase_vol/exorcism_phase_vol.html) [http://www2.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/ExorcistXIV/Exorcist1....](http://www2.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/ExorcistXIV/Exorcist1.pdf) [http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/ExorcistXIV/Exorcist2.p...](http://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/ExorcistXIV/Exorcist2.pdf) ~~~ mannykannot Thanks for the links, and I see that they are of Norton's work. Going solely on the article, I felt I could understand Norton's view, but in the author's outline of Brown's view, I haven't been able to make the jump from "the laws of gravity... are 'real' in that they exist, again, independently of human observers" to "thought experiments are genuine examples of how the human mind can 'perceive' laws of nature by simply thinking about reality." The first thing I want to ask about that (beyond just how it works) is how can you tell that you are not just making it up? Of course, one way would be to use reasoning to see if your ideas are consistent with what you take to be known, but does that not give you just Norton's view decorated with some metaphysical musings? I realize that Brown's version may be too subtle to even be summarized in an article such as this, and if someone knows of a link to a fair outline of Brown's views, I would give it a go. As an aside, I am also amused to see 'real' in quotes (and it is not for the reason I just put it there). It puts me in mind of George Burns' joke about faking sincerity. ------ mad44 If you are interested in thought experiments, this book does a great job of providing you "tools for thinking". The book is called intuition pumps and other tools for thinking by Daniel Dennett. [https://www.amazon.com/Intuition-Pumps-Other-Tools- Thinking/...](https://www.amazon.com/Intuition-Pumps-Other-Tools- Thinking/dp/1491518871) ~~~ opaqe This was my immediate idea for a comment as well. His "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" book also has an extended discussion on the "Library of Mendel" which I forgot if he included in intuition pumps. But from a programming languages perspective I think the discussion of navigating "design space" in a generalized way is a very powerful abstraction. ------ mannykannot Perhaps I am missing something, but the example given here seems to have been loaded up with more insight than it can bear - it can refute "heavier things fall faster" but not conclude that all things' acceleration under gravity alone is independent of their mass (the article itself says "two objects of different weight must fall at the same speed" which is simply false.) To reach the equal acceleration conclusion by way of this thought experiment, I think you have to have a quantitative and fairly comprehensive theory of drag, and a supercomputer on which to do the calculations. Of course, one alternative is to posit that drag is caused by movement through the surrounding fluid and then, without elaborating on that, perform an experiment - a real experiment - in a vacuum. ------ matt4077 The major misconception I always had was that thought experiments were tools for teaching, i. e. cute little metaphors to make special relativity accessible to 16-year olds. The reality (on the macro scale :) was apparently that especially Einstein strongly relied on them to allow him to use project intuition into these rather strange realms he was working on. (The book I got this from added something like "because his math skills were relatively shallow", but people always misunderstand that because they don't see the unspoken context "... among physicists winning two or more Nobels") ------ mwexler Gedanken! [https://www.britannica.com/science/Gedankenexperiment](https://www.britannica.com/science/Gedankenexperiment) I love this word and it's associated meanings. Einstein is it's most famous practitioner, but I find it's a useful way to play out situations to see possible outcomes. ------ dTal I think of thought experiments as consistency audits on a mental framework - they can't tell you anything new about the world directly, but they can reveal problems in the way you've broken the problem down.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Books and Courses for Wannabe CTOs and Heads of Engineering? - iforgotmypass How did you become the CTO or Head of Engineering at a larger organization? What books and courses did shape your growth and prepare you for this role and/or solidify your knowledge as a CTO / Head of Engineering?<p>---<p>I've got a background as a software developer and development team lead. I've filled shoes as an architect, infrastructure expert and an IT project manager. I've got a solid understanding of the business side as well.<p>What books, courses and other "theoretical background" you would recommend to make the jump / transition from a development team lead to a Head of Engineering or CTO at a company with 100-250 employees?<p>This is not a question about career progression as it is more about "growing with the company" (so gaining all the required knowledge in advance before actually gaining that know-how in practice - for example, when you are a "CTO" of small yet fast-growing startup).<p>The recommended literature should contain info on:<p>* scaling the software development team (e.g. if I've lead a team of 8, how do "I" "handle a "team"" of 50-70 engineers? What are the common pitfalls to scaling the engineering team? Some common examples for the organizational structure for handling multiple software development teams?)<p>* defining and measuring KPIs and/or OKRs for technical people in all the levels<p>* project management techniques and tools to gather all the data (and what data and how should I gather?) to be able to make any decisions<p>* talking to the management (reports, bridging the understanding between the business and the IT)<p>* everything else I haven't thought about<p>I am looking more for a know-how that could be applied to existing enterprise as well. So more of an enterprise-way how-to than "whatever works" and "let's just do it the start-up way". ====== thiago_fm 1\. you don't handle a team of 50-70, you hire good team leads and handle only the team leads, trusting them to do their job and try to get what they want from top management done 2\. there are a lot of books on that subject, but the most important thing imho is that you and your company about the KPIs they chose. It's an art like painting. If you do the colors and forms the way others do, it is very unlikely that you will beat competition, and if there would be a book that would tell you, everybody could become Picasso. I think this is the main challenge of being a C-level, all the rest is well documented. 3\. Same as 2. I see you are addicted to perfect methods which even in team lead positions doesn't apply/exists. It isn't coding. If anybody knew the right way, they could just do it infinitely and create infinite useful companies/products. 4\. I'd get a good communication course and practice often in different situations, you need to become very good in "powerpoint karaoke" and it's mostly a selling skill. 5\. There is an infinite amount of information in that subject, you need to figure out what the combination of (you+company) needs and focus only on that. My 2 cents: You should focus on creating a good environment for the people that work with you, so that they can just have a lot of autonomy and are empowered, feeling responsible for the future of the company. All your worries above are partially useless, things such as KPIs isn't so much a thing that a CTO should control/care. Instead create an environment that people would come up with ideas of what to do and you just enable them. ------ macando A lot of eye-opening insights in: Becoming a Technical Leader: An Organic Problem-Solving Approach [https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Technical-Leader-Problem- Sol...](https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Technical-Leader-Problem-Solving- Approach/dp/0932633021) "It identifies which leadership skills are most effective in a technical environment and why technical people have characteristic trouble in making the transition to a leadership role. For anyone who is a leader, hopes to be one, or would like to avoid being one." ------ davismwfl I am a CTO today (albeit for a small startup right now), but I have run teams of 120+ people and I have run my own successful businesses. So my advice comes from that knowledge and experience growing an engineering team from 6 to 120+ in a year. Books are interesting to read and can give you ideas, but in the end it is leadership that solves the problems and makes teams successful, not which OKRs you put in place. In fact, OKR's can be the death of a team if they are done incorrectly, and just cause Google uses them doesn't make them good. Six Sigma was invented at Motorola who used it mainly properly, GE started with it in a good way then twisted it so badly that it became a problem not a solution. Sadly that trend went around multiple industries, much like OKR's today. That's just an example though. OKR's and six sigma can be used properly to great success, but be careful with trends when you are a leader. To the things you asked about specifically, there is no book or set of books I know of that will answer it all. Most of being a good CTO isn't about the technical part of the job or engineering specifically, it is about people. So if you are not a good people person that is the place to start. Read about people, read psychology books, read sociology books, understand how group think works and how to avoid it etc. Make sure your life is in order so you are not running around like a chicken without its head, because how you work is how your team will work. So if you are a negative person you'll surround yourself with negative people, either because you hire them that way or you'll make them negative through your own behavior. Negativity is bad, fairly blunt honesty with positive reinforcement is good. Growing a team from 0-8 vs from 10-30 isn't much more difficult, the rules stay the same but you have to setup more structure. The biggest mistake new CTO's and Founders make is they don't put in organizational structure, thinking a flat organization is ideal, and truly flat. Flat organizations are great, but it does NOT mean you lack structure, please read on this if you don't understand it. People need to know who to go to when, how to resolve an HR problem vs an engineering issue etc. 90% of the time I see growing teams in trouble it is from a lack of organizational structure and process. And process doesn't mean some heavy weight manual on how to do a job, just where to go for what and when and who to ask what types of questions for quick resolution. I could go on and on about each of the issues. What you need is a good mentor to help you and to give you advice. My 2 cents, if you want to grow with the organization into a technical leader understand that you need to be a people person and your technical ability is second. IMO you should never lose your technical knowledge and I feel CTO's should always remain highly technical ( at least in knowledge ), but your primary job goes from technology to leadership, so if you are touching code in a company that size as CTO you have failed big time. If you want to touch code, move to the principle or staff engineer type position and not a CTO/VP etc. As for books: Crossing the chasm (get the latest edition) -- good for technical product introductions and marketing behavior. CTO's/VP's etc need to know marketing and business methodologies well to be successful. The Essential Drucker -- not saying I agree with everything, but at least it helps you understand a lot of concepts and you can see patterns. Chainsaw by John A Byrne -- This book is about Al Dunlap and Sunbeam and corporate greed. I think all new founders, managers and business people should read it. It isn't a guide to being good but showing how you can destroy a company quickly. So worth the read, and interesting characters. Also read all kinds of management books and military leadership books for special forces etc. It gives you good information on how to create high performance loyal teams.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Agile Development for Designers - pius http://hoth.entp.com/output/agile_for_designers.html ====== VisuallyOn Knowing that most software are always 85% ready! Rapid Prototyping and Multiple Iterations is the way to go (I do).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
exFAT in the Linux kernel - UkiahSmith https://cloudblogs.microsoft.com/opensource/2019/08/28/exfat-linux-kernel/ ====== pedrocr I'll believe Microsoft loves Linux when I can install Microsoft Office in my desktop Linux machine. Everything else is marketing. Edit: to expand, the corporate world runs on Excel/PowerPoint/Outlook. Microsoft milks them on Windows/Office licensing and is very aggressive against organizations that try to do Linux deployments. They're a convicted monopolist that got away easily when at some point the option on the table was to split OS and Office into two different companies. If they want to continue to use Office to keep Windows dominant that's their strategy. WSL and their other "love Linux" efforts are all about making sure developers stay on Windows. If you want to do all that fine but don't patronize us by then claiming you love Linux. ~~~ tw04 Given that Microsoft is a for-profit company, what's the financial justification for writing office for Linux on desktop? The market share isn't even a rounding error and you're talking about them investing tens of millions minimum into the development. The fact they have office on Android, iOS, and osx proves it's about market share and common sense, not some fabricated hatred or fear of Linux on the desktop. ~~~ pizza234 > what's the financial justification for writing office for Linux on desktop? Well, the same argument could be applied to their open source contributions. Considering that [canonical corporate view is that] patented ideas are expensive to produce, and that exFAT is patented, what's the financial justication for open sourcing it (the specs or else)? The argument is ultimately against "Windows love Linux". The thesis of the parent is just that they're doing unsubstantial moves (or worse, manipulative ones), and that if they "truly loved Linux", they would do something substantial, which, for the corporate world, is to support Office on Linux. ~~~ close04 This argument can very easily be used against people who claim they love Linux and FOSS but they never really seem to be willing to part with the same amount of money other people are willing to give MS. Donating $300 for every copy of Libre Office you use would go a long way to making MS Office on Linux completely unneeded. Same goes for donating similar amounts for every Linux you install. I guess everyone's love has limits and it's usually money. As for MS's contribution to open source you have to consider the difference in magnitude between the revenue that Office generates and the revenue that their other open source contributions do (would?). Then consider also the development effort involved. It looks like OP just wants exactly what MS doesn't offer completely disregarding the alternatives, and I'm