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Hypothes.is: an open platform for scholarly discussion on the web - sohkamyung
https://hypothes.is/
======
kristopolous
I'm seeing yet another metaweb ... I think either NS4 or IE4 had a built-in
tool do this and even with half the web having it at its fingertips it still
flopped.
The only real metaweb that has worked has been the indirect "share a link" on
a link aggregator + comments - exactly what reddit, slashdot, digg, metafilter
(funny name huh?) and hn are.
The insight is that there Needs To Be A Central, Browsable Repository of What
Pages Have this Meta Content.
Without what is effectively a 21st century web-ring, it's not happening. There
should be a page that shows new stuff and a search engine ... I mean
essentially reddit + wikipedia. The layer has to a centralized interface
~~~
MasterScrat
I did a fun experiment last year with Chrome extensions: for some websites, it
adds comments about the current page from Reddit.
For some websites it actually works quite well. Some users reported it
actually "adds a dimension" to the page.
So while i agree universal metaweb is doomed, I do believe in some specific
additions from relevant sources.
~~~
cven714
Thats interesting, there's been many times I've stumbled on a page
"organically" and wished there were reddit or HN comments I could read about
it. I would use an extension that found them for me.
~~~
ivan_ah
It exists for HN: [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
discus...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-
discussion/iggcipafbcjfofibfhhelnipahhepmkd)
------
sohkamyung
Found via an article on the service at Nature News [1]
[1] "Annotating the scholarly web" [ [http://www.nature.com/news/annotating-
the-scholarly-web-1.18...](http://www.nature.com/news/annotating-the-
scholarly-web-1.18900) ]
~~~
dang
More at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10655563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10655563).
------
merraksh
Interesting to see not all major publishers are involved, e.g. Springer and
Elsevier are missing. Given their (especially Elsevier's) policies toward
making content publicly available I'm not too surprised.
[https://hypothes.is/annotating-all-
knowledge/](https://hypothes.is/annotating-all-knowledge/)
~~~
dwhly
We've had discussions with them, they'll take a little longer to engage, but
I'm encouraged that they probably will-- I think annotation is inevitable for
scholarship, regardless of whether it's using our technology or not.
------
mintplant
The video emphasizes that this is controlled by users, not site owners, and
that annotations are permanent.
So if, hypothetically, I ever managed to incite the wrath of an internet mob,
they could use this to tack up my family's personal information over my
homepage and various profiles, without me being able to do anything about it.
Great.
~~~
dwhly
They're "permanent" in that they're not controlled by the site owners. But
without effective moderation, a public channel of annotations will become
unusable, so spam and trolls must be dealt with effectively.
------
pervycreeper
This is being run as a coalition of corporations, academics, and publishers.
This leaves me with some concerns over just how open, accessible, and
ultimately successful this enterprise will be.
It is clear to me, however, that an annotation layer for the internet is the
future. The time to build this is unquestionably now.
------
chx
Hey, the first Kickstarter I backed! Four years ago. Why is this on HN front
page...? Did something happen?
~~~
jacobolus
Seems to still be active
[https://hypothes.is/blog/](https://hypothes.is/blog/)
~~~
fulafel
Not to mention there's a "We're hiring developers" link at the top of every
page.
~~~
juskrey
Which is there every time the seek for the new investors begin.
------
IshKebab
This would be great for documentation. The number of times I've found
something incorrect in the Android documentation and had no way to note it for
others...
That said, I think it would have to be officially recommended by a website
before many people would use it.
~~~
dwhly
That's the thinking behind this coalition for the scholarly community.
------
messo
I can see myself using this tool. A lot. But I'm missing a vote up(down?)
button on annotations already.
| {
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Notes on Epic Games - aml183
https://www.arilewis.com/aris-posts/notes-on-epic-games
======
Farbklex
The part about digital goods (read as: in game purchases) being potentially,
easily transferable in the future stuck out to me so I looked it up in the
original article:
"However, an increasingly large portion of the gaming economy now runs on
virtual goods. The ability to take items, outfits, and more from one game to
another will obviously increase the price a player is willing to pay on these
goods. And if a user ever wanted to jump across digital worlds (as is
portrayed in Ready Player One), it helps if all worlds use the same “physics”
and “logic”."
This makes sense, but boy, this will never happen. As far as I am aware, songs
from Guitar Hero and Just Dance aren't transferable from game to game. Same is
true for players in Fifa Ultimate Team, anything you buy in Call of Duty,
Battlefield and basically any game.
In many cases, the engines were the same between games. I just don't see
transferable in-game purchases happen.
Valve and their marketplace system at least give players the ability to sell
their items for funds, all without having to use a specific game engine.
~~~
swivelmaster
Yeah, transferrable digital goods are 99% of the pitch for game-centric
blockchain infrastructure companies, and it's an absolutely ridiculous claim
because while it's TECHNICALLY possible, the incentives for developers to
actually make it viable simply do not exist. Making any item interoperable
between games reduces its value in any single game, or at the very least makes
the value of any item unclear, which means that it's just as likely to add
negative value to the game economy and make things worse for any developer
that implements it.
~~~
aml183
I agree, but Tim Sweeney’s goal is to create the Metaverse. If done, though
unlikely, it would solve these issues.
Go to essay #6 to see Matt and Jacob’s argument.
------
alanfalcon
[https://hackmd.io/@XR/tim-metaverse](https://hackmd.io/@XR/tim-metaverse)
| {
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Programming on a Piano Keyboard - yuriyguts
http://elekslabs.com/2014/06/programming-on-a-keyboard-a-piano-keyboard.html
======
JoshTriplett
Fun idea! The note mappings shown at the end of the article seem quite
specific to producing the code written for the demo, but I could imagine a
more general mapping. Velocity also allows for some interesting possibilities,
such as uppercase/lowercase. Rather than mapping chords to individual letters,
notes could map to letters and chords involving those letters could map to
common patterns with the letters as mnemonics.
~~~
gcb0
watching it i thought the opposite would be better
playing the piano i would often struggle with not enough finger
opening/movement.
i seeing how slow he 'typed' that code, i think the other way around would
make more sense. i.e. learning the piano with a matrix keyboard.
We just need pressure sensitive switches. but after that, you would get much
more agility. not to mention be able to play pieces that are impossible
without 4 hands.
~~~
metaxy2
There's actually a whole class of keyboards like this [1], the most popular
being the Jankó keyboard [2]. Here's [3] a cool demo by a Jankó virtuoso.
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jank%C3%B3_keyboard)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomorphic_keyboard](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isomorphic_keyboard)
[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK4REjqGc9w](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK4REjqGc9w)
------
UrlichtZwei
Awesome hack. It'd be interesting to run the rules in reverse: i.e. take some
code, run it backward through the mapping and see what music comes out.
(P.S. you can't really call it C# minor if there are no cadences, ya know, in
C# minor.)
------
kylerosenberg
Check out OSCulator if you're on a Mac.
[http://www.osculator.net/](http://www.osculator.net/) You can route MIDI,
plus a number of other types of physical controllers like a Wii Remote to
keyboard commands, mouse movements, AppleScripts, and more.
------
totoroisalive
Refreshing hack news, after all that startup BS.
~~~
quarterto
My God, you'd think this were a news site, run by a startup accelerator, that
used to be called Startup News!
~~~
NoodleIncident
What's your motivation for making this comment? Do you actually think that
this approach will change anyone's opinion on a subject you (clearly) feel
very strongly about? Or are you just trying to post what you think the most
passers-by will agree with, as loudly and as noticeably as possible?
~~~
liquidise
As an aforementioned passerby, i laughed audibly when i read his comment. Then
the irony of you calling out his sarcasm instead of the OP's comment slamming
startup news was itself refreshing. Well done.
------
andreastt
I'm quite surprised Hello World in C# could ever sound so lovely.
------
dspig
My suggestion for the sustain pedal is enable/disable all breakpoints.
~~~
elektronaut
Sustain needs to be caps lock, obviously.
------
dllthomas
Interesting. I did something a little like this a while back. The way I worked
it, it spanned two octaves, and chords in the lower octave determined a one-
to-one mapping in the upper. It seemed about as usable as any unfamiliar
keyboard, though I didn't play with it for more than about 20 minutes in
total.
------
rch
There's a lot of this sort of thing going on right now actually. I've been
experimenting with dynamic interfaces on a tablet and found it to be strangely
satisfying to have task-oriented controls come into view when they're likely
to be needed.
------
eng_monkey
I guess this is as sensible as the author's master thesis titled 'Adaptive
Object-Oriented Architecture of Information Systems Based on High-Level Petri
Nets', where apparently he ran out of keywords to put together.
~~~
yuriyguts
Counting the number of words is, no doubt, a sensible way to assess the
academic value of something. Sure, REST may sound better than 'Architectural
Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures', but let's
stick to
[http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html),
section "In Comments".
------
fasteo
"How can you tell a programmer from a musician? Ask them what C# is." LOL
------
nullc
Typing via a mapping to the keys is a normal feature in some integrated
synthesizers. E.g. the K2600 does it... certantly beats entering in labels for
patches via a little wheel or 9-key.
------
samweinberg
I like the idea of using a MIDI trigger pad for things like keyboard shortcuts
or text snippets. I'm sure you could make something similar on the cheap with
an arduino.
------
grondilu
Can it make the opposite and turn code into music?
~~~
lbruder
[http://thecodelesscode.com/case/132](http://thecodelesscode.com/case/132) ;)
------
fjcaetano
Nice to see that the key mapping was projected to sound good, not only random
notes being played.
------
auvi
one of the earliest typewriters had a piano type keyboard. [0]
[http://www.nytstore.com/Typewriter-Patent--
1868_p_8837.html](http://www.nytstore.com/Typewriter-Patent--1868_p_8837.html)
------
nocman
The old Styx song "Too Much Time on My Hands" comes to mind :-D
Still looks like fun, though.
------
thegeomaster
I imagine working in Emacs would sound like Mozart playing.
~~~
totoroisalive
So VI would be god hehe
~~~
beeskneecaps
vim would be like dubstep. vwwwwwww (drop the beat!) d.
~~~
gcb0
most experienced vim users would type dt<letter> or d5wd2w (so you don't have
to count everything you go in increments)
and also by experience, one should know that everytime you press that many w,
you WILL type a b or h :) vwwwwwwwwwwbbd.
~~~
beeskneecaps
You know, I typed it out in shorthand at first, but it didn't have the same
visual effect. haha
That's it, I'm writing a plugin that plays dubstep while you type.
| {
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Neanderthal 'skeleton' is first found in a decade - cesis
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51532781
======
use-net
Those Germans from Neandertal were happy to travel even back in the day,
right...
| {
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A native code to C/C++ decompiler - fla
http://derevenets.com/index.html
======
userbinator
No source? The first thing I did was try it on itself... which I suppose is
somewhat of an "acid test". It took a few minutes and an enormous amount of
memory, but finally it told me that the function at the very beginning of the
executable, definitely a nontrivial one, decompiles to...
void fun_401000() {
}
I'm sure I hit upon some edge case and much better output can be had from this
tool if I play with it some more, but for a first impression, not so good. But
I'm definitely going to keep this one around, it looks promising.
~~~
webkike
For all we know, that result is a complete facsimile of the original source.
But then again, we don't have the source.
------
os_
The original and the most powerful disassembler is IDA Pro. The project was
started in the 90s and has been used for security analysis, antivirus work,
protection analysis/research, hacks as well as normal dev work in the closed-
source ecosystems.
[https://www.hex-rays.com/products/ida/index.shtml](https://www.hex-
rays.com/products/ida/index.shtml)
The author has implemented a decompiler plugin over the top of IDA and it
works on the real-world code. The point here is to annotate the disassembly
bottom-up and then decompile.
[https://www.hex-rays.com/products/decompiler/index.shtml](https://www.hex-
rays.com/products/decompiler/index.shtml)
I don't want to bash the author of Snowman - this kind of research is serious
fun. Yet, IDA has an insane lead.
~~~
DigitalJack
It's also expensive. I'm sure it's worth it from all I've heard, but it's
unlikely I'll ever have the money for hobby work.
~~~
tptacek
For what IDA does, it's incredibly _inexpensive_ , so much so that it's
distorted the market for reverse engineering tools. Consider that people who
use IDA on a day-to-day basis have $250/hr+ bill rates, and if they use IDA,
they rely on it. Meanwhile, the set of people who use IDA on a day-to-day
basis is very small relative to the whole industry.
I'm not saying you should buy IDA, just that I think IDA is severely
mispriced.
~~~
os_
I hear you. For the sake of completeness, here is the other side of the
argument from students that use IDA for reverse engineering. Those activities
are really about cracking freemium/shareware apps and the associated
subculture is a little... well... special. I have heard countless times that
IDA should cost $200 and the author should work with the community to improve
the tool...
My stance is that the tool is very specialized, unique and the cost is
reasonable for professional usecases.
~~~
tptacek
I know I'm repeating myself here, but I want to make sure I communicate this:
IDA's price is so low that it actually harms the market for professional
reverse engineering tools. Most useful products you can build --- tracers,
visualizers, emulators, pattern matchers, debuggers --- fit into IDA's orbit.
As products, as "feature/function/benefit" statements, they are subsets of
IDA. But they're chained down by IDA's price. Just like IDA, they have to
serve a small market of users who make tens of thousands of dollars _per week_
using the tools, but the market optics make it hard to charge even a
significant fraction of the (low) total cost of IDA.
It's sort of hilarious to me to see what Hopper is doing to the market.
"Ruining it entirely" wouldn't be far from the truth. I'm only sort of
complaining. Viscerally, I'm thrilled that Hopper exists.
~~~
duckingtest
Who is making tens of thousands per week? Outside of selling exploits to
government agencies or cybercrime. Or is that what you meant?
AV jobs pay shit.
~~~
tptacek
The software security bill rate for people who are competent with IDA and can
find bugs black-box with it exceeds $3k/day. Source: until Friday, I'm a
principal at a very large software security consulting firm.
That's for projects denominated in billable days. Talented specialists do even
better, on fixed-price projects for specific targets. Rates get higher for
cryptographic work, as well.
I am _not_ talking about selling vulnerabilities. I have never sold a
vulnerability to anyone, nor have I (to my knowledge) done any software
security work for any division of the USG or any other government, nor would
I.
Don't work in AV. There are worse things about AV than the pay scale.
------
jordigh
C and C++ are different languages. I only saw C examples. How would you even
decompile to C++? The only C++ information you have in the object code is the
mangled names. How do you use that to get C++ code?
~~~
_wmd
And vtables, rtti data, systematic sequences of ops for invoking base classes,
intrinsic/library functions emitted by the compiler in specific situations,
exception handling tables, ...
~~~
jordigh
But none of those is something only a C++ compiler would specifically do,
right? How would you distinguish a vtable emitted by a C++ compiler from one
hand-rolled in C? I suppose you could just offer a reasonable guess. I wonder
if decompiled GTK+ code would end up turning into C++.
~~~
mieko
Most C++ platform ABIs are pretty trivial to recognize. A tool like this could
distinguish a C++ binary by looking at its initialization/housekeeping
sections, static constructors, __cxa_atexit, exception handling tables, linked
libraries, etc.
For example, the Itanium C++ ABI ([http://mentorembedded.github.io/cxx-
abi/](http://mentorembedded.github.io/cxx-abi/), perhaps Itanium's only real
legacy) adopted by Linux/ELF and other platforms, leaves a huge amount of
fingerprints on a binary. It'd take a very conscious effort, including hand-
crafting linker scripts, to generate a C binary that a tool would incorrectly
think was C++.
------
barrkel
Interesting that gcc removes the \n from the string and calls puts() directly
- this avoids the overhead of parsing the string for non-existent format
specifiers.
The decompiler could do with a bit of work making dynamic library imports more
symbolic. Following the puts call chain quickly disappears into a non-local
jump to an address with no further references.
------
nes350
Another native code decompiler, although apparently abandoned long ago:
[http://boomerang.sourceforge.net](http://boomerang.sourceforge.net)
~~~
RDeckard
Thanks for sharing, did not know. Of course, aware'ing everyone on IDA Hex-
Rays on this thread too: [http://www.hex-
rays.com/products/ida/](http://www.hex-rays.com/products/ida/)
------
72deluxe
That "hello world" decompilation is complex!
[EDIT: Very informative replies below, thanks!]
~~~
qzc4
It's because of the #include <stdio.h>, isn't it?
~~~
ctz
No, it's because its decompiling from _start downwards. From main downwards
it's actually very straightforward.
You can also see that GCC did strength reduction of printf("thing\n") to
puts("thing").
------
stinos
Pretty impressive! I haven't used any disassembly tools in years and only
remember last time I did I found it useless. Not sure if that was due to my
lack of understanding or the generated output or rather a combination of both.
This thing however: I fed it with an OpenGL test app which doesn't do much but
still has hundreds of lines of modern C++ spread over different libraries and
could clearly recognize lots of my functions in it and follow some program
flow starting from main. Still hard but at least I didn't feel completely lost
like years ago.
------
Someone1234
This is extremely useful for analysis. Even if you understand x86 ASM, it
allows you to quickly jump around a lot more efficiently than you otherwise
would.
It won't, for me, recompile back into the source application. So that is a
limitation, but even with that limitation it is extremely useful (and the fact
it looks the C/C++ back to the ASM, makes altering the ASM directly trivial).
~~~
fla
This and also the fact it's available as an IDA plugin.
------
3rd3
I’m wondering whether one could use machine learning and C/C++ code from
GitHub to find reasonable variable names automatically.
------
ntoshev
I wonder if statistical machine translation approach could be usefully applied
here. Get tons of source from github, compile with every compiler available,
train on the result. It would be challenging to compile automatically at
scale, to align the code with the source, or to get a source representation
invariant to identifiers, but should be doable.
~~~
fiatmoney
It's both harder and easier. There is a mechanical transformation, without un-
or approximately translatable idioms like natural language. On the other hand,
the dependency chain is much more complex - with something like link-time
optimization, a change to one part of the code can completely change the
result (for instance, if it suddenly allows inlining of a function
everywhere). There is also the problem of, if not "idiom translation", "idiom
generation" \- people write code in a particular style that may not be
captured by the generated output, even if it compiles the same.
Targeting something like Clang specifically, where you have access not only to
the assembler & a potential source, but also a whole AST & intermediate data
structures, would be pretty interesting.
------
daguu
I'm brand new to C, but wouldn't this from the hello world example always eval
true?
if (__JCR_END__ == 0 || 1) { return;
~~~
fnordfnordfnord
If __JCR_END___ was always a boolean, yes.
~~~
tpush
Am I missing something? '==' has a higher precedence than '||', so it should
always evaluate as true.
~~~
DSMan195276
I think the catch he's getting at is that || imposes an ordering that the left
side is checked before the right side. This also implies that any side-effects
of the left side have to happen before the right-side is evaluated.
That said, I still don't know how you could get this code generated. If you
make an equivalent piece of code with _JCR_END__ as a volatile int, you still
get an infinite loop which has the mov op for reading the _JCR_END__ value but
it doesn't bother to test it. IE. gcc still reads the variable but optimizes
the loop to a while (1). I can't think of anyway to trick gcc into generating
asm like this.
------
J_Darnley
I'm kind of disappointed that there isn't a version available for IDA 5.0.
Yeah, I'm cheap.
------
TickleSteve
This will totally fail for optimised code if it is just using object code
without debug information. There is no information in the resulting machine
code that can indicate whether some code has been inlined or not. Basically
any optimisations performed by the compiler will throw this decompilation off.
I question whether you can get any real use out of this...
~~~
anemic
I don't think the market for this is to get the _actual_ original code. It's
more like understanding what a particular program does: when you see it on a
higher level it's much easier to understand the code than reading raw
assembly.
~~~
TickleSteve
Absolutely... I get that, but its only functional for non-optimised code. My
point is that for anything non-trivial, its not going to be terribly useful.
You're still gonna need to understand what really is going on, optimisers
mangle the code out of all recognisability for this decompiler.
~~~
pjmlp
Unless the Assembly is using clever tricks like code rewriting, it is always
possible to at very least decompile into some form of pseudo-code.
Just the fact of giving symbolic names to memory addresses and replacing
Assembly opcodes by more meaningful instructions can make wonders trying to
understand some code.
~~~
TickleSteve
I disagree... inlining will remove all evidence that a function call existed.
loop unrolling will remove all evidence that a loop existed (potentially).
Those are basic optimisations, comiplers will transform the code out of all
recognisability for a decompiler to be worthwhile.
------
m00dy
Why only windows ? i couldn't get it.
~~~
schoen
There's an enormous community of people who spend all their time worrying
about the contents or behavior of Windows binaries. I've met some of them
through my work, like malware analysts who deal with malware that's part of
phishing attacks. The phishers will often prefer to create Windows-only
attacks because Windows has such a commanding market share lead among most
populations of phishing targets; in turn, that's what the people trying to
defend against or mitigate those attacks will study. To folks in that sort of
field, "binary" is virtually synonymous with "Windows binary"!
I guess also historically most of the tools for creating, modifying, and
examining binaries for a given platform have been native to that platform,
rather than cross tools. That's surely because most people (with the exception
of embedded developers) do much more native development than cross
development. I can get a small number of packages on my Linux machine that
will deal with Windows executables in some relatively shallow way, but I have
_tons_ of programs already installed that do complicated and specific things
to Linux ELF binaries even though I don't typically use those programs on a
day-to-day basis.
| {
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Don't Shave That Yak (2005) - vsrev
https://seths.blog/2005/03/dont_shave_that/
======
opportune
Yak shaving is an inevitable, unavoidable part of working in a large company
with mature (or rather: conservative and safe) engineering practices.
A feature I’m working on right now involves a ridiculous amount of knowledge
of the service component architecture and release process because making any
change coordinated across two different hot services with different release
schedules is absolutely hellacious. So even though customers will barely
notice the change, I have to do all this release and flag and migration and
analysis work simply because people actually use and depend on our service and
we have to be really careful not to break it.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing. If we didn’t have to yak shave, it would
mean we either weren’t making money, didn’t care about our customers, or
didn’t do anything important. In 2005, maybe most people weren’t working on
hot services with complex architectures that people depended on. But imagine
what would happen if the tens of thousands of people working on AWS all
collectively decided to not shave yaks when they updated their services.
On an individual basis, your decision to not shave a yak might save time and
effort. At scale, it increases your error rate. If you have thousands of
developers and hundreds of components/services to keep track of, issues are
already an inevitability, and you’re increasing the rate at which issues would
occur by a lot.
~~~
celticmusic
One thing I'd like to add to this.
Software Developers will often be tempted to automate the yak shaving away so
they don't really have to deal with it all. This is a good attitude to have,
but when combined with automation it can also be dangerous. I've seen many
automated solutions run off on their own doing entirely the wrong thing. It's
very often safer to slow down, build tools to assist, but have a human there
to push the go button. It's not as sexy, and if you're scale is large enough
you're also building tools to help with analysis. But in the long run you'll
avoid problems.
------
jrockway
You should be careful about how you manage your time. There is an art to
decide where to draw the line. For this super-contrived example that literally
involves breaking into a zoo to get from an animal a part that can be bought
off the shelf with same-day delivery... I am not sure that the answer is
"don't buy a new hose." You could just pay the cash toll to drive across the
Tappan Zee Bridge. Get a great hose, wash your car, and continue to ignore
your neighbor whose pillow you ignored.
In general, you should have a cost and benefit attached to every action you
are planning. Buying a hose is super easy and solves a lot of problems; you
can start watering your garden again, you can wash your car, you can spray
your kids. The cost is low, the benefit is high, so you should consider it
today. At the bottom of the chain is "break into a zoo and shave a wild
animal". The benefit is low, you can buy yak hair on Amazon. The cost is high,
you're likely going to be maimed AND end up in prison. So don't do that!
This is a super dumb example and we shouldn't even be discussing it.
Management consultants always have a contrived example where their advice
sounds good because the example is bad. This is that.
~~~
RangerScience
This indicates both side of yak-shaving. The chain of requirements in the
contrived example is (IMO) deliberately silly, and misses what you're
(correctly) pointing out: it's not yak shaving if it's building capability...
...unless you know you won't - or don't know that you will - benefit from that
boosted capability. Then it's back to yak shaving.
------
ken
Having tried both ways, I have the opposite view.
Skip all the extra steps and just take a shortcut, and you'll fix one problem
today -- and tomorrow you'll run into three consequences of this shortcut, and
have to take yet more shortcuts. The next 25 problems that cross this path
will be just as hard, and they'll require their own shortcuts.
But fix the 5 sub-problems necessary to fix this the Right Way today (no
matter how crazy), and at the end of the day, you will have the Right Fix in
place. Plus, you'll be one step closer to solving those 25 other problems that
cross through this path.
When solving a problem, you always get to choose whether to take on more tech
debt, or pay off some existing tech debt. People almost never choose to pay
off tech debt, so every step is one step closer to that inflection point where
the entire project is too complex for anyone to work on, and you have to scrap
it and start over.
~~~
iudqnolq
> But fix the 5 sub-problems necessary to fix this the Right Way today (no
> matter how crazy), and at the end of the day, you will have the Right Fix in
> place. Plus, you'll be one step closer to solving those 25 other problems
> that cross through this path.
Unless tomorrow you learn you need to build something completely different.
This is an age old debate, and doing it technically "Right" isn't the be-all-
end-all. "Move fast and break things" is dumb, and so is it's inverse.
Now, that doesn't mean the truth is the happy medium. It's somewhere in
between, weighed to one side. I don't know which. But this is a tension, and I
don't think we can afford to ignore either side.
~~~
bencollier49
Which side it happens to be is on entirely context-driven. If the object of
"yak shaving" happens to be a mathematical proof, then the yak must be shaved.
But if you have to get a system working within five minutes to stop your
company losing ten million pounds, then the yak can remain unmolested.
~~~
SAI_Peregrinus
Sometimes there's an easy way around. With the article's example, you buy an
EzPass (or call the tolls-by-mail number & pay the extra fee for that vs
EzPass). Then you don't need to borrow your neighbour's EzPass, or return the
pillow, or restuff the pillow, or shave the yak. Likewise for many real
systems, often one of the intermediate steps has a better alternative.
------
drewg123
" _Doing it well now is much better than doing it perfectly later_ "
That sounds fine until hundreds of developers make this choice every single
day, and your project is so riddled with technical debt that forward progress
becomes hard to muster. I'll be the first to admit that I postpone or neglect
Yak Shaving myself.
If we think about it the other way around, if we shaved yak every single time,
then the herd would be shaved, and we'd be able to work without so many
distractions.
I guess the big problem with Yak Shaving, at least for a dayjob, is that it
doesn't always count towards making forward progress toward your goals or
OKRs, or whatever we want to call them. I think we need to recognize the
importance of Yak shaving and reward the shavers.
~~~
cortesoft
I was going to say this... every shortcut to avoid shaving a yak is just
creating a new yak that will need to be shaved next time.
Pretty soon, you are surrounded by nothing but yaks, and even yak shaving
requires shaving ten other yaks first.
~~~
quickthrower2
If you are lucky! Sometimes I reckon it’s so impossible to reason about
tangled code that the only option is to rewrite!
~~~
taneq
That's where refactoring comes in. Start with simple, local things. Make sure
all the variables are properly and consistently named. Fix the indentation.
De-duplicate cut'n'paste code (carefully!) where appropriate. Expand out
functions that are only called from one place, where appropriate. Convert
awkward control flow into more natural flow. So on and so forth. Abstract out
common functionality into its own functions/classes.
You'll be amazed how, after a few iterations of this approach, even the worst
spaghetti turns into something that you can start to reason about. (In fact, I
find myself mentally referring to this kind of refactoring as 'combing
spaghetti'.) And if you're careful to make sure none of your changes alter the
function of the code, you don't lose the 'tried-and-tested' advantage of the
original code.
~~~
rabidrat
This is peephole refactoring. Architectural redesigns (the ones that result in
1/10th the code with the same functionality but more robust, maintainable, etc
etc) aren't feasible to do incrementally like this. If you're resourceful and
clever, you can sometimes get to a certain point with both the old and the new
architecture in place at the same time, but at some point you have to make the
hard cut-over, and redevelop all the old features/edge-cases in the new
system.
~~~
taneq
Even if you're starting with a disgusting hairball, a bottom-up approach will
still get you to something understandable. At this stage you'll probably find
that you can fix it one subsystem at a time without doing a full blank-slate
rewrite. And once all of your subsystems are nice and independent and well
designed, changing up the high-level architecture is far, far easier and
safer.
------
thamer
Great example from Malcolm in the Middle:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbSehcT19u0)
~~~
osn9363739
I thought of that as I read the article as well!
------
bentona
I've been hearing this term probably since TFA was published, but it's only
been recently, ~15 years into my career that I realized how much I'm guilty of
this. It's so easy to get caught up in that PR for that upstream dependency so
your code is a bit prettier.
I've also noticed that the low-level yak shaving I tend towards becomes much
less tempting if I focus on decoupling what I'm writing. As long as a
function/module I'm not super happy with is nicely isolated/decoupled, who
cares? I can easily swap it out later if it becomes an issue.
------
gweinberg
I like the expression "Yak Shaving", but I don't really understand what it's
supposed to mean.
In the story, obviously the guy should return his neighbor's pillow, whether
or not he's going to immediately ask for another favor, and he probably ought
to get a new hose also. So even if he thinks shaving the yak is way too much
trouble to get his car waxed, shouldn't he shave the yak anyway?
~~~
wolfgang42
A lot of people in this thread are talking about it in the context of
technical debt, but I've always interpreted it as an allegory about time
management: you find yourself shaving a yak when you've ‘gone down the rabbit
hole’ and traversed several layers down the dependency chain of your to-do
list. When you realize this is a good time to take a moment to reflect on the
situation. Sometimes, the yak really does need shaving right now, but
sometimes it's a result of performing a depth-first search, so to speak, and
it's better to back up and take another tack, leaving the yak for later. And
even if that yak really does need shaving, taking a moment to reflect on _why_
you've found yourself shaving it can be useful to prevent frustration that the
original task doesn't even seem to have been started yet.
~~~
zeroimpl
Yeah, it seems the metaphor is about incorrectly performing a depth-first-
search, when breadth-first-search is the right algorithm in general to find
the optimal solution.
------
Pxtl
The problem is that when everybody avoids shaving the yak, the yak gets too
hairy.
"Oh, the build server can't handle that one lib, I'll just commit the DLL
directly"
"Oh that library is too confusing, I'll just roll my own for this one use-
case".
The opposite of yak-shaving is technical debt. If you find yourself in
"there's a hole in my bucket" territory, that's a sign that nobody is paying
down that technical debt ever.
There are thankless jobs in software development that basically amount to
"making sure the yak is already shaved".
------
peterwwillis
Yak shaving is _" Any seemingly pointless activity which is actually necessary
[...]"_. Yak shaving is necessary. It isn't an indicator that you _shouldn 't_
shave the yak.
Now, if you can't decide if yak shaving is necessary, ask yourself 4
questions:
- What am I really trying to do?
- Is this the best way to do that?
- Is it necessary to do that?
- Do I really need to do it right now?
And remember, perfect is the enemy of good.
------
smarri
I really tried to get into Seth Godin's work, blogs, books, video, the altmba.
I just find there is no substance beyond wishy washy ideas and turns of
phrase. I just read his latest blog where he tells us to look inside a box of
infinity and 'dance with it'. What am I missing here? Isn't this nonsense?
~~~
1123581321
I can speak to the blog. First, the daily posting rigor is inspiring. It makes
you want to do something useful every day.
Second, many of his blog posts prompt you to ask questions of the work you are
doing. They are not always the questions you expect and sometimes the pairing
of your current situation and the current blog post are fortuitous.
Third, he has strong, uncommonly held about how to start, continue and finish,
and find an audience for _meaningful_ work. Unless you are particularly
prolific, his writing should help you raise your expectations for yourself.
Fourth, he’s an executive and product creator and sometimes it’s worth
understanding how those people think, whether to emulate them or just to sell
to them.
That said, at this point I would start with his books because he’s had so much
time to distill his blog ideas into longer writing and it’s better to catch up
with a book than to read a lot of old posts.
------
russellbeattie
If you're yak-shaving correctly, you're laying the groundwork for future
tasks.
If you do it incorrectly, it's more like Malcolm's dad [1], who is distracted
by subtasks that are only minimally related to the initial goal.
Devs get the two mixed up quite often. Usually on Monday mornings...
1\. [https://youtu.be/AbSehcT19u0](https://youtu.be/AbSehcT19u0)
------
klyrs
> Yak Shaving is the last step of a series of steps that occurs when you find
> something you need to do. “I want to wax the car today.”
> “Oops, the hose is still broken from the winter. I’ll need to buy a new one
> at Home Depot.”
...
> So, what to do?
> Don’t go to Home Depot for the hose.
This analogy is rather awful. The takeaway I'm getting from this is "if you
hit an obstacle, stop trying." Surely that isn't what the author is trying to
tell us?
~~~
axaxs
I think you may be taking away a different than intended lesson. The
implication is that you can wash the car with a broken hose(tape it!), or with
no hose at all(buckets/pans).
~~~
klyrs
Yes, now we're getting somewhere. The fallacy is in recursively accepting the
first solution to a given problem. Rather, it's worthwhile to ruminate[1] on
multiple solutions before embarking on one that exceeds the apparent
complexity of the problem.
Digging into the analogy, though, this is a story about maintenance failures.
At some point, you're going to make good with your neighbor and also repair or
replace your hose, and it sounds like getting a pass for that bridge could
save time in the future. Waxing your car might be a vanity project. What's
most important in this moment?
[1] my first yak pun in 2020
------
IshKebab
Counterpoint: [https://github.com/flutter/flutter/wiki/Style-guide-for-
Flut...](https://github.com/flutter/flutter/wiki/Style-guide-for-Flutter-
repo#lazy-programming)
------
DonHopkins
Yak shaving is so common in the industry that I started a company renting pre-
shaved yaks, until I realized it was the fur they were after. So I pivoted,
and my new elevator pitch is: "It's like Uber for yak fur".
------
jinpan
> "And the next thing you know, you’re at the zoo, shaving a yak, all so you
> can wax your car."
I'm interpreting this as (maybe unintentionally) creating new forms of debt -
next time you want to visit the zoo, you may need to resolve some favors to
the zookeeper that let you into the yak exhibit.
------
maerF0x0
"YAGNI - You Aint Gonna Need It"[1] is a form of antidote to these kind of
meandering insanities. I often have to remind myself to do whatever it takes
to get done today, and then to return for the longterm investments _after_ if
I still think it's worth it.
In this case it probably would look like: Pay cash for the toll, get the hose,
wash the car. Consider fixing the relationship (or buy my own ezpass) _after_
the task at hand is done.