pretty sure they would not be willing to pay the markup for the extra development involved. ------ jaclaz The IMHO extremely relevant point is in the very end of the actual specifications: [https://docs.microsoft.com/it- it/windows/win32/fileio/exfat-...](https://docs.microsoft.com/it- it/windows/win32/fileio/exfat-specification) >26-Aug-2019 Seventh release of the Basic Specification, which includes the following changes: Updated legal terms pertaining to the specification, including: Removal of Microsoft Confidential notice Removal of Microsoft Corporation Technical Documentation License Agreement section Updated copyright notice to 2019 Till now the documentation wasn't AFAIK publicly available or it was anyway "restricted". ~~~ userbinator Skimming through the doc, it looks like a modification of FAT32 with some (noticeably more complex) extensions, and not anything resembling what you might envision a "FAT64" to be; a FAT is still a linked list of 32-bit entries, there can still be two of them, and directory entries are still 32 bytes each (although defined in a rather complex way.) There's a separate allocation bitmap, which seems redundant and a waste of space (and code) given that the FAT itself already contains the information in previous versions. I've written a FAT12/16/32 driver for an embedded system before; and oddly enough, the documentation I had at the time was far easier to understand than this one. I didn't expect exFAT to be this complex, or perhaps the doc is just excessively verbose --- for example, the whole first paragraph of the 4th section is saying nothing more than "there may be 1 or 2 FATs, one after the other, and NumberOfFats is the field that says how many there are" except it takes 5 sentences to do so. That said, this spec is written in a style that's easier to understand than a lot of the other "open specifications" docs that MS has released, but I suspect that's because this one was once an actual NDA'd implementer's document rather than the others which I've heard may have been released purely for legal reasons related to the antitrust than anything else. Now if only they'll do this for NTFS... ~~~ MuffinFlavored With how slow modern day NTFS is for things like node_modules (lots of nested directories), I can't help but hope some better file system will become widespread on the next major Windows release. ~~~ kevingadd Most of the performance issues are not NTFS so much as the prevalence of file- system filter drivers. This is why WSL had so many file-system performance issues despite the fact that it was using a custom FS. IIRC this also motivated the move to WSL2 from what I read, since a virtual machine can use a small set of files to store a whole FS. EDIT: See here - [https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425...](https://github.com/Microsoft/WSL/issues/873#issuecomment-425272829) ------ jdsully The big deal here is the patent grant. FAT related patents were held over linux like a gun in the Ballmer years. Its a reason Linux was stuck with 8.3 length filenames for so long. ~~~ taffer Aren't the FAT patents about to expire anyway? ~~~ WorldMaker Some of the earliest ones, surely, but presumably Microsoft also continued to patent later innovations: all of the "extended" in ExFAT. ~~~ viraptor This seems to be one of the patents involved: [https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC...](https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=2008168029&KC=&FT=E&locale=en_EP#) I'm not sure what's the expiry on 2008 submission. ~~~ loeg 20 years from invention? Which looks like ~2004 skimming the 2008 filing. ------ hnarn I don't mean for this question to sound inflammatory but I can't help but think: why does this matter? You can already use exFAT on Linux via FUSE, and as pointed out by VentureBeat: > To be clear, Microsoft isn’t open-sourcing exFAT — but it is making sure > anyone building with Linux can use it. 'It’s important to us that the Linux > community can make use of exFAT included in the Linux kernel with > confidence.' exFAT is still not open source, and still can't be distributed with the kernel. So what changed? It will now be easier to integrate it into a _custom_ kernel instead of using FUSE? Why is this better than the current situation, where you'd install exfat-utils for example? Are there benefits of using a kernel module that I'm missing which makes this important news? ~~~ gregkh It will be in the "real" kernel soon, here is a patch I submitted adding it: [https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20190828160817.6250-1-gregkh@li...](https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/[email protected]/) And yes, this is _much_ better than using a FUSE interface to the filesystem. ~~~ ghostpepper For the 99% of people reading who don't know the kernel as well as you (seriously) can you explain why this is the case? Does a userspace filesystem driver lose a lot of performance to context switching, or is there something unique to filesystems that slows them down in user space? ~~~ gregkh > Does a userspace filesystem loose a lot of performance... Yes. Try the two versions out, and see for yourself if you are curious. ~~~ dekhn I use a FUSE filesystem on linux- not ExFAT, but as an S3 interface. I often see 1+Gigabyte/sec throughput over the wire from simple multithreaded IO operations. FUSE can be very fast. ~~~ notriddle For one thing, that's throughput, not latency. For another, that's probably a desktop, not a smartphone. ~~~ dekhn That's correct, my metric for performance is throughput I don't really think a desktop vs a smartphone matters much at this comparison, it's just my observation that when people say a fuse filesystem is slow it's just not well- engineered, not that the fuse API is inherently slow ~~~ grosswait Run a benchmark that measures more than throughput and you'll see the difference. IOPs are usually poor. ~~~ codycraven Latency is a nightmare if you perform certain types of tasks on FUSE. ------ rhn_mk1 Does this affect anything outside the Linux kernel? Will *BSDs be able to use the specs without patent fears? What about microcontrollers, and the Arduino community? ~~~ Conan_Kudo No. The OIN promise only applies to Linux-based systems. ~~~ derefr What defines a "Linux-based system"? Does Android count? Would VMWare's VSphere ESXi hypervisor count? Would a unikernel running on a pared-down Linux rump-kernel (if such a thing were made) count? ~~~ progval According to [http://en.swpat.org/wiki/GPLv2_and_patents](http://en.swpat.org/wiki/GPLv2_and_patents) , GPLv2 includes an implicit patent grant So my guess would be that the definition of "derivative work" would apply. ~~~ monocasa That's super duper grey area, which is why GPLv3 went out of it's way to have an explicit patent grant. ------ tambourine_man OMG, I can't believe we finally have a cross platform read/write disk format. At last. No more Fuse. I just need to know when it will be available for my Raspberry Pi. ~~~ pwg We already have one, it is just that few know we do: Universal Disk Format ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Disk_Format)). I can confirm it works on Linux, and works on Windows (at least W10). The wikipedia article indicates it works on newer MacOS'es, but I can't confirm that fact. ~~~ tambourine_man I thought it was for optical media only. Yet, it seems there's no way to format to it out of box on macOS and support looks dodgy. I'm not willing to bet my data on an unreliable file system implementation. ~~~ pwg > I thought it was for optical media only. Nope, although it is most commonly used on optical media it is not restricted to only optical media. From the wikipedia article: Specifications The UDF standard defines three file system variations, called "builds". These are: Plain (Random Read/Write Access). This is the original format supported in all UDF revisions ... Plain build Introduced in the first version of the standard, this format can be used on any type of disk that allows random read/write access, such as hard disks, DVD+RW and DVD-RAM media. Metadata (up to v2.50) and file data is addressed more or less directly. In writing to such a disk in this format, any physical block on the disk may be chosen for allocation of new or updated files. Since this is the basic format, practically any operating system or file system driver claiming support for UDF should be able to read this format. ~~~ ldng Have you used it IRL ? How does it fare performance wise ? ~~~ pwg I've been using it for some number of years now on USB sticks that are larger than 2G (to avoid the 2G file size limit of Fat32) for file transfer to/from the work machine. I have had zero issues with it from Linux or Win (I think I started using it when the "work pc" was Win7, but am not 100% sure of that). It has just worked, with no problems, for my use cases. Performance wise, well, the performance is limited by the USB sticks (they are USB2 sticks) so from what I can tell, UDF is not the limiter, the USB2 interface or the flash cells in the stick are the performance limiter. ------ mixmastamyk Thanks MS. Would also like to see ext4 support in Windows and better NTFS support under Linux. Then the turnaround (on the technical side at least) will be complete. ~~~ wpdev_63 Bring btrfs to windows pls! ------ newscracker When will we have a modern file system that “just works” for read and write on Windows, Linux and Mac without the need to buy some proprietary product or depend on some open source option that may not be maintained or 100% reliable? Seems like going over the network is the easiest option for people who use multiple OSes, though it comes with incompatibilities in permissions, ownership and also comes with a speed hit. I doubt if Apple would provide implementations of APFS for non-Apple operating systems. So that probably leaves Microsoft to push NTFS (since ReFS isn’t a common option anymore as per Wikipedia) if it desires. But Microsoft seems to be on a cost cutting mode (cf the adoption of Chromium in Edge). Are there viable and good options suitable for these three operating systems? ~~~ angrygoat exFAT works on MacOS >= 10.6.5, Windows and with this announcement hopefully shortly on Linux. I'd say it counts as a modern file system too - only released in 2006. ~~~ shmerl I'd count "modern", as something like btrfs, zfs or bcahefs. ------ buildbuildbuild Too little too late, with no acknowledgement of Ballmer-era exclusivity, bullying. It’s progress, but progress without awareness of baggage in the room. ------ jasonhansel "We love Linux so much that we would never let it be polluted by our horrible desktop software!" ------ postit MS wants a native kernel fs compatible with Windows so they can improve WSL. Today's virtualized kernel pays an unecessary price to access ext4 FS ------ xvilka Meanwhile, ntfs-3g[1] wasn't updated for years and looks like totally dead. Last version is of March 28, 2017. [1] [https://www.tuxera.com/community/open-source- ntfs-3g/](https://www.tuxera.com/community/open-source-ntfs-3g/) ------ bubblethink Any news on NTFS ? ~~~ benbristow NTFS-3g is pretty good and support on Linux is definitely a lot better than it used to be. Still, official (or officially supported/documented) support would be really nice. Honestly I hope even Windows abandons NTFS soon. It's the worst part of using Windows. e.g. Try and develop any Node project on Windows and it's painful - takes literally minutes to delete the node_modules folder whereas on Linux/Mac it takes seconds. It only recently got long pathname support (260+ chars long)... ~~~ GordonS On the other side, file ACLs in NTFS are way more powerful than the Linux owner-group-world model. ~~~ grumpydba You can use posix acls whenever you want though. ~~~ amaccuish Posix acls aren't particularly nice though. RichACLs is what I'd love but they're not merged :( ------ The_rationalist Almost every months Microsoft make a more or less major gift to the open source community, this is beautiful. They are the new "benevolent" Google and it's no surprise they're now the number one open source contributor of the world. ~~~ TwoNineA They already extorted Android OEMs using exFat patents for billions, might as well try to look nice. ~~~ swiley As much as I hate the patent bullying Android should have never used FAT for _ANYTHING_. The stupidity around that continues to make everyone's lives hard to this day. ~~~ lern_too_spel If you want an SD card that is also readable by the digital camera ecosystem, what choice do you have? ~~~ jdnenej How often are people taking a microSD card from their camera and putting it in their phone considering on a lot of devices this means pulling the battery out. Also they could support fat while not having the main system storage using fat. ~~~ vetinari Main system storage didn't use FAT; /sdcard did. ------ dang Related: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20821161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20821161) ------ acd Thanks Microsoft and the developers there for sharing ExFat! It is great to see the changed attitude and embracing of open source software! This will ease the use of large external disks, sharing files between Windows and Linux systems. It will help with larger USB memory sticks which no longer needs to be reformatted. It will also make it much easier to deal with SD cards from cameras and mobile phones. ------ shmerl Finally. Next steps — MS can release active sync without patents, and also start supporting Vulkan and drop DirectX 12 diversion. ------ ausjke wan't Samsung providing a GPL-version of exFAT for Linux already? what's the difference assuming this news means we will have a native exFAT driver in kernel "soon". Is exFAT only good for file storage considering it has no journal ling? putting rootfs on it may have a dysfunction system relatively easily without fsck I assume. ~~~ finchisko I have extensive (bad) experience with exFAT implemntation on other platforms than Windows. My external disk formatted as exFAT gets constantly corrupted (need fsck), when used on macOS and Linux. On Linux I use this Samsung's exfat-nofuse kernel driver on raspberry pi. ExFAT fs is mounted read-only and still get corrupted. So I don't share the excitement with most folks here. Until driver gets better, exFAT is not rock solid option for sharing data between OSes. ------ dkh Big deal! This is right up there with Adobe Premiere on Windows finally getting a ProRes encoder at the top of my list of "Things That Would've Helped My FilmTech Career Around 6 years ago". 1) We finally have a file system that works across operating systems, which is a big deal if you ever do anything in a multi-OS environment. 2) exFAT is heavily used in the film production world, and the convenience of knowing it'll mount properly on any OS so you can duplicate it a few times is much more important than whether or not it's a "safer" file system in general. It doesn't need to survive forever -- the card just has to make it from the camera to the computer on the other side of the set, or survive a trip from one office to another on a shuttle drive that by this point is not the only place that data exists. Regardless, it's still more mature in general than I remember it when it started to appear in high-end cameras around 2012/2013\. When your Blackmagic camera shoots exFAT but isn't capable of deleting files off it without a computer... 3) Should something still go wrong (like, oh, the time I was almost responsible for losing $60k of footage my second day on a job due to unexpected use of exFAT + a truly unfortunate and odd-defying day of bad luck) the fact that Microsoft is implementing it in the kernel should still be a huge help -- it will be a proper implementation (not a reverse-engineered sometimes-working mess), will perform much better than FUSE, and just generally improve reliability. Trust me, when your card with irreplaceable footage won't mount, you'd rather not have to fight that battle on two fronts, with one of them being your Linux implementation. ~~~ userbinator _fact that Microsoft is implementing it in the kernel should still be a huge help_ If you're trying to recover video (which is one of the easiest types of data to recover, due to it being large, sequentially written, and bitstreams containing easily recognisable sync markers), and especially from a storage device that's being exclusively used for video, the actual filesystem doesn't really matter because practically all of the sane ones will store the file data in a contiguous range of blocks. Depending on the exact codec, you may even be able to dd the raw device into a decoder and it'll simply find the first valid sync marker and start decoding from there. ~~~ dkh Well of course, some file carving is what has gotten me out of a few messes in the past, including the one mentioned. But in a situation where a volume won't mount/read, it's nice to eliminate a poor implementation or FUSE issue as a potential variable in determining if there's actually a problem. (Or worse, introducing a new problem... I've seen that, too, especially in earlier days of exfat-fuse/exfat-utils.) ------ Canadauni Is it worth formatting my external flash media as exFAT at this point if I find myself dual booting often? NTFS on Ubuntu is pretty well covered so that has been what I have been using. But if exFAT support is improving I'm wondering if it is worth switching over. ------ goatinaboat Great news! But I would have delayed announcing it until I had the patches ready to be merged. ~~~ mey The real news here is the specification being opened. ------ wcchandler I haven't spun up anything in Azure for quite a while. Does anybody know if their default images use anything exFAT formatted? Doesn't UEFI/EFI binaries usually sit on exFAT? ~~~ whereistimbo By standard VFAT is required, but on most Windows PC, the UEFI partition is in NTFS. ~~~ vetinari UEFI partition is FAT32 (or EFI-FAT; EFI has their own specification of FAT, frozen in time, with it's own identifier), if not for other reason, that most UEFI implementations would not be able to boot from NTFS. Windows installer creates several partitions: System (ESP), MSR at the beginning of the disk and Recovery at the end of the disk. ~~~ whereistimbo Most UEFI implementations are loaded on Intel Windows devices, which is most likely to use TianoCore, reference implementation of UEFI which includes UEFI NTFS driver by default. I have seen that some low ends from Lenovo and Acer have its UEFI partition (ESP) formatted as NTFS. ~~~ vetinari Are you sure? I had a look into edk2 and cannot find NTFS driver there. I can see the FAT one. The NTFS support depends on device. From devices that I have around, Intel NUCs do support it, Asrock X399 board does not. I have yet to see the Windows installer to create NTFS-based ESP partition. If manufacturer does that for specific device (where it is guaranteed, that it will support NTFS), that's different thing. ------ panpanna > To this end, we will be making Microsoft’s technical specification for exFAT > publicly available to facilitate development of conformant, interoperable > implementations. How about their FAT patents?? ------ whalesalad Sweet. I had to purchase something for my Synology NAS fairly recently to support an ExFAT device. It’s great to see this contribution to open source. ------ mikorym I remember having had problems with exFAT on linux. Did it not work at all, or did you have to use user repos to get exFAT working? ~~~ paule89 You had to add it as a fuse module. I don't know if a user compiled kernel module worked. But still even if it was used as a fuse module i myself had often times problems with it. So i hope this goes away soon. ------ cosarara In my experience, exFAT gets corrupted constantly, and then on linux you don't have a proper fsck for it. ------ decoyworker Will this allow WSL2 to access your entire Windows filesystem without the performance hit? If so this is really cool. ------ dis-sys I will believe Microsoft loves Linux when they decide to drop the development of their buggy NT kernel and starts to build windows on top of the mainline Linux kernel. Everything else is just cheap marketing. ~~~ rswail "buggy NT kernel" is a stretch. There's nothing particularly wrong about the NT kernel in its design or implementation, any more than other kernels. MS don't have to drop Windows to support Linux. They can walk and chew gum at the same time. ------ vkdelta Does this mean it is royalty free now? ------ mmorearty embrace, extend, exFAT ------ mda So after abusing this bullshit for more than a decade to bully companies. How gracious and generous of them. Oh btw, Satya is the CEO for 5 years. ~~~ jaboutboul Stop shitting on them. We won the war. They’re mending their ways. It takes a long time to right such a large ship with levels upon levels of bureaucratic bullshit that’s been caked on for decades. It’s a WIP and they just granted a patent license to the OIN for fuck’s sake. Even 10 years ago this would have sounded like science fiction. ~~~ traverseda The WSL looks a _lot_ like the embrace step of an embrace-extend-extinguish doctrine. I'll believe them more when I can write user-facing apps against their posix subsystem instead of requiring people to jump through many many hoops to actually install it. Right now it just looks like something they were forced into doing because they were losing on the devtools market. ~~~ dhyft >instead of requiring people to jump through many many hoops to actually install it Yeah the hoops of going to the Store, searching for "ubuntu" and clicking Install ~~~ traverseda Are they not still requiring this? Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Windows-Subsystem-Linux I admit I haven't used WSL in a while. ~~~ jdsfighter You still need to enable the subsystem, but I don't see why most users need it on by default. It seems like an easy enough feature to prompt the user to enable (or enable for them automatically) if your application calls for it. ------ morekozhambu Hmm.. Oops! now exFAT will bring the [A-Za-z] case in-sensitivities into the GNU/Linux system. ~~~ craftyguy The ext4 folks are working on adding case-insensitive support... [https://lwn.net/Articles/784041/](https://lwn.net/Articles/784041/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Social and Cultural Aspects of Drinking - fanf2 http://www.sirc.org/publik/drinking4.html ====== LarryL A very interesting read. I did not know that alcohol effects varied that much between societies & context/circonstances. I found especially surprising the part about how in some cultures drunkenness is used as an excuse for violent behaviour while it's NOT elsewhere. I don't drink myself, but I've seen a lot of other people's behaviour in France (being loud, more or less belligerent, removing clothes, etc.), but had not realized it could be otherwise in other countries. I've always thought that being drunk (or drugged) was NOT an excuse for bad behaviour (especially picking fights): that's much too easy/convenient to justify oneself like this! Now, I've learned that I was even more right than I thought! ~~~ naravara I'd have liked to have seen more specifics on which cultures were which. I've experienced the drinking cultures from India, Japan, China, France, the US, Argentina, Brazil, and England and in ALL of them drinking alcohol was correlated with what they called "disinhibition" and aggression. The amounts of each of these things varied, but it's not like it was ever fully absent. So basically, is this is a dependency on cultural norms separate from everything else or does alcohol correlate with any specific about economic development that makes people behave this way? ~~~ skate22 If i had to take a guess, I would imagine above all else, the reasons people start drinking are going to vary from one culture to another (on the average). Ive heard the expression: drunk people speak sober thoughts (meaning they hold back less) People who get drunk to cele brate act different than people who get drunk to cope with something (from what ive seen) If in one culture it was only socially accepted to get drunk to celebrate, i would expect different behaviour than a culture who only views drinking as a way to cope Just my uninformed theory ------ brighteyes This is important information, but it's also easy to misinterpret, which I've seen a lot of on twitter. That alcohol has different impacts in different cultures certainly supports it not having a single "natural" affect on humans. But: 1\. That doesn't mean it doesn't have a single "natural" effect inside a single culture. In a culture where alcohol is strongly tied to violence, it may have such an effect regardless of a person aware of that fact or even trying to counteract it. 2\. That doesn't mean alcohol doesn't actually have a single "natural" effect on humans - it's possible cultures manage to overcome that effect through effort. (Though, this is certainly less likely than the alternative.) ~~~ watwut Both can be true simultaneously. If you being drunk excuses being aggressive, you will have lower incentive to even attempt to control aggressivity while drinking. You will also be more likely to drink before executing plan to be aggressive/violent - to give yourself excuse and reason. If alcohol excuses, you will also drink so that you give yourself social permission to do stuff you know you should now and that would make you look badly if not drunk. In opposite culture, you will not purposfully drink to enable social permission and you will attempt to regulate behavior while drinking. That is independent of whether alcohol actually makes you more aggressive and how much it naturally lowers inhibitions. Even if it does, the culture will affect how much. ------ beenBoutIT It's interesting to note that alcohol is both socially acceptable and neurotoxic, with direct effects on nerve cells. If ancient man had discovered Testors cement before alcohol we would undoubtedly be living in a world of glue huffers who demonize drinking alcohol in cautionary PSA films. ~~~ __jal That idea seems to hinge on the notion that the cultural acceptance of alcohol intoxication somehow "filled a niche" that would otherwise have been filled by some other intoxicant. The first problem to overcome if one wishes to support that idea is that alcohol had other uses than getting plastered. Weak ciders were ubiquitous before refrigeration because they were safe to drink when the local water wasn't. It was also a pain reliever before there were many others and used as a disinfectant. ~~~ toomanybeersies Cider makes a horrible disinfectant, it would be just as effective to pour apple juice over everything. You need distilled alcohol (>25% ABV), without sugar, before it starts being an effective disinfectant. ~~~ krageon I could be reading it wrong, but I think the grandparent jumped back to speaking about alcohol in general somewhere along his line of reasoning (without specifically saying where).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Chomsky: spying does not protect you - wslh https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/19-3 ====== danenania There is a practical way to reduce terrorism and make the US and the world safer that won't cost a dime and doesn't require compromises on civil liberties. Stop starting and getting involved in foreign wars, stop supporting the abusive policies of Israel, and stop supporting corrupt and abusive governments around the world. You don't hear much about that option on TV, but it's by far the simplest and best course for all concerned save a handful of greedy and duplicitous folks at the top. ~~~ joelrunyon This is copy/paste the same exact response from the top thread on reddit[1] Been seeing this a lot around here lately...Could be the same user, but I've seen it happening enough that I bet it's not. [1] [http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1gxehl/chomsky_sp...](http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/1gxehl/chomsky_spying_does_not_protect_you_if_we_had/caorp3s) ~~~ discostrings It looks like the reddit user "kaax" is taking insightful posts from HN and posting them on reddit [for karma?]. See the Bitcoin comments at [http://www.reddit.com/user/kaax](http://www.reddit.com/user/kaax) and [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5929622](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5929622) . ~~~ danenania It's kind of sleazy but I guess given the topic that I'm just happy for the words to reach more eyes. ------ beloch If you're looking for a simple way to reduce support for the Taliban and start bringing stability to Pakistan and Afghanistan, look no further than grounding the drones. Vietnam taught U.S. strategists that wars of attrition simply don't work. You'll never kill _all_ of the enemy because every attack creates more enemies than it destroys. In this sense, drone attacks do exactly the opposite of what they're supposed to do. U.S. drones do more for General Atomics than they do for U.S. citizens! Every shot fired generates future business for weapons manufacturers. The use of drones also sets an ugly precedent. If the U.S. can kill anyone they want, anywhere they want, so too can China or Russia or any other country. Sooner or later that's going to be U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. There will be moral outrage, but no moral high-ground to stand on and no recourse. Just terror. ~~~ shardling >Vietnam taught U.S. strategists that wars of attrition simply don't work. You'll never kill all of the enemy because every attack creates more enemies than it destroys. There is an absolutely amazing Rumsfield moment where he acknowledges this, but draws the conclusion that the solution is to kill them more quickly! ------ abalone Favorite quote: "Obama is running the biggest terrorist operation that exists maybe in history." "Suppose you are walking down the street and you don't know whether two minutes from now the guy across the street and everything around him is going to be blown away by a sudden explosion run by somebody a couple thousand miles away. You're terrorized. And in fact villages, regions, countries are terrorized by these [drone] operations." ~~~ MarkMc OK, I can understand Chomsky's argument that drone strikes should be classed as a terrorist operations. But the 'biggest in history'? What about the fire- bombing of Tokyo, the rape of Nankin or the genocide of Cambodia? ~~~ rdtsc Terror and murder count don't go hand in hand. They are rather orthogonal. There were murdering regimes that murdered without sowing too much terror through the population because they were good at hiding and squashing the news. As people