[1]:
[https://martinfowler.com/bliki/Yagni.html](https://martinfowler.com/bliki/Yagni.html)
------
wodenokoto
Does anybody know the origin of the term? The author links to [1], which says
it "probably" comes from a Ren & Stimpy episode.
According to wiktionary [2], the episode is called "Yak Shaving Day", of which
a song clip can be viewed on youtube [3] and some more googling can tell you
that yak shaving day is introduced in episode 3 of season 1.
But nothing about that song or episode has any relevance to the expression of
yak shaving. So why did the MIT lab choose that name for the expression?
[1] [http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/Y/yak-
shaving.html](http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/Y/yak-shaving.html) [2]
[https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/yak_shaving)
[3]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mmISldi060](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mmISldi060)
------
yarg
Don't shave it now, shave it later. Interfaces exist for a reason, and can
potentially provide you with a mechanism for bootstrapping new designs onto
the old base implementations.
Albeit in a less than optimal manner.
It does, however, provide you with a means to approach the eventual shaving of
the yak piecemeal.
At any step into the deep dive into madness, all you need is a viable
implementation of the highest level of required functionality.
Even if the insanity of a complete implementation can get through code review,
future archaeologists won't thank you for rebuilding existence in a single
commit.
Shave the yak if you need to, just be sure that you need to do it now.
------
big_chungus
This isn't really anything new. Sometimes, it's important to get that hose or
whatever the real-world equivalent is. The real advice is to not waste time on
things that aren't important. To poorly extend the metaphor, this is running
to home depot to buy a pack of gum. I've caught myself a few times tweaking my
i3 config or something to "increase productivity" to procrastinate something I
don't want to do. The important thing is to not do that. This advice, however,
is already well-known.
------
freehunter
It's so weird that we have a group of people who tell us don't shave the yak,
and then a group of people telling us to measure twice and cut once, and a
group of people telling us that technical debt is bad, and a group of people
telling us that we need to move fast and break things. Then you have Joel
Spolsky telling us we should never rewrite our code, but the anti yak shavers
telling us not to think too far ahead and just get the pen to the paper as
quick as possible.
But I guess you're not going to sell many books by saying "think exactly as
hard as you need to about the things you need to think about, make smart
choices, pick relevant abstractions when you can, and choose the right tool
for the job".
~~~
FPGAhacker
Most of this doesn’t seem in conflict to me.
“Don’t shave the yak.”
\- stay focused on the task at hand.
“Measure twice cut once”
\- if the output cannot be easily fixed, double check yourself before
committing.
“Technical debt is bad”
This is an oversimplification. Perhaps dangerous is a better word than bad.
“Move fast and break things”
\- a hyperbolic response to perfectionism
~~~
wayoutthere
> “Technical debt is bad” > This is an oversimplification. Perhaps dangerous
> is a better word than bad.
Technical debt is not dangerous or bad, it's just debt. It continues to
compound the longer you don't pay it down. You have to be strategic with the
resources you have, but often taking on debt is the right thing to do
(provided you intend to pay it back later).
------
perl4ever
Is this a human version of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_inversion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priority_inversion)
------
sansnomme
This is actually part of the business justification for using SaaS/PaaS
instead of rolling your own. E.g. skip implementing auth when just starting
and simply use Firebase.
~~~
ben509
The key is to shave the yak before you're forced to.
Lots of sellers get their start on e.g. Amazon marketplace, and they find it
becomes progressively more awful as they scale up.
If they make the switch to their own site on their own schedule, this is fine.
If a competitor puts in false reviews on their product and gets them banned,
or their search rankings mysteriously plummet, the loss of revenue can
bankrupt them before they stake their own site.
------
weej
Perfection is the enemy of good enough. BUT...technical debt does factor in
when choosing the easier route that may incur longer-term problems with short
cuts.
------
yoz-y
I know nothing about waxing cars but don’t you actually need the hose?
Wouldn’t the actual solution be to get to Home Depot without the EZ pass, or
buying it instead of borrowing it.
This is to say that you should do the _necessary_ steps but no more?
~~~
other_herbert
I think the idea in the analogy would be to just use a bucket and the broken
hose as a good enough solution... Like find alternatives if the right path
ends in a yak
~~~
gwd
> Like find alternatives if the right path ends in a yak
But taking his example at face value -- I mean, you _are_ going to have to
return that pillow someday, and to return the pillow you _are_ going to have
to go to the zoo and shave the yak. I mean, yeah, today day maybe you can just
deal with the old broken hose. But if you'd shaved the yak _last_ weekend
instead of whatever other thing you were doing, you could have bought a new
hose this weekend. The longer you wait to do what you need to do anyway, the
more hassle you end up dealing with.
------
proc0
I think it works better for every day life things, because in the context of
work it amounts to making bad decisions. Building a new feature vs. fixing or
refactoring old code.
------
kristianc
I used to find this quite an appealing analysis - don’t waste time on busywork
after all. We’ve all heard that advice. I’m not sure it works in practice.
What happens if every time you go to solving one of these problems, you go
about three layers deep in your analysis rather than to the root cause.
Sometimes it isn’t a Yak to be shaved but actually something that done right,
can save you a lot of time and effort. Particularly in a field like software
development where the cost of rework is very high.
As construction friends of mine like to say, concrete erasers are expensive.
------
travbrack
I find that often times if I don't shave the Yak today, I'll end up shaving it
tomorrow. Sometimes you gotta shave that Yak.
------
dsalzman
Yak Shaving and Bike Shedding are some of my favorite sayings.
~~~
freehunter
Yak shaving sure... but bike shedding is a term I've only ever heard used to
dismiss valid criticisms without any counter argument. I've seen plenty of
projects where the simplest thing could have made all the difference, but it
was hand-waved away as "bike shedding". So the project moves ahead, ignoring
any feedback, and then people wonder why the project failed.
I've never encountered someone using the phrase "bike shedding" when it wasn't
in relation to a project that was in the middle of failing and the speaker is
looking for any excuse to ignore the real reason why. So instead they blame
everyone around them for focusing on "trivial" things. How many times was
Zune's exclusively brown color and "squirt" feature brought up and dismissed
as bike shedding? And when it was released, all the tech press could talk
about was that it looked like poop and squirted songs at you.
Details matter.
~~~
wolfgang42
I can definitely see how it could be used to steamroll over objections, but I
don't think that's a problem with the term so much as who/how it's being used.
Having a simple term in a team's shared vocabulary to point out when excessive
effort is being used on something trivial is important, because it can prevent
a lot of time from being wasted.
Here's an actual example from recently: “Hey, I think this parameter [that we
can't decide if it should be a boolean or an enum] is turning into a
bikeshed.” “Good point, leave it as a boolean for the moment and we can always
refactor later.” Something like that is not going to make or break a project,
and being able to concisely point that out is useful.
------
geocrasher
In other words:
Don't let perfection get in the way of progress.
~~~
anonytrary
But also, don't let progress get in the way of progress. Sure, over-perfecting
can get in the way of immediate progress, but under-perfecting (quick-fixes,
avoiding refactors, etc.) can get in the way of future progress. The question
of "should I refactor this or can I get away with a quick fix?" really needs
to be asked all the time. There is no silver bullet.
------
motohagiography
I told the CTO of the last startup I worked for his organization was a
bikeshed full of half shaved yaks. I hope it sunk in.
------
hydgv
(2005) in case you're confused about the "five years ago" remark
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Carbon Fated: We’re Built This Way for a Reason (2013) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/carbon-fated-were-built-this-way-for-a-reason
======
acjohnson55
I read this piece, but it ended rather abruptly without providing any real
information. Kind of surprised out made the front page.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
They Cracked This 250 Year-Old Code, And Found a Secret Society Inside - pstadler
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/11/ff-the-manuscript/all/
======
kens
I suspect there's a second code hidden in there. From the article, describing
the code symbols that are Roman letters:
These unaccented Roman letters appeared with the frequency
you’d expect in a European language. But they don’t
represent letters—they mark the spaces between words.
It's implausible that these characters just happen to appear with a language-
like frequency distribution and are all meaningless spaces. I suspect they
actually have a meaning and provide a second message.
To clarify, it's like taking "SthisEisCtheRfirstEmessageT" and assuming all
the capitals just indicate spaces.
~~~
cbr
It's implausible that these characters just happen to
appear with a language-like frequency distribution and
are all meaningless spaces
Really? If I were to try to pick random letters I suspect I would end up
mirroring the frequency that they appeared in English.
~~~
Groxx
Probably not. People are bad at random:
[http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/02/05/is-17-the-...](http://scienceblogs.com/cognitivedaily/2007/02/05/is-17-the-
most-random-number/)
~~~
wlievens
I think his point is valid exactly _because_ people are bad at randomness.
~~~
Groxx
/me rereads
Oh, heh, I can see it that way now. I had intended my comment to say that,
since you'd be trying to reach that set of ratios to hide things, you'd
probably fail miserably against any competent analysis.
------
danso
A wonderful read. I know a little bit about frequency analysis and was
surprised to see how straightforward its application was (in theory). I'm even
more surprised that after a decade of Google, that this approach wouldn't be
one of the first things tried out given the length of the text. As the OP
describes, it was a chance encounter at a conference that machine learning was
finally introduced into the problem. Until that point, the linguist had been
trying in vain to decipher the text...is there still such a gap between the
researchers and the computational experts who know how to implement solutions?
* to put it in a less-polite way: how the _F_ else would you solve a problem like this, with non-computational methods?
~~~
Avshalom
>Until that point, the linguist had been trying in vain to decipher the text
Well no, the linguist tried in vain to do frequency analysis by hand on ~88
symbols for ~100 pages for a couple months before saying "bugger this for a
game of soldiers" and went on with her life.
"She tried a few times to catalog the symbols, in hopes of figuring out how
often each one appeared. This kind of frequency analysis is one of the most
basic techniques for deciphering a coded alphabet. But after 40 or 50 symbols,
she’d lose track. After a few months, Schaefer put the cipher on a shelf."
~~~
dyselon
Like a lot of people that played Fez, I recently did some frequency analysis
by hand, to crack the alphabet in that game. It was pretty tedious, and I
messed up frequently. I wouldn't blame her for giving up after a few mistakes.
------
Turing_Machine
The next time I'm at the eye doctor, I'm going to be wondering what that eye
chart _really_ means. :-)
Another poster mentioned the Voynich manuscript. It's available on archive.org
if anyone wants to try their hand:
<http://archive.org/details/TheVoynichManuscript>
Here's a list of others:
<http://www.omniglot.com/writing/undeciphered.htm>
------
gebe
Wow, not often accomplishments from people you actually know and have had as
teachers end up on the frontpage of HN. I was at the same talk by Kevin Knight
as Schaefer and I can vouch for that it was a mighty interesting one! I
actually changed my curriculum a bit (to include cryptography) as a result of
his talk.
------
keithpeter
Good catch, nice read, with a computational angle.
Take a walk down some of the older lanes in London, say near Borough Market or
back up towards Southwark, or the other side between Brick Lane and Petticoat
Lane, and imagine yourself back in the 1700s.
Coffee houses, close groups having meetings, private rooms upstairs in narrow
houses. The feeling that _true knowledge_ was being passed on. The _meaning_
people found in the processes of the primitive technology.
It strikes me that the boring bits of the decoding (tokenising the symbols,
entering the tokens) could be farmed out using a web site hosting scans of
texts. The computational resource could perhaps be spare cycles on a PC with
an appropriate application. Scope for lay science of a particularly
interesting kind, _and_ the refinement of algorithms as they are applied to a
larger corpus of texts.
------
Leszek
> Eventually we turned to the last items in the Oculist trove: nine copies of
> a four-page document written in a mixture of old German, Latin, and the
> Copiale’s coded script. The message was more or less identical in every set.
I feel kind of sorry for them, that at the end of their journey they found
what was essentially a Rosetta Stone for the code they were decoding.
~~~
Avshalom
That sentence says the nine copies (sets) were more or less identical not that
the german latin and copiale were translations of each other.
~~~
Leszek
Oops, you're right, parsing fail.
------
nnq
this: "The unaccented Roman letters didn’t spell out the code. They were the
spaces that separated the words of the real message, which was actually
written in the glyphs and accented text." makes me think of a cyphertext
within a cyphertext, something like an ancient form of stenography.
...maybe the symbold used as spaces are not actually random and there's
another message hidden there, with another cypher, offering the writers of
this "plausible deniability" regarding its existence: they could only give the
way to decipher the first level of encryption and say that's all there is,
while the really important information was hidden in the "space characters"...
(... now putting my tinfoil hat back in the closet :) )
------
stcredzero
Actually, they cracked a 250 year old code and found a secret society inside a
secret society. (True. Read the article!)
------
Jun8
And now if only someone cracked the Voynich manuscript!
~~~
fsiefken
yes, unfortunately the frequency and language analysis didn't result in
anything useful except for some vague hints the encoded language might be
asian, perhaps written by a westerner who traveled there.
------
BerislavLopac
I'll be calling my rock band "Quiet Bulldozer". ;-)
~~~
ansgri
There's a composition I like very much, by GY!BE, "She Dreamt She Was a
Bulldozer, She Dreamt She Was Alone in an Empty Field". Maybe you could do
similar genre?
------
tsunamifury
This introduction feels eerily similar to an opening interview at Google.
~~~
chime
How so?
------
BaconJuice
Enjoyed reading this. Thank you.
------
k2xl
Question (maybe a dumb one) but how does an algorithm account for symbols that
might mean a series of letters? Or a symbol that stands for a different letter
depending on the symbol before or after it?
~~~
shabble
In general, using _n_ -grams[1], probably at the character level. (So, as the
article mentions, the bigram "ch" is common in German, and "qu" is much more
common than "q _X_ " for any _X_ in English)
You can analyse texts you believe to be similar (in language, period, subject,
etc) to the coded message you are attempting to crack, and use that to build
tables of these n-grams in various semantic units.
Of course, these are useful in many more things than code-breaking, and Google
have various datasets they make publically available.
The Google books ngram viewer[2] is a fun tool to play around with, or for the
more serious, you can download a corpus of ~24GB of analysed web data they've
crawled (from around 1 trillion source words)[3]
One actual example of a code constructed in the manner described is the
Playfair cipher[4] which was used for a time in the late 1800s, but is now
thoroughly broken.
[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-gram>
[2] <http://books.google.com/ngrams>
[3] [http://googleresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2006/08/all-our-n-
gram-...](http://googleresearch.blogspot.co.uk/2006/08/all-our-n-gram-are-
belong-to-you.html)
[4] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playfair_cipher>
------
Roelven
Woah. Awesome story but was kinda disappointed with the ending, just leads to
more riddles & codes.
------
myWordBiLLY
This was a fun read. Thanks for sharing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Go to All the Meetups, they said… - DinahDavis
https://medium.com/code-like-a-girl/go-to-all-the-meetups-they-said-f4c52d41dc30#.6nr1x3wue
======
x1798DE
> As a woman coming from a non-technical background (physics)
That's a new one for me. I guess she means her connections aren't in software,
but physics is like the most technical non-engineering field I can think of.
------
dj325
I have friends who embarked on a similar path. They found it much easier to
join meetups where the focus was on help building stuff rather than
networking. G'luck!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Review my startup idea, Algonaut - abhijitr
http://www.algonaut.com - a hosted platform for algorithmic trading<p>We are still circling in on what the MVP should be, would love to hear feedback from any quant-types out there.
======
HardyLeung
I do algorithmic trading myself since 2006, with Interactive Broker, and
C++/C# implementation of my own heuristics. As others said you are not
providing enough information. I don't want to have to sign up to discover what
you offer. At the minimum, you do need to (1) provide some pricing
information, (2) put more emphasis on security (how do I know that my crown
jewel is secure with your service, do I need to give my password to you), and
(3) provide some idea what the workflow is like. For example, give people test
account and canned algorithm just so I can easily get a feel of what this is
about.
I probably are not interested myself. A big part of my algorithmic trading is
many different types of analysis. I need to be able to easily change something
and debug and run other tools (e.g. various statistics packages). Having it
hosted elsewhere rather than by myself seems to complicate the problem. And
what's the benefit, really? Do you have a better feed than IB? Do I get
dedicated trading machines or do I get a VM and risk slow execution? What is
the cost? Is there enough saving to justify the risk and inconvenience? All
these require more than a teaser MVP page.
------
cschmidt
You do need to define things a bit more. Daily data or tick? Stock, futures,
etc. Just US data or more.
How are you going to allow any languages to run on your server? That seems
pretty dangerous.
~~~
abhijitr
Thanks for your feedback! We will clarify it on the page, but the short answer
is both daily and tick data. We plan on starting with US equities unless we
get strong feedback to the contrary.
As for security, we plan on running each user's code in its own sandbox, with
restricted permissions.
~~~
cschmidt
If you want a MVP, then daily US equity is probably the place to start. I'd
also wonder if your service could run tick strategies in practice. I've never
done it, but it seems like tick strategies are all about having expensive co-
located servers.
I'd also suggest getting fundamental data for the equities, so your customers
have more than just hi/lo/open/close/volume for their strategies. You'll find
that making sure none of this fundamental data is snooped is hard. (i.e.
making sure the data isn't revised back in time, so it is as it would appear
on a given date). That messiness is your good value add if you can get it
right. Also, please encourage out of sample testing using some form of cross
validation.
~~~
abhijitr
Agreed, we believe there's a huge amount of value in aggregating and cleaning
fundamental data.
To your point about back testing, would you want guidance as to what the in-
sample and out-sample time ranges should be? Tools to help you make sure
you're not overfitting? Or something else?
~~~
cschmidt
The user's algorithms are going to have try to control for overfitting on
their own. Try to make it hard for the users to evaluate the model on the same
data they trained it on. Also educate them that in-sample results are
meaningless.
I guess I'd want an easy way to get data in chunks for testing. You can either
do it as a rolling window or regular cross validation. (Rolling would be train
on N years of data, test on the next year. Then drop the last year and add
another year and repeat. CV would be just divide in 10 chunks, train on all
combination of 9 and test on the 10th.) It would be good to support both.
------
alphakappa
It's an interesting idea, but you need to provide more information in order to
get feedback. Right now it seems like I would have to sign up to find out more
about the system. Could you provide more examples of what a coded strategy
would look like, maybe some screenshots of the working interface, and what the
business model (pricing etc) is?
~~~
abhijitr
Thanks! We're not quite ready to share screenshots, but I see your point about
providing more technical details. Some code samples would definitely help. As
for the business model, we're still iterating on that, but the current
thinking is a straight SaaS play.
------
scottkrager
Link: <http://www.algonaut.com/>
------
komlenic
I know nil about the subject space, but that seems like a _great_ domain name!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is there a company logo web service? - cwisecarver
Is there a web service that can look up a company logo by SEC CIK number, ticker symbol or some other unique ID?<p>ex: GET http://log.os/{{CIK_NUM}}/100/100 returns a 100x100 px logo for company matching {{CIK_NUM}}<p>If not, am I the only one interested in having one?
======
latch
INAL and I don't want to piss on a good idea, but the first thing that came to
my mind is that company logos are trademarked and that you might be opening an
unexpected ball of hurt for yourself.
~~~
maxbrown
IANAL either, but...
While a company's logo may be under trademark or simply copyright protection,
you still have a legal "Fair Use" right to use the logo for the purpose of
identifying or describing the company.
Most often, this is what logos are used for on a site. For example, "As Seen
On... TC, CNN, blah blah blah". They obviously cannot be used to mislead
someone into thinking the company is tied to or endorses your site.
Here's an article about it: <http://smallbusiness.chron.com/fair-use-
logos-2152.html>
~~~
esw
Yeah, I think it's a fine line. For example, the Washington Post wrote an
article about my last company. We included a link to the article on our media
page (where we listed every mention in the press), along with a tiny WaPo
logo. Several months later I received an email requesting some unreasonable
sum (~$4k, IIRC) to continue use of the logo.
------
revorad
Interesting idea. You could probably use the google image search api -
<http://code.google.com/apis/imagesearch/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What is your best method to learn new things? - tmaly
I have traditionally used book, and now some blogs. During my drive to work, I use audio books and podcasts.<p>I am looking for rapid techniques to learn new things. What are some of your best methods?
======
dontJudge
Reading a book is a recipe for procrastination. I just don't have the
willpower to read upfront.
Build an easy 2 hour project in the technology. Like a basic bug tracker. Dive
in knowing _nothing_ , no learning first. Consult google as you go.
I need to build something first, then read little bits here and there.
Eventually sitting down to learn the "proper" way to use the technology.
------
alfonsodev
Cultivating a genuine curiosity for the topic, for me that means be driven by
my own questions in the first place. A side project could be a form of a
question, don't feel guilty for not finishing those projects, some aspects of
the project will answer your question and the other uninteresting parts will
be never finished, and it's fine.
Also I used to read books linearly and the whole thing, recently I'm
experimenting with these other ways from How to read a Book pdf[1] which I saw
posted on HN[2]
[1]
[http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/PDF/howtoread.pdf](http://pne.people.si.umich.edu/PDF/howtoread.pdf)
[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12209446](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12209446)
------
sus_leec
Become a producer of knowledge rather than just a consumer. When you create
new knowledge, you synthesize what is already known and thus learn with a
purpose (vs. being passive). Alternatively, solve a problem. When you identify
a problem that you want to solve you will retain and apply related learning
better than if you are simply reading or listening.
------
sarthakjain
Listening to lectures is a good start. I found that listening to it at 2-3x
speed multiple times works best for me. Skimmimg a variety of articles on the
topic, this helps for understanding the jargon used in the field. Jargon
intimatedes me when I'm reading for a thorough understanding. So if I already
have a flavor of the field it becomes much easier to grasp what is written.
The best method yet is just spending time with people who know a lot about
that field.
------
importantbrian
I don't have a magic solution. I tend to learn best in the typical formal
classroom way. I like to watch lecture, read the material, take notes, and
work practice problems. Ultimately it's the practice that really helps me
learn something. Most things I know really well I know because I had a work
related or personal project that I could use those skills for.
------
cauterized
Come up with a project that you want to complete that requires the thing
you're using. Then work on the project. It'll help you figure out what aspects
to focus on, realize what you don't understand, and become familiar with the
gotchas.
~~~
tmaly
I have taken this exact approach with my side project.
------
tom5
The most efficient way to learn is to find out the original problems that
these new things trying to solve. Learn as much as possible about the historic
context of these problems and solutions. Having this big picture in mind will
enable you to learn much faster and deeper.
Another thing is to apply what you just learned in practice as quick as
possible. That will help convert your new knowledge to ability.
------
bluestreak
It may sound stupid but it works for me. Read, listen, watch something in
relaxed manner before you go to sleep. Problems and information is always
clearer next morning. Doesn't work, too much to learn? Rinse and repeat.
Taking notes as you listen helps too.
------
axon
I read then take notes on what I read, summarizing the concept(s) so I
solidify understanding.
Once I understand the concept(s), I practice these concepts by creating
examples and solving the examples.
Finally I analogize and connect the concept with previous knowledge, i.e.
internet is to spider web and quarternary numeral system is to DNA.
Quarternary numeral is related to decimal numeral system in that they encode
real numbers to limited symbols.
From there you can create small projects to reinforce a combination of
concepts in your brain!
------
bakli
What I typically do is create something, then try to teach how to make that
something to other people. In person is good, but tough. Screencasts and blogs
are great for this.
While teaching, you really get sudden moments of clarity as to why something
is like it is, or why you had to do it this way.
------
bsvalley
carpool
~~~
tmaly
can you elaborate?
~~~
bsvalley
Communicate with other people while driving. You learn a lot!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Recommend a freelance job board - speric
Can anyone recommend some good freelance job boards that are not eLance/oDesk etc.?
======
ryanwaggoner
I've been doing contract work for three years; 95% of my work has come from
Craigslist or from referrals from people who I connected with through
Craigslist. You have to wade through an incredible amount of junk, but the
volume on CL can't be touched anywhere else, and there _is_ good stuff in
there. I look in computer gigs and I also periodically post an abridged
version of my resume in the resume section.
Other places I've found stuff include Dice.com, 37signals Gigs Board,
Freelance Switch, and AuthenticJobs.
I get a lot of recruiters for contract jobs contacting me through Dice, my
resume post on CL, and my blog. That might not be the kind of thing you're
looking for, but it doesn't hurt.
~~~
garply
Can you give a rough percentage of people who respond to you from CL?
I've only recently started hunting for gigs via CL. I've picked 3 and
responded (I took time to write what I thought was a good, carefully-worded
response) within 24 hours or so but no one's responded back. I know sales is
all about volume, I'm just trying to get an idea of what to expect.
~~~
lsc
3 to 1 sounds about right for initial responses, assuming you pick jobs that
you are obviously qualified for. this goes up and down, obviously, depending
on how qualified you appear to be for the position you are responding to.
Once you get the initial response, there's still a pretty good chance of the
gig falling through for whatever reason. Contracting is rough this way, really
no matter where you get your clients.
------
natgordon
This was from an another HN thread (HN Contractors) -
[https://spreadsheets2.google.com/ccc?key=tk7rUIb-2aPdk_5gFJE...](https://spreadsheets2.google.com/ccc?key=tk7rUIb-2aPdk_5gFJEodCA&hl=en#gid=0)
I've been contacted for work through it.
~~~
olalonde
Why was this down voted?
------
pmjordan
I got most of my contract work via networking in the local tech scene using
twitter and going to a couple of events, and just generally jumping at random
opportunities. Replying to local people who are urgently looking for a small
job to be done is by far the easiest route to get yourself out there. Once you
gain a reputation of being good at what you do, people will start referring
you work.
For what it's worth, I'm fairly introverted, and talking to random people
isn't all that easy for me, yet I seem to have managed just fine[1]. All I did
was talk to people what they were working on, what I did, and random techy
banter. The idea is to make people remember you when they need stuff done, not
sell yourself right there and then. This probably only works for techy
customers, if you're designing web sites for random businesses you might want
to use a different strategy.
[1] I'm offered far more work than I could possibly accept 2 1/2 years later,
rates increasing steadily, and I don't even have a website.
------
olalonde
IMHO, the problem with oDesk and most freelance job boards is that they are
lemon markets[1] and are therefore disadvantageous to good programmers. If we
take the analogy from the used car market explained in Wikipedia and adapt it
to the freelance programming market:
[...] the problem of quality uncertainty. It concludes that _good programmers_
will not _offer_ their _service_ on the _freelance_ market. This is sometimes
summarized as "the bad driving out the good" in the market.
That being said, I would suggest you contact companies directly to offer your
services or look for _specialized_ job boards where buyers know exactly what
they are looking for.
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Market_for_Lemons>
------
poet
Are you near a college with a decent CS department? Go there. Seriously. In no
other place is there such a high concentration of talented individuals who are
willing to work for bargin rates. Put up some flyers, get an announcement in
the departmental newsletter, and buy candidates a cup of coffee once you get a
good set of potentials. Of course, there is an upper bound on the
talent/quality you are going to find. But depending on the type of work you
need done it could work out great.
------
jefffoster
A few years ago I used rentacoder.com (now known as vworker.com) and made
about $10K in 3 months. I made the majority of the money from doing a good job
on something (generally at a very low price) and then getting repeat business
from outside the bidding system.
Most fun project was writing some software that showed prospective patients
what their teeth would look like after having their teeth bleached!
~~~
karatchov
I have been using RAC sporadically for 2 years now, but didnt even manage to
make the tenth of that number ! Do you have a suggestion/advice on how to
boost my business ?
~~~
gtdminh
RAC is very competitive, i suggest you move to elance or odesk or guru, where
you can get decent paid projects. And portfolio is a must to win the bids
there. i am in odesk for 3 yrs and now work as long term contractor for a US
firm in Chino, CA. All thru odesk. i dont have enough patience with elance, it
is overly more competitive
------
coderholic
I created this little site that aggregates around 10 fairly decent freelance
job boards: <http://jobs.plasis.co.uk>
------
oomkiller
Avoid them all, you will only find pain in that strategy, kind of like 6 pool.
Focus on building your network of contacts, they will be the source of most of
your work, mainly through word of mouth and referrals.
~~~
gtdminh
i agree, network is really important.
------
sahillavingia
Sorry if this isn't helpful, but the direct approach has always worked for me
(and job boards not so much). I try to contact people I'd like to work with on
IRC, Skype, or just through email.
I include a few links and that has worked alright for me.
------
Grantmd
Authentic Jobs has design/development freelance listings:
<http://www.authenticjobs.com>
~~~
flacon
+1 for Authentic Jobs. The jobs are generally high quality but it can be quite
competitive to get selected since so many people are watching this job board
very closely.
------
slater
Craigslist? _ducks_
~~~
brianlash
Shit, I'm sorry. I meant to vote Craigslist up but instead gave your comment
the fat-fingered iPad treatment.
~~~
bigsassy
Well I wasn't going to vote up or down, so consider my up vote a fix for your
down vote.
~~~
bigsassy
Wait, seriously? Down votes for this? I don't get you sometimes, HN.
------
jobmatchbox
If you are anywhere near Washington, DC check out
<http://www.socialmatchbox.com>. There are not a crushing number of freelance
jobs there, but there are some good ones with startups, consulting companies,
and interactive agencies.
------
stcorbett
I started using this strategy yesterday: <http://sivers.org/how2hire>
From the CD Baby guy. It's pretty straightforward and so far I'm getting
decent responses.
------
bearwithclaws
I've had success with this one: <http://jobs.freelanceswitch.com/>
It works the other way around. Job listing is free; job seeker has to pay.
------
reinhardt
Speaking of job boards, are there any with non-trivial number of
remote/telecommuting gigs or permanent positions ? The ones mentioned here
have few if any such jobs.
------
gefresh
Try oDesk. I've hired a bunch of help from there. Its been hit or miss but
I've found a few real gems who I now hire regularly.
------
hess
scriptlance.com
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Java is the slowest of all - wiradikusuma
http://onlyjob.blogspot.com/2011/03/perl5-python-ruby-php-c-c-lua-tcl.html
======
rhnet
Well they didn't use StringBuffer in java...
[http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-03-2000/jw-0324-javape...](http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-03-2000/jw-0324-javaperf.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A quick and lightweight service for creating disposable email accounts - tonerdo
http://disgui.se
======
edoceo
Neat but, these accounts are already blocked by the user verification service
I use for my SaaS offering. Another service I have to explicitly whitelist :(
~~~
Arnt
What service is that? I mean the user verification service, not yours, but
feel free to tell us about both.
------
nadayar
Why would I want disposable email accounts? (except I'm hiding from the NSA)
------
unicodeveloper
Awesome app..very useful!!!
------
tonerdo
I found it terribly useful
------
3dimension
Great app. suites me well
------
udswagz
is my identity really secure? no https
------
iamlordaubrey
noice app...highly useful!
------
betkom
this makes a lot of sense
------
udswagz
cool app though
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Balancing Scooter Version 2 - soundsop
http://www.tlb.org/scooter2.html
======
pbhjpbhj
Sounds fun, no indication of cost to make it though, nor details of the
dealers he used to get all the parts on the internet (and not have to talk
to!).
~~~
zck
I'm guessing Octopart (<http://octopart.com/>) might've helped with getting
some of the parts.
------
grinich
Are these photos from Burning Man?
------
rawr
Things I enjoyed: the article
Things I did not enjoy: the shirtless picture
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Open Letter To Tony Hsieh (CEO of Zappos) - kunle
http://www.messagefortony.com
======
dangrossman
Is HipMob funded? How do bootstrapped startups handle huge companies like
Zappos? Would they be able to take on a client whose resource usage (in terms
of hardware and people) would outstrip all the startup's current clients by a
few orders of magnitude?
What if they find their architecture doesn't scale and they really can't
handle it -- is it worth the risk of going under because you spent all your
savings on servers and employees to handle this company-changing client, only
to lose them immediately when things don't work out right away?
I guess that's why startups seek funding, eh? I'm not sure what I'd do if a
Zappos wanted to sign up with one of my apps, honestly. Spend the money
scaling up quickly for them, not knowing with certainty that I'd be able to
keep ahead of their usage, or just turn them down?
~~~
kunle
Hi there - Ayo from Hipmob here. You raise a fair question - we believe we can
handle the scale challenge well (we're built on Heroku & AWS), and we've
deployed with that in mind. That being said, only time (and deployments) will
tell.
~~~
javajosh
That is wrong. You should be eminently prepared for this question. At the very
least, you should have estimated the scale you need to be able to support, and
demonstrate that your systems can handle the load. This means spending
development time and effort to create a scaling test environment, with
instrumentation, and then spending time to present the results.
~~~
kunle
Didn't mean to sound dismissive. My reply wasn't stating that we're
unprepared; we're absolutely prepared and we think about this ALL DAY. We're
also seasoned enough to know that behaviors sometimes deviate from test
environments while in the wild.
------
jordanthoms
Cool approach - but my nitpick is the misquoting of Fry -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QfSzgV1q5g>
------
Ataub24
Good luck. Definitely a creative attempt to land a client :)
------
modarts
Well played. Definitely a move to boost traffic to hipmob rather than a
legitimate open letter to Tony, but I like the creative thinking behind the
campaign.
------
hamxiaoz
Nice try! Although the iphone picture on your website is not clear/sharp. Do
you need a photographer to take a better pic for you?
~~~
kunle
Hit me ayo[at]hipmob.com!!
------
stfu
Not sure if I just jumped into an employee upvoting scheme, but its a nice
idea. Good luck!
~~~
kunle
Haha thanks. We dont (yet) have enough employees to have a scheme, but good
idea. It's coming.
------
hoodwink
I'm excited to see if he responds
~~~
kunle
Haha thanks, we are too :)
------
xxpor
I don't know if Zappos' CS infrastructure is the same as Amazon's, but if it
is I will just say I feel getting this to integrate would be.... non-trivial.
~~~
kunle
CS infrastructure is quite a bit different from Zappos (Amazon doesn't provide
live chat support for example from what I understand), and as entities, both
their customer service philosophies (while focused on keeping the customer
happy) are quite a bit different - Zappos is very high-touch, and Amazon is
not.
------
rhizome
Where's the printer friendly version? I'm not playing too-clever scrolling
games.
------
ameyamk
great marketing!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Spanish startup will let you remotely control a human avatar - ForHackernews
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/12/04/a-spanish-start-up-will-let-you-control-a-human-avatar-remotely-like-the-sims-but-for-real-life/
======
dkersten
With the backlash that Google Glass got for having a camera, I can't really
imagine too many people wearing this crazy headgear.
------
debacle
Isn't this part of the original idea behind justin.tv?