disappeared news did spread but it was always rumors that could be dismissed. Then there is terror -- a single death using a particular technique or weapon withe the particular amount of publicity could be very terrorizing. It is is always attacks on small-town America. Imagine this news story "Cuban drone killed a young family in the small town Idaho because it was believe to be the hiding spot of (Luis Posada Carriles)[[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Posada_Carriles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_Posada_Carriles)], a known terrorist sheltered and protected by the US government" Ok, so one family killed. Now imagine the terror, the talking heads ("experts") on TV, the news channels, the presidential address, declarations of war, additional security checks etc etc. See the difference? ------ ryanSrich In response to stopping terrorism, violence, etc. It's a fact that humans are products of their environment[1,2]. This has been known for quite some time. However the degree to which we are products of our environment has always been a hot topic of discussion. On one side we have a status quo in the medical profession that insist we are pre determined for disease both physically and mentally. On the other side we have social scientists that say we are solely products of our environment and genetics only gives us predispositions to things like mental illness or obesity and so on. I tend to agree with the social scientists. We have triggers; genetically. They are either pulled or left alone. The environment in which you live is the catalyst for that type of action. Going off of that I'll point to Michel Foucault, a mid-twentieth century philosopher and social critic. The bulk of his work focuses on dissecting the ideas of power and knowledge. He understands these two entities to be synonymous with each other, which lays the foundation for his critique of governmental and institutional power. Through his critiques, Foucault positions himself as a post-modernist philosopher interested in the societal controls of modernity. He believes power, and therefore knowledge is not absolute; it is defined, enforced and accepted within the society in which it’s institutionalized. This of course is the opposite of modernism, which exercises the belief that science and reason possess the knowledge for an ultimate truth. Stemming from the industrial revolution, modernity reigned supreme through much of the twentieth century and arguably still does today. Without the willingness to accept that our environment effects so much of what we do we will never understand the means in which to change it. The ideas of violence and power are not born inside of our minds. They grow, over time, from our perceptions. Forcing an ideology or a standard on an environment will not change the behavior of the individuals occupying it; it will only enforce the causation of negative action. 1.) [http://www.mindingourbodies.ca/sites/default/files/suicide_a...](http://www.mindingourbodies.ca/sites/default/files/suicide_and_nutrition_20110415.pdf) 2.) [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1556-4029.2007....](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1556-4029.2007.00562.x/abstract;jsessionid=811EC401E930A13C826B1F72CFD0E1BD.d03t04) \+ [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucauldian_discourse_analysis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foucauldian_discourse_analysis) ------ carbocation Link is down for me; here is a google cache copy: [https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...](https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.commondreams.org/headline/2013/06/19-3&strip=1) ~~~ GoogleCache4NSA Yeah, let's all tell google that we're visiting some subversive website. Then when the NSA scoops up the most recent dump of activity, they can correlate all the Verizon and AT&T IP addresses, and the Google cookies, and compile their... "list" of subversive Hacker News readers, right? Something they wouldn't be able to capture via normal streams, since the HTTPS connection to commondreams.org masks the referrer info so that it can't be sniffed from any plaintext HTTP GETS. Hey, I wonder why the site's down? ~~~ carbocation If the NSA wants to know who most HNers are, it would be much easier to check our profiles. ------ personlurking Here's a video interview with Chomsky linked to within the OP's link ("What do Takism Square, Google Glass, the Trans-Pacific Partnership and NSA data gathering have in common? Find out in this interview with Noam Chomsky.") [http://grittv.org/?video=noam-chomsky-on-secret-trade- deals-...](http://grittv.org/?video=noam-chomsky-on-secret-trade-deals- killing-polio-workers-fighting-for-the-commons-in-turkey-the-heroism-of- bradley-manning) ~~~ Spearchucker That reminds me of a question I've pondered - what will the impact of Snowden's NSA leaks be on a. the perception of Google Glass and b. on sales? ~~~ EliRivers Indeed. Given Google's insatiable thirst for data, and the NSA's apparent open-door policy with regards to other people's data, will Google glass essentially be seen as a way for the NSA and chums to watch what everyone is doing, all the time? How do you feel about someone in your workplace/social space/anywhere recording you on behalf of the NSA? ------ PavlovsCat _[Bradley Manning] ought to be regarded as a hero... Like the trade agreement, the public has a right to know what 's being done to them by their so-called elected representatives, but there's a principle that he's violating, namely that power has to be protected from scrutiny...that's the principle of every dictatorship ... you can hear it from the high priests of government. Bradley Manning is violating that._ \-- Noam Chomsky What else is there to say? And I mean "say", not "squirm". ------ calibraxis There's a recent philosophical interview where middle-school students asked Chomsky some questions: ([http://www.zcommunications.org/noam-chomsky-beyond- fascism-b...](http://www.zcommunications.org/noam-chomsky-beyond-fascism-by- noam-chomsky)) I liked the discussion of proto-humans, and comparisons to other species. Helps put our violence and self-destructiveness into perspective for me. ~~~ emiljbs Do you have any other nice interviews with Chomsky like that? I find it very hard (as a non-native speaker) to hear and understand what he says in interviews, so text is best for me... ~~~ foobarqux [http://www.chomsky.info/interviews.htm](http://www.chomsky.info/interviews.htm) ------ PavlovsCat The quote in the linked article from the bit about Google glass was a bit short, so I transcribed it, corrections are welcome (it starts at 11:07). \-- _Meanwhile, in the course of this "Terrorist Generation" campaign, for Obama to claim, "you know, I'm really worried about terrorists, so I have to to read -- well, they claim they don't read it -- I have to get information about your email, where you are, who you're talking to, what you have on Facebook; I've gotta put that on my big database"... actually, we're moving into a world which was described, pretty accurately I think, by one of the founders of Google... I don't know if you followed the stories about Google Glass? Well, Google has some new, ridiculous thing, they're marketing glasses which have a small computer on them. So you can be on the internet 24 hours a day, just what you want. It's a way of destroying people, but quite apart from that, this little device has a camera, and presumably, if it doesn't already it will soon have a recorder, which means that everything that's going on around you, goes up on the internet. Some reporter asked Erich Schmidt, didn't he think this was an invasion of privacy, and his answer was exactly right, comes right out of the Obama administration, he said: "If you're doing anything that you don't want to be on the internet, you shouldn't be doing it." This is a dream that Orwell couldn't have concocted. We're moving into it, and it's not the only case. If you read the technical journals, there's more stuff coming along. So, for example, right now there are corporations that are concerned about using computers with components made in China, because it's technically possible to build into the hardware devices which will record what the computer is doing and send it to those bad guys. well, the articles don't point out that if the Chinese can do it, we can do it better, and probably are, so it may end up in Obama's database the next time you hit the computer._ \-- I guess you can scoff about the notion that computer would (need to) have a "recorder", or point out that Glass doesn't record without the user's say so, but still.. considering his age and that it's not his field, that guy is paying more attention to things than many of those geeking out about them. And that Schmidt quote is a smug, idiotic statement; a threat, or should I say, a dare. If he wanted to make a difference and be remembered well, other choices would have been more appropriate for him. Oh well.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Pancreatic Cancer Resources - LinkPlug This is still very new to us and I couldn't think of a better place to try to get a head start on beating this.<p>I hope when future hackers go searching for this on HN that they will find a list of the best resources.<p>Thank you :) ====== melling Pancreatic cancer is a tough one. Try reading some stuff about Randy Pausch, who did the "Last Lecture" [http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/honor/index.html](http://www.cmu.edu/randyslecture/honor/index.html) Perhaps there are organizations or treatments that you will learn about. Also, this PBS series on cancer was informative: [http://www.pbs.org/show/story-cancer-emperor-all- maladies/](http://www.pbs.org/show/story-cancer-emperor-all-maladies/) Think it might be on Netflix. It's based on a best-selling book: [https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7170627-the-emperor- of-a...](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7170627-the-emperor-of-all- maladies) ~~~ edwinespinosa09 Dealing with the diagnosis and treatments/surgery is indeed tough physically and psychologically. Physically it's important to understand how to deal with things day to day. Article is on nutrition post-diagnosis from John Hopkins. [http://pathology.jhu.edu/pancreas/TreatmentNutrition.php?are...](http://pathology.jhu.edu/pancreas/TreatmentNutrition.php?area=tr) Psychologically the whole team (family/friends/practitioners) need to be on the same page and transparent. [http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2013/03/fine- balance-hope-cope-c...](http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2013/03/fine-balance-hope- cope-cancer-patients.html) Patrick Swayze had this condition and despite his prognosis filmed a movie and did his own stunts. ------ edwinespinosa09 This might not help post-diagnosis but maybe will help a lot of people in the future. As they say the best type of care is preventative care. Pre-Cancer screening (Gates & Bezos invested) [http://www.grailbio.com/?ref=producthunt](http://www.grailbio.com/?ref=producthunt) Here's a better article from the MIT review [http://www.technologyreview.com/news/545326/illuminas-bid- to...](http://www.technologyreview.com/news/545326/illuminas-bid-to-beat- cancer-with-dna-tests/) ------ brudgers My beloved is currently back in oncology. Her career has included working in hospice, geriatrics and alzheimer's. The place to start irrespective of having pancreatic cancer or not is with a living will and an advanced health directive. Even if you're going to freeze your head, you'll likely benefit. [http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer- health/...](http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-lifestyle/consumer-health/in- depth/living-wills/art-20046303) Good luck. ------ melling This site has a video about someone who had pancreatic cancer and was cured: [http://www.cancermoonshot2020.org](http://www.cancermoonshot2020.org) ------ LinkPlug A past HN discussion about cancer [not pancreas specific, though] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9628682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9628682)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Rotten Tomatoes for Amazon products - pierc3 https://bestbestlist.com/# ====== chrisco255 One comment I've got is you might want to give users the option to receive notifications and updates for when you add new product categories. Or write frequent blog posts about it. I can see it being marginally entertaining to read about various things I may / may not be in the market for. It's a clean UI and much more pleasurable than browsing Amazon! ~~~ pierc3 Thanks for the kind words. When you say "when you add new product categories", are you referring to the collections ([https://bestbestlist.com/collections](https://bestbestlist.com/collections))? Or do you just mean new list pages in general? I'm trying to add new lists pretty frequently so I would hate to flood someone with updates on a bunch of things they may not care about (e.g. laundry detergent when maybe you don't do your own laundry, kitchen tools if you don't cook). ~~~ chrisco255 Maybe notifications on collections, or give users the option to subscribe to email updates / push notifications. I think what you've got here reminds me of those SkyMall magazines they used to have on the planes that are sort of interesting to read through in a way that browsing Amazon isn't. So, I really think you can get a better visitor return rate if you keep people coming back with updates. ------ pierc3 Hey HN, I wanted to share a tool I built to scratch my own itch. I call it Best Best List and the aim is to answer _" what product should I buy?"_ in a similar way that Rotten Tomatoes answers _" what should I watch?"