Seems fraught with danger, but in a post-economy economy (har), I guess
everyone needs to be a camwhore.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Five Techniques To Help You Think More Deeply - irrationaljared
http://jaredcosulich.wordpress.com/2014/06/27/five-techniques-to-help-you-think-more-deeply/
======
TrainedMonkey
Blog post is interesting, but is kind of not organized. Almost like author did
not spend enough time "deep thinking" about it before doing information dump.
Here is the flow of how to analyze something deeply as I see it:
1\. Take your idea to extreme. This is about mapping out overall constraints
of the problem. It will help you understand not only the issue you are trying
to think about, but also how set of options is constrained by environment of
problem lives in.
2\. Come up with analogies, understanding constraints and environment will
really help you to map out useful analogies.
3\. Based on analogies you can come up with real world examples. Because you
mapped out constraints and came up with analogies, you will appreciate subtle
differences between examples (and the problem you are thinking about).
4\. Now, you can check out situations historically similar to your examples to
see how those subtle differences affected the outcome.
5\. By now your should have sufficient understanding of the problem to set up
either thought or real experiments to see how tweaking variables will affect
the problem.
All of those connections between steps are in the article, but it is hard to
notice them amongst other noise. Really cool thing, that after going through
once you can come back to first step with significantly expanded
understanding, which will lead to mapping out constraints better, and thus the
space whatever you are thinking about lives in.
~~~
tjradcliffe
Most of these are at least as likely to provide the illusion of understanding
as they are to produce understanding.
1) Taking ideas to extremes... which extremes? And are the effects monotonic?
We live in a world of many dimensions. I have seen many good ideas shot down
by people taking their consequences to extremes along a stupid dimension, or
by assuming that the effects of change along a given axis are monotonic. Anti-
process arguments tend to go this way, "If we take process to an extreme
development will cease, so let's dispense with process!"
2) Analogies are also subject to dimensionality. Everything is similar to
everything else in some respects. Arguments by analogy are great ways to
mislead you into thinking you understand something you don't. For example,
Plato's analogy between individuals and states.
3) Examples are useful, although it is easy to pick bad ones and generalize
from them inappropriately (see: any argument about the unique inability of
Americans to reduce their gun murder rate to that seen in the rest of the
world.) Examples frequently lead to argument by anecdote.
4) Historical analogies are also famously misleading because so many factors
change. World War I was not at all like anything that came before it, and
decision makers were badly misled by using inappropriate historical examples.
5) This mixes a very bad idea with a very good one: the difference between
thought experiments and real experiments is that real experiments tell you
about the world, and thought experiments tell you about your imagination. The
human imagination is well-known to be a terrible instrument for understanding
the world. Imagination is useful for many things. Deep understanding of the
world is not one of those things.
If you want to think deeply about a problem you need to test your ideas about
it via the discipline of systematic observation, controlled experiment and
Bayesian inference. This discipline (not method) is called "science", and it
can be applied to anything.
If you really want to get deep into an idea, ask "If this idea were true (or
false) what would the consequences be? How would they appear in the world? How
could I measure them?"
For example: I have an idea that 500 ml bottles of wine would be a product
that had some demand in the market. If this was true you'd expect to see some
product offerings in that space (you do, particularly in restaurants, so that
increases the posterior plausibility of the idea). There are likely other
observations one could make, and test marketing is likely the appropriate
experimental approach, although there may well be others.
No amount of imagining is going to give me the information about the way the
world is that is required to make this decision, and in general imaginary
arguments--arguments based primarily on the contents of an individual's
imagination--should be avoided. Philosophers tried to understand the world
using the method of imagination for thousands of years, and they failed
utterly.
~~~
TrainedMonkey
1\. To the extremes that environment of the problem will be able to support.
For example if you want to figure out education one of the extremes would be
one teacher per student, other extreme would be the top minds in the field
create a single class online and teach it to everyone together (Everyone gets
same material, as opposed to different material per student in first case).
You immediately see what is different between two, second one enables way to
collaboration and idea swapping between students at the cost of face to face
to face teaching and individual attention each student receives. In this
context you can think of how many students can each of the extremes support.
2\. I think analogies are a way of simplifying problem so that you can model
it. People usually do it by assigning actors that they have experience with to
the models, but that is not necessary. So if we model education as knowledge
transfer between actors we can look for other concepts that share similar
models.
3\. Bad examples are a problem, I have nothing on this one. It might be
mitigated by the fact, that on average some people will get good examples and
succeed, but that feels like a non-argument.
4\. Good point on historical factors, they are still useful to help pinpoint
what kind of factors are affecting problem you are thinking about.
5\. I think point of thought experiments is to try to come up with an obvious
flaw in your experimental setup. Knowing those potential flaws would help you
to set up controls in real experiment.
Not everyone is going to succeed in understanding big problems such as
education system anywhere close to accurate. Even fewer people will be able to
do anything with their understanding. I do not think that is the problem, as
long as people try some will make it. I do know for sure that if you do not
try, you will definitely never make it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon's internal numbers on Prime Video, revealed - ethanpil
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-amazon-com-ratings-exclusive/exclusive-amazons-internal-numbers-on-prime-video-revealed-idUSKCN1GR0FX
======
vxNsr
>But a person familiar with its strategy said the company credits a specific
show for luring someone to start or extend a Prime subscription if that
program is the first one a customer streams after signing up. That metric,
referenced throughout the documents, is known as a “first stream.”
That seems disingenuous as described. It would really only make sense to use
that metric if that was the first prime interaction they had at all, but if
they first bought a couple things and then listened to some music and only
then watched a video I don't really believe that you could say they were
acquired through the video.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: E-Book Site for Classics - kermittd
http://www.bookeyes.co/
======
mc42
Though the site is visually appealing, I fail to understand why nearly 550kB
of JS is needed (548kB to be specific). A site like this could get away rather
well with just using on-hover and some elegant links.
Overall a decent idea, but it's not one that needs to be this complicated. I
feel as if designing a better "classics" landing for the Project Gutenberg
might be a better idea. [0]
[0] - [https://www.gutenberg.org/](https://www.gutenberg.org/)
~~~
kermittd
On the memory side, I actually don't know why the site is so large compared to
its relatively small amount of content. Do you believe that it's large because
of the images that you think are unnecessary or because of some technical
defect?
~~~
bbody
I believe mc42 wants to know why your JavaScript files are so big. E.g. why
are you using the full jQuery library AND the minified library? All your
JavaScript should probably be minified.
~~~
kermittd
Gotcha
------
geraldbauer
FYI: A while back I've started to put together a world classics bookshelf
using plain text w/ markdown formatting and auto-published with a GitHub Pages
(Jekyll) theme - see
[http://worldclassics.github.io](http://worldclassics.github.io) Still early
(e.g. world classics for now include The Trial by Franz Kafka and Strange Case
of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.) Cheers. PS: The idea is
that you can easily change the book design (thanks to markdown and github
pages/jekyll themes); see
[https://github.com/bookdesigns](https://github.com/bookdesigns) for more
(free) book designs.
------
roryisok
There are a lot of these sites already, but I like the layout you've gone for.
You really need to add more books though. I count only 11 (!)
Trying to decided the greatest books of all time is obviously divisive, but
there's a pretty good consensus on what makes up the greats of classical
literature. You don't have to (and shouldn't) wait for people to suggest them
to you.
A good start would be adding everything listed here.
80+ free classics for download:
[http://www.planetebook.com/](http://www.planetebook.com/)
The "top" charts on gutenberg.org itself:
[http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top](http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/scores/top)
Full list from "1001 Books to read before you die", copied from Listology
before it went down: [http://cc-gems.blogspot.com/2006/10/e-book-books-to-
read-bef...](http://cc-gems.blogspot.com/2006/10/e-book-books-to-read-before-
you-die.html) [http://cc-gems.blogspot.com/2006/10/e-book-books-to-read-
bef...](http://cc-gems.blogspot.com/2006/10/e-book-books-to-read-before-you-
die_11.html) [http://cc-gems.blogspot.com/2006/10/e-book-books-to-read-
bef...](http://cc-gems.blogspot.com/2006/10/e-book-books-to-read-before-you-
die_15.html) [http://cc-gems.blogspot.com/2006/10/e-book-books-to-read-
bef...](http://cc-gems.blogspot.com/2006/10/e-book-books-to-read-before-you-
die_18.html)
~~~
kermittd
Yes, I definitely need to add more books! I'll probably need to add a search
capability, that actually works, on the site as well once I put up enough
titles.
Though I don't "have" to wait for people's suggestion I really like that
aspect of it. Thanks for those links as well I'll be sure to use them!
------
anothercomment
I like it. I have often thought that there should be a more obvious way to
find the good books on Gutenberg. Simply providing a small but choice
selection, as you do, is one valid approach.
As a bonus, you could provide different formats.
~~~
smoyer
One way to narrow down the list is to use the recommended reading list for the
SAT.
[1]
[https://www.powerscore.com/sat/help/reading_list.cfm](https://www.powerscore.com/sat/help/reading_list.cfm)
------
acabal
Looks like these are just epubs rehosted direct from Project Gutenberg. Why
not just go to gutenberg.org instead?
~~~
kermittd
They are just rehosted from Project Gutenberg. I think their
interface/experience is terrible
~~~
soneil
I think I'd agree, but they are trying to solve very different problems. I'm
not sure your UI would scale to 53,000 titles either.
~~~
mcphage
Why should it need to?
~~~
dredmorbius
Why shouldn't it?
I'm working on a large research project, and with ~5,000 references, managing,
accessing, annotating, classifying, rating, and integrating in a workflow the
references ... is an absolute PITA.
~~~
mcphage
Because there's value in sites that highlight a few works as well, which is
the purpose of OP's site. Managing 5,000 references is a pain, but there's no
indication that was the problem OP was trying to solve.
~~~
kermittd
Hi! OP here. I would like to expand it but yes cracking the UI, which I really
like right now, with so many titles is a little more complex.
My plan is to actually host tens of thousands of titles but highlight between
9-18 titles and implement a search feature, that actually works, for author or
title.
~~~
dredmorbius
If you're still taking notes: there's a standard for information on books.
Library catalogs. In particular, MARC format.
Titles, authors, genres, publication dates, subjects, publishers, _languages_
(the amount of online information _not_ clearly categorised by langauage is
... annoying).
In my use of Pocket, what I'd really like is the ability to both see how many
titles are grouped under a tag, _and_ to get a visualisation of relationships
amongst tags.
------
aeroith
I also made a similar project to store personal books at
[https://bookstrap.ga/](https://bookstrap.ga/) The books are in my native
language but any language works.
------
dredmorbius
Recommendations:
"Your home for the classics" is ... a bit generous. "Your home for 11
classics" is rather closer the truth.
Please indicate what the specific format is. Neither the homepage nor the
About page indicate this. Given that e-book formats exist as: ePub, MOBI,
DJVU, fb2, PDF, PS, and more (I'm going off the Pandoc manpage largely here),
clarity would be appreciated. (Multi-format output could also be useful.)
There are ... a lot of classics. Project Gutenberg has some 53,000 texts.
There are many more texts on sites such as The Internet Archive or HathiTrust,
largely as scanned-in pages presented as PDF or other formats (and with OCR of
varying degrees of accuracy).
A pass-through to Gutenberg which would output formats on-the-fly might be of
use.
Categorisation and cross-referencing of works likewise.
------
soggypenny
I added The Time Machine by H.G. Wells. (unsure if on Project Gutenberg, but
it's at least free on Amazon). btw, when I submitted the form the thank you
message was off-white text on a white background.
~~~
kermittd
I'll update it so the message can be seen and also add The Time Machine.
------
paulcole
Why no mobi? Kindles must be most popular dedicated ereaders.
~~~
kermittd
I agree and am working on it
------
kermittd
Hey everyone! If you submitted book suggestions, as long as there in the
public domain ;) I'll be putting them up today.
------
cqlchess
I hate the way Gutenberg, and thus your site, mangles quotation marks and
apostrophes.
------
kermittd
Just updated to include suggested books: Mediations, The Time Machine, and
Walden Pond! More book suggestions will be implemented throughout the day.
------
dade_
It's a fine project to undertake, but this is a free feature of Kobo (software
and devices).
------
peternicky
When clicking on a book link on mobile nothing happens.
~~~
kermittd
I've had that problem as well and am trying to fix it. For some reason the
mobile build is unreponsive at times.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
LLVM 4.0.0 - zmodem
http://lists.llvm.org/pipermail/llvm-announce/2017-March/000073.html
======
bajsejohannes
> thanks to Zhendong Su and his team whose fuzz testing prevented many bugs
> going into the release.
[http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~su/](http://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~su/) claims 1228
bugs found (counting both LLVM and GCC). Impressive!
~~~
nightcracker
With fuzzing it's possible to find distinct bugs (or at least bugs that
trigger in distinct code locations) without ever further investigating the bug
in person.
Your bug report can simply consist of "this input file causes a compiler
crash".
~~~
willvarfar
Indeed! On the Mill project we leave boxes crunching hours and hours of
csmith/creduce, and we don't watch them do it :)
SPE looks to be very nice too.
~~~
gravypod
What's the Mill project? Is that the "new computer" thing or am I missing
something.
~~~
willvarfar
Yeap that's the project :)
We have our own llvm backend which is a front end to our own "specialiser".
We use csmith to fuzz for compiler bugs and creduce to reduce them. This
starts with C and we even validate the output of the sim against clang x86
output.
~~~
tmccrmck
How should someone go about contributing to your LLVM backend?
~~~
willvarfar
[http://millcomputing.com/#JoinUs](http://millcomputing.com/#JoinUs) :)
[http://millcomputing.com/topic/mill-computing-
in-2017/](http://millcomputing.com/topic/mill-computing-in-2017/) is our plan
this year
~~~
gravypod
So it is meant to be a different architecture? What market is it targeting?
Is mill low power, high performance, embeded, radiation hardened, etc? Will it
come in small packages with RAM and ROM on the die? Will it support a
different architectural view (maybe all the memory will be non-volatile)?
A lot of questions and very little answered in the page.
------
opt-viewer
Looks like it didn't make the release notes but one of the features new for
this release is opt-viewer. It's useful for finding the rationale why some bit
of code was/wasn't optimized. It's a WIP but usable today.
I made a demo [1] for this tool.
[1] [https://github.com/androm3da/optviewer-
demo](https://github.com/androm3da/optviewer-demo)
------
lossolo
LLVM Coroutines - This is the most exciting thing for me. Gor Nishanov in his
videos explains how coroutines are implemented and how are optimized by LLVM.
Asynchronous IO code will be so easy to write and so efficient. Context switch
in cost of function call, you can have billions of those coroutines, heap
allocation elision (in certain cases). Can't wait for coroutines to land in
Clang.
I am a big fan of Go gorutines so Networking TS and Coroutines TS made me very
happy, connecting both and having it in standard will be great. Just a shame
that for Networking TS integration we will need to wait for C++20.
~~~
wahern
Go-style coroutines will still be more efficient and more elegant than C++
coroutines. Goroutines are stackful, whereas in C++ you'll need to manually
chain coroutines. That means a dynamic allocation and deallocation for _each_
call frame in the chain. That's more efficient than JavaScript-style
continuation closures, but in many situations still far more work than would
be required for stackful coroutines.
Everything described in Gor Nishanov's video applies equally to stackful vs
non-stackful coroutines. That is, the code conciseness, composability, and
performance advantages of non-stackful coroutines are even greater with
stackful coroutines.
Nishanov dismisses stackful coroutines out-of-hand because to be memory
efficient one would need relocatable (i.e. growable) stacks. But that begs the
question of how costly it would be to actually make the stack relocatable. I
would assume that in a language like C++ where stack layout must already be
recorded in detail to support exceptions, that efficiently relocatable stacks
wouldn't be too difficult to implement.
At the end of the day, without stackful coroutines networking still won't be
as elegant as in Go. And for maximum performance, state machines (e.g. using
computed gotos) will still be useful. You'll either need to sacrifice code
clarity and composition by explicitly minimizing chains, or you'll sacrifice
performance by having deep coroutine chains.
~~~
pcwalton
> Nishanov dismisses stackful coroutines out-of-hand because to be memory
> efficient one would need relocatable (i.e. growable) stacks. But that begs
> the question of how costly it would be to actually make the stack
> relocatable. I would assume that in a language like C++ where stack layout
> must already be recorded in detail to support exceptions, that efficiently
> relocatable stacks wouldn't be too difficult to implement.
No, this is a common misconception. Unwind tables only store enough
information to be able to _locate_ each object that has to be destroyed. It's
an entirely different matter to _move_ those objects, because a system that
does that has to be able to find all outstanding pointers to an moved object
in order to update them. It's legal, and ubiquitous, in C++ to hide pointers
to objects in places that the compiler has no knowledge of. Thus moving GC as
it's usually implemented is generally impossible (outside of very fragile and
application-specific domains like Chrome's Oilpan).
The best you can do in an uncooperative environment like that of C++ is to
allocate large regions of a 64-bit address space and page your stacks in on
demand. (Note that this setup is gets awfully close to threads, which is not a
coincidence—I think stackful coroutines and threads are essentially the same
concept.)
~~~
mkup
> I think stackful coroutines and threads are essentially the same concept.
I think "fibers" is more correct term here: "stackful coroutines and fibers
are essentially the same concept".
In Win32, each process consists of threads, and each thread consists of
fibers. Each fiber has its own stack. Userspace code can switch fibers with
SwitchToFiber() API, kernel never switches fibers (kernel's unit of scheduling
is entire thread).
------
pjmlp
Love the improvements to clang-tidy!
[http://releases.llvm.org/4.0.0/tools/clang/tools/extra/docs/...](http://releases.llvm.org/4.0.0/tools/clang/tools/extra/docs/ReleaseNotes.html#improvements-
to-clang-tidy)
Congratulations on the work. Also nice to see that OCaml bindings are still
being taken care of.
~~~
danieljh
Absolutely. The following two new checks are impressive and should be on by
default.
_New misc-move-forwarding-reference check Warns when std::move is applied to
a forwarding reference instead of std::forward._
[http://clang.llvm.org/extra/clang-tidy/checks/misc-move-
forw...](http://clang.llvm.org/extra/clang-tidy/checks/misc-move-forwarding-
reference.html)
_New misc-use-after-move check Warns if an object is used after it has been
moved, without an intervening reinitialization._
[http://clang.llvm.org/extra/clang-tidy/checks/misc-use-
after...](http://clang.llvm.org/extra/clang-tidy/checks/misc-use-after-
move.html)
The use-after-move check has its limitations which make sense considering the
"unspecified but valid state" moved from objects are in. From reading the
design document the cases they handle should catch common ownership issues,
though. Great step in the right direction for sure.
Implementation: [https://github.com/llvm-mirror/clang-tools-
extra/blob/master...](https://github.com/llvm-mirror/clang-tools-
extra/blob/master/clang-tidy/misc/UseAfterMoveCheck.cpp)
Related: [https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ownership.html](https://doc.rust-
lang.org/book/ownership.html)
------
falcolas
> Stable updates to this release will be versioned 4.0.x
/nit Semantic versioning (or communication) failure. I would think that
"stable updates" would represent minor releases (i.e. 4.x.0), not bugfix-style
patches. Unless all new features will be present in major releases instead of
"stable updates"?
~~~
pavanky
They have their reasoning behind this scheme over here:
[http://blog.llvm.org/2016/12/llvms-new-versioning-
scheme.htm...](http://blog.llvm.org/2016/12/llvms-new-versioning-scheme.html)
I personally do not agree with their line of reasoning.
~~~
falcolas
OK, so indeed, no features in between major releases.
It's also somewhat unfortunate that, in their words, "every [six month]
release is also API breaking". How can you create a stable product that
targets a constantly breaking API (short of picking a version and sticking
with it)?
Of course, I'm a biased, since I consider stable to be measured in years, not
months; certainly not the current trend.
~~~
SamBam
But major releases are always expected to be API-breaking, right? Isn't that
basically the (SemVer, at least) definition of a major vs minor release?
Nothing's forcing anyone to keep up to date, though, so anyone can pick a
version and stick with it as long as they like. (So long as they keep making
patches for at least the previous version for major bugs...)
~~~
pavanky
That results in half a dozen versions of LLVM libraries installed on a given
machine instead of 1.
~~~
kbenson
When it comes to a compiler, I think I would rather have a statically linked
LLVM in the compiler than a shared object anyway, which would make this moot.
------
javajosh
Ha, was just reading
[http://aosabook.org/en/llvm.html](http://aosabook.org/en/llvm.html).
(Really like that LLVM IR. Does anyone code in it directly? Was also thinking
it would be interesting to port Knuth's MMIX examples to it.)
~~~
mhh__
Nobody actually programs in the IR of a compiler, except for (say) tests and
debugging. The IR is not usually designed to be read to by humans, although
LLVM is actually very readable (But still rather tedious).
If you looked at, just for an example, the IR used in the dmd d compiler,
using (Walter Bright's) Digital Mars backend then you'd notice that the IR is
not trivial to access at all. Last time I checked, you had to actually dive
into the backend code (I'm pretty sure there's an undocumented flag/switch
that I'm missing somewhere) to get the IR out of the compiler. In fairly sharp
contrast to this, getting the IR (in a textual format!) is normally as simple
as using -emit-llvm when compiling. This is part of the revolution (~Slight~
exaggeration) that LLVM brought about in compiler design: Compared to most
other compilers, LLVM is designed to be very portable. The only compiler, of
similar stature, like it is GCC. GCC is much better than it was, I'd imagine
because of the competition from LLVM/Clang.
Tangent Aside: The LLVM IR textual format is not guaranteed to be stable _at
all_. It's also not particularly nice to program in, and also it uses SSA form
so it's not suitable for humane consumption. It looks like a high level
programming language, but it really isn't. IR is designed to be generated,
bullied and discard by the compiler.
If you want to punish yourself, the LLVM project does contain interpreters and
compilers just for IR in a file. If I remember correctly, Clang will compile
anything with a ?.ll? file as IR.
You can see all the optimisation passes in action here:
[https://godbolt.org/g/uZH3UD](https://godbolt.org/g/uZH3UD)
~~~
nickpsecurity
"Nobody actually programs in the IR of a compiler"
It's called LISP. It is a niche style, I'll give you. ;)
~~~
mhh__
:-). _I think_ GCC has/had IR's that are LISP like.
------
grassfedcode
I'm trying to add support for lldb to a gdb frontend
([https://github.com/cs01/gdbgui/](https://github.com/cs01/gdbgui/)), and need
a gdb-mi compatible interface to do it.
lldb-mi exists, but its compatibility with gdb's mi2 api is incomplete. Does
anyone know of a more compatible api to gdb-mi2 commands, or if there are
plans to improve lldb-mi's?
------
self_awareness
Visual Studio is already at version 2017, and LLVM is only at 4, they need to
catch up real quick! /ducks
~~~
snnn
VS is slowing down. VC++ 2017 is VC++ 14.1, not 15.0
------
mark-r
Too bad they didn't use more aggressive aggressive grammar checking.
------
amyjess
I wish they'd do what GCC does and just eliminate the middle number entirely.
~~~
SamBam
But semver is a pretty meaningful standard. Why not stick to it, even if you
don't plan on adding non-API-breaking new features?
------
futurix
Version number inflation strikes another software package, although at least
it is not as bad as Chrome or Firefox.
~~~
jupp0r
It's not like there is a shortage of Integers, you know...
~~~
shmageggy
Unfortunately though, there is a shortage of capacity for our mental
representation of them. It's pretty easy to remember whether I'm on version 3
or 4, less so for versions 3713 and 3714.
~~~
w-m
Your mind would just skip the 371 though, like it does with year dates, as the
371 would be the same for a long time. And you're back to version 3 or 4.
------
aslammuet
[http://llvm.org/demo/](http://llvm.org/demo/)
Demo page is not working. Is there any other page that makes me understand
what really is it and where it is helpful.
~~~
kebolio
LLVM is a compiler toolkit, used by, for example, Clang for C/C++/Objective-C,
Rust, and various libraries like Mesa.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Resources for getting started with NoSQL / Big Data - desigooner
I've read quite a few articles posted here and else where about Data startups and some tools to work with such data.<p>Are there good resources out there for beginners to learn more about NoSQL data stores and use case scenarios for each solution (case studies and what not) and for data analysis using the same.<p>Any blogs that are recommended? I tried taking a look at MyNoSQL blog (mynosql.mypopescu.com) but that blog is nothing more than a copy=paste archive without any insight at all to justify the solutions and what not. Not really useful for someone who wants to get started with such solutions and look beyond RDBMSes ..<p>Thanks..
======
_grrr
Probably the first thing to understand about nosql is that there is no
standard, there are multiple paradigms to chose from.
Broad differences in storage models:
* Column Oriented Storage (e.g. HBase)
* Document Store (e.g. CouchDB, MongoDB)
* Key-Value (e.g. BerkeleyDB, TokyoCabinet, REDIS)
* Graph DB (Neo4J)
Furthermore each will have their own consistency, replication & availability
models, as well as read/write optimisations.
Before choosing one you need to ensure it is adapted to your usage pattern.
Here are some links that go into more detail:
A visual comparison, comparing trade-offs of each type of nosql db:
<http://blog.nahurst.com/visual-guide-to-nosql-systems>
Article on appropriate use-cases for each type of nosql:
<http://blog.heroku.com/archives/2010/7/20/nosql/>
NoSQL - the 'definitive guide' (apparently): <http://nosql-
berlinbuzzwords2010.heroku.com/#1>
Further resources: <http://nosql-database.org/>
And here's a link on data from the top of HN today:
[http://www.junauza.com/2010/11/free-data-mining-
software.htm...](http://www.junauza.com/2010/11/free-data-mining-
software.html)
~~~
desigooner
Thanks a bunch for these pointers.
I understand that there's no one size fits all approach to NoSQL but rather it
has multiple paradigms and such. It's just that i hadn't come across any book
or text that would explain the basis of NoSQL, why it'd be preferred in
certain scenarios, different types of paradigms etc. etc.
Thanks again.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Open Letter to the Chiefs of EMC and RSA - koenrh
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00002651.html
======
Goopplesoft
Knew his name was familiar. Mikko Hypponen has some great Ted talks as well:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_how_the_nsa_betrayed...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_how_the_nsa_betrayed_the_world_s_trust_time_to_act.html)
[http://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_three_types_of_onlin...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_three_types_of_online_attack.html)
[http://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_fighting_viruses_def...](http://www.ted.com/talks/mikko_hypponen_fighting_viruses_defending_the_net.html)
~~~
AlexanderDhoore
Another great one is "The History and Evolution of Computer Viruses" [1].
I actually have the viruses he demonstrates. You can download them here [2].
He emailed them to me once. Just load them into DosBox!
[1]
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yswPIwDFYDY](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yswPIwDFYDY)
[2]
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/rhqt3wh8hzuf8vn/dosboxViruses.zip](https://www.dropbox.com/s/rhqt3wh8hzuf8vn/dosboxViruses.zip)
------
wavefunction
I'm an american and I care about widespread surveillance of foreigners.
~~~
Goopplesoft
Yeah, that honestly almost felt like a challenge to his fellow presenters and
show caring by boycotting the conference as well.
EDIT, Also NSA is a intelligence agency: spying on foreigners seems to me like
it'd be their objective, regardless of the revelations... Lets not act
surprised about this now. Other foreign intelligence agencies do their share
of spying on foreigners too (again, their objective). Unless you're stressing
'widespread'.
~~~
coldtea
> _NSA is a intelligence agency: spying on foreigners seems to me like it 'd
> be their objective, regardless of the revelations..._
And the objective of the KKK was to spread fear on certain parts of the
population. That doesn't make it OK. Objectives, even obvious ones, can be
shitty too.
Also, spying on elect foreigners, doing targeted work to get intelligence data
on terrorism etc is one thing. Spying on almost everybody on the world, and
especially targetting politicians, allies, officials involved in trade deals,
etc, is not what it should be doing. The German chancellor is not bloody
Osama, and helping some major corporation get a stronghold in some country is
not about "national security".
~~~
a3n
> helping some major corporation get a stronghold in some country is not about
> "national security".
While I agree with your overall message, and even the part I quote, if you
think "holistically" then it is in the US interest to dominate trade
negotiations through intelligence. For example, it's better for US national
security if Brazil had bought a US fighter. It strengthens the financial
health of Boeing, makes it easier for the US to keep up a certain level of
capability (paid for by foreignors, win-win!), has money coming in to the US
for decades as a result of the maintenance contracts, and there's a non-zero
chance that the software for flying those planes have backdoors and loggers.
I'm not saying it's right, but the security forces and corporations are very
much motivated for this to happen, with ready made excuses of national
security to justify it.
------
suprgeek
Excellent principled stand by Mikko.
Minor problem ".... In fact, I'm not expecting other conference speakers to
cancel. Most of your speakers are american anyway – why would they care about
surveillance that’s not targeted at them but at non-americans."
Incorrect - NSA surveillance most definitely HAS targeted Americans in
America. That is precisely what the Snowden disclosures show - leaving aside
all the contortions of "Only Collecting data is not surveillance - Metadata is
not Surveillance, etc, etc"
~~~
jorde
I'm 100% Mikko knows this and he is just being sarcastic.
~~~
suprgeek
Hmm ...complete Sarcasm fail on my part then. Getting harder and harder to
tell.
~~~
azakai
Does not look like sarcasm to me either.
------
LionRoar
"In fact, I'm not expecting other conference speakers to cancel. Most of your
speakers are american anyway – why would they care about surveillance that’s
not targeted at them but at non-americans. Surveillance operations from the US
intelligence agencies are targeted at foreigners. However I’m a foreigner. And
I’m withdrawing my support from your event."
I realy like all the double layers he put into this :D Its a joy to read.
------
gruseom
Mass surveillance of foreigners vs. citizens is a red herring anyway, since
the national agencies can easily get around such restrictions by swapping
data, or by declaring data "foreign" when it travels over international
networks. And those are just the workarounds we've heard about.
------
atoningunifex
Thanks for taking a public stand against this. I like to muse about whether
the rot is so entrenched that anything can clean it out now, but principled
people taking a stand is a good thing.
------
salient
You should hold it at 30C3 instead (unless it's too late to sign-up now).
~~~
mikkohypponen
Can't make it to Berlin this year, sorry.
------
chris_wot
What, you think Tucci cares? lol!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How we found the missing memristor - mhb
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/dec08/7024
======
MaysonL
dupe
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Open source Evernote replacement based on Electron - randomor
https://github.com/Laverna/laverna
======
randomor
Since the Evernote announcement, I've been trying to find an open source
alternative. This one is the closest I could find. Notable features:
\- Markdown \- Image in Markdown \- Notebooks and tags and searching \-
Encryption \- Dropbox sync \- Open source and built on Github Electron
Missing features: \- Mobile support (android coming, iOS client missing?) \-
Better searching \- Importing Evernote notes \- OCR?
Would be interested in what's coming up. What replacements have you been
using?
~~~
the_common_man
What was the evernote announcement? Was there a breach?
~~~
niftich
I think the reference is to the pricing changes announced at the end of June
2016 [1]
[1] [https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2016/06/28/changes-to-
evernot...](https://blog.evernote.com/blog/2016/06/28/changes-to-evernotes-
pricing-plans/)
------
jkmcf
Right now I'm tracking LightPaper[0] and Typora[1]. Both support Markdown and
saving as text, i.e. normal .md files. Quiver, which I'm using daily, stores
files with a custom format.
I'm very excited about Typora, but for me to use regularly it needs a file
navigator similar to LightPaper's.
[0] [http://lightpaper.42squares.in/](http://lightpaper.42squares.in/)
[1] [https://www.typora.io](https://www.typora.io) and
[https://github.com/typora/typora-issues](https://github.com/typora/typora-
issues)
------
diaz
I never used Evernote, but I read people talking about the changes and I
started using Turtl - [https://turtl.it/](https://turtl.it/). GPL3 and you can
run your own server it seems.
------
emdd
This still seems to have a water to go, but it looks quite promising. Thanks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Consumers Cut Food Spending Sharply - peter123
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123448606475780133.html
======
patio11
The spending is down about 4%, blamed on two factors: substitution from more
expensive to less expensive food sources, and people consuming food stores
(i.e. goods in pantry). The second has to be temporary for the obvious reason
(well, absent a return to foraging, I suppose).
Looking at their graph (alcohol sales down 10.5%, candies down 5.5%, veggies
up 2.3%) I'm left wondering if they didn't miss part of the story: people
aren't trading down within categories so much as they are reducing expenditure
on dietary non-essentials. Its not "I was going to have steak but I couldn't
afford it so I had burger", it is closer to "OK, I'm going to cut at the
fringe of the food budget that I eat primarily for gustatorial enjoyment."
~~~
jacoblyles
The expansions of the luxury market to include more and more of the middle
class was a major story during the 90s and 00s. I wouldn't be surprised to see
that reverse during the recession.
Who knows, people might even start shopping at Target for clothes instead of
expensive boutiques.
------
josefresco
Unfortunately this probably also means that people are buying and consuming
less organic and healthy foods, as they tend to be more expensive than your
highly processed crap. It probably also means that sales of fast food are
rising due to the perception that it's cheaper than a local family restaurant.
On a related note, I just dropped $100 for a Valentines Day meal for two at a
locally owned restaurant. Support your local economy!
~~~
tjic
> Support your local economy!
Why?
Seriously. This is the mantra of a certain sector of society, but why should I
discriminate against one perfectly good set of humans who live 100, or 1000
miles away, in favor of another perfectly good set of humans who live 1 mile
away?
This is reactionary, regressive medeival thinking.
~~~
josefresco
No it's not, however I used to have your line of thinking when I was
outsourcing programming to India. The way I look at it, your local economy is
just an extension of your family. Also, the people around you share many
resources and depend on each other for everyday life. I don't think it's a
solution that can be followed 100%, but when someone buys something on Amazon
for the same price as the local shop, they aren't doing themselves or the
local economy any favors.
This ties into national pride as well, and for me it all starts with the
family. Family>Friends>Town>Region>State>Country. Why do we care at all about
America if 100 Chinese are equivalent to 100 Americans? Caring for the people
around you is still very important because we still rely on physical realities
of being in the same geographic location.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Georgetown study: To succeed in America, it’s better to be born rich than smart - pseudolus
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/29/study-to-succeed-in-america-its-better-to-be-born-rich-than-smart.html
======
esotericn
The article here is largely a statement of a tautology because it defines
success as financial success.
If you're born with enough wealth, you have an income higher than those stated
in the article from investments only; you've "succeeded" by their metric from
birth.
At 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than that, you can afford to hold out for
what is effectively an infinite period compared to a poor person and so never
work a $20K job because it is actually beneath you - you don't need it - it
would be a net negative over you continuing to study, network, search for
other work, etc.
Of course a person with money is more likely to go to college - they're more
likely to do pretty much anything they want to do, because they have money!