_ i.e. by summarizing the opinions of lots of other critics/websites. [https://bestbestlist.com](https://bestbestlist.com) It has been working really well for everyday, kind of "mundane" products that you would get on Amazon. Say for instance you're looking for a small blender. The way I would always go about it: 1\. search google for _" best small blender"_ 2\. end up with 7 tabs open of various review sites 3\. spot the 5 or so models they recommend 4\. cross-check those products with their Amazon ratings/reviews/prices. I was never really interested in spending hours reading long-form reviews. I realized I could write code to do this for me... so I did! It's very much a work in progress. Based 100% on what the tool is spitting out, I've recently bought an EZ-curl bar ([https://bestbestlist.com/best-ez-curl- bar](https://bestbestlist.com/best-ez-curl-bar)) for my home gym, new tweezers ([https://bestbestlist.com/best-tweezers](https://bestbestlist.com/best- tweezers)), a small blender ([https://bestbestlist.com/best-small- blender](https://bestbestlist.com/best-small-blender)), and a cigar cutter ([https://bestbestlist.com/best-cigar-cutters](https://bestbestlist.com/best- cigar-cutters)). I gotta say I've been extremely pleased with the recommendations. Caveats: It _might_ not be the best tool for very complicated items with tons of specs (e.g. a TV) or emotional purchases with brand loyalty (e.g. a guitar) - for those maybe you DO want to spend hours reading reviews. Also it's just Amazon for now. If you wanna put it to the test I can run the tool on something you're thinking of buying, submit it here: [https://bestbestlist.com/ask](https://bestbestlist.com/ask) What do you think? Does this help make buying decisions a little easier? ~~~ techaddict009 So are your aggregating all these reviews manually? Or using some scripts to aggregate them all? And how are you updating the price? I have seen some affiliate program guidelines that you can not show old the prices of the product. So are you live updating them or how? ------ bradknowles Except we can't trust any of the ratings on Amazon, so what are you going to metafilter on? ~~~ pierc3 Interesting. What reviews do you personally find to be the most trustworthy? ~~~ bradknowles ConsumerReports.com is reliable. TheWireCutter.com is reasonably reliable and are up-front about their use of affiliate links. At least some of the mainstream consumer periodicals are reasonably reliable, like PC World and MacWorld. You could do a MetaFilter-like combination of those review sites. But Amazon.com is notoriously unreliable for reviews. As is most any other e-commerce platform or shopping site with integrated reviews. ------ ajeet_dhaliwal Can’t seem to submit/search when using mobile safari on my iPhone X. ~~~ pierc3 Hmm thanks for the feedback. Can you tell me what happens when you try to search? Are you able to tap on the search input to get the cursor in there? ~~~ ajeet_dhaliwal My apologies, it does actually work now that I tried again, it’s just that the ‘no results’ text (if there are no results) is faint and I didn’t notice it before. ~~~ pierc3 Cool. That makes sense, I think I need to tweak the whole UX for when there are no results.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Microsoft's Windows 10 privacy headache extends into gaming - chris-at http://www.theverge.com/2015/8/17/9164153/windows-10-privacy-concerns ====== norea-armozel It seems to me that Microsoft needs to get better writers for their EULAs since they can be interpreted so freely. For example, I've had a discussion with someone that believed their EULA language meant that if you used Gmail for your email that Microsoft has access to that information. To me, that wasn't the case since Microsoft's language specified that if you used OneDrive and other Microsoft services they were indexing such information. But if you're using Gmail or a third-party client/service then that information isn't under the EULA. But the other person still construed that Microsoft was spying on their emails which seemed odd to me since Google already uses your emails through Gmail to market to you so why complain now? Either way, I hope the discussion forces Microsoft to make some clarifications on what is being documented and what isn't. ------ Vecrios It seems like Microsoft is still staying quiet about this. They need to start declaring were they are going with all those privacy-related concerns.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: What's the latest hot-topic about Speech Recognition? - TrollHammarenF ====== RNeff There is a lot of success in translating speech into a foreign language speech in near real time. The next step would be to convert heavily accented speech (example: English) into normal pronunciation speech (example: English). This is called "auto-correct for accents". This would make webcast conferences (example: Google IO) more comprehensible. ~~~ TrollHammarenF Thanks for the comment. But what i'm trying to do is to figure out a topic for my master's thesis (about automatic speech recognition). i've been searching for the latest researches about automatic speech recognition (ASR). Lots of work have been using Attention and end-to-end models. But I can't figure out a topic to explore on my master's thesis.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Raw Thought: The Weblog of Aaron Swartz in Markdown, PDF, and ePub - joshleitzel https://github.com/joshleitzel/rawthought ====== bguthrie I believe SBP (aaronsw's digital executor) is planning to make sure his domain is maintained and all the content remains available. But I do think it's nice to have this stuff in non-HTML form--ePub especially is great. Be sure to ping [email protected] (Aaron's friends and family) and let them know. Also, did you look into using html2text (<https://github.com/aaronsw/html2text>) to generate the Markdown? Might be a fitting tribute to try it. It would be helpful to include the generating scripts in the repo no matter what. ~~~ joshleitzel Thanks, I'll be sure to let them know! I haven't looked into using it, but I will! Want to improve the generation process if I can. I went ahead and pushed all the scripts I used, but they're a tad messy right now (was tweaking them); hope to clean them up soon. ------ spatten I know you've already spent the time to build the PDF and epub converters, but if you want to use Leanpub to get the PDF, epub and mobi versions, you're totally welcome to. Since you already have Markdown, it would be ridiculously easy to do. We don't take (or want!) copyright on anything generated on Leanpub, so you're free to do what you want with it after it has been generated for you. I'm not suggesting is that you sell it on Leanpub -- we only want to sell things that are put on Leanpub by their creators -- just that you use us as a generator and distribute the files as you wish they're created. ~~~ joshleitzel I actually didn't "build" the converters, I used the excellent Pandoc tool to do it for me. (Even used them to do the HTML-Markdown conversion.) ------ dzuc (I never thought about this before but I would love to be able to convert arbitrary blogs to ebook formats.) ~~~ joshleitzel Me too! It was something I was actually thinking about before doing this project, so I hope to be able to port this to a more general solution in the near future. ------ julien_c Nice work – Including the generating scripts in the repo would be great. ~~~ joshleitzel Thanks! I've went ahead and uploaded the generating scripts (all the *.rbs at the root level). They're a bit messy b/c I was tweaking them to deal with various idiosyncrasies, but I'll hopefully get time to clean them up this week. ------ robertskmiles It seems that Amazon's Kindle ebook reader doesn't support the epub format. It would probably be a good idea to include another ebook format as well, like mobipocket. ~~~ spatten This is easily accomplished by kindlegen[1], which takes in an epub file and spits out a mobi file. [1]: [http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000765211) ~~~ joshleitzel Thanks for pointing me to that! I used it to convert the ePub to Mobi and added it to the repo. ------ machinarium Seems there is no table of contents for the 1000 page ebook. ~~~ joshleitzel You're right! I'll try to add that today. Thanks.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Death Of Point-and-Shoot Cameras - techblock http://www.thetechblock.com/articles/2012/pointandshoot-camera-dying/ ====== nathanb "I’m sure I’ll catch a lot of flak for that prediction, but it wouldn’t be the first time. People called me crazy when I predicted the end of console gaming, too." The author makes that statement as though this example vindicates him, while the death of console gaming is far from a foregone conclusion (the only way one could present a credible argument for the death of console gaming is by arguing that modern consoles are actually PCs, an argument which is at best a technical red herring). The observation that "hey, phone cameras are pretty nice these days" isn't novel or bold, and it's not a Holmsean tour-de-force to extrapolate the declining point-and-shoot market. This is sort of like writing an article in 2003 saying "if you're a camera manufacturer who relies on 35mm film cameras to stay afloat, you should be worried as hell". ~~~ huggyface Not only is the observation that P&S cameras are going to decline obvious, the author posted this after various P&S manufacturers reported on said decline. This is like predicting the Superbowl champion on Monday. In other news, alarm clocks, MP3 players, GPS units, and voice dictation devices are all going to decline at the hands of smartphones. News at 11. ------ ajkessler Which manufacturers rely on point and shoots to stay afloat? You're point is valid, though not exactly contrarian. The decline of point and shoots became pretty obvious when the iphone 3g was released. I'm sure this is why every manufacturer has been diversifying their lineups away from point and shoots over the last 5 years. Sony released a full SLR lineup, including lenses. Olympus has been producing very high quality mirrorless bodies (not exactly point and shoots) for a few years now. Even Fujifilm has followed suit. Nikon and Canon, who probably generate a lot of revenue from p&s sales, have been widely diversified for decades. ------ gerggerg This has been known for some time now. What would make your blog post more interesting is if you cut down on the conjecture and put some real research in it. For example, heres flickr's report on camera usage: <http://www.flickr.com/cameras/> \--edit-- heres another list: <http://bighugelabs.com/topcameras.php> ------ flomincucci Tell this to my mom. She doesn't even know how to send or read SMS, but she still wants to take pictures at my birthday. I think we still have one or two generations that need the point-and-shoot	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Profitable social network for people with curly hair raises $1.2M - dirtyaura http://www.businessinsider.com/social-network-for-curly-haired-people-raises-12-million-2011-6 ====== BvS It were sites like that which made my realize we are in a bubble back in 2000. On the other hand they were far from being profitable back than so it might really be different this time around... ;-) ------ galuggus There's a lot of money in haircare products and a lot of advertising cash. ------ revorad Please tell me this is a joke.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Atomo (programming language): giant 0.4 release - vito http://atomo-lang.org/notes/0.4 ====== vito The link is to the release notes, which has the documentation embedded - click Getting Started at the right if you've never heard of Atomo (which is very likely).	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Cpp_Redis – C++11 Lightweight Redis client - cylix https://github.com/Cylix/cpp_redis ====== albeva Neat, but horrid naming for everything. Why does namespace need explicit "cpp_" prefix? Why do classes inside "cpp_redis" namespace still have "redis_" prefix? I would prefer simple "redis::client" so much nicer than "cpp_redis::redis_client" ~~~ clishem namespace redis = cpp_redis; there you go. ~~~ adgasf A quick fix, but having many of these can make code much harder to read since you will need to trace through the various aliases to find the actual implementation. ------ hans0l074 A few years ago, I dabbled with the idea of building a "shared clipboard" application across platforms and decided to use Redis - esply the pub/sub mechanism - for this. I ended up discovering and using hiredis[0] (which I can see now was co-authored by antirez as well). I'm curious to know if hiredis can be used from C++ 11 as well. [0] [https://github.com/redis/hiredis](https://github.com/redis/hiredis) ~~~ pjmlp As arjo129 says, there is nothing preventing you from using hiredis, provided they don't make use of the few cases where C language features and C++ are no longer compatible, e.g. VLAs or structure initializers. However, given it is a C API you will get the usual C unsafe code, instead of C++'s improvements regarding type safety. ~~~ jjnoakes > provided they don't make use of the few cases where C language features and > C++ are no longer compatible, e.g. VLAs or structure initializers Wouldn't one compile hiredis in C, their app in C++, and link the two together? In general compiling C code with a C++ compiler isn't the path of least resistance. ~~~ pjmlp Depends how C++ compatible are the headers, as they can't make use of C99 or C11 features that aren't part of ANSI C++17. ~~~ jjnoakes True, although most C libraries ought to use those features in the implementation files and not the headers if they want to be used widely. And even if some things leak into the headers they might be accepted by compiler extensions. But yes, in general if a c library's headers are hostile to cross-language usage then using it from c++ won't be trivial. ------ asveikau Looks like a learning project for someone relatively new to C++. I suggest using git tags instead of putting a version number in every commit message. Have you looked into epoll or kqueue or even poll? Or for your windows backend, WSAEventSelect/WaitForMultipleObjects or IOCP... Trying to get all these disparate ways of doing async sockets to use a consistent wrapper interface is an interesting challenge. ~~~ cylix Hi, I do use git tags but I also include version numbers in my commit messages so that I can easily determine in which version a given commit was published. I find it pretty useful. I know some people prefer to create a dev branch, then squash merge, but sometimes you got multiple features and I feel it is more convenient to separate them into multiple commits that will belongs to the same release. Do you have some other suggestions, I would be interested :) Concerning epoll/poll, the networking part was first based on it. However, the poll implementation on windows is buggy and thus it is more advised to use select on windows apparently... So to keep consistency between unix and windows versions, I decided to switch back to select for both platform for now. I'm planning to switch back to poll for unix and look at WSAEventSelect. I also looked at IOCP and it is really interesting. However, it is pretty hard to implement a portable library that uses select/poll under unix but IOCP on windows as the implementation is pretty different. There are some ways, but the way I designed the networking part does not make it possible without changing completely the design on one platform ~~~ asveikau Running `git describe` will give you the nearest tag. gitk will also show you the tag in a manner similar to how it displays a branch head. ~~~ jhasse Btw: gitg is a slightly more modern looking gitk alternative :) (it also shows tags similar to branch heads) ~~~ asveikau On the other hand, gitk is light, simple, cross-platform, and works. ~~~ jhasse You're right, gitg doesn't work on macOS. But since I'm only using Windows and Linux it works for me :) ------ dvirsky Nice. Would you consider a mechanism for injecting the client with extra commands for redis modules? As far as I can tell it's possible to run generic commands with the client, but it would be a nice touch to add more commands to it. ------ faithful09234 My experience over the last five years pertaining to software requirements have been: Does it require low latency? Yes -> use Clang environment. In this case, redis usually doesn't fit the bill within the stack. I'm surprised for most other use cases, people are using C++, where Ruby/Java can provide a solid programming abstraction (and fast development time). tl;dr I would be curious of the use case of C++ and redis. ~~~ detaro Redis is commonly used to share data/communicate between different subsystems, potentially written in different languages. ------ 10000101 Silly question, but if redis is written in c , couldn't c++ call redis' interface directly. I'm aware it wouldn't be best practice and there would be problems if redis' c code base was non-compliant with c++ standards? But is this effectively a c++ wrapper ? ~~~ clishem This is not a silly question. Yes, using the C library from C++ is certainly possible. There would be nothing non-compliant about that, although you would need to write code that is somewhat frowned upon when writing C++ (i.e. using raw pointers all over the place). No, this is not a wrapper. It doesn't use the C library to pass queries to redis. ~~~ 10000101 Makes sense, thanks for clarifying clishem ------ keymone made this couple years ago: [https://gist.github.com/keymone/b89c23e3e43beb97eb94](https://gist.github.com/keymone/b89c23e3e43beb97eb94) (tiny ruby redis client) ------ c4pt0r [https://github.com/Cylix/tacopie](https://github.com/Cylix/tacopie) an interesting network library. ~~~ c4pt0r which is used in this project (Cpp_Redis) ------ gaius Does this correctly handle Redis clustering? E.g. the "get it from this other node" message? I don't see a handler for that in redis_client.cpp. ~~~ dvirsky Looks like it doesn't, although it supports the cluster control API. ~~~ cylix exactly, it only supports cluster control API for now ~~~ dvirsky Why not go full cluster?