------
CM30
Is that different anywhere else in the world? Unfortunately, having
connections and existing resources has always been far more advantageous to
people than talent alone (or any other factor).
~~~
kwhitefoot
In kind no, but in degree yes. The US has lower social mobility than many
other 'western' countries.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google accused of GDPR privacy violations by seven countries - _of
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18114111/google-location-tracking-gdpr-challenge-european-deceptive
======
tssva
The title of the submitted article is deceptive. No countries have accused
Google of GDPR violations. Consumer groups in 7 countries have submitted
complaints to their country's GDPR enforcement authorities.
The title of the Reuters article this is sourced from is more accurate,
"European consumer groups want regulators to act against Google tracking". The
article can be found at [https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-google-
privacy/europea...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-google-
privacy/european-consumer-groups-want-regulators-to-act-against-google-
tracking-idUSKCN1NW0BS)
~~~
hadrien01
It is a GDPR violation:
> In our opinion, the scale in which Google tracks the location of its users
> breaches the GDPR. Users have not given free, specific, informed and
> unambiguous consent to the collection and use of location data, particularly
> considering the scale of tracking going on, says Gro Mette Moen.
[https://www.forbrukerradet.no/side/google-manipulates-
users-...](https://www.forbrukerradet.no/side/google-manipulates-users-into-
constant-tracking/)
~~~
merb
it's only a violation IF the authorities think it's a violation. they decide
the fine, if any at all.
~~~
akvadrako
That's getting very philosophical. If a tree breaks a regulation in the forest
and no agency is around to issue a fine, was it a violation?
~~~
diffeomorphism
No it wasn't because "innocent until proven guilty" applies. At the moment
there only is an accusation of a violation.
~~~
ssalka
Maybe, but in this case there are millions (billions?) of people that can
attest to Google's practices.
~~~
skybrian
There are probably millions of people with negative opinions about Google. The
number of people who understand both Google's practices and the GDPR well
enough to write a complaint is probably a lot lower.
Most people just use Internet services to get things done, rather than
experimenting with them enough to know how they work. And they believe rumors.
~~~
acct1771
Don't worry, the story's worse than the Luddite rumors anyway.
------
pointillistic
Why are Europeans are so much ahead on USA on this? I can guess the reasons
but would like to hear what people think. Thanks.
~~~
superkuh
The EU countries (generally) believe in positive liberty where people believe
those they vote into power then have the right to tell people what to do for
the greater good of some ideology.
The USA (generally) believes in negative liberty which is based around the
individual being able to do whatever they want unless it actually harms
another person.
Both positive and negative liberty are valid views but generally positive
liberty leads towards trouble in the form of authoritarian issues.
~~~
goto11
In this case the authorities are telling _businesses_ what they can and cannot
do. GDPR denies business the right to track humans who have not consented
(i.e. the negative liberty to be free of unwanted tracking). So the real
question is whether you consider the liberties of business more important than
the liberties of humans.
~~~
hodwic
Businesses are just groups of humans. We in the US have constitutional
protections around freedom of association and assembly, of which a business is
but one example. We extend other constitutional rights to businesses, because
to remove them from businesses would be to remove them from the people
associating under those businesses, and would thus be a limit to free
assembly.
Also, we definitely do not have a constitutional right to privacy in the
public sphere for services that we elect to use.
~~~
Daishiman
This is completely invalid.
Courts and legislatures in the US regumate limits to corporate behavior in
ways that are the complete opposite to what you're saying.
~~~
hodwic
I'd be interested if you could provide some examples of regulation which would
be unconstitutional if applied to another form of free assembly which is
currently held constitutional when applied to a business.
~~~
Daishiman
Businesses have to comply with regulations in the form of record-keeping,
safeguarding medical data, determining the composition of its board of
directors, etc. HIPAA is not for individuals, neither is Sarbanes-Oxley.
~~~
friedman23
> HIPAA is not for individuals
It is. I don't even understand how it couldn't be unless you are trying to
state that doctors themselves are somehow not individuals.
~~~
maemilius
I think I can kinda see this argument, actually. The punishment for violating
HIPPA is not placed on the individual, it's placed on the company.
I work for a company that operates on HIPPA-protected data; if I leaked any of
that, I wouldn't face any legal punishment but the company I work for would be
on the hook for some seriously large fines.
~~~
dragonwriter
> The punishment for violating HIPPA is not placed on the individual, it's
> placed on the company.
Be careful believing that; it's true that direct liability under HIPAA is
almost exclusively for be covered entity as such, but individuals may be
criminally liable for HIPAA violations in two ways:
(1) Certain directors, officers, and employees may be liable under general
principles of corporate criminal liability, and
(2) Individual employees (and other inbividuals) not criminally liable under
(1) for direct HIPAA violations that have a role in it may be liable for
conspiracy or aiding and abetting (the latter of which has identical
punishment to the crime it relates to) related to the underlying crime
committed by the covered entity that is their employer.
So, yes, actually knowingly leaking PHI that subjects the company to
crimination penalties under HIPAA would likely also subject you to criminal
penalties tied to that HIPAA violation.
------
chopin
>As a new piece of legislation enacted in May, ...
It's in effect since 2016. I wish there was better research in these
articles...
~~~
hodwic
Signed into law in 2016. Most of the major provisions did not come into effect
until May 2018.
------
balibebas
If you're on Android it's possible to completely block the GPS daemon from
phoning home, usually to 1e100.net based on my observation. To do this you can
install an app called NetGuard from F-Droid and enable service blocking. This
app is non-root, and it uses a local VPN to provide an almost impenetrable
firewall. Google's GPS daemon hides itself under a process called "1021" block
that and enable notifications and see the connection attempts every few
minutes to 1e100.net getting blocked—you don't even need to have any Google
services enabled to see the connection attempts occurring.
------
ccnafr
Duplicate:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18541650](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18541650)
------
ForHackernews
Can any Googlers answer: Does turning off these "history" sliders actually
affect the data Google gathers from you? Or does it just mean that the
information is hidden from your own account view?
~~~
onetimemanytime
Judging by Google /FB modus operandi I doubt it, they'll collect all. Googlers
that _really_ know would probably not tell.
Looks like EU might put the brakes on a lot of this creepy crap. As much 4% of
revenue or close to $5 billion fine....$5 billion for this, $4b for
another...and all of the sudden we're talking real money.
~~~
mda
Any proof of your claims? By law, If they say they do not, they do not.
~~~
onetimemanytime
>> _Any proof of your claims?_
Google, FB, LinkedIn etc engage in super creepy procedures and suck as much
data as they can. Some to be used today and directly, other data to be used
indirectly...or just to be there just in case. Plus, if you read it again,
it's clear I was saying what I _believe_ it to be likely.
>> _By law, If they say they do not, they do not._
Ummm, no. Justice system isn't based on what the accused says. That's only
part of it, called (more or less) the defense. Others chime in too
~~~
mda
So zero proof just hand waving.
------
merb
to be fair, it's only a claim. not a case (yet). The national data protection
authorities can now actually look into it and maybe make fines for that.
however I guess proceeding could take a while.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Comparing Speed of ToUpper, ToUpperInvariant, ToLower, ToLowerInvariant in .NET - cincura_net
https://www.tabsoverspaces.com/233748-comparing-speed-of-toupper-toupperinvariant-tolower-and-tolowerinvariant-in-net-framework-and-net-core
======
sick_of_web_dev
hmm what's the point of this comparison though? The implementation of these
methods may change in future versions at any time. You should just use
whatever method is most appropriate for what you are doing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MegaProcessor (2017) [video] - pseudolus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNa9bQRPMB8&app=desktop
======
ruslan
I admire people who designed and assembled this machine. So much of fine
scrupulous work multiplied by enless hours of debugging.
------
djmips
If this interests you, you'll probably really like or already have seen Ben
Eater's great YouTube series on building an 8 bit computer. (2016 as well)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyznrdDSSGM&list=PLowKtXNTBy...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyznrdDSSGM&list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2565dvjafglHU)
------
bartread
This thing is awesome. Been lucky enough to have a play on it a couple of
times. Highly recommend the Centre for Computing History, where it lives, to
anyone with an interest in both retro and modern computing. Lots to be learned
that is still surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly) relevant today.
------
dang
From 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12317217](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12317217)
~~~
satysin
Another (that I submitted) from 2016:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12035522](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12035522)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: CloudQuery – Turn any website to serverless API with SPA support - timqian
https://github.com/cloudfetch/cloudquery
======
Jaruzel
Nice. I've been toying with the same idea, but with optional RSS formatting to
be able to generate an RSS feed from _any_ website.
What's stopping me though is the EUs Article 13, and I can't see this avoiding
that either.
~~~
hiccuphippo
I was able to do this 10 years ago with Yahoo!Pipes :(
~~~
timqian
Yahoo also have a similar tool nowadays called YQL, I tried it but faild to
make a query..
~~~
franze
YQL is dead since 3rd of Jan. 2019
[https://developer.yahoo.com/yql/?guccounter=1](https://developer.yahoo.com/yql/?guccounter=1)
------
nreece
This looks good!
* _Shameless plug_ *: Our little startup, Feedity - [https://feedity.com](https://feedity.com), helps create XML/RSS feeds for any public webpage, even JS/XHR/SPAs and social networks (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter), via a visual feed builder and REST API.
------
dmitriid
Where's Yahoo! Pipes when you need them...
~~~
morenoh149
dead. so sad.
------
mrspeaker
Very neat idea! I like do this locally in Emacs (by scraping `M-x eww`
output!), but having an API is a great idea! How would you go about using it
on sites that require login (for prototyping private apis for example)?
Also, it says it uses serverless-chrome for running chrome on AWS lambda... is
that "expensive"?
~~~
timqian
For pages require login, it is not implemented yet as this is a little
complicated , but it is not impossible, the tool need to record actions user
do and replay it in the remote browser.
About pricing, AWS lambda provide 10 million free invoke and the billed invoke
is cheap too($0.2 for 10 million invoke) you can check the pricing detail here
[https://aws.amazon.com/cn/lambda/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/cn/lambda/pricing/)
~~~
fefb
*1 million
------
orliesaurus
Does anyone remember the Kimonify extension? It reminds me of that! Cool!
~~~
LikeAnElephant
LOVED Kimonify, especially how it (somehow!) figured out the pattern of data
after clicking on a few different items. This is very close to that, minus the
pattern recognition.
------
aboutruby
I think the correct keywords for this would be "tool assisted continuous
scrapping"
------
bobbydreamer
So people are starting to miss YQL
------
leowoo91
Looks great, reminds me of Kimono labs.
------
lugrugzo
What's the use case of this tool?
~~~
tobyhinloopen
My guess: Rapid prototyping of tools that use scraping as a source of data.
We actually have multiple tools that do realtime scraping as the primary data
source. Many of these tools act as a simplified interface to features from
another service.
For example, there is some webapp we've been using that we were using for a
single feature, and that app doesnt have an API available. Using the app
required many clicks, and page-loads were slow. By inspecting the HTTP
requests, we figured out the minimum amount of HTTP requests required to
perform our common task.
Using a simple GUI that focusses on that simple task, the user can initiate
the task from a single form, and the server will perform the correct HTTP
requests and notify the user whether the process was successful or not.
We have plenty of these "micro tools" that encapsulate / wrap around web apps
to simplify the usage of that tool. Usually our micro tools are easier to use
(because its focused around our use-case), add integrations with other tools
and commonly are significantly faster as well.
They are easy to build (usually within 40 hours) and are a real time-saver,
because the users don't have to keep track of all the logins, don't have to
load slow web apps, and don't have to have a guide with screenshots where they
need to click.
These web-apps sometimes change their request/response structure but after
building a few of these tools, but it doesn't happen that often and the tools
are updated within hours.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple and Google are launching a joint Covid-19 tracing tool for iOS and Android - marc__1
https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/10/apple-and-google-are-launching-a-joint-covid-19-tracing-tool/
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22834959](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22834959)
------
towndrunk
No thanks. This is nuts and will be used for more than just "covid" tracing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
WolframTones – An Experiment in a New Kind of Music (2005) - weatherlight
http://tones.wolfram.com/generate/G16aF5KBayLGZqrbyXodKZNu6fmG6ANllrjanSNAPM
======
mimixco
The music is just awful. Try the Dance or Hip-Hop buttons and tell me you hear
anything but 8-bit videogame music, not even remotely in the genre.
I love music and software and I play the synth myself (a Roland V-Synth with
normal piano keys), but I don't see how experiments like this actually
accomplish anything. People create music and art. Machines don't. And I don't
they ever really will, frankly, because machines lack the emotional impetus or
understanding to make art that's meaningful to people.
~~~
munificent
A human choosing to use a machine to automatically generate music is still a
human choice that communicates something to other humans. It may not
communicate an idea or feeling that resonates with you personally, but it's
definitely saying something.
One of the fundamental changes in humanity especially in the recent past is
machines. Of course artists are going to explore that relationship. Part of
that exploration may be things you don't like. Maybe that's deliberate. Maybe
the artist wants you to feel uncomfortable with the mechanization of our life.
Personally, I've been on a kick recently of listening to "synth jams" on
YouTube. Musicians set up a big pile of drum machines, synths, effects, and
argpeggiators and then play live sprawling evolving soundscapes. The result is
a mixture of human choice and machine-like repetition, and it really does it
for me. Plus all the blinking lights are pretty.
~~~
Frondo
I gave it a go and listened to a bunch of these wolframtunes....all of which
sounded very much like random walking melodies over rhythm tracks someone
probably programmed, or specified with enough constraints that they sounded
like a regular 4/4 rhythm. (I didn't fuck with the controls too much.)
I can accept your statement that "it's definitely saying something," with the
caveat that all that random walking melodies are saying is: "I programmed a
computer to generate a random melody."
The range of expression is limited when you're making a computer work on
random input; it's pretty much limited to "this is a demonstration of the
algorithm I programmed," kind of a far cry from how most music is written and
received.
Synth jams are something else, they're driven by people through and through.
~~~
munificent
_> I gave it a go and listened to a bunch of these wolframtunes_
Sure, but that just says that _this particular_ combination of human and
machine isn't very good. Lots of people play guitar poorly. That doesn't imply
that guitars are bad instruments.
_> it's pretty much limited to "this is a demonstration of the algorithm I
programmed," kind of a far cry from how most music is written and received._
If I write an "algorithm" that simply plays back a hard-coded series of notes
and timing that I selected, that's, I assume you would agree, a fully artistic
expression. After all, that's how most working keyboard musicians work today.
They play and record the MIDI notes. Now maybe I play a few melodies and write
a program that just randomly selects between them. That's still 90% human-
authored "art" plus a little random chance. Maybe the melodies get shorter and
the random choices get larger. There is a continuum here between "human makes
all decisions" and "human makes no decisions" and I think you'd have a really
hard time putting a finger on it saying "everything below here is just
algorithmic demonstrations".
Even acoustic instruments and our physical bodies have some stochastic
processes. A tambourine player isn't controlling the hit timing of each
individual cymbal on it. That doesn't lessen it. Maximum artistic value
doesn't necessarily mean "maximum human intent".
See:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminacy_(music)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indeterminacy_\(music\))
_> they're driven by people through and through._
I think you might be surprised. Many synths and drum machines have randomness
as an input and can use it to vary the timbre of sounds, velocity, whether or
not to play individual drum hits, etc. For example, the Digitone lets you
assign probabilities to individual notes and will roll the dice each time to
decide whether or not to play it.
Even hand-authored LFOs with slow rates interact in ways the author is
unlikely to be choosing deliberately. It's not like musicians are calculating
the least common multiple of their various LFO frequencies to determine when
the pattern repeats. They just tweak a few knobs and let them "randomly"
wander in and out of phase with each other.
------
mturmon
Meanwhile, in the world where generative music is made with the obvious
involvement of actual musicians:
[http://www.generativemusic.com](http://www.generativemusic.com)
------
sova
As a musician, Every sound I have tried is terrifying to the core. Well done.
This is necessary like a new kind of Sleep. Actually, the Hip Hop button
generated something almost palatable. All jesting aside, this is actually
quite interesting, as it lead me to see the Elementary Introduction to
programming with Sound in the Wolfram language. Some inflexible points of
implementation: notes are represented by names and numbered pitches, like "C"
and 5. This is interesting for Western music that enjoys the twelve-tone scale
and chordal motion, but for generative computer music as long as we appreciate
the natural harmonic string lengths we will have harmony: 3:2 and 4:3
representing relative ratios between pitches. Choosing static points on the
spectrum and adding music programmatically is the perfect way to ignore
everything that makes music musical, the relative ratio of frequencies
------
benguild
I remember thinking this was terrible when it came out.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Online Free YouTube Video Downloader Websites - ycmember
https://twitter.com/myviralmag/status/1159428518381592577
======
croh
check youtube-dl
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Referential Accessibilty - marvindanig
https://bubblin.io/blog/referential-accessibility
======
cimmanom
Sorry, I like my e-reader in part because at the end of a long day it can
change font sizes to accommodate tired eyes with imperfect vision.
Yeah, this makes page numbers inconsistent.
BUT the reader also has a concept of a “location”, which is basically a
paragraph number. Why not just use those for reference instead?
~~~
marvindanig
Ability to change font-size or scaling up content on a page has nothing to do
with referential accessibility. They are orthogonal to each other in fact.
Location to paragraph is nice but not enough for referential accessibility
requirement of a classroom. No one in my class uses an eReader, it's iPad
mostly or Galaxy Tab.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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What Will It Take to Solve the Student Loan Crisis? - elorant
https://hbr.org/2019/09/what-will-it-take-to-solve-the-student-loan-crisis
======
UserIsUnused
To me , most college university major are just luxury, and you should only go
there if you have fine finances. It's has been proved that a college degree in
the right major is the best investment you can do, even with the big loans you
have to take. The problem with people not being able to payout their loans is
because they did not took a good choice in major. And why should my taxes go
into someone spending their time in a liberal arts major? or anyother with
little or no relevance to the market? Those kind of loans are never pay, and
yes, if it's free it's a loan as well, the state will use the tax money to
fund these students, expecting to get some bigger tax money later when they
graduate. Well, bad majors won't find well paid jobs, the tax money wasn't
well invested.
Maybe I'm just a sad adult, that just sees everything around money/market
value. Maybe I should have spend my college years in some place where college
was "free" perfecting my art skills. Now I pay for my art classes after
work... What an absurd idea, to pay for an hobby, rather than having taxpayers
funding some years into my hobby research.
edit: I'm talking mainly about tuition, things like access to classes
references/books/material, it's ridiculous to be paid, as the ones that wrote
those were already paid to do it, and a lot of it, done with research payed by
taxpayers
| {
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Long player - bootload
http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/05/long_player.php
======
ralph
news.yc really needs the ability to add a descriptive sticky first comment
along with a URL otherwise the RSS feed, and this page, has bugger all on it
to know whether to click on the link or not. Yes, this is already on the
Feature Requests page. I'm just letting off steam.
~~~
bootload
_'... news.yc really needs the ability to add a descriptive sticky first
comment along with a URL otherwise the RSS feed, and this page, has bugger all
on it to know whether to click on the link or not ...'_
To expect the submitter to do this is ideal, but not scalable. (I know I've
tried to add comments in articles as I've posted them, but gave up because of
the number I submit. I do read them but now comment sparingly.) There is a
real problem with generating volumes of information quickly. If you want
speed, there is a limit on the amount of _meta_ information a user can
reasonably generate. If you want usefulness, this requires more time on behalf
of users submitting.
Newspapers have this problem and solved it by training news editors to create
_catchy titles_ that neatly summarises the entire article in a small sentence
- maybe even a few words. But not everyone writing articles on the web is
trained in Journalistic techniques, let alone people who read this site. There
is also the other problem when re-phrasing or changing titles of articles.
Mutilating them into something un-recognisable from the original.
This is where the software has to work harder. By supplying users with the
tools to classify, sort and value the submissions with tags, comments,
summaries (already have ranking). I'm thinking here of delicious where tagging
has allowed users to sort quickly by tag, then if they want to add more data
themselves (descriptions, summary). The other way is to gather meta data from
the source document (tags, microformats) where possible (un-likely as it takes
time to process documents to generate useful things like summaries - even
longer for meta data like microformats). Now the question is, _could_ "pg with
news.yc create some tools to help users or process new submissions extracting
meta-data"?
~~~
ralph
If I wanted volumes of information I know where to find it. This is news.yc.
I'm hoping for quality, not quantity, and if that means a 70% fall in
submissions, who cares?
Besides, having the ability to attach a comment to the URL does't mandate
putting anything in it. It's suggestive to the submitter that they should make
the effort though else their submission might not compare well against those
that do.
And if a submitter thinks "Oh, this article isn't really good enough to spend
my time on summarising" then that's a good test of whether they should inflict
it on the rest of us in the first place.
Rant over. :-)
~~~
bootload
_'... Besides, having the ability to attach a comment to the URL does't
mandate putting anything in it. It's suggestive to the submitter that they
should make the effort ...'_
I've tried now to add title + (summary) on the submissions resulting in a
_more_ descriptive subject line. It actually works at the expense of size & a
bit of time. So I have to agree with this bit and have changed my approach.
_'... If I wanted volumes of information I know where to find it. This is
news.yc. I'm hoping for quality, not quantity, and if that means a 70% fall in
submissions, who cares? ...'_
This is already automated by users in the _news_ link (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/news> ) and for the best articles in the _best_
link ( <http://news.ycombinator.com/best> ) As for me I'd rather more articles
submitted & gain the benefit of the long tail of submissions (lots), let the
brains filter submissions (users) and see the resultant niches of information
pop up instead of just the _hits_ ~
<http://longtail.typepad.com/the_long_tail/2005/07/how_finely_can_.html>
_'... Rant over ...'_
It was a good one, because it made me think about this & in the process solved
a few problems I was working on :)
~~~
ralph
The _news_ and _best_ links don't help avoid the long tail. _best_ is too
static; it rarely changes. And <http://news.ycombinator.com/rss> presents too
much dross. Dross which is hard to for my brain to filter because each item
has too little info so I end up having to visit every thread and then often
each linked external article.
(Thanks for starting to add (comments) to the title.)
~~~
bootload
_"... (Thanks for starting to add (comments) to the title.) ..."_
Believe me it makes a difference & really solves the _crappy title_ problem.
But it can be improved. I haven't used the the rss feed much (
<http://news.ycombinator.com/rss> ) but doing so I found that there is a cut-
off on the browser I use (Firefox = toolbars = bookmarks ) toolbar cuts the
text off at 40 characters. So If the title contains the most accurate info in
the first 40 characters it even works in the RSS feeds (reader) with readers
truncating the rest of the message. The other problem I noticed with the RSS
feed is the transporting you to the direct link, not the news.yc feed which as
the original link in the title. So rule of thumb: good title in 40 char
<http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/587744795/>
~~~
ralph
It's unfortunate that some RSS readers limit the amount of displayed text,
e.g. Firefox's menu items.
As for the RSS linking to the external article, the feed has both that URL and
a "comments" URL. Some RSS readers appear not to show or give access to the
comments URL, others do. For those that give both, I choose the comments one
first to get more of a clue as to whether anyone bothered to comment.
There are posts elsewhere about some RSS readers ignoring the comments URL and
what if anything can be done.
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"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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If you could go back pre-startup and give yourself 3 tips, what would they be? - danm07
======
stephenrowan
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sharing! I am new in the website writing.All sorts online journals and posts
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free to surf [http://rospher.com/](http://rospher.com/) for new writing tips.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Soundscapes of the JR Yamanote line - joshschoen
http://yamanote.style/
======
lathiat
The JR Yamanote line plays a different "jingle" for each station. As I
understand it, the idea is to make it easy to determine when you arrive at
your station.
After visiting Japan in 2007 and taking the line from the hotel to the office
I had the Ebisu tune as my SMS tone for quite some time.
------
jefurii
They had station-specific melodies back in the early 1990s when I was a
student. I wonder if these are updated versions of the same melodies or new
compositions.
------
bigrocketboy
I don't know why, but this is pretty soothing to listen to while working
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Watch Google’s robot dog play with a real dog - cornellwright
http://news.yahoo.com/watch-google-robot-dog-play-real-dog-140843627.html
======
kafkaesq
Groovy and testosterone-promoting, from a technical level, I guess.
But the bigger point, as someone pointed out in the comments below the
original, is:
_This dog is NOT playing with the dog robot. He is upset by it and is barking
to make it back down. We better be kind to all our dogs and keep them around
because they will probably be the only ones to detect those terminators._
The fact that the Google engineers don't instinctively realize this shows how
(very) far they have to go toward understanding the robot-mammal divide.
Which reminds me, I really like this comment, also:
_The future looks really creepy. That thing has as much regard for the dog as
it does us._
~~~
detaro
> _The fact that the Google engineers don 't instinctively realize this shows
> how (very) far they have to go toward understanding the robot-mammal
> divide._
To be fair, the "playing" nonsense entirely comes from the article author. The
video description is far less interpreting.
EDIT: Although the pure fact "it moves, makes noise and isn't something known
(like a car)" probably already causes a lot of the reactions. How do dogs
react to Roombas?
~~~
kafkaesq
Good points. Still, all I can think about is that poor dog.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Student wants a bit of direction - Jorslu
Hey,<p>I am currently finishing my second year of study as a Computer Science Major. About 12 credits away from my AA. Honestly... These programming classes suck. They don't teach me much other than printing out to the screen and getting a bit of input. Maybe a bit of manipulation but that is mostly it.
I have tried to do stuff on my own and read through beginner books (Intro/Begginer books on C++, C, Lua, Python) and even the "Serious" programmer books (Currently reading Pragmatic Programmer. Next on the list is Code Complete and Productive Programmer). I just lose my way though. Once I know some of the language, I try to think of ways to make little projects and such but to no avail.
I want to work with AI. Mainly Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. It's just what I want to do. Is there any advice anyone is willing to give? Maybe some open source project to point me to?<p>Thanks for reading. Have a nice Day/Night! xD
Jorge
======
manish_gill
You're stuck where I was about a year and a half ago. My classes basically
sucked, and all I got out of 2 years in my Comp.Sci course was how to make
small applets in Java, and how to print patterns in C++. I know it can be
demotivating. My advice? Start following projects. Read the code written by
people working on some of the most awesome projects out there. No, really
_read_ it. Don't understand something? Go find documentation for it. No
documentation? Email the people working on the project or go to their Mailing
list/IRC channel. People in the open source community are generally polite and
very helpful. There's tons of stuff out there. Oh, and stop switching
languages. I decided that I won't try anything besides the 2 languages that I
already know well enough (C++ and Python), until I become really really good
at them.
As for your desire to learn NLP and ML, as michaelpinto said, follow the
courses of Coursera, and you can also try to reach out to Dan.But I would
suggest doing small project (a blogging engine, a small game, whatever strikes
your fancy) first. Because that kind of stuff is just as important as learning
theory. Because until you've done something, you'll keep thinking of yourself
as a beginner.
For finding projects? Go to Github, Bitbucket etc. I won't recommend anything
myself, because it has to be something you yourself are comfortable with. And
you'll actually have to read the existing code before starting to contribute.
I guarantee you, you'll learn something new.
Best of luck!
~~~
Jorslu
Thank you! First time I have heard of Coursera but this site is pretty
awesome.
------
michaelpinto
I'm no expert, but it sounds like you want to learn to run a marathon before
you can crawl. However that said if you have a passion for something pursue it
with gusto: Read every book, article and blog that you can find on Natural
Language Processing and Machine Learning and find someone who is a true
master. Then ask that person how to get started.
I did a quick casual search and found this:
<https://www.coursera.org/course/nlp>
I would try to contact Dan and see what he thinks:
<http://www.stanford.edu/~jurafsky/>
What's the worst that can happen? Reach out...
~~~
Jorslu
Thanks for the advice! Just to clarify a bit because I noticed that I wasn't
specific enough. I want to know what I should do next, not build the next Siri
so to speakI am on my phone but I will check out the links as soon as I get on
my PC. Thank you Again!
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Why doesn't Amazon deliver to this one street in Northern Ireland? - hywel
https://www.quora.com/unanswered/Why-doesnt-Amazon-offer-express-delivery-to-this-particular-street-in-Northern-Ireland?share=1
======
SteveWatson
Why do I have to 'sign in' to view the answer? It's much easier to hit the
'back' button on my browser.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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You will live for longer than 1% of the entire history of human civilization. - GraffitiTim
The first civilization started in Mesopotamia around 5000 BCE (more or less), which is 7,000 years ago. If you live until age 80, that's more than 1% of the history of civilization.<p>Just throwing it out there for anyone else who'd never thought about it before. Certainly changed my perspective a bit.
======
mnemonicsloth
Yes, but there's a catch. The human race has existed for 140,000 years _or so
(edit)_ , but has only been civilized for 7000.
The population of nomadic humans was lower, but there's evidence that they
were much healthier than those who settled down to grow crops full-time.
Agriculture was a win because it allowed for many more people to be born, but
it's not a life for which we're well adapted.
ADDED: If this guy is right, 99% could turn out to be an underestimate or an
overestimate:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_ag...](http://www.ted.com/talks/aubrey_de_grey_says_we_can_avoid_aging.html)
~~~
KirinDave
What evidence is that? The average lifespan is on the increase, not the
decrease.
Or are you using some other metric to measure what you call "healthier"?
~~~
mnemonicsloth
There's always wikipedia:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy>
The first subsection is "variation over time". The drop between the
paleolithic and neolithic coincides with the development of agriculture.
This is a pretty contentious issue. The idea that humanity's single most
(evolutionarily) successful technology caused a massive decline in individual
quality of life is pretty disturbing, and some of the evidence is
contradictory. It seems like a debate best left to experts, but I thought it
was worth mentioning.
I still agree with the original post -- we're very lucky to be alive now.
~~~
scw
Check out Jared Diamond's "The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human
Race": <http://www.awok.org/worst-mistake/>
~~~
27182818284
I was actually going to point to Jared Diamond as well! In his book The Third
Chimpanzeem Jared writes about the immediate decline of health that followed
the introduction of agriculture. By measuring the health of teeth, and etc we
can see a noticeable drop in the years immediately following agriculture.
Looks like the article you linked to covers the same material.
------
patio11
You will also probably outlive three nines of humans historically. A woman at
my church passed away recently, tragically young at 68. (That is about a
decade below the life expectancy of Japanese women of her generation.)
Also, while I generally scoff at scifi, it is entirely possible that we will
make big strides against aging this century. I expect my chilren will grow up
with their grandparents. I expect their grandkids will not even understand the
import of that sentence.
~~~
crcoffey
_My_ grandparents are still alive, and are actually doing quite well.
I'm 19 years old, and I hold a strong hope that they will hold my children in
their time.
I can't explain how much that would mean to me.
~~~
mynameishere
I still have a great-grandmother who is almost 100. It was a very surreal
experience when her daughter died, at about 68 or so, and she hosted the
viewing.
Can you imagine burying your own elderly daughter?
------
kingkawn
Longer generations mean we stay mired in the past, and our elders are around
to advocate for the world views of their era in a way that can be good and
bad, my guess that its leans more toward the latter.
Also, considering how much time I waste now, who's to say I won't just take
more resources to complete what I'd have done in a shorter span?
~~~
jodrellblank
The goal of life is to live it, not to go anywhere particular. No matter what
we as a species do or where we go, we're trapped in the universe. There's no
escape, ultimately.
Yet you're arguing that people should hurry up and die so 'we' can move on and
not stay 'mired in the past' and 'wasting time'. What do they matter? Where
are we moving to that's so important?
If we can live until we choose to die or die by accident, feed everyone, keep
the planet in good condition, hit virtually 100% nanomechanical recycling /
construction and have enough resources for people or virtual people to set off
exploring the universe, what else matters? Why do we need everyone to be
young? And we might be able to step usefully close to those things in a
thousand years or so - and if you agree with Kurzweil, 1000 years of progress
will happen in much less than 1000 years. We might even live to see it.
~~~
kingkawn
I didn't say that we should all die young, but instead that aiming
relentlessly to extend the quantity of life misses the qualities that make it
worth living, including hope and the stunning curiosity that comes with youth.
There's beauty that no matter how burdened an individual is by experience,
they will die and the next generation will get to try again, hopefully without
too much of the negative baggage passed on.
~~~
jodrellblank
_instead that aiming relentlessly to extend the quantity of life misses the
qualities that make it worth living, including hope and the stunning curiosity
that comes with youth._
Misses the qualities that make it worth living? Have you checked out what
death is? The only way you can have hope and curiosity is by being alive to
experience them. Prolonging the state of being alive is a much much better way
to address "quality of life" than saying "death is for your own good - you'd
probably be miserable otherwise anyway".
_There's beauty that no matter how burdened an individual is by experience,
they will die_
I think not, because there is nobody outside "people who are alive" to be
experiencing the alleged beauty. The next generation don't get to try "again",
they get to try ... full stop.
Try what, though? Humanity as a whole isn't trying to do anything. There's no
outsider giving points for space exploration and underwater colonies and
disease eradication. The only point to progress is to progress the lives of
people who _are alive_ , and anything other than that about "the next
generation" is a holdover from the fact that we don't have enough power to
affect big changes in one lifetime but we can argue that they are worth
changing for the next generation. It would be even better, not worse, if we
could be changing things to improve our own lives a hundred years on.
~~~
kingkawn
haha, I'm hardly saying that "you'd be miserable otherwise anyway."
I'm saying that death and birth together, but only together, allow new starts.
Any wild deviations in individuals, be they bad, such as depression, or great,
like genius, end with that individual. We lose some wonderful and some damaged
people, but the steady stream of endings and beginnings permits us to
continuously renew and reassess our values and direction as a society and
species.
Yes, you will not get to live forever, but it also means that human beings are
healthier for having had so much variety of experience.
~~~
jodrellblank
_I'm saying that death and birth together, but only together, allow new
starts_
OK - but why is that desirable?
_Yes, you will not get to live forever, but it also means that human beings
are healthier for having had so much variety of experience._
What do you mean to say human beings are healthier?
I'd hope the species as a whole is benefitting _a lot_ from the 150,000 people
who die every _day_. How is the species benefitting (in ways that could not
happen without mass unplanned death)?
~~~
kingkawn
I'd hardly say those deaths are unexpected. And planned/unplanned deaths is
another discussion entirely. They're quite normal for the most part, and in
fact significantly lower than the rate of death in most other species.
Human beings benefit because of resource use and culture change. Imagine if we
double the lifespan of the majority of people on earth how insane things would
quickly become.
Or are we only talking about doubling the lifespan of those who can afford it?
In which case wouldn't it be better to focus these research resources into
raising universal quality of life (ie developing malaria drugs), rather than
further raising QoL for the rich in the 1st world?
------
Eliezer
I plan for the entire history of human civilization to be less than 1% of my
lifespan.
~~~
nostrademons
That sounds like an awfully boring existence. What will you do for the
remaining 99% of your uncivilized life?
~~~
sailormoon
Anything he wants? There is a whole universe of things to do. So many books to
read, so much music to listen to, so many things to learn and build and
understand.
I just can't imagine being bored, not in a million lifetimes.
~~~
tybris
Ahum, no civilization: no books, no music, no building.
~~~
iclelland
No, just no new books. Still plenty already written for a few hundred
lifetimes' worth of reading, though.
------
donaldc
And change happened at a much slower pace for most of that 7,000 years. The
21st century is going to be _very_ interesting.
~~~
pbhj
I think we've hit local maximum in civilisation (perhaps we're just beyond the
cusp). If the last century was defined by technological innovation, this one
unfortunately I think will be defined by over-population crises.
If we haven't solved the over-population issues by 2100 then I think the 22nd
Century will be defined by ecological disaster.
I'm not sure if I'm being too pessimistic or not!
~~~
Quarrelsome
Pessimism IMO. Generally brought about through age (older people are generally
more negative about the future) or fears of immigration. I'd bet we can
sustain WAY more people then we have at the moment.
~~~
spoiledtechie
Its not the older people are generally negative about the future.
Its that the more experienced people of ANY organization are generally
negative. The world pop is an organization, but you can put this idea towards
any organization that exists.
------
teeja
More perspective change: according to the 1903 Ladies Home Journal, half of
people then died before they were sixteen. One in a hundred lived to 65.
Something else to mention to people who ignore science.
[http://craigiest.googlepages.com/ThisWonderfulWorldofOurs.pd...](http://craigiest.googlepages.com/ThisWonderfulWorldofOurs.pdf)
------
rjs0
since this is all about the past evolution of the species, let me throw in a
few proposals about the future evolution:
[http://geaugailluminati.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/the-
human-r...](http://geaugailluminati.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/the-human-race-
is-almost-finished/) (and) The Moral Imperative of Our Future Evolution:
<http://www.prometheism.net/moral.html>
------
vaksel
more things were invented in the last 100 years, than during the entire world
history combined
note: I'm note sure if that's right or not, but it sounds like it might be
~~~
BearOfNH
There's a most excellent vintage 1980s lecture by Robert Anton Wilson titled
"The Jumping Jesus Phenomenon". The gist of it can be found at the
rawilson.com website as well as elsewhere.
Wilson defines the "jesus" (small j) as the number of scientific facts known
at the time of Jesus. Then he goes on to count how many years it takes to
double that number. By his count, humanity accumulated 2j by about the year
1500. Then 4j by the year 1750, and so on. I forget the exact numbers but the
point of the lecture was that our j-factor was increasing at an ever-
increasing rate. By Wilson's estimation the curve would go vertical sometime
around ... wait for it ... the year 2012.
This reads a lot like Kurzweil's singularity hypothesis (among others) but I'm
not sure who developed the concept first.
~~~
AndrewDucker
It's Terence Mckenna's Timewave theory (from the 1970s).
Kurzweil was following along after a lot of other people.
Vernor Vinge, for instance, came up with the term Technological Singularity in
1993, Teilhard de Chardin had the Omega Point in 1950, etc.
------
Raphael
You're saying this is the end of civilization?
------
quellhorst
I have multiple relatives that are 100+. I wonder what percentage of all
people they have lived longer than.
------
gregwebs
This gets at the root cause of what is wrong in our civilizations today. Most
of our genes were evolved pre-civilization. Civilization itself is just an
experiment. An experiment that hasn't been going all that well if judged by
what has been happening to our planet. There is wisdom from the pre-
civilization days I hope we can tap into while using new technologies to
actually have sustainable civilization.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, nuclear scientist and former president of India, has died - Andromeda101
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/apj-abdul-kalam-dies/article7470722.ece
======
foolinaround
Many know of him as an alpha technologist and as India's Missile Man.
Less known is the fact that he helped design a coronary stent at a much lower
cost, utilizing techniques and lightweight materials from the missile R&D
labs. He also designed lightweight artificial limb production processes.
In this way, he had a deep concern for the social benefits of the common man,
and distinguished himself from other scientists who lived in a world of their
own.
RIP Sir.
May your memory be eternal!
------
avinoth
I once met Sir Abdul Kalam at a scholarship event for only school students. I
was 14 at that time and after he had given his speech he walked through the
auditorium and asked "what they wanted to become?" to random kids.
I still remember to my heart when he came to me and when I replied I wanted to
become a software engineer he smiled and replied "And when you become, become
a good one".
Really a great loss for India.
------
kartikkumar
Incredibly sad day. I had the privilege of seeing Dr. Kalam speak to a packed
auditorium at the IAC [1][2] in 2007 in Hyderabad, India. Not only were a
large number of conference participants present but there were about 300
school children there too. There must have been almost 1000 people in that
room and there was absolute pin-drop silence. The way Dr. Kalam was able to
capture the attention of young and old is something that I feel truly
privileged to have witnessed.
During the Q&A, a girl stood up and took the mic, she can't have been over 10
years old, and she asked him in plain English why he wasn't going to stand for
President again when he was loved by every single person in the country. She
asked the question that was on the minds of every Indian in the room. His
response was measured, balanced and most of all inspirational. He commented
that he wanted to return to his passion. That he was a scientist at heart, and
that the country was in good hands.
My family WhatsApp group is flooded with messages over the last few hours of
the various encounters they've had with Dr. Kalam. Even his last breathe was
taken at IIM Shillong doing what he does best; inspiring a nation. A friend of
mine in Bangalore had the honor of meeting him recently. He has been working
on a space startup in India for the last three years and commented how special
it was to have the occasion to speak to Dr. Kalam about the future of the
Indian space sector.
He was an incredible scientist, a visionary, a leader and in someways that is
outdone by the single fact that he united a single country: with all the
religious tension between Hindus and Muslims, no one I have ever met back in
India has considered him to be anything else than ours.
The 27th of July should be a national day of recognition for his genius.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Astronautical_Co...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Astronautical_Congress)
[2]
[http://specials.rediff.com/news/2007/sep/27slide1.htm](http://specials.rediff.com/news/2007/sep/27slide1.htm)
_EDIT: Minor corrections_
~~~
ubersync
> The 27th of July should be a national day of recognition for his genius.
Slightly off-topic, but there are already too many "national holidays" in
India. Added with the "state holidays", there are barely any workdays left.
~~~
ninja_to_be
He mentioned recognizing it as a national day and not necessarily a 'holiday'.
There are numerous days when students pay their respect to a great personality
and continue with their regular activities. This could be one such day.
Moreover I read somewhere that Dr. Kalam himself wanted people to work harder
on his death day and not take a holiday. Not sure if that is misattributed to
him, but I'm sure his thoughts would have been similar.
~~~
kartikkumar
Exactly. That's why I worded it the way that I did. I am aware of Dr. Kalam's
quote, requesting that there be no holiday in his recognition, but rather an
extra day of work. So my point is absolutely as you put it, to pay respects to
a genius.
------
chdir
Adieu to a great man,
[https://twitter.com/APJAbdulKalam](https://twitter.com/APJAbdulKalam)
"Dream is not that which you see while sleeping it is something that does not
let you sleep." ― A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Wings of Fire: An Autobiography
Some of his books : [http://www.amazon.com/A.-P.-J.-Abdul-
Kalam/e/B001H9RNS0/](http://www.amazon.com/A.-P.-J.-Abdul-Kalam/e/B001H9RNS0/)
Brief from Wikipedia : _He spent the next four decades as a scientist and
science administrator, mainly at the Defence Research and Development
Organisation (DRDO) and Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and was
intimately involved in India 's civilian space program and military missile
development efforts. He thus came to be known as the Missile Man of India for
his work on the development of ballistic missile and launch vehicle
technology. He also played a pivotal organizational, technical and political
role in India's Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998, the first since the original
nuclear test by India in 1974._
------
hashgowda
Where there is righteousness in the heart there is beauty in the character,
when there is beauty in the character there is harmony in the home, when there
is harmony in the home there is order in the nation, when there is order in
the nation, there is peace in the world. - Dr. A.P.J Abdul Kalam
~~~
stcredzero
That is something we in the US should harken to. Especially: "when there is
order in the nation, there is peace in the world." So much instability in the
world is due to or exacerbated by imbalances involving the 1st world economies
affecting the rest of the world. (Chief among these would be environmental
problems, but they are not limited to only those.)
Also something to apply to one's personal life.
------
geektips
[http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Abdul-Kalam-widely-loved-and-
res...](http://www.quora.com/Why-is-Abdul-Kalam-widely-loved-and-respected-by-
everyone)
[http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-lesser-known-things-
about...](http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-lesser-known-things-about-Dr-APJ-
Abdul-Kalam)
------
binoyxj
One of my favorite quotes of all time! "The dream is not what you see in
sleep, it's something that does not let you sleep" ― A.P.J. Abdul Kalam
------
devnonymous
Of interest to the HN crowd -- When APJ Kalam was president he advocated for
the use of Open Source Software[1]. He was one the very few intellectual
leaders India has seen.
[1] [http://www.cnet.com/news/india-leader-advocates-open-
source/](http://www.cnet.com/news/india-leader-advocates-open-source/)
------
trequartista
Dr. Kalam once used Yahoo! Answers to crowdsource solutions to combat
terrorism -
[https://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=200701121355...](https://in.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070112135510AAD7SB8)
RIP.
------
sk2code
APJ once said, "the best leader when failed, take the complete responsibility
of failure, and when succeed give the credit to his team - this is the best
management principle i have learn for the first time"
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZkT0tcqEG0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZkT0tcqEG0)
------
binoyxj
I've a problem with this ad-ridden source, for such a significant news. Can
someone change it?
~~~
binoyxj
He deserves much more than this IMHO, hence! #NoOffence
------
rajathagasthya
A visionary, gentleman and brilliant scientist who saw youth as an important
part of the country's future. Dr. Kalam was an inspiration. It is a great
loss.
Edit: It is only fitting that he spent his last minutes with students.
------
amnigos
"I can do it, we can do it, India will do it" ~ Dr. A.P.J Kalam
------
rajeshmr
A.P.J. Abdul Kalam was a true symbol of "The Indian Dream". Born to a boatman,
walking miles to school, born before the convenience of computing and the
internet - his journey to becoming the President of India is truly remarkable
and inspiring at the same time.
I saw the picture of him falling just before his death, and i am disturbed.
This man made the country stand on its feet technologically and here he falls
amidst his students as he wished his death to be.
He is the most loved by all, he kept inspiring people to dream bigger. He
never relented to retiring. He tirelessly spread his message going to schools
and colleges. He is symbolic of an aspiring nation. A nation waiting to
unleash its potential - he always asked his countrymen to earn respect through
strength since strength respects strength.
His journey will be talked for decades to come, and he truly has become
immortal. He has inspired a generation and will inspire more generations
through his books and speeches. A saint at heart and a pure soul that worried
about humanity and world peace - this man is the best citizen any country
would die to have. A role model who transcends caste, creed , languages and
religion in a country like India that is so diverse. A binding force in our
country.
I am proud to have lived to see him. I am proud to be an Indian.
Every once in a while a great person descends to earth, he is one of them. A
saint, a gentleman, a scientist, an orator, a poet, a writer , the greatest
teacher, The President of India - various though your roles, you were focused
and dedicated. Your soul is so pure, your voice will echo through this nation
for decades ahead.
The nation skipped a heartbeat at the news of your death. You have lit a fire,
we will spread the wings of this fire that you have lit.
Salutes, to you sir! We will love you now and forever.
Return If Possible sir. :'(
------
rakesh-singh
Had a chance to see him in person long time back.. Very down to earth.. Simple
man with very high and clear thoughts. He always liked to remain close with
students.. Always going to different universities.. Guiding .. Inspiring
them..
I think it was a dream death for him. Till last breath he was contributing to
the nation.. Salute sir
------
Halienja
A good head and a good heart are always a formidable combination. ~ Dr. A.P.J
Kalam
~~~
rajeshmr
Please do not misquote! That was said by Nelson Mandela.
Source :
[http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/n/nelsonmand101682....](http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/n/nelsonmand101682.html)
------
linux_devil
Not only his speech were inspirational but his writings were motivating. Books
like ignited minds and India 2020 written by him were visionary and always
inspired me . Rest in peace sir
------
hindupuravinash
I remember the moment when Kalam Sir came to our graduation ceremony and asked
in his speech "What would you like to be remembered for? Evolve and shape your
life in that way".
He will remain an inspiration.
Here is the full speech:
[http://www.iitg.ac.in/pro/sites/default/files/14thConvo_Chie...](http://www.iitg.ac.in/pro/sites/default/files/14thConvo_ChiefGuest.pdf)
------
gamekathu
I was fortunate enough to witness his speech live when he came to our school
in 2007. It was held in our school grounds, which was full with about a 1000
people, with students, teachers & parents, all listening to his speech with
rapt attention. During the Q&A session a young boy stood up and asked him,
"Why does all the politicians are so old?" After a general murmur of laughter,
he asked, "Well students, let me ask you what you want to be in your
life?"..Lots of hands shot up, shouts of "Engineer", "Doctor", "Scientist"
echoed through the ground. After the clamor died down, he simply said : "See,
that is why. I see many engineers, scientists, doctors among you. But none of
you want to be a politician. Which is good, as the nation needs its youth to
carry them forward, while we old people manage the politics of this country."
\- Such simple & humble answer from a great man. He did a lot for this
country, and more over, he inspired many generations to follow their dreams.
He will continue to live in our minds as the perfect role model of modern
India.
------
swatkat
RIP sir! Alpha geek, father of SLV satellite launch vehicle family, father of
Indian ballistic missile program, and an inspiration for millions of Indians.
He'll always be present in Indians' hearts and minds.
Read "Wings of Fire"[0] if you haven't already!
[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_of_Fire](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wings_of_Fire)
------
alphakappa
A sad day for Indians. Dr. Kalam was a huge inspiration and role model for
many.
------
ninja_to_be
I'm deeply saddened by the demise of Dr. Kalam. He inspired me a lot when I
was a kid back in school. His books "Ignited Minds" and "Wings of Fire" are
highly inspiring and are filled with hope for India.
His passion was to inspire and ignite young minds and encourage them to propel
India on a global scale. His numerous interactions with school children,
political leaders, industrialists and scholars have a common theme - India can
do it.
On small example of how he always tries to look out for the benefit of
everybody: "A school in Madurai had organized an event and invited Dr. Kalam
as the chief guest. He initially declined the invitation saying that it would
benefit only private school students. Then the school had to modify their
plans and invited over 500 students from various other government schools in
the vicinity to attend the event too. Only then did he agree to be the chief
guest of the event. "
------
sigmaml
I met him once at a conference in Bengaluru. He was President then.
When it was his turn to speak, he said: ``My staff has written a wonderful
script for me to read aloud. You can read it on my Website tomorrow. But now,
I shall talk about good R&D, or the lack of it, in India." And he went on to
deliver a very inspiring speech.
Great man!
------
selvakn
Better source: [http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/former-president-apj-abdul-
ka...](http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/former-president-apj-abdul-kalam-
admitted-to-icu-in-shillong-sources-1201111)
edit: @mods: Can you please update the url
------
allpratik
A very very admirable person. Always inspired Kids, Always motivated them to
dream, And he died also while motivating them. A true marvelous brilliance and
down to earth guy. And that's the reason, Billion+ people are now mourning.
------
deepuj
"Don't declare a holiday on my death, instead work and extra day, if you love
me..."\- DR. APJ Abdul Kalam
------
boulevard
He'll be missed by billions. The Ace scientist, the missile man and above all
a great human being. RIP Kalam Sir.
------
awalGarg
I am just a normal student. Never had a chance to meet him. Always wished I
did. To meet him just _once_ and talk to him about how he wants to see the
country, and what a student like me can do to contribute towards it. I am
very, very sad that I won't be able to talk to him, ever in my life. </3
~~~
gautamsomani
Me too.
------
bigbang
Sad day for Indians. He has been a great inspiration for many students and
children. May his soul rest in peace.
------
Juneau
"Hard work, perseverance and kindness are the qualities that define a human
being" that's the lesson I learned from his autobiography "wings of fire",
this was way back in high school. He was an inspiration for me during my
formative years.
RIP Sir.
------
sharmi
I once met Dr. Abdul Kalam. He said, he wanted to become a pilot but couldn't
because of his height/eyesight (not sure which). But he did not become
dejected. He still got into flying, as an aeronautical engineer.
May his soul watch over the world.
------
_navaneethan
Sir Came to my college, when he was being a President, He asked the students a
question,
_I am standing the 73th orbit of the earth rotating to the sun, then what is
my age?_
Many young scientists replied the correct answer.
Feeling proud of him, truely inspiring leader
------
vishnuks
So sad that the death of Kalam was used for promoting a spam website. Can the
administrators change the link into a better source?
------
ravins
Really a big lose for us :(, He was and always be a true hero for us. RIP sir
------
ragsagar
RIP Missile Man of India.
------
namanaggarwal
We will miss you sir. RIP
------
sriku
Dr. Abdul Kalam was a musician too and played the veena.
------
itsashis4u
He will be dearly missed by one and all.
------
sushilk1991
R.I.P Sir!!!
------
neotrinity
may his soul rest in peace
------
perfectstorm
RIP.
Always enjoyed reading his books.
------
rtx
Good Bye.
------
devish
good bye!!
------
flipmonk
Why was the fact that he was the president removed from the title?
Please update to: "Nuclear scientist and former president of India, Abdul
Kalam, has died"
~~~
jacquesm
The article title right now reads: "Former President APJ Abdul Kalam is no
more with us: Collapses During Speech in Shillong"
~~~
flipmonk
Nope, still says "Indian nuclear scientist Abdul Kalam has died"
~~~
jacquesm
On the original website. HN has an original title policy so I expect a mod to
sync the two at some point.
------
throwaway6497
Don't want to bring politics here. I just could not believe why in the world
why Congress/Sonia wouldn't give him second term and brought in Pratibha Patil
who abused her privilege as a President ( In news for changing her portrait
picture N times because she didn't liked how she looked, Taking her whole
extended family > 30+ to all foreign trips, and making Rashtrapati Bhavan a
guest house/extended vacation place for them). Abdul Kalam inspired the
children and young people of India. He was an icon. She did zilch. How could
they disgrace Adbul Kalam and India like this? What were they thinking?
~~~
mangamadaiyan
> Don't want to bring politics here
Then you shouldn't have; but you chose to.
[Edit] Your comment says nothing about Dr. AK, but instead focuses on other
people and other issues that IMHO have no relevance to this thread.
~~~
jacquesm
> Your comment says nothing about Dr. AK
Actually, it does. It ranks him favorably relative to others that held the
same post.
~~~
newyankee
There is no doubt that S Radhakrishnan and APJ Abdul Kalam were two greatest
Presidents India had who made the most impact out of a ceremonial post (and
not in a political way).
~~~
nmridul
Dont forget KR Narayanan who refused to sign if proper procedures were not
followed showing that President is not just a rubber stamp.
------
iamgopal
Can admin please change source to Wikipedia instead ? It's spam site that's
getting all the click, thanks
~~~
dang
Wikipedia isn't a great source to use for a breaking news story. But if you or
anyone would suggest a more substantive URL, we can change to that.
~~~
Juneau
Try this one.. Its from a reputed Indian newspaper..
[http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/apj-abdul-kalam-
dies/a...](http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/apj-abdul-kalam-
dies/article7470722.ece)
* updated the link..
~~~
dang
Ok, url changed to that from [http://www.theindiantalks.com/breaking/former-
president-apj-...](http://www.theindiantalks.com/breaking/former-president-
apj-abdul-kalam-is-no-more-with-us-collapses-during-speech-in-shillong/10744).
Thanks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tools to Bootstrap your Startup Weekend Idea - mikeknoop
https://zapier.com/blog/2012/10/10/how-zapier-can-help-bootsrap-your-startup-weekend-idea/
======
cookingrobot
Showrapp.co won the last Seattle Startup weekend by having an actual app
running by the end of the event, complete with user accounts.
They used <https://DailyCred.com> (my startup) for the account system. There's
a big difference between collecting a potential user's email address for your
mailing list, and actually creating a real user account for them.
------
jakejohnson
One of the most popular tools I've seen at Startup Weekend would have to be
LaunchRock. Zapier sounds like a great addition! I'll need to brainstorm some
ideas. We had several teams use Divshot to quickly prototype web apps at
Startup Weekend in Lincoln, NE. Divshot was also used to build Qup.tv in 48
hours.
------
yesimahuman
Just wanted to shamelessly plug my Jetstrap which is a visual builder for
Bootstrap (since many SW projects are done in Bootstrap):
<http://jetstrap.com/>
~~~
agilekn0w
Are you guys gonna start charging for Jetstrap soon or will it stay free?
------
danso
I felt like the OP is lacking in practical details (besides, try our product)
but I think the topic is good: kits/steps to building a launch site for any
occasion for near-0 cost.
My guess is:
\- Twitter Bootstrap \- Amazon S3 \- memorable bit.ly link (bit.ly/kickapanda)
that goes to S3 page \- Google Analytics \- Something like
AddThis/Sharethis/etc. to do social media share buttons quickly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Looking for hacker roommate in Palo Alto - mike-
We're looking for a 4th roommate for our hacker-filled house in midtown Palo Alto. We are three male engineers aged 23-25: one works for Facebook, the other two are co-founders of a small web consultancy doing e-commerce, live video stuff, and analytics. We're into web stuff, cycling, running, good food, and building fun toys. We'd love to find another entrepreneurial work hard/play hard type.<p>It's not really a "hacker house" in that we don't work at home, and we're not looking for people who are only working there. However, you're welcome (and encouraged) to move in if you want to work at home.<p>See photos here:
http://bit.ly/3b8wir<p>The house is very expansive (~3500 sq feet) and comfortable with lots of goodies: pool, sauna, deck, grill, 60" hdtv, many couches, space for guests, fireplace, washer/dryer, hardwood floors, great landlord, and plenty of garage and closet space for storage/bikes. The location is convenient to Facebook, Google, Stanford, California Ave, and the San Antonio caltrain, and great for biking to all of those places. Rent is $1050/mo plus $1250 security deposit.<p>Email deactivated [at] gmail.com if you're interested.
======
mattiss
Sure looks sweet. I would totally be interested if I had work connections down
there. Good luck!
------
jli
a bit expensive, but looks nice
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GitHub banned us without notice – Is Microsoft the risk we didn’t consider? - chrisdbanks
https://medium.com/swlh/github-banned-us-without-notice-is-microsoft-the-risk-we-didnt-consider-a153f11cb1b1
======
harryh
Microsoft's acquisition of Github hasn't closed yet, so the company is still
operating independently. There is no reason to think that this has anything to
do with Microsoft.
To be honest, it seems like a fairly simple mistake that was cleaned up within
48 hours. Certainly a pain in the ass, but these things happen.
~~~
bovermyer
The Microsoft-fear in this article isn't justified.
However, the author does point out several good practices:
* Don't host your code only in one place
* Don't host your services only in one provider
* Don't host your backups only in one provider
I suppose you could argue the second one, but the other two are important to
follow.
~~~
m-p-3
Yeah, treat code as any kind of data.
If it's worth a lot of time and cannot be replaced easily, back it up.
------
sciurus
Their Github account at
[https://github.com/prowriting](https://github.com/prowriting) looks boringly
normal. I wonder what could have caused Github's systems to flag it and a
customer service rep to decide it was not legitimate.
~~~
jessaustin
There doesn't seem to be much going on there? Over 13 repos, there are like 5
issues, all open, with one response that seems to be from some other user who
just randomly wandered in? There are a few commits and a couple of branches,
but no releases. Also a couple really ancient forks. This looks like a random
person's GitHub page, not a software company's.
They also don't have any links to their GitHub pages on their site. This isn't
how organizations normally use GitHub. One suspects they're just using it as a
CDN without engaging with any of the coding or social features. Perhaps GitHub
has some sort of trigger when particular resources get requested over and over
without any referer? Why not just use GitHub normally? Failing that, why not
just use a CDN?
~~~
cannonedhamster
CDNs cost money. The whole point of most businesses lately seems to be
externalizing costs while providing the least amount of service that they can
get paid gobs of money for. I understand that's a sound business model in a
race to the bottom, but eventually you hit the bottom and the whole market
losses.
~~~
jessaustin
They don't cost enough money to justify this whole embarrassing episode.
Probably they're just a little bit harder to configure than it was to just
dump everything on GitHub.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Crazy iphone 4s launch in China - clementyu
http://pipi818.com/11916/
======
jackhomeyxm
market with 1.3 bil people
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Sun Will Eventually Engulf Earth -- Maybe - kenhty
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=the-sun-will-eventually-engulf-earth-maybe
======
ChuckMcM
The humorist in me wants to say "Now _that_ is undeniable global warming!" but
the real point here is that the existence of Earth as a habitable place to
live is finite. It would be helpful if more people internalized that as it
would put space exploration into a different perspective.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Russian satellite seems to be tailing a US spy satellite in Earth orbit - Tomte
https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/31/21117224/russian-satellite-us-spy-kosmos-2542-45-inspection-orbit-tracking
======
ColinWright
Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22207683)
Other sources for the story:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204838](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22204838)
: thedailybeast.com
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200881](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22200881)
: Extension Twitter discussion
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
New Planet Is Largest Discovered That Orbits Two Suns - smaili
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/new-planet-is-largest-discovered-that-orbits-two-suns
======
_nalply
If that planet hosts a large moon live might have evolved on it («within the
so-called habitable zone – the range of distances from a star where liquid
water might pool on the surface of an orbiting planet»).
Compared to the Earth it would be a strange world. First there are two suns in
the sky, both smaller than Sol and near to each other. Perhaps two thumbs held
at an arm's distance. Then there is the big Jupiter-like planet. On this world
there is no normal day-night rhythm. The moon most probably would be tidally
locked to the planet. And the orbit around the binary is just above three
years.
Perhaps there are no spectacular sky scenes, however. A three-year «day» is
very hard on the climate. For live to evolve it would have needed a permanent
thick cloud cover like on Venus. Aliens living in that dark world would have
no eyes.
We could try to listen for a message from there. The star is located in the
Cygnus constellation and quick googling gives distances between 170 and 1500
light years.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Your turn to buy the coffee? Coffee run can help! - jamesdhutton
https://coffeerun.azurewebsites.net
======
CatsoCatsoCatso
Neat idea, I'd use it for our Friday McDonalds runs if I didn't enjoy going
round and personally asking people so much.
~~~
jamesdhutton
Thanks!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Barebones Wordpress template with Bootstrap to save you a little time - bliti
https://github.com/bliti/basic-wordpress-template
======
bliti
Nothing outstanding here. Just sharing this basic template to those who might
be starting out with Wordpress developing. It saves a little time and gives
you a blank slate.
Hope you find it useful. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Shower Thoughts - DoreenMichele
https://streetlifesolutions.blogspot.com/2019/11/shower-thoughts.html
======
coderintherye
What are your thoughts on implementing paid showers in more places? We have
the free mobile showers in SF for the homeless, but they are few and far
between. Seems like having access to paid showers would be welcomed and is
just not something the city and/or business has tried to prioritize.
~~~
DoreenMichele
Market-based solutions are almost always better than homeless services.
Showers for a dollar are likely to be cleaner, available for a longer window
of time on demand instead of by appointment and more humane in every way.
I would love to see more paid showers more generally available at services
like truck stops and beaches. I am at a loss as to how to encourage or foster
that.
~~~
rolph
perhaps an investment in a mobile unit so there is no renovation and minimal
install costs. hook up electricity and water supply and dump the drain water
at a treatment facility as grey water. move the unit[s] to an area where
demand exists, option is there to pack it up in the winter, or during a low
use period.
~~~
coderintherye
That's what the city does for their free service, but it's got limited hours
and limited locations and as far as I can tell it feels more like showering in
a port-a-potty than in a hotel shower.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Will You Be Able to Run a Modern Desktop Environment in 2016 Without Systemd? - mariuz
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/15/11/25/1728238/will-you-be-able-to-run-a-modern-desktop-environment-in-2016-without-systemd
======
JdeBP
... the embedded bug report in which is hyperlinked in Hacker News at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10629407](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10629407)
.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Hitchly, turn any URL into a phone number you can call or text - mcocaro
After struggling with failed QR codes and unmemorable bit.ly links to share our online assets in the real world, we thought on using the power of phone numbers to share links offline.<p>Take a look at it here: https://hitch.ly<p>What do you think?
======
herbst
A very unique concept, at least i never saw something like this. Personally i
also dont see the benefit. I would just buy a domain and redirect it or a path
of it as that would be at least memoriable in opposite to a phone number. What
happens when i call the number?
I have a suggestion as well, i wanted to try it and it told me there are no
Numbers for Switzerland currently. But i never said i wanted one of those.
Most of my marketing is done in Germany and the US, i would probably make that
chooseable.
That all said, Interesting concept. Good luck.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Matt Mullenweg: I’m Worried That Silicon Valley Might Be Destroying the World - diego
http://pandodaily.com/2012/05/24/matt-mullenweg-im-worried-that-silicon-valley-might-be-destroying-the-world/
======
Zarathust
Yeah sure, there's this impending Euro zone collapse, millions of death due to
famine in Africa, rampant obesity throughout the world, decades of war in the
middle east. What really is destroying the world is an internet software
feature 99% of the planet never heard of.
Should I use dental floss tonight or not? Because you know, I like to ponder
about the important things in the world.
~~~
joelrunyon
I don't really think that tone is needed here on HN. Matt does bring up a
valid point. Ability to concentrate will be a differentiating factor in an
information age defined by the ability to create efficiently.
~~~
tikhonj
I think the tone is just a reaction (and an appropriate one, at that) to the
hyperbole in the title. Just saying "the title is a bit of a hyperbole" would
actually make for a worse comment.
~~~
andyjohnson0
Its not appropriate here. Snarky/sarcastic comments just encourage more of the
same, which degrades the conversation. Also, its not really a comment on the
subject of the article (which has something useful to say), but on the
headline (which is poor).
Appropriate for Reddit/Slashdot, not HN.
~~~
MrMan
Sarcasm is one of the most sophisticated modes of communication. Sanctimony is
not.
------
joelrunyon
The title is obviously hyperbole, but I think it's a fair point - I believe
there was actually a discussion last week or so here about how the key
differential in the workforce will be able to focus for distinct periods of
time.
I'm actually still resisting a smart phone (much to my friends' chagrin),
because while I'm at the computer 10 hours a day, the rest of the time, I
actually enjoy not "having" to check my email, twitter, facebook constantly
because of push notifications.
~~~
unimpressive
>I'm actually still resisting a smart phone
I would say the same thing, except that resistance implies that there's a
significant chance that I'll give in.
No matter how it's spun, I'm not putting a GPS spying device in my pocket.
------
firefoxman1
He's completely right in his reasoning, but just like a lot of pessimistic
predictions made about people, this one doesn't take into account the human
ability to realize and fix something like this if it becomes a real problem.
I quit using a cell phone once I realized it was killing my concentration (and
a Palm Pre is a hard thing to give up). I haven't used Twitter in months,
Facebook sees me like once a week, and my email is quickly sorted (with the
help of Webos 3.0's amazing mail client) once in the morning or whenever I
feel like it.
I have a feeling a lot more people will try this in the next few years (and
they'll love it).
~~~
pemulis
I think that you're partly right, and it ties in with one of the points in
pg's essay about addictive technology[1], that societies eventually develop
antibodies to addictive new things. The problem (also noted in the essay,
which grows more frightening the longer I think about it) is that most of the
people who succumb to the addictive thing will not change their lifestyle to
overcome it. Meanwhile, many companies in Silicon Valley are working to make
their products as addictive as possible, soaking the most vulnerable users for
the most money. The poster boy for this behavior is Zynga, but you see it
everywhere.
What's the solution? Maybe we need to try harder to add addictive properties
to activities we value. Or maybe we need a cultural movement away from things
that are low-value and addictive to things that are high-value but not very
addictive. It's difficult, because almost anything that's fun is potentially
addictive. Reading, coding, and exercise are all valuable and can all be
addictive. Not all addictions are equal. Running for two hours a day is
probably better than playing Farmville for two hours a day.
I think that Matt's comments hit home because we're often in a position now of
building things that lock people into harmful addictive behaviors. We all have
to ask ourselves whether the work we do is valuable, or just lucrative.
[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html>
~~~
mikegirouard
I like your idea for solutions a lot and think there's some great room for
ideas to brew from there.
After reading GTD for Hackers[1], I kept thinking about ways to keep the
momentum going after the initial excitement wore off… perhaps gamifying email
and/or tasks (I hate that word, but it works).
[1]: <http://gtdfh.branchable.com/>
------
DanielRibeiro
Joe Kraus did a in depth analysis of tthis phenomenon in his _We’re creating a
culture of distraction_ [1]
[1] <http://joekraus.com/were-creating-a-culture-of-distraction>
------
forgottenpaswrd
It is amazing how people develop antibodies when exposed to a treat. When I
traveled around the world one of the worst thing you could think is: look,
this water source is safe to drink, all locals do and they are fine. I did
learn the painful way.
As an early adopter of mail, facebook and tweeter(back from the early days,
"hey, HN could you test my idea?") I had to develop antibodies for
distractions and I don't use tweeter, for facebook anymore(mail only at the
end of the day). Reading only HN briefly. It works like a charm.
------
mipapage
"to the detriment of creativity and productivity."
I don't think those are necessarily the only or most important things losing
out to all this "panem et circenses", which is really what a lot of these
things are. Distraction has been used for a long time!
------
bobsy
Maybe Matt hasn't heard about turning something off. Matt is worried that
engaging technologies interrupt peoples lives and disrupt productivity and
creativity. He is probably right, until you realise you can disconnect
yourself from these notifications.
Its like Twitter. It can be horribly distracting and engaging. It can
interrupt your work and even conversations you may be having. At the same time
you can turn off whatever app you have and it will disappear completely from
your life until you turn it back on.
The majority of people know their limits and can decide how much they want a
specific app/technology/whatever to impact their day-to-day lives.
~~~
joelrunyon
>The majority of people know their limits and can decide how much they want a
specific app/technology/whatever to impact their day-to-day lives.
I would say _some_ people know their limits, but if you look at the number of
people who walk around with their eyes glued to their iphone, I'd really
question that the _majority_ do.
~~~
schukin
Ten minutes at a busy intersection in downtown San Francisco will yield
frightening results.
~~~
prodigal_erik
I do that too, I stay out of traffic, and I don't see the problem. Of everyday
experiences I'd just as soon miss out on, staring at another DONT WALK sign is
near the top of the list. When I want to spend time being creative, I wander
around a park aimlessly and ignore my phone; navigating busy streets is just
enough hassle that it doesn't work for me.