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Technology the new engine of central Canada - mtw http://www.nationalpost.com/related/topics/story.html?id=1554656 ====== christofd Go Waterloo! Go Warriors (<http://www.athletics.uwaterloo.ca/>)! ~~~ pshc Seconded! Though OMGUW might have you think otherwise, I rather like the university. On the topic, here are some Waterloo startups: <http://wiki.watstart.ca/LocalStartups>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Steve Wozniak Shares How the Name "Apple" Came About - patel http://blog.tvdeck.com/2010/11/steve-wozniak-shares-how-name-apple.html ====== Triplane Alan Turing killed himself by eating a bite of poisoned apple... ------ tiles Can someone transcribe loosely for the video-disabled? ~~~ david2777 Steve Job's was working at a farm and someone gave him the idea of Apple Computers. Then, years later, Steve Wozniak was on Dancing With The Stars and met the brother of the person who gave him that name. Wozniak also thinks that the lawsuit from Apple Records was wrong because Apple Computers was not a musical device. ~~~ Natsu > Wozniak also thinks that the lawsuit from Apple Records was wrong because > Apple Computers was not a musical device. Isn't that the origin of the "sosume" ("so sue me") sound? I thought I remembered that it came about because they were sort of turning around and adding musical ability to something that didn't have it before. But now we've come full circle, with them offering Beatles songs on iTunes (Apple Records was the label for the Beatles). ~~~ Hagelin [http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/24/early_apple_sound_de.ht...](http://www.boingboing.net/2005/03/24/early_apple_sound_de.html) ------ thought_alarm Hmm, I always thought it came from the Beatles' record company. The more you know... ------ patel The point being, it might just fall in your lap, or be super random. ~~~ mitjak Or, you know, fall on your head.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Instagram says it now has the right to sell your photos - ValentineC http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57559710-38/instagram-says-it-now-has-the-right-to-sell-your-photos/ ====== sgdesign I'm starting to realize that Instagram is not the service I thought it was. I initially thought it was Flickr with social features, but more and more it's turning into Facebook with photos. There is zero content discoveries features, so you have no way to get new followers or find new people to follow. And the top posters are all teenage pop stars that I've never even heard about who post completely uninteresting photos. The more Instagram turns into Facebook, the more this opens up a spot for another company to build an actual social network around photos. Whether this will be 500px, Flickr (again), or somebody else entirely, I don't know. ~~~ Smrchy As soon as i read that FB was buying Instagram i quit and deleted my Instagram account. It was too predictable that something like this will happen. Mark Zuckerberg is in a horrible position. I bet he would love to just build a cool and useful product. Instead he is damned to roll out all these awful money making features. And quick. Not only for his investors but also for the staff that owns FB stock. How smooth could FB move along if their investors trusted them like they trust Jeff Bezos and his very long-term view. ~~~ kloncks What's the alternative? A cool and useful product that makes revenues how? How do you propose that Instagram actually make money? Not attacking. Just wanted to hear more specific thoughts. ~~~ richardjs Would it be viable to let users opt-in to selling their photos, with users and Instagram splitting the money? That seems to be a system that would appeal to both sides. ------ cookiecaper This is not new. It seems that their new TOS explicitly lays out that your photos may be used in advertising, possibly due to a new law somewhere requiring specific notification and release, but my understanding is that _you'd already given them this right_ based on this clause: _By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content on or through the Instagram Services, you hereby grant to Instagram a non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels, except Content not shared publicly ("private") will not be distributed outside the Instagram Services._ Yes, that's in the _old_ TOS, and it's pretty much boilerplate for any site with user-generated content. That language certainly seems to me like it would cover uses in advertising or even Instagram reselling your images as a "stock photo" site. This kind of clause is required so that users can't attempt to entrap the service provider by uploading content and then claiming that Instagram didn't have a license to utilize it and therefore had violated copyright, and also probably as a fallback policy in case a cranky user spotted their image in a stream or feed or video or something (or, alternately, that the server is hacked and db is leaked, and thousands of claims of "unauthorized use" come flooding in). IANAL but pretty much this is a non-story. They've simply decided to _specifically_ inform you that a license to " non-exclusive, fully paid and royalty-free, worldwide, limited license to use, modify, delete from, add to, publicly perform, publicly display, reproduce and translate such Content, including without limitation distributing part or all of the Site in any media formats through any media channels" includes use in advertisement, as one would reasonably believe it does. ~~~ declan Agreed with aptwebapps. The old TOU, as you correctly say, is pretty standard. Twitter's is similar, and any company with decent lawyers is going to protect themselves with similar wording. The new TOU, however, heads in a different direction. The phrase "limited license" is gone. It's been replaced with the phrase "transferable, sub- licensable" license. Also new is "a business or other entity may pay us to display your... photos... in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you." Transferable is a very important word. So is sub-licensable. Those were NOT in the old terms of use. ~~~ cookiecaper It really doesn't seem like a material change to me. Again, IANAL, so if there is some reason to believe these things would be disallowed under the old TOS, I'd like to know, but it sounds fairly straightforward. While Instagram may have had a more difficult case under the old TOS, and may have had to be more careful about the dispensation rather than just doing a blatant "stock photo"-type interface, I could definitely see an attempt at the argument that representation in "any media formats through any media channels" covers Instagram in most cases of what would be considered "transferred sub- licensing". The clarifications, of course, are intended to clarify the consent they're taking. I'd be interested to know their motives for this; as I speculated in the parent, does a new law take effect in an important market with regard to advertising? Are they just trying to play it safe? Are they going to make aggressive moves into this kind of space (reselling user photos, using users' profiles without consent in advertisements) and wanted to ensure that they didn't have to deal with any lawsuits upon launch? I will agree that the new TOS allows them to use your profile and likeness as they see fit, which based on my simple layman's reading, isn't included in the old TOS. Just thinking out loud here, move along. ~~~ brigade You granted _Instagram_ a license. Under the old ToS, an entity that wasn't Instagram, say a nightclub, couldn't use your pictures on their own promotional materials, advetising, or site without obtaining a separate license from you, _period_. This changed. ~~~ cookiecaper Right, I'm aware "that changed". I'm not sure that "an entity that wasn't Instagram, say a nightclub, couldn't use your pictures on their own promotional materials, advetising, or site without obtaining a separate license from you" is really true, though. If a night club was working in clear collaboration with Instagram and published your photos on its promotional materials, that would seem to be covered by Instagram's license to replicate your content in "any media formats through any media channels", as _Instagram_ exercised their license to place it there. As I said, they'd probably have difficulty operating as a blatant competitor to iStockPhoto, but I think if they'd structured things with a modicum of cleverness, their old ToS would allow them to get away with most of what's explicitly covered in the new ToS. ~~~ mcherm There is a difference between a contract that "Joe can use this" and one that says "Joe can let anyone use it". Sure, if Mary uses it Joe can say "She's just using it for me", but UNLIKE code, the law is not completely decimated by a single loophole. Judges and juries can see through blatant abuses and rule that the contract did not cover that use. ("Can", not "will", but even the chance is enough: a 1% chance of losing a 100-million dollar class-action lawsuit is a million dollar cost, plus legal fees.) ~~~ jamesbritt _Judges and juries can see through blatant abuses and rule that the contract did not cover that use._ I've seen this observation mentioned a few times on HN and it seems quite right. The letter of the law may say this or that, but ultimately it comes down to some form of the giggle test. You have to imagine a judge saying, "You didn't _really_ think that's what the law\|contract meant, did you?" For example, people trying to avoid penalties for unauthorized distribution of copyrighted material by claiming they own the copyright on certain large integers or are merely passing _numbers_ around, not movies or songs. With the boilerplate TOS there may be all sorts of things that one could imagine are allowed but I'm pretty sure Instagram's (i.e. Facebook's) lawyers thought that the original phrasing would not be sufficient to clearly allow them to do what they wanted to do, so it was changed. ------ Osmium There's an ethical and an unethical way to do this. Not being able to opt out, and changing the system wholesale overnight like this, is deeply unethical. On the scale of things they could do that would make this better: * Best case: opt-in only, compensate users whose photos they use. * Present a choice to users when they sign up, default to opt-out. * At least present a choice to existing users whether they want this or not, and allow them to continued access to the service either way. * Notify users and only change the rights when any new photos uploaded, and keep existing photos under the old terms. * Give existing users the opportunity to deactivate/delete their account if they don't agree, and a chance to download their photos. Or "freeze" existing accounts until they acknowledge the changes, rather than automatically assuming consent. They seem to have picked the absolute worst option available to them, and it's troubling to say the least. ~~~ killahpriest It seems that you can opt out by selecting to be a "private" user. ------ MattBearman I was about to delete my Instagram account when I saw this, but having given it a bit of thought, I'm actually ok with it. Instagram needs to get money from somewhere, and as far as I'm concerned selling my photos is preferable to filling the feeds with ads. However I can see how for a lot of people they'd rather have ads then have their photos sold (especially pro photographers) so it'll be interesting to see how many users they loose over this. Also it goes with out saying that if they do put adverts in, I'm out. ~~~ ScottWhigham I don't understand why people have downvoted this yet far more inane comments that are older haven't been downvoted as much (case in point: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4936978>). This is an "expressed opinion" - it's not "inane banter" (like this one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4936806>) - yet people have downvoted it because they disagree. It doesn't express the hive mind thus the downvotes rain in. So weird... ------ callmeed This is going to get interesting. I know several professional photographers who use Instagram regularly (and are worth following). I suspect this will not sit well with some of them. I'm especially curious if Instagram will let people leave _and_ remove their old photos easily. Some of them also post professional images they've imported from their computer ( _not_ just phone images). For example, here's an image taken by Jose Villa (high-end wedding photographer) for Williams Sonoma's gift registry: <http://instagram.com/p/STxUVcrodv/> What's gonna happen when IG sells ads with those kind of images? ~~~ mtgx Why is he even using Instagram? Doesn't seem like he used any filter there, did he? Seems like he's just using it to promote his own DSLR-made photos. Google+ might be a better target for that kind of community. ~~~ untog Because Instagram has a huge audience. Google+ might be a better place for the photos, but it doesn't have an audience. ~~~ jonknee Google+ has a significantly larger audience than Instagram. G+ is more than photos though and has a different audience. ~~~ untog How do you figure that G+ has a larger audience? Larger _potential_ audience, sure, given the number of Google users out there. But Instagram posts have engagement (likes and comments) on a level I've never seen on Google+. ~~~ jonknee G+ has more active users than Instagram based on the released data. They purposefully don't release too much information, but the figures that have been announced show G+ to be far larger than Instagram. Instagram claims more than 100M signups, Google claims more than 500M. I don't see MAU for Instagram, but Google+'s MAU is 135M which is more than all of Instagram's signups. Like any social network, what you see is dependent on who you are and how you use the service. Instagram is much more wide open than G+ as well, people are much more likely to share content to only a few people on G+ and thus you'll never see that content (or any replies). From what I've heard from photographers, G+ is definitely an active place to share photos. ~~~ lotso What makes a user "active" on G+ exactly? ------ spacestation deleting your account is futile, photographs will still remain on their AWS account. after deleting one of my accounts, I was suspicious that they would still keep the photographs. So to test this, I made a dummy account named after where i live; nikkojapan <http://instagram.com/nikkojapan/> i made a quick pointless photograph just to upload <http://instagram.com/p/K8bx_ZB59K/> Here is the link that still exists to the photograph of an account that was deleted right after the Facebook acquisition announcement. [http://distilleryimage6.instagram.com/6d96aaa0a45611e1a9f712...](http://distilleryimage6.instagram.com/6d96aaa0a45611e1a9f71231382044a1_7.jpg) ~~~ 54mf This is actually kind of a big deal. Have you sent this info to any tech blogs? ~~~ spacestation I have commented on blog posts of tech blogs about it using ...but, they hasn't been noticed yet. ------ jiggy2011 So, how big is the target market for over saturated photos of someone's dinner? ~~~ biesnecker A billion dollars? ------ thinkling So the claim that Instagram is establishing the right to sell your photos is supported in the article with this language: _It says that "a business or other entity may pay us to display your... photos... in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you."