------
mikecane
Mullenweg should be more concerned about how his software causes users to do
more work than is necessary.
People prefer posts with photos that scroll, not a slideshow (WordPress
Gallery). Many posts I do (mainly the ones about Occupy Wall Street) can have
over one hundred photos. These photos have to be placed one-by-one _manually_.
There is no "Place All" button that just plops them all into a post (we have
bulk upload now, but not bulk Place).
If he is so concerned about making the world a better place, he can start
_there_. That is something he can actually _do_.
~~~
hdctambien
WordPress is open source, you know. You could write a plugin or patch the core
code to add any features you'd like.
Why wait for Matt and his team to do it for you?
~~~
mikecane
I'm using the free WordPress service, not the free self-hosted version.
------
maresca
This is the reason I keep my phone on silent. Not even vibrate anymore, but
silent. Keeping distractions under control has greatly improved my mental
well-being.
------
AznHisoka
Technology and elements of our modern lifestyle such as multitasking really do
make our brains less tolerant to stillness and slowing down. So he has a great
point.
Plus it wouldn't hurt if people though about the WHY of what they are dOing
------
indubitably
That headline isn't hyperbolic at all.
~~~
ClHans
I think you mean: There has never been less hyperbole in a headline, in all
the history of the world.
------
adventureful
The premise paints a terrible picture of people, such that they aren't the
ones making a completely volitional decision about how they want to spend
their time. If people want to spend their time reading blogs and Twitter, who
are you to say otherwise? It's not your choice, it's not your life, it's none
of your business.
Might as well question whether soap opera's, tabloids, espn, disney, movies,
television in general, music, and just about every other form of entertainment
and media stimulation are destroying the world. After all, isn't modern music
crap? Was FRIENDS really worth spending all that time watching? Who really
needs to watch 50 NFL games per year? Could there be a greater waste of time
than NASCAR? Most movies are an extreme waste of time because they're so
terrible, so why make them?
It's a completely absurd premise, and it applies just as well to all media as
it does to Twitter or Facebook or Wordpress.
~~~
potatolicious
I don't think the premise is absurd at all, and it need not paint a terrible
picture of people.
There are often two camps when it comes to topics like this - the free-will
proponents who posit that people's behaviors and choices are based on their
own conscious, controllable volition. Then there are the contextualists, who
would have us believe that people behave as the system dictates and can be
held blameless for their failings.
The truth is, naturally, somewhere in between. We can suggest that people are
negatively influenced by certain things without denying them free will and
personal responsibility.
> _"It's not your choice, it's not your life, it's none of your business."_
Note that Mr. Mullenweg didn't suggest that systems be designed to actively
curb this behavior. There are no Big Brother nor Nanny State overtones to this
at all.
> _"If people want to spend their time reading blogs and Twitter, who are you
> to say otherwise?"_
Again, nobody has tabled that we should _disallow_ people from reading blogs
all day. Mr. Mullenweg seems to be feeling guilt that he's helped create
something that may have a negative overall impact on many of its users.
Imagine if you've created the world's most addictive cigarette and completely
cornered the market. People all around the world are lighting these things up
by the packloads. You wouldn't feel any concern, or even guilt? Surely this is
not as simple as "these people are adults, if they smoke like a chimney it's
their own damn fault". That logic applies just as easily to crack cocaine or
war, and represents the most extreme end of the "free will" argument.
> _"and it applies just as well to all media as it does to Twitter or Facebook
> or Wordpress."_
And it does. This is the nation that, after all, invented the TV dinner and
the couch potato. In fact, TV's influence on society is a _big_ can o' worms.
If Mr. Mullenweg wants to feel better about his role in the creation of new
media, he may want to take note that the Internet is the first thing in 50
years to get people off the damn couch and onto a far more interactive, more
informative medium. The Internet has some serious information addiction
problems that we're just scratching the surface of - but IMO it beats the
pants off what it replaced.
Information addiction _in general_ does not have me overly concerned about the
future of society and the Internet. What _does_ worry me is the growth of the
personalized web - we are very, very rapidly sailing into a future where a
person would _never_ have to hear a single word of dissent to their own
beliefs. This troubles me more than any other issue that faces the Internet
today.
~~~
amirmc
> _"... we are very, very rapidly sailing into a future where a person would
> never have to hear a single word of dissent to their own beliefs. This
> troubles me more than any other issue that faces the Internet today"_
I concur. I don't think this is limited to online interactions either. There
were stories a few years ago of how people in the real world were increasingly
moving to be near like-minded people (and the negative effects this had on
reinforcing their world-views). Wish I could find the story but no luck.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
mdBook – A utility to create modern online books from Markdown files - karlicoss
https://github.com/rust-lang/mdBook
======
michaelangerman
For me the testament as to the quality of this product is to look at the Rust
doc ecosystem. Anyone who has read the Rust docs knows how well done the
presentation of the material is
Here is one example...
[https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/](https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/)
------
xvilka
So far the biggest missing feature is the export to PDF[1]. With projects like
crowbook[2] and Tectonic (TeX engine) oxidation[3] it can be a perfect
solution for creating modern documents without the legacy churn.
[1] [https://github.com/rust-lang/mdBook/issues/815](https://github.com/rust-
lang/mdBook/issues/815)
[2] [https://github.com/lise-henry/crowbook/](https://github.com/lise-
henry/crowbook/)
[3]
[https://github.com/crlf0710/tectonic/tree/oxidize](https://github.com/crlf0710/tectonic/tree/oxidize)
~~~
bluejekyll
Does this plugin work? [https://crates.io/crates/mdbook-
latex](https://crates.io/crates/mdbook-latex)
The features list looks like there's some gaps, but probably worth checking
out.
------
n8henrie
I live in a very rural town with poor internet and kept wanting a good way to
make an offline ebook from these mdbook sites (to them turn to mobi with
calibre for my kindle).
For a while I struggled using a recursive wget on the `print` page and using
calibre's `ebook-convert`.
Last week I finally found [mdbook-epub][0] which seems to do a fine job! The
standalone binary choked on some codeblocks, but using it as a plugin worked
great.
[0]: [https://github.com/Michael-F-Bryan/mdbook-
epub/blob/master/R...](https://github.com/Michael-F-Bryan/mdbook-
epub/blob/master/README.md)
------
bluejekyll
mdbook is one of the tools I have grown to use and love so much. One of the
things I love about it is that the toolchain for building and using it is just
the Rust standard toolchain, which means no crazy dependency hell to manage.
By comparison I’ve found Jekyll to be a long-term annoyance to keep up-to-
date, I’m probably using it wrong. I know.
Anyway, beyond that, it’s one of the few Rust tools that I’ve gotten decent
adoption of at work, due to its simple nature.
Just wanted to say nice work to everyone who’s contributed to the project.
~~~
mrec
For using it on Win/Mac/Linux you don't even need the Rust standard toolchain;
just download the standalone executable. No runtime, no npm, sheer bliss.
------
ipnon
From a theoretical perspective, it would be nicer to have a "programming"
language for writing modern, online books than to have a Markdown compiler for
the same purpose, because Markdown is not a programming language. Markdown has
no authoritative definition. It's more like a family of similar HTML macro
collections.
~~~
the_pwner224
I recently switched from Markdown to AsciiDoc. It is much better in my
opinion. The syntax is similar enough to MD that just having the adoc
cheatsheet bookmarked is enough to switch. But it's more structured, much more
fully featured, just two big implementations (AsciiDoc and AsciiDoctor) which
are largely compatible. There's only one way to mark the language of a code
block, only one way to make lists, only one way to make footnotes, etc. Also
it actually has first-class support for things like footnotes and
admonitions[0] etc.
It is a syntactic sugar layer on the DocBook XML format which is apparently
used to make actual books. But AsciiDoctor compiles it to everything from
DocBook XML to HTML to Markdown to ePub to PDF.
Another thing I like is that AsciiDoctor actually comes with a good default
stylesheet. If you just turn MD into HTML you get ugly garbage and need to
figure out how to put CSS into the HTML etc. AsciiDoctor has a good default
theme as well as a number of other themes available[1], and by default will
embed the CSS into the HTML so you just have one file to distribute. It even
shows anchor links to the headings when you hover over them.
[0]: [https://asciidoctor.org/docs/asciidoc-writers-
guide/#admonit...](https://asciidoctor.org/docs/asciidoc-writers-
guide/#admonitions)
[1]: this made it easier for me to add the themes, and includes more beyond
the ones bundled with adoc: [https://github.com/darshandsoni/asciidoctor-
skins](https://github.com/darshandsoni/asciidoctor-skins)
------
imroot
I use softcover for this:
* [https://github.com/softcover/softcover](https://github.com/softcover/softcover)
One of the things that I like about Softcover is that it will also build .mobi
and .epub formats, so I can give developers (via our MDM system) copies of
runbooks, and then revoke those copies once they leave our employer.
~~~
616c
That's a really neat concept, thank you.
------
taftster
Is there any comparison of mdBook to AsciiDoc? It seems the SUMMARY.md page of
mdBook is critical to promote markdown effectively into a "book" presentation,
something that feels more like on addon specification to markdown that is
already handled in asciidoc? What advantage does mdBook give you then?
~~~
steveklabnik
It is sort of comparing apples to oranges. AsciiDoc is a markup language for
documentation. mdBook is a tool that uses the Markdown markup language, and
adds a bit of structure so that you get something that appears coherent.
> What advantage does mdBook give you then?
If you prefer Markdown to Asciidoc, then mdBook would be a better fit.
------
atrilumen
Is it still connecting to Google Fonts?
Open Issue:
Remove Google surveillance #847
[https://github.com/rust-lang/mdBook/issues/847](https://github.com/rust-
lang/mdBook/issues/847)
~~~
steveklabnik
By default, yes. Anyone can fix that in their books in the meantime by
generating the theme and then deleting some lines.
It is tough to get contributors and maintainers of projects like this, and
this issue in particular has been bombed by folks who don't even use Rust and
are acting like the sky is falling. It's incredibly demotivating.
~~~
wccrawford
I wish people in general could get used to the idea that not everything is
designed with them in mind, and they might not be the intended audience.
If privacy is your number one priority and you absolutely can't have Google
"spying" on you, then a lot of software and websites probably just aren't for
you.
Instead, they bombard people who are doing great things for free, making them
make little changes to please them instead of great changes that could please
most people.
I'd be less critical of them if they were submitting PRs instead of just bug
reports.
~~~
Arnavion
>I'd be less critical of them if they were submitting PRs instead of just bug
reports.
So, exactly what the author of that issue did on the same day they made the
issue.
~~~
wccrawford
So, they _did_ submit a PR (which is great!), but it wasn't acceptable to the
maintainer. Other things were suggested, but none of the PRs met the
requirements, and so none were accepted.
------
saurabhnanda
Is there a link to sample books rendered using this tool? Did I miss it in the
README?
~~~
karlicoss
Right in the beginning of readme! :) [https://github.com/rust-
lang/mdBook#what-does-it-look-like](https://github.com/rust-lang/mdBook#what-
does-it-look-like)
There is also a collection of mdbooks by other people
[https://github.com/softprops/awesome-
mdbook](https://github.com/softprops/awesome-mdbook)
And a shameless plug, I'm using mdbook to publish my org-mode notes
[https://beepb00p.xyz/exobrain/](https://beepb00p.xyz/exobrain/)
------
dhbradshaw
I've been using mdBook for awhile to keep a personal journal and also
separately to keep a work log.
I really like being able to keep notes in Markdown tracked in git and at the
same time being able to view and search through those notes in the form of a
nice looking web book.
~~~
Poems
That's really interesting, do you mind sharing how you set it up for notes and
a work log?
~~~
dhbradshaw
I leave it in standard configuration, but fill in Summary.md by adding new
content to the top. That way when I open it I see the most recent notes first.
I have a shell script that opens vscode and starts mdbook. For my journal the
script also checks to see if there's an entry for today. If there isn't, it
will add one to the top of Summary.md, which then creates a new file for me to
write in for that day. In the meantime mdbook has opened up the book for me to
look at that side.
When I open the book I see what I wrote more recently and can also go back to
documents from the past.
------
dchuk
What’s my best option if I want to write an online book in this style but from
an IPad? It seems like I’m stuck using something like Ulysses and the setting
up a tool chain on a VPS or something... anyone have any tips?
~~~
karlicoss
Not sure what's Ulysses, but you could probably set a Github action for it?
This way it would be rebuilt and deployed on pushing into your git repository
(hopefully it's possible to work with git from an ipad?)
[https://github.com/peaceiris/actions-
mdbook](https://github.com/peaceiris/actions-mdbook)
~~~
Jtsummers
It is possible to work with git from an iPad. I've set up a similar workflow
(not for mdBook but for gitbook) a long time ago. I used Working Copy and
Textastic.
------
ollerac
This looks really nice on mobile and the default typography is great. I've
been looking for something like this for a while to publish a few short non-
technical books I've been working on.
I'll definitely give it a try!
------
karmakaze
Are there any plans to add more interactive features, or is the expected use
more static? e.g.
- Tabs
- Variants (like language selection)
If it already has these, awesome!
------
marvindanig
ack, no. online websites, files and webpages. going by the strict definition
of a book none of those online things are books though.
------
bachmeier
"Create book from markdown files. Like Gitbook but implemented in Rust"
Now that's one hell of a good reason to use it. It's reimplements existing
functionality in Rust!
~~~
karlicoss
Perhaps the readme should emphasise it, but the gitbook public repository was
abandoned by the company who open sourced it.
~~~
steveklabnik
I actually did not know this until this comment.
mdbook was originally created because we liked the UX of gitbook, but didn't
want to introduce a Node dependency into building Rust.
~~~
bachmeier
That would certainly be useful information to provide in the readme. I'd never
heard of gitbook or mdbook before this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NASA 'alien life' announcement leaked - ljf
http://www.longislandpress.com/2010/12/02/nasa-announcement-leaked-nasa-arsenic-announcement-thursday-leaked/
======
RiderOfGiraffes
Choose your news source for this story:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962894> \- go.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962893> \- nytimes.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962846> \- nature.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962696> \- longislandpress.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962386> \- gizmodo.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962200> \- gizmodo.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962110> \- google.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1957823> \- skymania.com
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1953228> \- kottke.org
~~~
bradfordw
You can even follow ArsenicBacteria on the twitters.
------
gort
Nature News:
[http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101202/full/news.2010.645.ht...](http://www.nature.com/news/2010/101202/full/news.2010.645.html)
[Edit] They are calling it a member of the Halomonadaceae, which means it is
descended from the common ancestor of that group, and so does not represent a
second, independant origin of life.
~~~
vinhboy
You know what I don't get. Why is this NASA news?
~~~
cryptoz
The scientists that made the discovery work for NASA. Edit: That is to say,
the work that led to this discovery was funded by NASA, and was done to gain
information about how to look for life on other planets.
------
teilo
From everything I have read so far, it seems that this is not so much a case
of life evolving separately, but rather a simple, albeit unique, case of
natural selection.
If a bacteria could evolve to tolerate arsenic, it could then use arsenic as a
substitute for phosphorus. That appears to be the case with the Mono Lake
species.
Yes, it opens up the possible chemical signatures for life to be found
elsewhere, but I would hardly call it "alien life".
~~~
aditya
Depends on how you define "alien", right? Alien as in different from human,
then this qualifies. Alien as in extraterrestrial (ie. not originating on
Earth), then this doesn't.
The bigger question, in my mind, is can you evolve a sentient species (in a
few million years) from this microbe? And what would happen if we threw this
microbe on Mars or Venus? Would natural selection allow it to thrive there?
------
ryandvm
Does Julian Assange have no limits?
[I'm saving my insightful commentary on extraterrestrial life for the Hacker
News post _after_ the press conference...]
~~~
kiiski
What does Julian Assange have to do with this? I didn't see any mention of him
or wikileaks in the article.
~~~
cypherpunks01
The joke being that Assange leaked the announcement before the press
conference, if that wasn't clear enough... : )
------
ericb
If this is true, life evolving twice right here would have implications for
what we would plug into the Drake equation, and make the deafening silence so
far even a bit more eerie.
edit: It sounded like a separate evolutionary path initially before the actual
announcement--that is what I was saying "if this is true" about.
~~~
JabavuAdams
Why would we expect anything other than silence? The universe is big, but time
is long.
The chances of two active technological species overlapping in time is pretty
low. I'd expect to find a lot of ruins and artifacts out there.
~~~
ceejayoz
> The chances of two active technological species overlapping in time is
> pretty low.
There are some pretty big assumptions about how long a technological species
lasts in that statement.
~~~
sfphotoarts
... and likely _accurate_ assumptions, if the last 100 years is anything to go
on.
~~~
ceejayoz
There are lots of alternative explanations proposed. Quick transitions into
more advanced, less detectable communication technologies, for example.
~~~
JabavuAdams
Or less detectable life-forms. I.e. we're wired to ascribe intelligence to
human-like intelligence. Something radically different or developed might not
look like intelligence to us.
E.g. Are those proto-stars in a nebula? Or is that some transcendent
intelligence's weekend project or substrate or waste matter?
------
ljf
Which marries with the speculation from yesterday:
[http://skymania.com/wp/2010/11/alien-life-form-is-here-on-
ea...](http://skymania.com/wp/2010/11/alien-life-form-is-here-on-earth.html/)
(Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1957823> )
~~~
ljf
The live announcement will be viewable here:
<http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html>
------
psadauskas
Phil Plait on Bad Astronomy has a really good write-up about it, and why it
matters to exobiology:
[http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/12/02/na...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/12/02/nasas-
real-news-bacterium-on-earth-that-lives-off-arsenic/)
------
jim_h
Article from 2 years ago on the 'Arsenic-loving bacteria'
[http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2008/August/15080802....](http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/News/2008/August/15080802.asp)
------
andreyf
I think I remember my dad telling me of this as theoretically possible in the
early 90's (he's a biologist).
------
T_S_
If it didn't use DNA I'd be even more impressed.
It's great that they leaked it, though. My 9th graders' science class is going
to tune in live, thanks to the leak. Good opportunity to make science seem
timely and relevant to kids.
~~~
ceejayoz
Technically, it's not DNA, as it lacks the phosphate groups that are in
DNA/RNA nucleotides.
~~~
T_S_
Your point is well-taken. I was reacting to the early hype that suggested
these bugs may have originated completely independently of other life on
earth. If the organism evolved to use arsenic as a replacement for phosphate
in a DNA-like chemical, I'm not sure if the independent origins hypothesis is
really warranted. The Nature summary I saw today did not mention anything like
that. The nature of hype I guess.
------
mfukar
I knew they couldn't keep their mouth shut.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Git: Grafting repositories - ben_straub
http://ben.straubnet.net/post/939181602/git-grafting-repositories
======
tzs
There's no need for grafts for what they are doing. "git filter-branch
--parent-filter" will do what they want without any need to much around by
hand with anything in the .git directory. There's even an example in the man
page for that command showing how to use it for exactly what they are doing.
------
avar
Grafts allow you to do a bunch of other neat stuff. I use Git as a backup
system for SQL dumps, but since the repository will grow a lot I want to throw
old dumps away.
So I just create a graft and rewrite my history so that it only contains 7
commits (7 days):
git rev-list HEAD | sed '7q;d' > .git/info/grafts &&
git filter-branch -f HEAD
------
seiji
I had to deal with this a while ago. Scripts resulting from my troubles are at
<http://github.com/mattsta/git-shrink>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Senators to Apple: Pull iPhone DUI checkpoint alert apps - pwg
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9214928/Senators_to_Apple_Pull_iPhone_DUI_checkpoint_alert_apps
======
jseliger
My reaction to this was to buy the app.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Billionaires vs. The Press in the Era of Trump - JumpCrisscross
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/22/magazine/billionaires-vs-the-press-in-the-era-of-trump.html?em_pos=small&emc=edit_dk_20161122&nl=dealbook&nl_art=8&nlid=65508833&ref=headline&te=1
======
internaut
Alternative View:
The New York Time is at the heart of a network that controls a huge part of
Washington's mindshare. The paper itself is something like the top portion of
a considerably larger iceberg.
Consider for a moment the possibility that if state controlled media is a
problem, which of course it is, then a corollary of that thought is that if
the media controls the state then it is also a problem. Is that a realistic
proposition?
To be non-abstract; the New York Times makes no secret of the fact it sees its
role as an agent of change within the Western world. It is not merely
reporting the news in an information discovery process. Former NYT employees
like Michael Cieply state that the NYT has a plan it calls 'The Narrative'
which it plans years in advance. Stories are wrapped around this to keep on
message. It is functionally identical to the concept of a party line, except a
political party does this publicly and these memos are not made overt to their
readership. They are a newspaper coupled with a think tank agency which
operates together to form opinion.
Perhaps just as important, I believe the NYT also determines the _priority_ of
news headlines across the world. Without fail, if I spot a certain news
headline in a local Dublin paper, you may be sure the agenda was set by the
NYT. I am reminded of how so much Net culture is downstream from 4chan and
Reddit. There's an organization that determines what 'colour' is in this year
for fashion. NYT does that for the 'issues'.
What I am describing here is not just syndication. Every major broadsheet in
the West has many of the same stories and offers similar conclusions. Much of
this is inorganic. When enough people think the same thoughts, even using the
same phrases and words, using the same chains of logic, then they are either
in the same culture or they are being unwittingly subscribed to a narrative.
I noticed this myself because I used to be belong to a proselyting cult. They
have periodicals which they spread across the world in many different
languages. The local context would change, but at the end of each article,
whether it is religious or general interest, there will be a remark alluding
to or tying in a 'faith based interpretation'. To a non-believer this is
tediously obvious. Believers are but dimly aware of the tactic. The new
thought slides into their mind well greased. Later they are impressed that
other believers had similar parallel thoughts. How much I have in common with
my fellows! Warm feelings result and a sense of _being special_.
This is how you traffic shape human thought across a population. The fact is
that for persons of normal intelligence and experience there are only so many
possible branches in human reasoning when presented with limited data. I'm not
calling it pyschohistory, but I think a clever Narritive caretaker is well
able to predict the trajectory of thought in advance.
The simple truth, and I think of this as our dirty little secret, is that
we're not as unique as we popularly imagine ourselves to be. I think the
Internet has made that much clearer than before. I imagine for example, that
while reading this you thought: "yeah this is not new information, we knew
that already".
I am not calling this all bad. I think some of what I'm describing is a
natural outcome.
The basic problem with this is that every once in a while, they get something
really, really wrong. The Narrative stops matching reality. I'm sure over your
lifetime you've spotted this happening under a wide array of circumstances.
My suspicion is that mindshare coordination is useful to society up to a
certain point of complexity, and thereafter it is better to be less
coordinated for reasons Taleb outlined with his anti-fragile concept. If you
live in a world where everybody is going along the same path, then having a
strong contrarian bias is going to continually pay off even if you get some
commonsense things wrong.
One item that struck me as interesting is that Chomsky and Moldbug had a
problem with the NYT. They have different takes on what is wrong with the
world, but I think their basic intuition is bang on.
tldr; The New York Times is a political actor. If you want to be different it
is easy. Throw away your newspaper and television. Stay on the Net with your
fellow weirdos. We have hivemind too of course but don't you prefer organic
mindfoods?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Samsung core confirmed inside iPhone 4S - Garbage
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20122324-64/samsung-core-confirmed-inside-iphone-4s/
======
Mordor
It's an ARM core on a chip manufactured by Samsung (i.e. not a Samsung core).
Also, if the "A5 is SoC including RAM", then the RAM is on the same piece of
silicon as the ARM core (for it to be SoC). Not sure how it's possible for
Samsung to make part of the silicon (for the core) and someone else to make
the RAM. Perhaps the RAM isn't on the A5 after all ;-)
There's no risk in Apple switching manufacturers (e.g. Samsung Nexus uses a TI
OMAP SoC CPU, instead of a Samsung Exynos for the Galaxy S II). Switching to
Intel is the massive risk, since they don't use ARM cores at all, so the O/S
would require a rewrite.
Finally, the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture isn't aimed at lower power computing
(Intel Atom chips are based on the Bonnell microarchitecture), so there's
unlikely be 3D transistor technology...
Apple's real move would be to drop the A6 entirely and focus on the same CPU's
used by Android, since the both Android and Apple are using ARM V7 instruction
sets with Cortex A9 cores.
~~~
willyt
> Switching to Intel is the massive risk, since they don't use ARM cores at
> all, so the O/S would require a rewrite
I think the idea behind the Intel rumour is that Intel would 'just' be a fab
in this scenario. They would license the ARM tech and fab the A6, so the story
goes...
~~~
Mordor
That's an even bigger story, as it would mean Intel is no longer able to
design CPU's LOL
------
CountSessine
It would be interesting to know what the politics inside Samsung are vis-a-vis
the dispute with Apple. It's hard to believe that the silicon people were
thrilled with the mobile division kicking sand in their biggest customer's
face. If Samsung's mobile division gets a little bit bigger and their
components business gets a little bit smaller, is this a net-win for them?
~~~
nknight
I wonder what Samsung's long-extant mobile division thought of Samsung's
silicon division getting in bed with a competitor?
~~~
piotrSikora
"Business as usual."
------
ohboy
If they're still dependent on Samsung for their main processor it kinda makes
you wonder how well they're doing finding another processor for the iPhone 5.
I know the 4S just came out but traditionally iPhones have come out over the
summer so we _might_ see the iPhone 5 as soon as 7 months from now.
------
wmf
There's not much of a story here. Where chips are fabbed doesn't matter than
much. When the A5 came out in the iPad 2, it was manufactured by Samsung (that
decision was probably made around two years ago) and nothing has changed since
then.
------
2muchcoffeeman
How long does a contract to supply silicon usually last?
~~~
protomyth
Varies pretty heavily and could be many years. Check all the wrangling when
Apple bought P.A. Semi. The DoD contracts can go on for more than a decade.
------
latch
i remember reading that apple tended to financially help companies set up new
fabs/equipment/whatever in exchange for fairly long term contracts. For
example, when they do a die-shrink, apple might pay 30% of the cost to upgrade
the fab, in exchange for preferred (in terms of quality and price) chips for X
years. No source, too lazy.
------
ck2
Corporations as large as both of them really do not care.
Greed for profits overrides any "pride". Happens all the time.
Google is still paying Mozilla millions for home page links right?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Beware of the Silicon Valley Cult - swimorsinka
http://thinkfaster.co/2015/12/beware-of-the-silicon-valley-cult/
======
wayofthesamurai
In general I agree with the sentiment, but calling it a "cult" might be a
little too extreme.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Unopinionated framework faster than everything (0kb raw and gzipped) - saddam96
https://github.com/undefinedbuddy/vanilla
======
throwanem
"Unopinionated"? This is nothing _but_ the expression of an opinion.
------
zelphirkalt
It's a terrible framework, but it works and many successful projects have been
built on top of it.
------
Kaze404
This is a really bad shitpost
------
eska
The algebraic effects link made my head spin.. So webdevs go from synchronous,
to callback hell, to async await, to callfrom?
I start to understand more and more why I see so many frontend devs learn
about Rust as an alternative for the near future.
~~~
dgb23
I write vanilla JS for a majority of projects. If you adhere to a certain code
structure it is quite productive and maintainable, while avoiding
dependencies.
But that is _only_ when I don't have a choice over the template engine.
In reality it is: a template engine + vanilla JS vs. React. And as soon as you
also need to do client side routing and manage state across page transitions
you are in a world of hurt with the former (exaggerating, in comparison).
This is why I prefer React and frameworks like Nextjs.
With Nextjs you get a full-blown solution that is feasible and performant for
both simple and complex sites, a convenient top level structure, complete
control over when you render (SSG/SSR/CSR) and a _uniform_ way to build your
UI (JS + React).
And in some cases a React SPA is just right, especially if your website is
mostly a structured "CRUD" UI, since these are (hopefully) designed in a very
consistent way, so you end up updating small pieces of your DOM with every
transition/action.
The alternative is not "Just use Vanilla-JS", it is a hodgepodge of languages,
code/logic duplication and choices/trade-offs that you need to make such as
"where is the right place for this thing" etc.
~~~
saddam96
It's great to hear you use plain JS for most of your projects when there are
so many frameworks out in the world. In these times, developers are often
fooled into thinking their applications won't 'scale' if they don't use
frameworks or opinionated UI patterns.
This is why even the most basic of web applications will be using a framework
(I'm not referring to Web Components consumers).
Sometimes, said frameworks and patterns become convoluted and make things
cumbersome. On top of that, many will be using bundlers, transpilers for
syntax and polyfills, etc. Of course, some of these frameworks are not so tied
to build tools and will have ESM support, but the __convention __is what will
strictly differ.
Nevertheless, with some abstractions, frameworks make building web
applications fun. However, those abstractions should not be a cause for users
paying a hefty price when performance kicks in. Most of the time, these
frameworks won't give you a choice. "You pay for what you use" sorta thing.
I really like your conclusion and I totally agree frameworks fit somewhere
(large, actually). I just don't get why shipping bulk JavaScript is a price we
have to pay. That is why Preact and Svelte have an upper hand in this case.
My take: I'd rather use Vanilla for building my projects instead of a
combination of:
1\. React with ReactDOM, ReactRouter, React-X, React-Y, React-Z
2\. Angular and RxJS
3\. Ember with GlimmerVM
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google images get content, color filters - strangely useful - anigbrowl
http://images.google.com/images?q=bob+dobbs&imgtype=face&as_st=y&hl=en&safe=off&rlz=1C1GGLS_enUS322US322&sa=N&um=1&imgcolor=red
======
barrybe
Related:
Search Flickr by color: <http://labs.ideeinc.com/multicolr> . This one lets
you pick a palette of several colors, and the UI looks better.
Various other crazy ways to search Flickr:
<http://mashable.com/2007/07/11/browse-flickr-photos/>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Schneier on Security: Ass Bomber - billpg
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/09/ass_bomber.html
======
byrneseyeview
Amazing. A reddit commenter (pica, for those who were there from the
beginning) once suggested doing exactly this as a way to mess with the TSA. He
also suggested forcing the TSA to do racial profiling; if a shoe-bomber means
everyone with shoes is a suspect, what does an Afro-bomber mean?
------
idm
I wonder if there's any value in "lobbying" the TSA to implement rectal
searches on the basis of this story. It's the reducito ad absurdum tactic: if
the lobbying were successful, there's no way there _wouldn't_ be backlash,
right? As a result, we'd have people lobbying for sensible security, right?
Please?
Of course, the worst case scenario is that the TSA caves in to the pressure,
starts rectal searches, and keeps doing it... and then _I_ get searched.
~~~
daniel-cussen
Or you stop flying and start taking the bus.
~~~
mahmud
I drove to Australia, mainly to limit my carbon footprint but also to avoid
the merciless torture that is in-flight entertainment. Delta runs the golden
collection of _Adam Sandler: Auteur_.
------
rfreytag
Here comes millimeter-wave scanning
([http://www.manolith.com/2009/05/18/whole-body-imaging-is-
who...](http://www.manolith.com/2009/05/18/whole-body-imaging-is-wholly-
frightening/))
~~~
jrockway
It is interesting that people are so upset about being "naked" on a screen
somewhere. I find it much more troubling for someone to root through my
consciously-collected possessions. That says a lot more about who I am than my
standard-issue body that is pretty much the same as 3 billion other people's.
Yet nobody has any problems with that -- only being "naked".
~~~
derefr
That's the point: people got to pick their stuff, so they're generally proud
to show it off. People didn't get to pick their bodies, so they're generally
embarrassed by them.
------
tomjen2
I wonder what TSA is going to do now. The public won't stand for anal-searches
each time they are going to fly, but on the other hand they would have to
appear to be doing _something_.
~~~
GiraffeNecktie
"The public won't stand for anal-searches ..."
Well, you certainly can't expect to do them sitting down!
~~~
die_sekte
"Now slide your pants down and sit on that gloved hand."
Well yes, you can.
------
webscaler
I prefer Una Bomber.
------
tfh
People will always figure ways out to harm the guys opressing them. The best
way to avoid that is not to give them a reason.
I admid that millimeter-wave scanning is really useful but not in the field of
preventing terrorism.
~~~
jerf
That's terribly naive.
I challenge you to find one person in the world that there isn't at least one
other person who wants to kill them. You can't. No matter who you pick,
someone wants to kill them for their race, or because they are mixed race and
therefore traitors. In fact, you can find someone for each component race.
Someone wants to kill them for their religion, regardless of what it is.
Someone wants to kill them for their economic system, regardless of what it
is. Someone wants to kill them for their position on abortion, regardless of
what it is.
And don't forget the crazies, because some of them are actually capable of
pulling stuff off, despite their crazy.
How much more so for entire countries.
~~~
eru
I only need to find someone that wants to kill everybody including himself for
your thesis to come through. But what do we learn of it?
Nobody's going to attack the Swiss.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
32blit: Retro-inspired handheld with open-source firmware - jimmcslim
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/pimoroni/32blit-retro-inspired-handheld-with-open-source-fi
======
jimmcslim
An alternative, of sorts, to the Playdate from Panic/Teenage Engineering...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chrome for Mac now more resource efficient, lighter on battery consumption - acdanger
http://betanews.com/2015/06/12/chrome-for-mac-now-more-resource-efficient-lighter-on-battery-consumption/
======
kolev
Chrome is a giant resource hog - compared to Safari or Firefox. I switched
back to Firefox Developer Edition after having Chrome use tens of gigabytes of
virtual memory for just a few open tabs for a couple of hours. The new SHA1
SSL blocking signed its death sentence - the road to hell is paved with good
intentions, right?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
‘I knew that a battlefield of suffering was in my eyes': Frida Kahlo - endswapper
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/in-sight/wp/2017/01/13/i-knew-that-a-battlefield-of-suffering-was-in-my-eyes-the-many-faces-of-frida-kahlo/?hpid=hp_no-name_photo-story-a%3Ahomepage%2Fstory
======
endswapper
NB: Title edited for space.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Website outages and blackouts the right way - bhartzer
https://plus.google.com/115984868678744352358/posts/Gas8vjZ5fmB
======
ndefinite
Repeat post, the earlier HN conversation is ongoing here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3470396>
------
bhartzer
The most important point: Webmasters should return a 503 HTTP header for all
the URLs participating in the blackout
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Outages at rackspace Email and App services - leejoramo
http://status.apps.rackspace.com/
======
leejoramo
Nearly all of our clients called within minutes of SMTP being disrupted. So
much for the email is dead meme.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you use a pricing strategy based on a geolocation? - s-stude
Hello, hackernews-ers.<p>I'm interested in a feedback for a geolocation based pricing strategy for an online e-commerce application. Does anybody use that already? What do you think about the strategy?<p>E.g. I can market some items on the highest price for customers from large cities but give a discount for customers from small to mid-size cities. (I can generate more cases here...)<p>What do you think about this?
======
bobfirestone
If I find out a company I do business with is charging me more because of
where I live I'm never giving them another penny.
------
smt88
You should consult a lawyer about your strategies if you plan to operate in
the US. There are lots of laws in the US about price discrimination.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tubes vs. Torrents: The Ethics of Piracy - rbanffy
http://graphicdescriptions.com/28-tubes-vs-torrents-the-ethics-of-piracy
======
AnthonyMouse
That blog has a surreal intersection with the issues people talk about on HN.
Put aside the politics of pornography. She's a content creator trying to make
a living, trying to have a reasoned discussion about how to make that happen.
But she can't get paid because we don't have easy, secure, anonymous payment
systems, and her customers won't trust small time studios with credit card or
personally identifying information because they don't want to get double
charged by unscrupulous bastards or end up in a database.
So customers don't have a good way to pay her which means her work is
inevitably going to get pirated more often than bought. At that point she
wants the rational next best thing, which is to distribute her work for free
to as many people as possible, because the only way to make money when only a
small percentage of people pay is to grow your fan base so that it's a small
percentage of many people. Which means that what she wants is a platform for
community engagement -- something like BitTorrent and The Pirate Bay which is
open to everyone and doesn't censor anything or divert your viewers to your
direct competitors. But those platforms and their users are under attack by
the aforementioned unscrupulous bastards and their extortionate "settlement
letters" that push users to their own streaming sites.
So she writes a very reasoned explanation of this, only to have her entirely-
not-inappropriate reasoned discussion blocked by overzealous corporate proxy
servers.
Which can only lead to the conclusion that this content creator would be
better off if the likes of Bitcoin, BitTorrent and Tor were more widely used.
Yet people keep saying that stuff is only useful to criminals.
~~~
Goronmon
_So she writes a very reasoned explanation of this, only to have her entirely-
not-inappropriate reasoned discussion blocked by overzealous corporate proxy
servers._
To be fair, I did see an ad for a Fleshlight product when I visited the page.
~~~
AnthonyMouse
The ad and the nature of the site is obviously the reason the page is blocked.
But the page is still blocked.
If you mean to argue that this isn't a false positive, I disagree. It's just
an extraordinarily hard false positive to avoid. The post and the ad shown
contain no pornography but they're _about_ pornography and other content from
the same source might. None of the filters are that granular.
And that's the problem. Nobody's boss has any justifiable reason to allow
their employees to read HN but not the post in question, but the burden of
false positives doesn't fall predominantly on the company with the filter or
even its employees. It's a negative externality that harms the author of the
blocked content even though she has no ability to fix the filter.
So filters with false positives are a bug and anti-filtering proxies like Tor
are the patch. Which is why everyone benefits when they're more widely
deployed.
------
smcl
Just a heads-up, this appears to be _related_ to NSFW content. I say "appears
to be" because I got a nasty "you're trying to access some sketchy domain and
your admin has been notified" warning when accessing this through my work
computer. Nothing in the title or URL seems to suggest this so I figured I'd
share share in case anyone else may have a similar setup.
~~~
nsnick
Why would you work for a company that censors your internet?
~~~
Strang
I work for a great company and I'm happy with my job. They also happen to
censor my internet (very mildly, I should add). In fact, there are plenty of
sectors where all viable positions would include internet blacklisting. And
finally, plenty of people can't be so picky about their jobs to make litmus
tests out of relatively minor factors like this.
------
emehrkay
This was an interesting read. It is pretty crazy, and easy to parallel to
something like Youtube, how the Manwin empire is built on linking to work that
someone else produced and using the ad money to buy the creators of that work
out. I wonder if Manwin makes an effort to keep content that Manwin-owned
properties put behind a paywall off of the tube sites.
~~~
towelguy
Well they have a monopoly on tube sites, I don't think they'd care enough to
keep their content outside the few others.
BTW, CreativeCommons BY-NC-SA porn videos is a great move.
------
diminoten
Pulling a Louie, I see.
Good. More people should.
If this works out for Stoya like it did for Louie, you should see work from
new/upcoming artists coming from her studio soon after the business method is
validated.
Porn and comedy. Really the same, when you get down to it.
------
k__
In Germany you can get sued if you use Torrents, but you can't if you use a
streaming service, because your're not the distributor.
So many people stopped torrenting at all and started streaming all their video
needs.
It's also faster for smaller things, like those clips mentioned by her.
For this particular type of content it's simply the superior platform :\
~~~
weinzierl
That isn't wrong, but a bit oversimplified. The difference between streaming
and Torrents is that it's easy to get hold of the IP addresses of Torrent
users but difficult for streamers[1].
The situation is special in Germany because:
1\. It is possible go get the name and postal addresses if you have the IP
address. The lawyer just asserts infringement and the prosecutor will hand it
over.
2\. Legal fees for cease and desist letters are based on the amount in
controversy and to be paid by the addressee.
No lawsuit will be filed, just a cease and desist letter sent with a
fictitious amount. People will pay out of fear, it's border line extortion.
As far as I can tell, Torrents are dead in Germany.
[1] Assuming the copyright holders don't cooperate with the streaming
services.
~~~
Kenji
You are mistaken. In many countries an explicit, legal line is drawn between
uploading and downloading copyrighted material, and some allow downloading
because otherwise clicking on a link might already incriminate you. What k___
is saying is that it's the illegal upload part that moves people away from
torrent.
~~~
weinzierl
In many countries an explicit, legal line is drawn
between uploading and downloading copyrighted material,
Not true in Germany, as far as I know.
Nach aktuellem Urheberrecht stellen sowohl Download als
auch Upload eine Urheberrechtsverletzung dar und sind
als solche prinzipiell auch strafbar. [1]
My translation:
Under the current copyright law both download
as well as upload are copyright infringement and
as such, in principle, punishable.
and some allow downloading because otherwise clicking
on a link might already incriminate you.
In Germany it does. The most prominent case, so far, was when in 2013 the law
firm Urmann + Collegen sent a large number of cease and desist letters to
people that used a popular adult video portal. They obtained the IP addresses
from ads they allegedly published themselves. This was major news in Germany.
The reason it doesn't happen more often is that going against Torrent users is
much easier and less risky for the law firm. Urmann + Collegen went bankrupt
in 2014 from the fall out of this case, but this is the exception.
I don't have a number for 2013, but in 2011 the mentioned law firm alone sent
70000 cease and desist letters amounting 90 million Euro.
What k___ is saying is that it's the illegal upload part that moves
people away from torrent.
I understood, but that's not relevant for Germany. Even if it was true it
wouldn't matter, because the two points I mentioned give the cease and desist
lawyers (Abmahnanwälte) a much easier way to go against downloaders.
[1] [http://www.rechtsanwaltskanzlei-
urheberrecht.de/news/Abmahnu...](http://www.rechtsanwaltskanzlei-
urheberrecht.de/news/Abmahnung_Download_Uplo)
------
Padding
I agree with the sentiment. Charging for pirated content is among the worst
things someone can do. It’s also why I was at least a little bit glad when the
megaupload/rapidshare sites were taken down. There may be an argument to be
made about traffic costs and the like, but that doesn’t legitimize anything.
Nevertheless, the real issue here is that those services exist because there
is demand for them and the "legitimate suppliers" don’t seem to feel a need to
attend it. As Valve’s founder put it "Piracy is almost always a service
problem and not a pricing problem".
Is there any service out there with Netflix-level breadth of the titles
available? Is there any service out there that let‘s you watch without having
your name associated to "adult videos" in various databases? Is there anywhere
people can turn to when still underage? Is there anywhere people can go to for
getting the latest "fappening" leaks?
Hence piracy.
Yes, some of those reasons may be questionable or outright wrong, but given
that the situation is what it is, why not try to at least make the best out of
it and settle for some youtube-like service/agreement where the content
creators will get at least some share of he profits and at least some control
over the contents can be retained?
The argument about torrents vs "tubes" however seems pretty irrelevant. If you
want HQ videos, don’t mind the wait and have plenty of storage available then
torrents are likely the better choice. If you need something _right now_ ,
don’t have much bandwith or storage and don’t care much for quality, a
steaming service might work well enough for you. That there exist some
unscrupulous streaming service providers is no different from torrents
containing malware or torrent-indexing/tracking-sites/communities engaging in
similar behavior as streaming services.
------
towelguy
> Long term crew members have found themselves replaced by inexperienced
> people willing to do their jobs for lower pay. The quality of videos made
> under these conditions tends to suffer.
Do people care that much about video quality in porn? Hopefully the people
gone can use their experience and go to higher payed industries.
~~~
emodendroket
Like what? I mean, the problem that people with expertise are being replaced
by people without it but who will work for less is not a phenomenon unique to
this industry, in the first place (look at the rise of services like MyGengo
or Mechanical Turk or TaskRabbit or or or), and, besides that, if a whole
industry's worth of filming people are suddenly unemployed how can the other
industries (which are presumably already well-staffed) really absorb them all?
~~~
prawn
"people with expertise are being replaced by people without it"
Worth noting that the replacements presumably lack expertise _initially_ but
inevitably improve along the way. Being paid to learn isn't all bad and is
better than occurs for many trades.
~~~
emodendroket
Yeah but it's an ever-rotating parade of amateurs and since the road to
advancement is gone they don't stick around to build up the expertise. When I
was young you'd walk into a place selling hi-fi stereo equipment and the guy
there had worked in the field for decades and had some appreciable knowledge
of it. Does the guy at Best Buy do that?
~~~
cmdrfred
Best buy will never pay more than a few dollars above the minimum wage, thus
best buy has decided that the guy behind that counter will be pulled from the
lowest acceptable pool of candidates. I'm sure stores that have knowledgeable
people for that type of thing still exist, you just have to pay more for that
service. Myself, Ill just read the reviews on Amazon.
~~~
emodendroket
> Best buy will never pay more than a few dollars above the minimum wage, thus
> best buy has decided that the guy behind that counter will be pulled from
> the lowest acceptable pool of candidates. I'm sure stores that have
> knowledgeable people for that type of thing still exist, you just have to
> pay more for that service.
And so this brings us back to my initial contention. Yes. That's true. The
problem is that this sort of "good enough" stuff makes being an expert an
untenable position and those stores are pretty much just gone, even if you are
willing to pay (the pool of customers who are is too small to support it).
------
runn1ng
WiggleYourIndex, you are hellbanned, just fyi
------
fr0ggerrr
"Appears"?? I don't appreciate having fleshlight ads displayed on something I
read at school.
~~~
coldpie
Please install adblock plus.
~~~
Goronmon
Why? I have no problem with people trying to monetize they content they
generate.
------
dsjoerg
I wish I could write like that.
~~~
prawn
I checked the index to see what topics she typically covers and found a story
which I thought was well-written (NSFW for prudish workplaces; no
inappropriate images though) -
[http://graphicdescriptions.com/27-mitcz](http://graphicdescriptions.com/27-mitcz)
------
davidslv
why couldn't you put a NSFW tag? is that asking too much? Thanks for the
awkward office moment.
------
rythmshifter
tl;dr
I worked for a company that got screwed by shrewd business tactics. don't give
money to that company.
~~~
Goronmon
Not only is this not really a summary of the article, the little that is
there, is wrong.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Sun Microsystems’s Plan Of Revival Failed - dsr12
https://mobile.twitter.com/mcclure111/status/1196557401710837762
======
streetcat1
Sun would have lived today if they had not open-sourced java (or at least have
tiered pricing).
Not unlike docker (the company) today.
Solaris was probably the best OS ever made.
~~~
pstuart
Not sure about that. Linux + x86 killed their server market.
------
hindsightbias
Many companies had storageless internet clients 15-18 years ago.
Would have all worked had the Linux community had a viable desktop vs Msoft.
------
jibanes
I miss my sunray.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to implement a versioning schema - uptownhr
I have always wondered how versioning gets implemented on a project. I have started on a new open source project http://github.com/uptownhr/hackathon-starter-lite and want to implement a versioning schema. Any good resources for me to look at?
======
stray
Instead of using the public schema in your db, use schemas with version
numbers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cloud Cost Calculator - dataviz
http://blog.scalyr.com/2013/11/11/cloud-cost-calculator/
Direct link to the calculator -- https://www.scalyr.com/cloud/
======
dataviz
Direct link to the calculator --
[https://www.scalyr.com/cloud/](https://www.scalyr.com/cloud/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Should I develop my new ios app as Hybrid or native? - mandeepj
I have technical background and very good hold on asp.net mvc and overall Microsoft stack. I like to develop a new iOS app. I do not have any development experience with ios. I can learn xcode and objective c but i think it will get me side tracked from the over all focus of the application. There are lot of other components in the app architecure that I can develop like messaging platform etc.
I have two options to deal with my scenario -<p>1. Develop a hybrid app for first release using phoneGap so that app is out quickly
2. Hire a seasoned iphone app developer.<p>I have read few story about not so great performance of hybrid apps and that is what worries me when I think about choosing this option.<p>What you would recommend?
======
tiboll
since you're a .Net developer you should take a look at Xamarin
~~~
mandeepj
Thanks.
Xamarin is way behind ios native dev platform and it have issues.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
[2002] Distel: Distributed Emacs Lisp - swah
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19746944/distel-3.1.pdf
======
jonjacky
Pertinent recent project: pie, "Emacs written in Erlang", "Text is stored as a
tree of binaries ... Buffers are small servers"
[https://github.com/5HT/pie](https://github.com/5HT/pie)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Shepherd-js manage Javascript modules, your files are your modules. - jenhsun
http://xcambar.github.com/shepherd-js/
======
rationalthug
I had a negative reaction when I first saw the string literal syntax, but
after reading through your docs I can see the appeal. Using the Harmony syntax
seems like it could be a big win. RequireJS is the module loader I currently
use, but I'll give the source of Shepherd-js a once-over and if it looks
promising I'll give it a go.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Macpaint for the web written in Erlang & Erlyweb - vikram
http://vimagi.com
======
nickb
What a giant letdown! Not only did this POS app force me to register, the UI
looks NOHTING, and I mean NOTHING like Macpaint! It's made in Flash and has
ONE TOOL! have you ever seen Macpaint?
------
dbrush
Great, another competitor...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Emotionally focused couple therapy can help love last - raleighm
https://aeon.co/essays/how-emotionally-focused-couple-therapy-can-help-love-last
======
mlthoughts2018
> “Real love stories reflect the wisdom of attachment science, which states
> that love is an ancient survival code designed to keep a few precious others
> that we can count on close. We are wired by millions of years of evolution
> for this kind of connection, and it is as essential to us as our next
> breath.“
I _hate_ stuff like this because it’s some of the most “just-so” evolutionary
reasoning there is. It reminds me a lot of the way “ancient” or “evolutionary”
stories are used to justify fad diets.
No amount of statistical studies on current couples therapy outcomes can
confirm such a highly specific evolutionary marketing tag line. Not to mention
that, like with many parts of social science, we should be hugely skeptical of
the research basis for this technique.
I’d need much more compelling discussion of the study methodologies before
finding it worthwhile to invest in really reading them and deciding if there
is credibility to it, or if the outcomes are due to confounding factors or
selection effects.
But hearing just-so reasoning about attachment bonds is a non-starter. What
about forager societies with loose sexual norms and cultures that did not
emphasize monogamy or long-term partner bonding?
~~~
Erlich_Bachman
I wish I could upvote this many times. This "just so" reasoning about
evolution is basically pure pseudosience, and yet it is so prevalent in so
many books, seminars, videos of today... It's like people assume that if they
just think up of some reason that would losely make some vague sense and use
some of evolutionary terms, if there is a way to picture a mechanism that they
are describing and if that mechanism in the picture would have some
evolutionary mechanics - that it automaticallt means that it applies to
reality, to our physical historical evolution and the exact way that it played
out; that they understand the evolutionary traits of those
behaviors/qualities...
It's like they think that just because evolution itself is basically a status
quo in the scientific community, then any other random preposterous bs
argument that you make about it, or just use the evolutionary terms in, would
somehow automatically by association have as much predictive power/internal
coherence/pure basic connection to reality as the evolution itself. It's a
disgrace this is so prevalent nowadays... It is a clear sign that whoever
writes the content is no real scientist.
~~~
StavrosK
What irks me is that the every time someone finds an evolutionary reason for
something, it is just as easy to find an evolutionary reason to explain the
opposite of it, which makes the explanation useless.
For example, "men evolved to be promiscuous because having many children gave
the biggest chance at surviving offspring" makes sense until you realize "men
evolved to be faithful because nurturing their children gave them the biggest
chance at surviving offspring" makes just as much sense.
When your theory can explain everything, it can explain nothing.
~~~
kebbekaise
Both of those explanations vaguely make sense. And indeed both strategies are
seen in nature.
Neither approach is strictly better than the other. It's situational.
You gotta look at how many resources are available how easy and predation
pressure and probably lots of more factors.
~~~
MiroF
But this isn't falsifiable.
------
tony
I got the book by the author ( _Attachment Theory in Practice: Emotionally
Focused Therapy (EFT) with Individuals, Couples, and Families_ by Susan M.
Johnson) on kindle but haven't read it yet. I was on a book buying binge a few
weeks ago for anything related to attachment theory.
More on EFT:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotionally_focused_therapy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotionally_focused_therapy)
Regarding attachment theory itself: A major paper in adult attachment theory
is _Romantic Love Conceptualized as an Attachment Process_ ,
[https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1d36/ac75d7081fcd86d467f6d2...](https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1d36/ac75d7081fcd86d467f6d2ef408d60c8ffca.pdf).
For further reading, stuff by Cindy Hazan, Phillip Shaver, Mario Mikulincer is
good
Attachment theory originally was focused on early stage development in
children by John Bowlby. Later it was expanded as a way to conceptualize
relationships beyond the child and caregiver, things like friendships, work
colleagues, bandmates, etc.
Examples where modern attachment theory could be used formulate a hypothesis
(or analyze if you have more than conjecture):
\- why a band breaks up
\- why CrunchPad failed ([https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/30/crunchpad-
end/](https://techcrunch.com/2009/11/30/crunchpad-end/))
\- in interpersonal relations, contradictory, anxious, afraid, erratic
behavior - or on the other hand - secure and trusting around someone or a
group.
Attachment can explain lasting, functional relationships.
I guess in HN-speak, there could be dyads between startup co-founders, founder
<-> employee, investor <-> founder, employee <-> employee. Those cooperational
things bubble up into group dynamics and product formation / stuff shipping.
New startup idea: Founder therapy :)
~~~
gregsadetsky
I really enjoyed _Attached: The New Science of Adult Attachment and How It Can
Help You Find and Keep Love_ by Levine and Heller [0].
The description of the “types” (avoidant, secure, anxious) was very eye-
opening, especially while scoring your own “traits” / tendencies / “patterns”
for each type. You sorta know what it means when you answer “very likely” to
many questions that point to the same type.
As far as I understand, the book is based on this same Attachment theory —
it’s a lighter read / introduction to it, but still very good to get the point
across. (I didn’t find it as useful to help deal with / compensate for the
non-secure type’s thought patterns — not as much as David Burns’ wonderful
_Feeling Good_ , for instance)
[0] [https://www.amazon.ca/Attached-Science-Attachment-Find-
Keep/...](https://www.amazon.ca/Attached-Science-Attachment-Find-
Keep/dp/1585429139)
~~~
istjohn
If you like David Burns, let me recommend his _Feeling Good Podcast_. One of
the most impactful episodes is one where he works with a woman dying of
cancer. You can hear him apply his techniques to a seemingly hopeless
situation in real life. It was eye-opening for me, even having read _Feeling
Good_.
~~~
gregsadetsky
Thank you for the recommendation! From [0] (first question on the page), I
gather that you’re referring to Marilyn’s case?
Thanks again
[0] [https://feelinggood.com/2019/03/11/129-ask-david-how-can-
i-d...](https://feelinggood.com/2019/03/11/129-ask-david-how-can-i-develop-
greater-joy-and-happiness-does-neuroticism-exist/)
~~~
istjohn
Yes, it was Marilyn. She's in two episodes recorded two years apart. The one I
listened to was the second one[0].
[0] [https://feelinggood.com/2019/09/23/159-live-therapy-with-
mar...](https://feelinggood.com/2019/09/23/159-live-therapy-with-marilyn-what-
if-i-die-without-having-lived-a-meaningful-life/)
------
kweinber
EFT is one of the few couples therapies that has any sort of scientific track
record. I looked into it a few years ago and it may have saved my marriage.
I highly suggest a therapist to guide you. They serve as a referee and coach
(an impartial person who can call bs or timeout) to get you out of bad
communication patterns between you and you significant other. I doubt you
could turn this into an app because both partners are effectively learning to
relate to each other in a more sustainable way.
I highly recommend this for married couples needing a tune-up and pre-marital
couples who didn’t grow up in an environment with parents in a stable
relationship.
~~~
Ixiaus
I wish I knew about EFT so much earlier in my life. Even just understanding
the basic ideas has helped me immensely.
------
paulryanrogers
> It has taken more than 4,000 years, starting from the first love letter –
> carved in stone for a Sumerian king in the 8th century BCE – to crack the
> code of love.
Comes off a bit self aggrandizing. Still, time will tell if this method really
works
------
shadykiller
How about using MDMA for couples therapy ?
~~~
mynegation
That was totally out of the left field. Is this a random joke or do you have
any interesting links to share?
~~~
berberous
Not the OP, but he’s not joking — it’s an area with an increasing amount of
interest and research, although obviously tremendously hampered by the legal
issues. I don’t have any links, but you can find plenty on google.
There are also studies using it to treat PTSD in veterans.
~~~
nothrabannosir
Which is ironic, because that was the original use of MDMA to begin with. It
started as a therapeutic drug.
------
onreact
I've got her "Hold Me Tight" book here but have stopped reading it a while
ago. Good reminder to finish it now.
My impression - even with my parents - was that couples always replay
conflicts following certain patterns. Turns out it's really the case.
"we cracked the code of love" would have been a better headline for that
article. It's an actual quote from it.
------
hospadar
Brings to mind SSC's excellent review of all therapy books ever:
[https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/20/book-review-all-
therap...](https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/11/20/book-review-all-therapy-
books/)
------
bananamerica
This may be true, but one could argue: is making love last always the best
option?
------
wiggler00m
Is there an app for this?
------
xwdv
Monogamy is still one of the biggest societal pressures that people struggle
to escape, at the expense of their own happiness and emotional well being. And
in some cases there are real punitive consequences for not conforming to it.
You should not force exclusivity wherever it does not occur naturally. Not
everyone can be 100% fulfilled from one relationship.
~~~
hacknat
I do think that monogamy should be considered "ideal" in some sense
(especially for raising children), but I do think we need to understand that
not everyone's upbringing, which forms their (surprise, surprise) attachment
style, will allow this to be a healthy constraint.
The statistics, obviously, bear out that a large number of, even happy, people
cannot hack it under the constraints of monogamy. Either monogamy needs to be
better defined or we need to drop it as a societal pressure/constraint on
relationships. Probably a little bit of both is needed.
~~~
EliRivers
_I do think that monogamy should be considered "ideal" in some sense
(especially for raising children)_
Naively, I'd wonder if children could be raised better by a group of adults
rather than a couple.
~~~
hacknat
Certainly a couple, by themselves, is the 2nd worst choice for raising a child
other than a single parent, by themselves. Children _need_ to be raised by
lots of caring adults. However monogamy does provide a sort of back-stop
safety protection against adults prioritizing their own relationships with
each-other over their relationships with their children (who are naturally
less interesting and invigorating relationship partners). Non-monogamous
raising of children probably has its own advantages and dangers, the point is
to make sure that children are always protected and nurtured to the best of
their caregivers' ability. I worry about diffusing responsibility for raising
children too much, at the expense of them developing a secure attachment.
However, as long as all the adults in a child's life are prioritizing that
child developing a "secure" attachment style, I could give a shit who is
fucking who.
And yes, this is very much my business, because how you raise your children
dictates what kind of society my children will live in, so please raise them
right.
~~~
shantly
Two adults earning incomes and a third (and maybe also a fourth) keeping house
and taking care of the kids sure seems a lot better for everyone concerned
from my perspective (normal 2-parent household with three young kids).
~~~
hacknat
I don't necessarily disagree, but lets be wise to the dangers that can present
themselves in this situation, and then lets make sure to legislate against
them (seriously).
------
viburnum
Nope, mutual attraction is what couples need. People invent unsolvable
problems in their relationship when they lose attraction.
~~~
anon4242
Nope, this is silly. Mutual attraction is what leads you to become couples in
the first place. The physical part of attraction is what leads you to notice
the other person and then building an emotional bond with each other will
increase the attraction. So attraction is a symptom not a cause. Like any
emotion attraction comes and goes. IMHO believing this folly is what leads to
so many people breaking up when they could be very happy together and why so
many people are lonely these days.
My own experience after 15 years of marriage is that attraction comes and goes
for both me and my wife. But by not doing anything rash when that happens we
have both discovered that it also comes back. Sure the first few times it
happened it was quite scary, but then we've found a rhythm with the ebbs and
floods.
~~~
dnissley
To be fair there are a lot of very unhappy coupled folks out there as well
stuck with essentially the opposite problem: the attraction has left the
building and hasn't been there for a very long time and waiting for it to come
back is likely an exercise in futility. See r/deadbedrooms etc.
~~~
anon4242
Well, rereading what I wrote I was maybe not so clear on that.
If you are just _waiting_ for the attraction to come back, chances are that it
doesn't, even though it certainly could. It all depends on the reason that
attraction disappears. Sometimes it's related to the things you do and
sometimes it isn't. The key, I believe, is to always try to be a better spouse
than you were a year ago, or even a month ago. But that of course presupposes
that there exist mutual trust and respect between you. It won't work if only
one part is trying to be a better self for the other.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Quotably now has a reddit/hacker news-style view of links on twitter - btucker
http://quotably.com/popular
======
btucker
Hi All- I'd love any feedback on this. Thanks for checking it out!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Internet of Things - arnauddri
http://avc.com/2014/05/the-internet-of-things/
======
jacquesm
> So my bet is that most “things” will be dumb and the smarts will be in the
> phone or in the cloud. At least that’s what I woke up thinking about today.
Only until the pendulum swings once more.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple Taps Bob Mansfield to Oversee Car Project - okket
http://www.wsj.com/articles/apple-taps-bob-mansfield-to-oversee-car-project-1469458580
======
kalleboo
My pet theory is still that the Apple Car project is all just to keep Jony Ive
around - he's bored of designing square rectangles, and every day when he gets
in his Tesla he swears at the crappy plastic interior. He went to Tim Cook and
said "I'm leaving for Tesla to fix their design", and Tim Cook knowing that
Jony Ive is probably half of Apple's share value will do anything to keep him
on.
~~~
btian
Jony Ive gets around in his chauffeured Bentley Mulsanne.
~~~
danpalmer
Now that does not have a crappy plastic interior.
~~~
dsfyu404ed
It has some of the finest plastic money can buy.
------
nardi
What I feel like everyone is missing is that an Apple Car makes sense for the
same reason the iPhone made sense in 2007:
The existing technology really blows, and Apple can make a significant
contribution.
Remember what "smartphones" looked like before the iPhone? No touch screens,
physical keyboards, tiny screens, almost no native web browsing.
Now imagine what Apple could do to the inside of your car with that kind of
thinking in mind, and $80,000.
Edit: I forgot one of the biggest problems with the old smartphones is they
were ugly as sin, which is also true of modern cars.
~~~
wavefunction
>The existing technology really blows, and Apple can make a significant
contribution.
This is absolutely ridiculous. Apple is starting out at 0 with no real
competence in this area, the least of which is interaction with regulatory
bodies tasked with consumer protection.
~~~
jameshart
All of which is also true when Apple set out to make a phone. They had no
competence in RF engineering, or interaction with the diversity of cellphone
network providers throughout the world, the conventional wisdom at the time
was that an outsider couldn't just break in to the phone market without
acquiring an existing manufacturer.
~~~
billiam
Sorry, I call BS on this. I know a good bit about the semi-secret history
here. I worked at Motorola before and during the launch of the first iPhone
and also knew some of the people on the original iPhone product team. While it
is true that they started with very few mobile industry veterans, they hired a
few key people; they either quickly learned how to maneuver inside Apple or
disappeared without a trace.
So it is not accurate to say Apple just learned how to make smartphones really
fast, more that they effectively hacked the whole process with a number of
Jedi mind tricks as well as key product decisions, all cemented by classic
Steve Jobs dickery.
1\. They cultivated us at Motorola shamelessly by pretending to make an
"iTunes phone" (remember the Rockr?) while they were just pumping our teams
for information on how the byzantine portfolio and terminal acceptance process
at carriers worked. They never intended that phone to ship and used the whole
sordid con to get into Ralph de le Vega's office (sorry, Ed Zander).
They then used all the persuasion and BS they had to convince AT&T to give
Apple a pass on the incredibly complex field network testing all phones must
pass. The reason the overall phone experience of the first iPhone was so bad
was not just because Jobs and co wanted it to be a great music and Internet
experience first, but because they couldn't make a great phone at all then.
I don't see the exact analogy with teh car industry. cars. The mobile phone
business was laughably over-regulated and unlike the extremely competitive
phone industry, wireless carriers were not really. And oh yeah, smartphones
were terrible, and cars today, whether you like the way they look or not, are
some of the most incredibly optimized products ever made by man: safe,
reliable, efficient.
Cars just can't be disrupted via a Jesus phone coming in at the high end with
innovative features. The Jesus car already exists (Tesla) and it has been
extremely successful at influencing one of the biggest industries in the world
in numerous ways. But if your goal, like Apple, is to not just influence but
manufacture at scale, then Tesla has failed and it appears it will take any
company, even Apple, decades to learn how to really make cars for more than a
few.
I sure hope this isn't just abut cars as a service, because Apple has
demonstrated it just can't do services, even when latched to a truly beautiful
shiny object it has made.
~~~
smcnally
> because Apple has demonstrated it just can't do services
"In Fiscal 2015, the Services bin, “revenue from the iTunes Store ® , App
Store, Mac App Store, iBooks StoreTM and Apple MusicTM (collectively “Internet
Services”), AppleCare, Apple Pay ® , licensing and other services” counted for
$19.9B, 8.5% of the company total."
[http://archive.mondaynote.com/2016/01/25/watching-apples-
fir...](http://archive.mondaynote.com/2016/01/25/watching-apples-first-
fiscal-2016-quarter/)
~~~
FireBeyond
People in this thread are talking about the "bullshit" of existing cars and
how the AppleCar will be a "come to Jesus" moment.
Pointing to revenue as proof of success is a bad metric here. Great, the App
and Mac App Store make lots of money, not the least because one of them is the
only way for anyone to make revenue from iOS.
No-one could point to MAS, for example, and pretend with a straight face that
it's a "service done right" for anyone except Apple's bottom line.
~~~
tjl
I can point to one service Apple has done right, Messages.
~~~
sangnoir
> I can point to one service Apple has done right, Messages
Is it the same message that for many years disappeared all message sent to you
when you switched from Apple? Perhaps as a final "fuck you" for leaving our
ecosystem or them not just caring
------
antonius
Mansfield has a successful track record with respect to Apple products.
With that said, this is his most difficult challenge to date and I'm not sure
how successful he and the company as a whole will be given the difficulties of
bringing an autonomous car to market.
~~~
arjunrc
I believe the goal here is an electric car with autonomous features, branded
similar to the S-Class or the new E-Class (instead of going all the way like
Tesla's AutoPilot).
~~~
pgodzin
What's the point of that? Why would Apple want to make such a huge bet on an
industry they have never been in just to create an incremental improvement on
cars already billed as luxury items?
If they proceed with the Apple Car, I would imagine it would be a disrupting
concept that Apple would be uniquely prepared to handle.
~~~
jms18
Ballmer in a 2007 interview with USA Today:
"There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market
share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money.
But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd
prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have
2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get."
Palm CEO Ed Colligan in 2006:
"We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a
decent phone," he said. "[Apple is] not going to just figure this out. They’re
not going to just walk in."
~~~
mikeash
They laughed at Einstein, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
A smartphone was solidly within Apple's expertise in 2007. It's a small
consumer electronics device (iPod, Mac) with a graphical UI (Mac OS X). Apple
had tons of experience building (or more accurately, outsourcing the building
of) small electronics. What was tricky about the iPhone was the RF stuff,
getting the carriers to cooperate, and cutting data usage to squeeze into the
crappy data plans available. Except RF stuff is nearly off-the-shelf, and
Apple cut the Gordian Knot for the other two items by partnering with an
underdog carrier in exchange for unlimited data plans.
A car is far outside Apple's expertise. Are they going to outsource it to
Foxconn like they do with the iPhone, and ship them across the Pacific?
Doesn't seem feasible. Will they buy or build their own factory? Doable, but
totally new for them. What about sales, service, and support? The iPhone was
able to use Apple's extensive network of existing retail stores for that, but
cars need garages and mechanics.
Obviously, it can be done. Tesla pulled it off with far less. But there's
plenty of room for Apple to crash and burn, too. (Figuratively, one hopes.)
~~~
ams6110
Jobs built a factory. The NeXT computer was made there and the factory was
reportedly state-of-the-art.
Of course Jobs is gone but I would guess there are others still at Apple that
were involved so that it might not be totally new to them.
~~~
protomyth
I was under the impression due to cost and poor sales, they actually had
alternate arrangements to build the NeXT products after a while. It was a nice
video and launch story though.
~~~
ams6110
You're right they did get out of the hardware business totally in the later
years. But still, they build an an incredible factory that was widely praised.
~~~
protomyth
I'm not talking about getting out of the hardware business.
"The factory that Jobs had configured to produce 10,000 computers every month
produced hundreds every month. Because of the low volume, human labor was
cheaper than maintaining the automated equipment."
[http://lowendmac.com/2013/next-years-steve-jobs-before-
trium...](http://lowendmac.com/2013/next-years-steve-jobs-before-triumphant-
return-apple/)
~~~
ams6110
My point was that he built a great factory. That is not diminished by his
inability to sell the product.
But, he is gone and as others note it was a long time ago. It's probably not
very relevant, in retrospect.
------
Tiktaalik
In the long term do people see the automobile industry as a growth industry?
Will there be more cars on the road per capita in the future or less?
Some trends make me think there will be less cars around in the future. The
average age at which people get drivers licenses is rising for example as it
is becoming easier to live without them. The car sharing network Car2Go, which
one could look at as an early example of how a vast autonomous car network
would work, has shown to take 11 cars off the road for each that it adds[1].