_ I read this as intended to say "when we display your photos (as part of our own service), we may serve up ads to be displayed next to them and not give you a cut of the proceeds". I don't mean to argue that the language _can't_ be interpreted to let FB sell the pictures but it doesn't look to me as _intended_ for that purpose. In any case, the usual scenario of virtualized user outrage will be followed by backpedaling by Instagram. 2% of the user base will vow to never use the servie again, and then all will go on as before. ~~~ drucken You glibly ignore the previous paragraph that references the section which establishes the rights for Instagram/Facebook to do whatever it likes with the Content. And since when is "intent" ever part of US law (especially with regards to IP)... ~~~ thinkling You seem to argue (by the use of "glibly") that the presence of the transferability clause leaves no other interpretation possible than that that transfer will be for use of user content by third part in return for payment. However, the clause may also be there to allow use of content on other services owned by Instagram's parent. I was quite explicit that I was giving my read of the intent, not my assessment of what Instagram _could_ legally get away with. The transferability clause does not change my reading of the intent. ------ planetjones The new flickr app (albeit very late) looks a whole lot better proposition then Instagram. To value Instagram at a billion dollars (well less now I guess because of Facebook's share price) is insane. They have a serious problem with spam - every photo I upload is liked by many getM0refollowers<RandomNumber> and every photo I upload is bombarded with spam comments. They seem incapable of getting a grip on this problem. The app also has bugs e.g. it says I have X followed but then displays X minus Y when I try to view who they are. Its popular photos are rubbish - so there is no way to discover interesting photos other than searching for tags you're interested in. Photos with a 1000 likes appeal to the teenage market only i.e. they're not serious photos. When you follow someone you get very large photos dominating your stream, so I don't follow many people because of this. I really hope flickr aggresively try and take back this market. Instagram is a neat idea, but has very poor execution. ~~~ neilk I don't really know what Instagram is really worth, but it might have been worth a billion dollars to Facebook to keep Instagram away from Twitter. Twitter + Instagram is starting to look like a viable Facebook competitor. Although we know now that Twitter is choosing to become a walled garden with a very limited kind of service, a year ago it seemed possible for them to become a sort of internet infrastructure. ------ hieronymusN I fully understand that with a free product, I am the product. I go into that with eyes open, and happily used Instagram assuming they would eventually start serving ads near the photos, promoting photos or similar. However, using my photos as ads seems a bit of a stretch. So, I just happily gave Flickr $25 after deleting my Instagram account. Some things are worth paying for, because sometimes I don't want to be the product. ~~~ bad_user With Flickr you're still the product unfortunately, although Flickr is much better than other similar services in this regard. Do you really think your measly $25/year cover for their expenses with you? Seriously, if you don't want to be the product, organize those photos in a standard directory structure and synchronize it either with Dropbox or Google Drive or SkyDrive. The downside of doing that is that storage is more expensive, but that's closer to the real price the service is worth and so that makes it sustainable. Also, migrating between cloud storage solutions is much easier. Shameless plug - try Dropbox by clicking the following link, and we'll both get a small bonus: <http://db.tt/x1XoSUnE> ~~~ 54mf "Do you really think your measly $25/year cover for their expenses with you?" Actually, yes. Hard drive space is incredibly cheap, especially at their scale. My photos aren't terribly popular, so they aren't using much bandwidth either. I probably cost them $5-10/year, tops. In fact, I'm probably one of the majority, the ones who subsidize the heavy, uber-popular users with tens of thousands of followers who upload hundreds of photos a year. ~~~ bad_user > _Hard drive space is incredibly cheap_ Actually, no it isn't and at scale it makes it even more expensive, because you need redundancy. We are talking about RAID and CDN, not to mention that at scale hardware breaks a lot more often. What actually makes it palatable for businesses such as Yahoo or Google is that many people pay for this storage without using it, while heavy users that share a lot help by marketing the product through their sharing to others. On the other hand I've got 50 GB worth of data uploaded on Flickr. You can't tell me that 50 GB of redundant on-demand storage is worth $25 / year, unless you live in some kind of fairy land. I also have only a couple of photos shared. So what value does Flickr get from me? ~~~ benbataille >Actually, no it isn't and at scale it makes it even more expensive, because you need redundancy. We are talking about RAID and CDN, not to mention that at scale hardware breaks a lot more often. That's related to reliability not scaling per see. Building a highly reliable system is far cheaper when you reach the scale of Google or Amazon because you can rationalize purchase. Actually, I bet price of hardware can totally be neglected next to admin and bandwidth cost. > On the other hand I've got 50 GB worth of data uploaded on Flickr. You can't > tell me that 50 GB of redundant on-demand storage is worth $25 / year, > unless you live in some kind of fairy land. I must live in fairy land. :-) You can buy 4 decent 1TB for 400$ that will allow you to cater for 20 users at 20$ per user. Conservatively you can expect them to live 3 years on average which brings the cost to 7$ per user per year. Add a 400$ server good enough to do software RAID. Let's say 5 years of life expectancy it adds 5$. It's 12$ per user plus network cost on a lan. Flickr uses better material and pay bandwidth and admin. But they have economy of scale and can put far more than 20 50GB users on 1TB on average because a lot of them don't use them fully. I think they are above break even point at 25$/year. ~~~ 54mf And that's assuming every user has 50GB worth of photos - which, for the record, is _a lot_ of photos. Most are probably in the low hundreds-of-MB range, which brings your cost per user down by an order of magnitude, at least. ------ dr_faustus Dont worry! The founders of instagram where afraid of this as well and they devised a poison pill before they sold out! All you images have been made useless for any commercial use by the application of shitty "lets make it look like a polaroid left in the sun for 30 years"-filters... ------ jaredcwhite I'm beginning to adopt a "I don't sign up for your service/social network if you don't know how to make money other than sell me someday" mindset because I'm sick of being burned. First the Twitter debacle, and now this. Instagram should be inspired by App.net, not Twitter. Sorry guys, I'm canceling my account. Flickr is starting to show signs of promise as a decent photo service again, and I'll happily pay them money for a Pro account. Buh bye Instagram. Hope that ad thing works out for you. (Not.) ------ kmfrk Posted some related stories: * [Instagram's suicide note](<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4934271>) * [Instagram Will Share User Data With Facebook According To Its New Privacy Policy](<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4932765>) The last one may be more interesting than the usage rights for photos. ~~~ bdcravens Those are both the same HN URL - looks like you mistakenly copied the URL for the 2nd by the 1st. :-) ~~~ kmfrk There we go, thanks. At least the most important one was the one that was copied. :) ------ polskibus It doesn't matter who the target market is. This can create a precedence, and make other "social" enterprises greedier. While I understand a contract can specify almost anything and there's always "if you don't like it, don't use it" way of looking at this, but there should be a basic sense of decency among all that claim to be serving the wider public. ~~~ praptak Sense of decency often loses against profit. That's why I think this quote from RMS is relevant when it comes to the old "if you don't like it, don't use it": _"All in all, I think it is a mistake to defend people's rights with one hand tied behind our backs, using nothing except the individual option to say no to a deal. We should use democracy to organize and together impose limits on what the rich can do to the rest of us. That's what democracy was invented for!"_ ~~~ ericHosick From a much much more cynical view: Democracy was created so the rich could convince a majority to tie the hands of a minority. ~~~ jrogers65 Just as laws have the effect of protecting the rich from the poor. I will explain the rationale behind that argument if anyone asks. ~~~ slig Yes, please do. Thanks. ~~~ jrogers65 People are very predictable if you know enough about them. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlates_of_crime> Criminality is essentially a combination of low dopamine, low serotonin and low adrenaline levels. Stress chemicals such as cortisol can rapidly deplete neurotransmitter levels. There is also an inverse correlation between socioeconomic status and criminality. Being poor means more stress and lower levels of those neurotransmitters. The impulsivity caused by dopamine deficiency also causes more unwanted pregnancies - another risk factor for criminality. Poor people are also more likely to be religious - [http://www.gallup.com/poll/116449/religion-provides- emotiona...](http://www.gallup.com/poll/116449/religion-provides-emotional- boost-world-poor.aspx) and being religious is correlated with criminality. So there is clearly a strong correlation between the effects of being poor or in poverty and criminality. Since the law is specifically designed to 'deal' with criminality, it is a mechanism which is quite biased against the poor. Hence, the law is there to protect the rich from the poor. ~~~ slig Thank you! ------ arondeparon What I am trying to figure out is: does this apply to 'private' accounts as well? I see no statement that seems to exempt private accounts from these new policies, but would definitely like to hear a conclusive statement regarding this. ~~~ declan I think it's fair to say that private accounts are probably not covered, but it would be nice for Instagram to make it clear one way or another. ------ InstaByeBye InstaByeBye.com coming soon. 1 Click exports and online photo log. Stay Cool. 3 hours and counting. Live update = @instabyebye ~~~ kmfrk My main concern as a passive user is finding a way to export likes and follows. I haven't really posted that many photos, but there is still something to lose as a lurker. ------ reasondiscourse "you acknowledge we may not always identify paid services, sponsored content, and commercial communications" Translation: You accept that we may try to trick you. I'm an intellectual property lawyer and I think the intent behind the above language is quite clear. It is not aimed at alleviating an undue burden of identifying commercial content (as Instagram might suggest), it's about reducing transparency to allow for marketing tactics that would not likely be viewed favorably if they were obvious to the user. While under no legal obligation to do so, Google has been identifying sponsored content for over a decade. If we were to begin by looking at "standard practice" then we might start there. I think it's great that people are reading TOS from web companies and making their concerns known. We might call this negotiation. If you accept that idea, then I think users are in an excellent bargaining position. They can walk away at any time. They can adapt and they can find new alternatives. These companies however may not be able to find new audiences so easily. I believe they will take the feedback very seriously and respond, with new language if necessary. I'm noticing some of my friends on Facebook who were using it extensively for one purpose or another are now closing their accounts. Other friends of mine cannot use Facebook because of their employers. It seems clear to me there are both costs and benefits to using Facebook or Instagram and that sometimes the costs may outweigh the benefits. Keep reading TOS. It is good for the web. ------ debacle While this isn't reddit, this would probably be a good time for that "That escalated quickly" picture. I'm surprised Facebook is moving so quickly to try and monetize Instagram. I wonder if they're using it for experimentation of what their user base will accept. Regardless, I think this is probably a step too far in the wrong direction. Will Facebook and Instagram be able to clamp down on users with the right acrobatics to keep their userbase and increase their ARPU? Either way, these seem like shady tactics. ------ itsprofitbaron Instagram's new TOS[1] state: To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you. In other words, they're trying to monetize Instagram a similar way Facebook is - Sponsored Posts - your photos and associated data can be promoted by companies without having to notify you about it. Furthermore under Section 106: Exclusive rights in copyrighted works aka. 17 U.S.C. § 106[2] Instagram _cannot_ sell your photos and it _cannot_ use your photos and alter them in any meaningful way. Having said that Instagram could have communicated this better as this hasn't helped the situation either. [1] <http://instagram.com/about/legal/terms/updated/> [2] <http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap1.html> ==== NOTE: Also posted this at: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4939663> ------ jakeonthemove I doubt this policy is going to last long - the biggest and most important Instagram users as far as I can tell are celebrities (incl. professionals and other popular persons), and they sure as hell will do something if Instagram starts selling/licensing the photos to anyone who wants them. Coupled with the other big mistake of separating themselves from Twitter, I'd say Instagram is well on their way of becoming the next MySpace. ~~~ FireBeyond I'd suspect that on the flip side, if Instagram does intend to do this sort of thing, they will have a well-curated list of "who not to piss off". That being said, said celebrities, professionals and popular persons also agreed to the same TOS... ------ mcguire If we assume that the good folks at Instagram (or at least their lawyers and public relations people) are not complete idiots, then they have no intention of actually following through with this change. Here's a prediction: it will be dropped due to "user feedback" or some such in a week or so and everyone will have a warm, fuzzy feeling. The question is, what do they actually want to accomplish by floating this trial balloon? ------ chrisconnell Instagram isn't about to become iStockphoto. There's no way they're going to let people buy pictures of other people to do what they want with them. More likely they want the option to use photos to help advertise. For example showing photos taken at a hotel on the hotels website or on the hotels facebook page without users moaning that they're being used without permission. ~~~ Paul12345534 Those sorts of uses are exactly what some more professional photographers would want to prevent. It's exactly why I never uploaded any of my tens of thousands of scenic photos to Panoramio. People can use their API to display photos on their sites. <http://www.panoramio.com/api/widget/api.html> [http://www.panoramio.com/api/widget/api.html#conditions- of-u...](http://www.panoramio.com/api/widget/api.html#conditions-of-use) ------ Irishsteve Wow. Wonder if their users will be bothered to care ~~~ sgdesign I wouldn't much care about my Facebook statuses somehow being used as advertising, or even my tweets for that matter. They're just things I've said publicly and social networks have trained me not to expect any control over them anymore. On the other hand, photos are much more personal: they're works of art, at their own level. So I think whether you care or not depends not only on your stance regarding privacy and all that, but also how you frame your use of Instagram: is it a way to post status updates disguised as photos, or photos disguised as status updates? ~~~ znowi > social networks have trained me not to expect any control over them anymore I think this is the major issue that will define the internet landscape in the long term. People indeed got _trained_ not to care about privacy and just like with "war on terror", they gradually give up their rights and freedom for the sake of "security" and "better user experience". Soon enough anyone who speaks out of user rights or privacy will be seen as a mad man akin to RMS these days. 10 years back, a site, which required a scan of your government issued ID in order to change your name would be deemed insane. Now it's a common practice. Welcome to the Matrix, gentlemen. ------ CWIZO What a wonderfully missed opportunity. Had they decided to share profits from content with authors they could attract more professional photographers to their service. I can't imagine any pro author will publish beautiful photos on Instagram now, and I suspect the service will just be flooded with amateur photos. And who is going to pay them for that? ~~~ devcpp Yep, make that an opt-in feature, add some light ads, and you have a full business model. I believe they may have just wanted to spare themselves the headache of a money system and of people who would reupload other people's pictures or copyrighted works for their own profit. ------ mwill I hope casual and regular Instagram users riot over this change (doubt it, really), honestly, not for their sake, or to spite Facebook or Instagram, but simply because I'd really hate it if they started doing this, and it turns out to be an awesome money maker. I don't look forward to a web where that precedent is set. ------ ThePinion Anyone else completely see this coming at this exact point in time when first hearing the acquisition announcement? ------ stalf Isn't it possible to use app.net to build an Instagram-like network without this whole monetizing problem? ------ thekevinjones You can easily move your instagram photos to Flickr with this web app we created today if you don't like their policies. <http://freethephotos.com> We wanted to move ours, so we built this handy thing and decided to release it. Let us know if you run into any issues. ------ mikeleeorg I wonder what this means for <http://instaprints.com>. ~~~ Deestan To my understanding, it means Instagram can do a direct deal with Instaprints and cut out the "sending profits to the artists" cost. ------ sailfast I noticed awhile back that Instagram branding was appearing in television commercials, such as recent Taco Bell ads about Doritos Locos. If companies are using Instagram content for branding it makes sense to try to change the license agreement to capitalize if you're focused on monetizing an acqusition. As we've seen, however, it will certainly anger a solid chunk of the user base. Nick Tran, social media lead for Taco Bell talks a bit about the campaign in the below article: "<http://www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/content/13959.html> ------ jscheel Guess I'll have to continue not using Instagram. All joking aside, this was the worst possible time for them to do this, considering Twitter and Flickr both attacking their space more and more now. ------ TeeWEE Since you cannot delete all photo's at once, i deleted my account. ~~~ wib I'm having a real hard time deleting my account, because I used plus addressing in the email when I signed up for Instagram. This is making it impossible for me to log in to the web version of Instagram which is as far as I can tell the only way to delete an account… Suppose I'll have to write support, if there is such a thing. ------ jmathai Unlike Facebook, I don't think Instagram can afford these antics. ~~~ batiudrami Instagram's target market doesn't care. These aren't professional photographers, or even amateur ones like flickr, they're teens and 20-somethings with camera phones who want to be able to take and share cool photos with their friends. ~~~ ryanhuff I bet celebrities will care when their picture unknowingly appears in some ad. ~~~ krichman UIAM you can't publish an advertisement with someone in it until they sign a model release form. ~~~ nwh You supposedly read and agreed to the TOS, aren't they effectively giving your permission? ~~~ vidarh The person reading and agreeing to the TOS is not necessarily the same person as the one(s) appearing in the photos. It is the latter that needs to sign a model release. ------ vegas Hipsters begin losing interest in instagram at a reliable rate. ------ nakedrobot2 As infuriating as I find this, I am afraid that many people won't care. Worse, I feel that FB/Instagram will backtrack from this, and nearly everyone will forgive them. Not me. They have shown their true colors. I'm out. I won't let them sell me down the river. Classic negotiating tactic - ask for WAY too much, then backtrack a bit, and you get more than people would have possibly let you have, had you asked only for that in the first place. ------ mosselman I am shocked. Weren't social media platforms to be our friends and respect our privacy, pay for servers and programmers without anything in return? ------ mleeds The hardest thing about legalese: trying to convey intent and write something specific at the same time. The intent may be in the category of “don’t be evil”, but the user never knows. And while it is easy to say “well, just stop using the service”, the impact of networks is that it makes it less realistic to use another service. Just another signal that we live in a “Caveat User” world… ------ InclinedPlane Is there a lawyer around? How legal is this? It's one thing if instagram uses a picture of you for advertising purposes, since you have agreed to their ToS. However, how do they know which pictures are of you and which are of other people? They shouldn't have any legal right to use pictures of other people for advertising purposes, as far as I understand, because there is no contract involved. ~~~ darkarmani I think you are right. There are two rights involved with this: copyright and model releases. Only the person in the photograph can sign away the rights to their likeness. I'm not sure how they'd be able to use these photos in a commercial manner without model release for each person in the photos. ------ hamoid I just found out about <http://i-am-cc.org/> They propose releasing your Instagram images as CC. What I don't understand is what effect, if any, will that have on Instagram using your images for creating ads or for other uses. How would a CC license affect in this situation? ~~~ mseebach > How would a CC license affect in this situation? Not at all. When you upload your photos to Instagram, you grant them a non- exclusive license to use them in accordance with their TOS. Licensing them under CC is just issuing another non-exclusive license to another party. ------ jnazario for those of your jumping ship, here's three tools that can help you grab your instagram photos as a ZIP or migrate them to another service: [http://www.forbes.com/sites/limyunghui/2012/12/18/export- ins...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/limyunghui/2012/12/18/export-instagram- photos-a-few-good-tools/) ------ dgurney This is a phenomenally dumb move. Instagram is (was) cool because of the absence of ads or any other monetization features. It was free, simple, clean, and fun. Now it begins the slow march towards a crowded, busy, ad-littered experience. And this is really bad press. In my opinion, the decline starts now... ------ npguy Let us move away from these services, into a more distributed model: [http://statspotting.com/2012/12/instagrams-policy-changes- is...](http://statspotting.com/2012/12/instagrams-policy-changes-is-it-time- to-move-everything-to-our-pockets/) ------ nphrk The copyright issue can be a bit tricky. Assuming that Instagram goes on and sells users' pictures - who's liable if somebody uploads a picture which he/she doesn't own, and then Instagram goes on and sells that to a third party? ~~~ darkarmani More than that -- how is Instagram getting model releases for everyone in the photos? ------ ChuckMcM Wow, that was not entirely unexpected, but rather poorly executed. I would have hoped there would be a grace period were you could either remove material or mark it in such a way that it wasn't tagged with this right. ------ deanclatworthy Presumably Instagram would not have the right to sell photos from people that restrict the viewing of their photos in public. I have my profile set up so only those people I "approve" to follow me can see them. ~~~ pdonis The language in the TOS says "you can control who can view certain of your Content and activities on the Service". Note that key qualifier: _on the Service_. It does _not_ say that you can control who can view your Content by other means; so if they sold your photos to someone else who made them viewable through some other means, you can't control that. At least, that's the way I read it; IANAL. ------ jrogers65 I'll just leave this here - [http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash- creato...](http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2003/11/19/facemash-creator- survives-ad-board-the/) ------ rwhitman Isn't this how YouTube policy works as well? As I recall YouTube is always the rights holder - if a YouTube video is played on TV the TV program pays royalties to YouTube and the user gets nothing. ------ tibbon Didn't we expect that they'd need to find some way to make money off us? ------ stephenhuey Instagram-export service Instaport is returning 500 errors: <http://instaport.me/> 500 Internal Server Error nginx/0.7.67 ~~~ kmfrk They're understandably under heavy load. It worked fine, when I tried it, though. ------ dimmedwit I'm not sure how Instagram has obtained my photos, but I will not stand for this. ------ felipesabino Get ready for the biggest duck face/bathroom mirror stock photo sale of all time ------ state Is there an open alternative that anyone would recommend? ------ kanakiyajay This is totally unfair . Now shifting to Flickr ------ ritratt Wait don't we already do this and accuse proponents of SOPA etc. of curbing our freedom under the excuse of piracy? ~~~ chris_wot No. ------ ForFreedom Let them sell one with your kid then you can sue their ass off. ------ edwardunknown So if I repurpose a photo I found on Instagram and it becomes the next Obama "Hope" poster I have to pay the photographer _and_ Instagram? That would be lolled out of court. Same thing with selling people's personal pics as stock photos, it doesn't matter what the user agreement says, that ain't gonna fly in front of a judge. It would be like putting a sticker on the back of a picture frame that says whatever you put in here now belongs to Frames incorporated, NAL but it seems to me however legally binding it claims to be it wouldn't pass the smell test in court. ~~~ JeremyBanks In no case does this require you to pay the photographer _and_ Instagram. It would be legally possible for you to pay the photographer _or_ Instagram. This change means that Instagram could license photos published through their service to you without compensating the photographer. You always have the option of licensing the photos directly from the photographer, in which case Instagram isn't involved at all. ------ igorgue Question, with these new rules, can you still sell your pictures? Unless you live under a rock, you know that many "Instagram girls" sell their posts to clothing stores to promote them, it's actually hugely successful! ~~~ joshbert I've been living under a rock, then. Although, it's fairly ingenious. ~~~ igorgue Maybe because I have friends doing fashion, I know it goes from 500 bucks a pop. A girl with about 100K followers. And she would say something like this: "Awesome glasses I got them from example.com use code EXAMPLE50 for %50 off on all their inventory" I wonder if that's still legal. Or maybe Instagram can automate that! ------ drivebyacct2 If only Android let you one-click share to any social network you wanted and included all of the photo manipulation and filter features of Instagram. Oh wait. ------ dschiptsov People still wondering that someone not just paying the bills, but making money in the first place, and that all these "free" services are about _making money_ by aggregating and selling user-generated content, logs and statistics? There is no other _working_ model, btw. ------ wildranter So long Intagram, and thanks for all the fish.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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