Lastly there is a renaissance in many cities right now with planners turning
away from car oriented infrastructure, and more strongly focusing on
pedestrians, cyclists and public transit. It seems to me that a lot of the car
oriented thinking of the 1950s that resulted in the cities we see today is
discredited amongst planners and they are trying to move us away from that.
I wonder where Apple believes the car market share is going. Even if
automobiles aren't a growth industry they may think it's worthwhile to them to
try to take a good share of the luxury market.
[1] [http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/07/car2go-car-
ownership-...](http://www.citylab.com/commute/2016/07/car2go-car-ownership-
vmt-ghg/491825/)
~~~
ryanmarsh
Yes. Cars are a growth industry. Which is kind of crazy but look at it this
way. How much bigger will the global middle class be in 50 years? 100?
Oh, and don't forget Africa. Lots of growth opportunity there.
~~~
ddebernardy
Africa is a prime destination for second hand cars coming in from developed
countries. I'm skeptical there is much growth opportunity there for car
manufacturers.
For the middle class, I can't help but wonder if it'll make much sense for
them to actually own cars in 50-100 years if there are company-operated fleets
of cheap self-driving vehicles - or at least more than one car per household.
Time will tell.
~~~
AnAfrican
>Africa is a prime destination for second hand cars coming in from developed
countries. I'm skeptical there is much growth opportunity there for car
manufacturers.
That's mostly because New Cars were unafforable to All. At least in the places
I've visited there are more and more new cars.
\- because people are richer than a few years ago
\- because financing options that didn't exist now do
\- because laws banning imports of cars "older than x years" also help (even
if they have unintended consequences)
------
DigitalJack
Apple is going to seamlessly combine Uber, ZipCar, Tesla's Autopilot, and the
US Drone program.
Here is what they are going to build:
A fleet of vehicles piloted remotely like drones, using all the the "tesla
autopilot" safety features as augmentation to make the job of remote piloting
easier.
The vehicles will be summoned by the iphone.
The fleet will have all-electrics and hybrids, where hybrids are a fallback
depending on availability and trip range.
The "front" seats will face the "rear" seats.
Windows will be dynamically shaded from transparent to opaque.
The "doors" will slide to open, including part of the roof, allowing
passengers to embark/disembark while standing.
~~~
nerfhammer
You will steer using your phone's accelerometer. Tilt the phone left to turn
left, and vice versa.
~~~
carterehsmith
Tilt up to fly? That would be something.
How about tilt down. Not obvious. Maybe you could dive if you were in water?
~~~
nerfhammer
Don't drop your phone while trying to use it to steer.
Shattered glass
------
Animats
Apple could easily make a branded car. The entire dashboard is usually
manufactured separately and installed as a unit.[1] Apple could build those,
with screens and Jonathan Ive design. This would come with a matching interior
package and exterior logos. Like the "Ford F-150 King Ranch Edition".
The next step up would to have some car company, perhaps in China, build them
a chassis, powertrain, and body, to which Apple would add their dashboard and
interior, and possibly the sensors and actuators for self-driving. Here are 10
new electric cars from China.[2] Apple could help them open up the US market.
There's no reason for Apple to get into the sheet metal stamping business,
even though Tesla did.
[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxeFEvEQKTU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxeFEvEQKTU)
[2]
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/tychodefeijter/2016/05/18/10-new...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tychodefeijter/2016/05/18/10-new-
electric-cars-from-china/#15fd56361e2f)
------
wehadfun
If the past is any indication Apple will most likely improve on what is
already out there Mp3 player, Cell phone, buying music over internet, GUI, ...
were all around before Apple made them big.
Tesla is probably their target this time.
~~~
vessenes
It's interesting to speculate about what a 'fast follower' model looks like
with cars. Cars have been around a long time. You propose that Tesla has sort
of v2.0'ed cars with their fast, attractive, semi-autonomous, electric thing.
That could be.
But a fast follower model doesn't admit for autonomous cars; nobody is doing
anything like that yet. And we are all sort of imagining like the self driving
Apple car "carved from a solid billet of aluminium" (cue Jony Ives), I think.
Apple seems to have the market lead in UI/UX, Product Design, Supply Chain and
some forms of Silicon. I guess that could all add up to a greenfield effort at
just a car, but better.
I think it's more likely that this is a turning point in Apple's strategy, and
that they see the need to make some big bets, like Google. In any event, I'm
super curious about what will come out in 2020, or whatever.
------
guimarin
I've thought a lot about this and don't think that full autonomy is necessary
for Apple's car to be successful. I don't even think they need to be anywhere
near as good as Tesla. In fact, they probably can't because Tesla Autopilot
gets better through the experience of the cars, and that kind of software data
expertise is not in Apple's wheelhouse.
Recently I've tested all the auto-sensing, autopilot, and what not features of
the latest generation of cars. I've gone on dozens of test drives and I think
that something around as good as Honda Sensing will be sufficient for the next
car cycle (5-7 years). If they can make iterative improvments that will be
even better, but I don't think we are as close to the kind of car Apple would
want to sell in the autonomy field. Well understood driving cities like NYC
and SF are just not a big enough splash for Apple.
Why Apple will be very successful: Recently they've started to revamp and
expand their retail Flagship stores all over the world have recently been
remodeled, all to be much larger. I think this footprint of stores, larger
than Teslas, will be huge in getting people to buy the cars, thereby
circumventing the dealership model. Tesla was the pioneer here, and Apple will
ride on their coattails. Apple has incredibly supply chain leverage and
capability. In the last 5 years, the cost of batteries has gone down
significantly. Yet all the hybrid cars utilizing batteries are still very
expensive. The brand new Volvo XC90 is $20k more expensive for a 9kWh pack.
With Apple's supply chain and margin control capabilities, they should be able
to comfortably source Li-Ion batteries in the $200-$300 range per kWh. Apple
also crushes every single other computer and phone manufacturer when it comes
to their onboarding experience. This and their experience in UI/UX will be
key. The knob-less experience in cars is total dogshit. No one does a good job
of realizing that the user experience should not be a monolithic touchscreen
for things that are NOT media related. Sure make all Media touchscreen
enabled/driven. But not the AC/Heat, and in my mind the volume for the AV
system at the lest. If apple can solve that, and make it easy to pair a phone
with the infotainment system, then with their competitive pricing and superior
experience they will destroy the competition. All the legacy manufacturers are
still stuck in the wrong paradigm. Only Tesla is positioned to compete with
Apple, it's a shame they didn't buy Tesla earlier and let Musk run both
companies. Tim is great don't get me wrong, but with Musk at the helm they
would have been totally unstoppable. Tim is a genius at what he does, but he's
not the kind of visionary CEO that can launch the car like an Elon or Steve
could.
~~~
threeseed
> and that kind of software data expertise is not in Apple's wheelhouse
I suspect Apple knows just a little about data science given all of the data
they collect: [https://www.quora.com/Whats-a-typical-day-like-for-a-data-
sc...](https://www.quora.com/Whats-a-typical-day-like-for-a-data-scientist-at-
Apple)
Also they just took a major stake in Didi Chuxing which I assume meant they
had access to a raft of GPS points to use for training machine/deep learning
models.
~~~
chillacy
The responder doesn't even work at apple (from his other post: "I'm not an
engineer at apple" [https://www.quora.com/What-does-a-day-in-the-life-of-an-
Appl...](https://www.quora.com/What-does-a-day-in-the-life-of-an-Apple-
hardware-engineer-look-like) ). His response was also vague enough to apply to
most tech companies.
I thought it was suspect, since apple employees tend to be very quiet on
social media and in conferences.
------
_ph_
The car industry is ready for some disruption. Current car makers are good at
what they are doing, but there have been few entirely new developments. So it
is no wonder that one of the most desirable cars at the moment is the Tesla, a
car which comes from a "startup" and is electrical.
The transition to electrical cars is what is shaking up the industry. All the
special knowledge around the creation of combustion engine is no longer
needed. And a lot of the non-engine components are sourced by suppliers, which
are also happy to supply companies like Tesla. The Tesla shares quite a few
components with the well known German car brands. This allows new car
companies to enter the market relatively easily.
And beyond the fact that Apple can hire car engineering veterans, Apple is an
excellent product design company. The Apple watch should be a warning. All
discussions about the usefulness of smart watches aside, one important thing
is, that Apple enters an entirely new product category, but if you look of the
design and quality of their stainless steel bracelet, it is much better than
most of the Rolex bracelets at a fraction of the price. So I would not be
surprised, if while the pure driving part (electrical motor, suspension) is
rather off the shelf, the overall construction of the car could be both
different and unexpected by the current players.
------
bluthru
In the short term I can see how an incredibly well-made car with AR tech would
make people want to own them.
Long term however I believe cars will just be a shared network of autonomous
vehicles for moving people and things. In other words a shared commodity with
cheap rental prices versus ownership. That doesn't seem like a market for
Apple. But hey, if they're investing in electric vehicles then that's better
for everyone.
~~~
threeseed
> Long term however I believe cars will just be a shared network of autonomous
> vehicles for moving people and things
I doubt it.
The majority of drivers on the road are your typical 9-5 commuters. For them
it will still be more convenient (no need to wait for another car) and cheaper
to just buy a car and there is still something intrinsic to human nature about
"owning" something. People leave all manner of goods in their car.
I see autonomous vehicles taking over taxis however.
~~~
bluthru
>The majority of drivers on the road are your typical 9-5 commuters.
And a car will automatically be at their house every morning. The car will
fill up with people on the same route for cost savings.
~~~
ams6110
>The car will fill up with people on the same route for cost savings.
Yuk. No thanks.
~~~
bluthru
Then pay more for exclusivity: Car ownership, automated car with privacy, or
shared automated.
~~~
spotman
Like uber pool, vs uber normal vs uber premium. Just have to get rid of the
pesky drivers.
------
omarforgotpwd
Tesla's market cap is $33 billion. Apple has $200 billion in cash. Why don't
they just buy Tesla? They'll spend more than that trying to recreate all the
work Teslas already done. I feel like this would help make the future happen
faster.
~~~
btian
Because you can't actually buy 100% of Tesla for $33B.
Elon Musk owns 20% of shares. Does he want to sell?
~~~
omarforgotpwd
Tesla has been working hard to raise additional capital so they can deliver
Model 3. Apple has a lot of capital. Perhaps they could come to an agreement.
An acquisition he didn't agree to would probably be unwise since he's so key
to the company.
------
ksec
The more important question here is, why Bob? Does it mean Apple has an
culture problem that is hard for other high rank managerial grade to fit in?
Why has Bob Retired and then Un-retired?
------
elchief
Apple is pretty good at scale manufacturing and lithium batteries and metal
and better at AI than any car company except Tesla.
Electric cars are much simpler than ICE ones. So they have a chance...
~~~
ryanmarsh
This. Is Apple going to start making a world class ICE from scratch? No. Could
they eventually? Yes of course. But why would they want to?
A car without an ICE is a reduced complexity space to engineer a vehicle in.
I'll bet they can figure out how to iterate from an electric mule to a safe
vehicle just fucking fine. People unfamiliar with the auto industry may also
be surprised to learn just how many parts on a Model S tesla _doesn 't_ make.
But an ICE? Fuck I wouldn't want to start that war with zero patents.
------
ibero
i find it interesting that the project is described as the "autonomous,
electric-vehicle initiative." isn't there a compelling enough productin the
electric vehicle aspect, without the autonomous piece as well?
or does apple believe that the "autonomous" component is the real stand out
feature?
~~~
mdorazio
It really doesn't make sense for Apple to manufacture traditional cars -
they're expensive to produce, have steep support requirements, allow limited
driver interaction points to avoid distraction, etc. Apple's strength is in
combining hardware and software in a way that makes interaction intuitive. If
you have to actually drive your car, there's not a whole lot of room for that
beyond what's already being done with CarPlay. It makes a lot more sense to
create an autonomous vehicle and treat the entire cabin as an interactive
experience that people will spend hours a day playing with and spending money
in.
~~~
nklas
"It makes a lot more sense to create an autonomous vehicle and treat the
entire cabin as an interactive experience that people will spend hours a day
playing with and spending money in."
Would be cool if Apple skipped the "car" and went straight to a stylish and
modern "RV", basically a small apartment that can also drive you around
(autonomously).
Look at this RV tour and imagine something that's a bit bigger in living space
(but same size overall (no big engine, no drivers area etc)):
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tylz5sfCAOc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tylz5sfCAOc)
It might not be realistic yet, but in a few years maybe, especially if solar
panels gets better. Which i'm guessing Apple is doing a lot of research on as
we speak...
And if you loose/somebody tows it, you'd just log on to iCloud and use the
"Find my House" feature ;-)
------
csours
> But building a car is complicated and Apple has struggled to define a
> differentiated vision for its vehicle, these people said. Some of the
> automobile industry veterans have clashed with longtime company employees on
> how best to proceed.
~~~
astrodust
Conflict can be a good thing in this case. Instead of Apple running off and
doing the "Apple thing" which isn't grounded, they get pulled back in by
veterans. Likewise, veterans have their assumptions challenged.
~~~
csours
Agreed, it will be very interesting to see if "Apple Scale" [1] thinking works
in automotive design[2] and manufacturing. Apple can buy 10,000 CNC machines
for an iPhone frame, but there are a couple thousand parts at least that size
in a car.
The difference in physical scale between a phone and a car should not be
dismissed... but I'm very interested to see what comes out of the process.
1\. [https://blog.bolt.io/no-you-cant-manufacture-that-like-
apple...](https://blog.bolt.io/no-you-cant-manufacture-that-like-apple-
does-93bea02a3bbf#.smhful8w4)
2\. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjcm-
ru-9iI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjcm-ru-9iI) (this talk is good, but
incredibly frustrating because the slides aren't shown)
~~~
semi-extrinsic
There is also a big difference in the importance of reliability. Half the
people I see with iPhones older than a year have broken screens. But with a
car, you can't engineer it to last for two years and then expect the owner to
scrap it and buy a new one. For all the talk of AR, shiny UX etc, keep in mind
that a car has to retain at least some resale value for at least ten years,
preferrably closer to twenty. Otherwise you'll be left with a lot of angry
customers. Planned obsolesence is out of the question.
~~~
rodgerd
This is true - secondary markets can make a huge difference in how affordable
a car is perceived to be. Cars which are considered to have a long life
command a high resale value, which cuts the real cost of buying new.
------
ourmandave
Bob Mansfield?
But John Sculley is tanned, rested, and ready.
------
Zigurd
So Richard Scary wasn't available?
------
ascotan
another paywall.
~~~
DanBC
"complaints about paywalls are off topic"
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple still hasn't fixed a Safari bug that's been known about for 2 years - piratesahoyahoy
http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/347741/two_years_later_apple_still_won_t_fix_safari_hole/
======
andrewtj
The "carpet bomb" attack that the article refers to is scripting the browser
to download a lot of files, knowing that Safari doesn't prompt before
downloading a file, in the hope that the user will execute one of them.
I don't think this kind of a attack is that practical on OS X as there's no
way of automatically executing a downloaded executable (as far as I know) and
OS X's sandbox would kick in with a dialog confirming that the file should be
opened on the off-chance the user did elect to open something random from the
internet.
It's arguable that this could be a more powerful attack by taking advantage of
an exploit in the handling of one of the "Safe" formats that are (by default)
opened automatically (Movies, Pictures, etc). However, such an attack would be
more subtle if it were just used inline in a webpage which makes the issue a
bit redundant.
------
fliph
Age is a meaningless metric for a bug; "age" + "severity" perhaps, but an old,
low-priority bug is less likely to be fixed than a new, high-priority bug,
given a non-infinite amount of development resources.
Case-in-point: Mozilla bug #350
<https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=350> was open for 11 years: that
means it predates Netscape Navigator 4.06, but it wasn't fixed until Firefox
3.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Evaluation of 18F’s Information Technology Security Compliance - jamessantiago
https://www.gsaig.gov/content/evaluation-18f%E2%80%99s-information-technology-security-compliance
======
danielvf
This is an epic bureaucratic smackdown. Somehow in the bowels of The GSA,
Moradoc, the preventer of information technology is cackling gleefully.
Highlights:
\- "We found that 100 of the 116 software items listed, or 86 percent, had not
been submitted for review and approval by GSA IT for use in the GSA
information technology environment."
\- PII leak
\- "We also found that during the period of June 2, 2015 through July 15 2016,
18F entered into contracts and other agreements for the acquisition of
information technology valued at over $24.8 million without obtaining review
and approval of the contracts by GSA’s CIO. These contracts included $21.5
million for infrastructure services, $2.5 million for support services,
$484,641 for software, and $332,909 for hardware."
\- "Employees of an executive agency are prohibited from sending work-related
emails using an unofficial email account unless the employee copies their
official account when the message is first created or within 20 days after the
original creation or transmission. GSA’s Information Technology Security
Policy reinforces this requirement.15 During the course of our review, we
found that 27 unofficial email accounts belonging to 18F staff had been used
to send work-related emails without copying or forwarding the messages to the
employees’ official GSA email account as required. Among the 27 unofficial
email accounts used to conduct GSA business were those of the former TTS
Commissioner, Phaedra Chrousos, a senior 18F advisor, and an 18F director."
~~~
jamessantiago
To play devils advocate: federal authorization workflows for such things can
be notoriously slow and counter intuitive. I'd argue that 18F's completed
projects, and any other contract company's similar attempts, would either be
impossible or greatly underperformed if done "the proper way."
Of course, security is not something that can be played off as technical debt
and 18F is definitely in the wrong here. However, the security apparatus of
the federal government must evolve if projects like 18F's improvements to
healthcare.gov are desired in the federal space. You cant have monolithic
waterfall processes and agile project performance anymore than you can eat
your cake and have it too.
~~~
danielvf
I completely agree with you.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ouya Android game console gets VC-funded, torn down - nikai
http://linuxgizmos.com/ouya-android-game-console-gets-vc-funding/
======
kayoone
This is slightly offtopic but i really like the funding road theyve taken,
after going through a Startup Accelerator and ultimately failing with the
original product after 2 years (a game) myself.
If i was to try again sometime in the future, id certainly do it like this.
1\. Build a good prototype and evaluate if the product works and if there is
demand on a really small scale
2\. Try to raise money through crowdfounding.
3\. If it works, you have proven to everybody (including yourself and
potential later investors) that there indeed is a market for your product(s).
You dont have to step in front of investors and try to sell an unproven idea.
Try to make a hit product and get VCs on board after this stage (if you need
to)
4\. If it doesnt you can quit or try it out on your own in bootstrapped
fashion.
Never ever again would i take outside money for equity in a very early stage,
but this is just my personal view and the lesson i learned in the last years.
This approach can work great for games/products, it wont really for your next
social web startup/app project mind you. In that case i would go the
bootstrapped route directly and try to prove my product before going for the
stars.
------
jd
The teardown iFixit link, hidden in the last paragraph:
<http://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/Ouya+Teardown/14224/1>
~~~
networked
I'm surprised to see a fan inside the console. This is the only NVIDIA Tegra 3
device running Android I know of to use active cooling. Why did they choose to
have it, is Ouya's CPU/GPU running at a higher clock rate than similar
devices'?
A tiny fan like that reminds of the one inside my PS2 Slim, which is loud
enough that when I have the inclination to game on it again I'll seriously
consider doing a hardware mod to replace it (with a non-stock fan -- just to
be safe). I have to wonder by how much this defect (which is apparently not
_very_ common with the model) has made me play my PS2 Slim less over the time
I have owned it. If the Ouya itself is not sold at a profit this may be a
problem. I'm not a hardware professional, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'd
be wary of including a small fan in a consumer product if it were at all
possible to avoid it.
~~~
DannyBee
Maybe they are trying to avoid the fate of the first generation xbox360?
There is no official info on the technical cause (some people say wrong type
of solder that would get too hot and develop hairline cracks, some say the
graphics chip dissipated more heat than expected, etc) but it was definitely
related to heat.
People often put these devices inside mildly enclosed spaces (media cabinets,
etc) with poor natural airflow, etc.
This tends to work okay if you have active cooling (since it's not totally
enclosed), but gets amazingly hot otherwise.
This is not normally how tablets are used, and maybe after testing it (or
thinking about it) they realized the safest bet was active cooling?
~~~
joezydeco
I'm using an i.MX6 development system that uses a similar processor (Quad
CortexA9 w/GPU) and has a aluminum cap/heatsink on it:
<http://imgur.com/1bJEqLU>
The thermal cutout in the Anatop driver defaults to 100C, which seems to be
driven by the ratings of the on-board voltage regulators. Perhaps the Tegra
has the same requirements.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Redirects Traffic to Avoid Kazakh Demands - pwg
http://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/06/08/google-redirects-traffic-to-avoid-kazakh-demands/
======
MichaelApproved
Yet another reason why you shouldn't use domains from other countries who
could change the rules and block traffic to your business. The .ly and others
are cute but you're building a business on sand.
------
iwwr
I don't understand why people visiting google.com from a kz ISP could not
receive country-specific or other customized search results.
~~~
InclinedPlane
Ethics.
~~~
iwwr
Can you be more specific?
~~~
InclinedPlane
I think I misunderstood your meaning. Google could of course attempt to
present the same sort of Kazakh specific google search as google.kz would. I
meant that google shouldn't filter results from kazakh IPs whether on
google.kz or google.com.
------
mahmud
Google pulled out of China for refusing to cooperate with the regime. But ..
it has met its match in Kazakhstan, world's next super power~
------
vain
Yak Shi Mash! Borat must be fuming now.
------
VladRussian
to whom missed it in theaters:
Kazakhstan greatest country in the world.
All other countries are run by little girls.
Kazakhstan number one exporter of potassium.
Other countries have inferior potassium.
Kazakhstan home of Tinshein swimming pool.
It’s length thirty meter and width six meter.
Filtration system a marvel to behold.
It remove 80 percent of human solid waste.
Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan you very nice place.
From Plains of Tarashek to Northern fence of Jewtown.
Kazakhstan friend of all except Uzbekistan.
They very nosey people with bone in their brain.
Kazakhstan industry best in world.
We invented toffee and trouser belt.
Kazakhstan’s prostitutes cleanest in the region.
Except of course for Turkmenistan’s.
Kazakhstan, Kazakhstan you very nice place.
From Plains of Tarashek to Norther fence of Jewtown.
Come grasp the mighty penis of our leader.
From junction with the testes to tip of its face!
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv5jLsLoYcE>
~~~
hugh3
Fark.com is that-a-way, man! --->
I know, I know, it's difficult to discuss Kazakhstan without reference to a
certain movie from several years ago, but we can try, right?
edit: Also "whom" is completely wrong here.
~~~
VladRussian
>we can try, right?
i guess we could if your knowledge about Kazakhstan was enough at least to
recognize the references beyond a certain movie from several years ago
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stan Lee has died - edward
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stan_Lee
======
toyg
I know Stan wasn't a CS personality, but I would argue that his impact on
hackerdom at large deserves the black bar. Please.
------
wafflesraccoon
Man, I just thought he would live forever. Rest in peace.
------
yumiya
I wrote an article to memorize him: [https://medium.com/boosto/stan-lee-
excelsior-the-hero-behind...](https://medium.com/boosto/stan-lee-excelsior-
the-hero-behind-heroes-3715adf918de)
------
nobrains
RIP Stan Lee (1922 - 2018)
------
walrus01
(deleted)
~~~
smacktoward
Confirmation from the Hollywood Reporter is here:
[https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/stan-lee-marvel-
comic...](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/stan-lee-marvel-comics-
legend-721450)
~~~
walrus01
okay so I'd suggest changing the top level post URL to this URL, and not
wikipedia. Seen dozens of wikipedia-edit celebrity death hoaxes in the last
ten years.
~~~
smacktoward
It's already been submitted, so you can upvote:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434698](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18434698)
It's picking up karma faster than this submission is, so this is a problem
that will shortly take care of itself.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Six hours in: launching a niche microsite - newmediaclay
http://www.newmediacampaigns.com/page/how-to-market-your-company-microsite
======
ryanwaggoner
That's actually a pretty interesting idea for a website. It held my attention
for longer than I thought it would. I voted on probably 10 of the random
races.
~~~
newmediaclay
Yea, we were expecting the avg person to vote around 5 times. However, people
have so far been voting an average of around 7 or 8. It's fun to see that
people are actually using it and fully interacting with the site.
------
johns
You should make the voting the home page. Get people into it right away. After
their first vote, then give them more info.
~~~
newmediaclay
Yea, we had an internal debate about that. Whether a marquis race should show
first (presidential), a random race, or the info page. We thought the
presidential race might make it look too partisan and distract from people
really delving in, and that a random race could have 2 really ugly sites and
also disenchant someone. So, we decided to put our philosophy up front and
encourage people to delve in. The bounce rate has been really low, so we've
been pleased with that.
~~~
johns
You could combat that by picking a couple 'featured' matchups that have high-
quality sites. Or pull from the top x% of popular ones.
------
johns
Besides the report, what are you going to do Nov 5th?
~~~
newmediaclay
Good question - we're going to gather a lot of relevant data in addition just
to winner vs. loser. We haven't settled on all of the criteria yet, but it
will be things like: video on the front page, social networking links on
homepage, blog feed to homepage, etc.
Also, after the election, we'll live the site up w/ the results so people can
keep going back and checking it out.
Have any other good ideas for things we should be doing after the election?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Advice using Stoicism/Meditation/Zen Buddhism,etc. to buildup resilience - forkLding
I'm still relatively young (20-25) and have launched a side project while working. Its been quite stressful and I have seen a lot of negative energy come out especially with those who work with me on the project.<p>So I have thought of relying on meditation and related literature to help calm me down and keep me mentally resilient as it seems that these techniques have helped others in the past.<p>Any actionable advice on how I can start this and buildup mental resilience?
======
Rainymood
Repeating mantras is awesome. I like to use these:
> "Dear God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the
> courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
Basically Stoicism in a nutshell. I like this one and I like to practice it
but I don't repeat, chant this one often in my mind now that I think about it
... the next 2 I repeat daily, nay, hourly, nay, even more probably.
> "There is never enough time to do everything, but there's always enough time
> to do the most important thing."
It's easy to get overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of the whole world (trust
me, I've been there) but there is no escaping this. In the long run we're all
dead anyway. There is basically always an infinite amount of things we can do
but often there is only ONE thing that adds the most value or is the most
important thing RIGHT now.
> "Look at how far youve come already."
For some reason this one motivates me because of all the hardships I've
experienced already. I'm alive. I'm breating. I'm here. I'm going where I want
to go. I have overcome all adversities in the past why should I not overcome
this one? Let's go!
The first one is basically
Besides this, earplugs are SO nice. Just not hearing so much noise really
really calms me down.
~~~
bobbinsbob
>> "Dear God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the
courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference."
This is like a long-winded version of one of my favourites:
>"Fight battles small enough to win that are big enough to matter."
~~~
cholantesh
Maybe it's just because I'm more familiar with the former version, but I find
it...catchier? And that's important in a mantra.
~~~
bobbinsbob
Each to there own ;)
------
crispinb
Firstly I would start with some introspection. Techniques from afar can help,
but you may find that you have resources well known to you, near at hand, that
may offer some immediate relief. What springs to mind if you imagine "running
away"? Where and what would you like to run away to? What do you associate
with joy and freedom? If you spend a little time introspecting & remembering,
you might already find you know of some things to do, whether it be surfing or
reading or walking in the moonlight. In my case a good run, or certain types
of gigs, offer peaks that can counter much day-to-day difficulty. These
resources can become a bit hidden by the daily grind. Digging them up and
allocating time for them might be useful.
Secondly, if you're a reader I think Jon Kabat-Zinn's book _The Mindful Way
through Depression_ is an excellent intro to meditation. Don't be put off by
the title -- it's useful for more than just depression. It's a decent read, is
very secular in tone, offers various ways in to thinking about and approaching
meditation that have been fruitfully used in clinical settings, and has a set
of guided meditations on the associated CD that are easier to start with than
trying to remember instructions.
Thirdly, if meditation appeals to you, why not find a local zen or vipassana
group? There's something a little heightened about meditating with a group
that can be motivating. Many such groups offer a weekly sitting, and are
usually pretty relaxed (not demanding you believe anything, join up, etc).
Good luck.
------
mbrock
All of those things can, in this day and age, be somewhat usefully summarized
like this:
_Airplane mode!_
That is to say: turn off your radio for a while and just sit down, or maybe go
for a walk or a swim.
Marshall McLuhan, who was extremely interested in the nervous and mental
changes brought on by network technology, wrote in 1966:
_With the telegraph Western man began a process of putting his nerves outside
his body. Previous technologies had been extensions of physical organs: the
wheel is a putting-outside-ourselves of the feet; the city wall is a
collective outering of the skin. But electronic media are, instead, extensions
of the central nervous system, an inclusive and simultaneous field. Since the
telegraph we have extended the brains and nerves of man around the globe. As a
result, the electronic age endures a total uneasiness, as of a man wearing his
skull inside and his brain outside._
~~~
bgibson
Hey mbrock, off-topic question, but I came across an interesting discussion
you had here on HN a few months ago on formal verification of Solidity/EVM and
some related work you were doing. I run a conference at Stanford in January on
this, would you have any interest in giving a talk on your work there? Contact
me if interested.
[http://cyber.stanford.edu/bpase18](http://cyber.stanford.edu/bpase18)
[http://twitter.com/byrongibson](http://twitter.com/byrongibson)
------
tixocloud
Hi there,
I'm in the same boat as you with working on a startup while working so I can
attest that it is definitely stressful. But it's definitely possible to build
up your mental resilience.
I practice Nichiren Buddhism and chant daily to keep my spirits up. Happy to
share my experience with you. I also read quite a bit of different sorts of
material as well.
For actionable advice, the easiest thing you can do at this very moment is to
take deep breaths (not-related to Nichiren Buddhism but which I found useful
as well) and really let your mind wander about the great things that have come
your way through life. Many people are significantly less fortunate than we
are to be here. The fact that I can do so much with my time is what I feel
thankful for.
~~~
tixocloud
I realize this may be a personal anecdote but I feel we get stressed when
we're in great uncertainty, there's an endless list of tasks, and we don't
seem to have control of anything. Sometimes I plan out breaks where I step
away to do something else other than work and projects. The spiritual practice
and the readings help to re-emphasize that even when I am deep in the
trenches, I have a choice to take a break. It also helps to realize that I can
be happy despite the circumstances, uncertainty and endless work. It's taught
me to be little more patient, to be less harsh when things don't work out and
persevere. Happiness within the chaos. You'll have to find what works for you
but it's definitely there if you're seeking it.
------
muzani
There's a whole manual on this, what to do and why:
[http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_eng...](http://www.vipassana.com/meditation/mindfulness_in_plain_english.php)
A lot of insights I've learned there, like why people sit straight and full
lotus cross legged instead of leaning back in a chair. Or how just sitting
down doing nothing helps you reach enlightenment.
------
zMiller
You need to go through it to unmask it. It's about getting terrified/stressed
and then coming out on the other side relatively unharmed a number of times
until your mind starts making association that every time you felt this way
before and told your self that it will be alright, everything did indeed turn
out ok. Thus the term : learning to trust your self.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Verizon, AT&T and Sprint to Limit Sales of Cellphone Location Data - mcenedella
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/technology/verizon-att-cellphone-tracking.html
======
mkempe
In Switzerland there is a concept of the "private sphere" [1] and it basically
implies that others do not have the right to pry into nor track that sphere.
Each individual and family has their own sense of that sphere and of how large
it is. Under this concept I cannot conceive of corporations monitoring and
tracking people, then selling that information, as is currently done in the
US. For instance, in Switzerland it is illegal to create a database on other
people without their knowledge and consent.
It is stronger than the idea of "privacy" \-- its intent is to completely
isolate and protect parts of your life from both the political and the public,
which includes the commercial. The right to property is part of it. Note that
the Wikipedia description of French "vie privée" ("private life") [2] has
deeper and more distinct grounding than the one on "privacy" [3] -- the latter
claims that this is mainly a US/British legal conceptualization, but the idea
of a private life that should be protected has strong historical and a
different effective presence in several European legal systems.
[1] [http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/f/F16104.php](http://www.hls-dhs-
dss.ch/textes/f/F16104.php)
[2]
[https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vie_privée](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vie_privée)
[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy)
~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
I don't have a whole lot to support my ideas here, other than a collection of
my own ideas etc.
When your whole country is about 8.5 million people it must be difficult to
ever go anywhere and be a complete stranger.
The USA seems to be such a huge land, both geographically and demographically,
that I think it lends itself to a variety of groups exploiting others. I don't
think _The USA_ is a _homogeneous whole_.
Or, if there were a scale on which various countries could be placed to
describe homogeneity The USA would be at the far end of one extreme of that
scale.
I think that's why The USA seems to be such a hodgepodge of poor planning and
action.
~~~
oblio
> When your whole country is about 8.5 million people it must be difficult to
> ever go anywhere and be a complete stranger.
I know it's not HackerNews material, but: LOL.
In a country with 8.5 million people it's not like you're living in a village
with 5000 people where you know everyone. I think that once you have more than
about 1 million people it's quite feasible to have perfect anonymity.
More than that, in Switzerland they speak 4 different languages (German,
French, Italian and the Romance language Romansch). The communities are quite
separate, it's entirely possible for your average French Swiss to not have
much to do with his fellow German Swiss countrymen.
~~~
cascom
I don’t think the OP was being completely literal, and your point about
language barriers is well taken, but in the context of America, Switzerland is
the state of Virginia in terms of population (and about 40% of Virginia’s land
area).
In that context, Swiss national politics is more akin U.S. state level
politics, where there tends to be much more cohesion.
~~~
CaptainZapp
Actually, as a fiercly federalist country politics are very much comparable to
a lesser corrupt US. In fact parts of the US system were implemented with the
founding of the Swiss Confederation. Namely the two houses.
The principle of governance is to push as much power as possible as locally as
possible. Communities and cities as well as cantons (states) in Switzerland
have a lot of leeway in handling their affairs. As long there's no violation
of higher principles. For example a violation of the federal constitution.
~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _parts of the US system were implemented with the founding of the Swiss
> Confederation_
Specifically, on the California constitution. (The Swiss system improves on
California’s referendum process by making the referenda texts non-binding as
law, but binding as instructions on the legislature.)
~~~
mkempe
You're inventing a past influence of California as a model for other parts of
the world.
The Swiss constitution of 1848 is modeled after the US Constitution [1], not
after such a thing as a Californian political model -- especially since
California was not admitted to the Union until 1850... popular initiatives
(not just referenda) were adopted in Zurich before spreading to other Swiss
cantons and then being also adopted at the Federal level.
[1] [http://history-switzerland.geschichte-
schweiz.ch/switzerland...](http://history-switzerland.geschichte-
schweiz.ch/switzerland-federal-constitution-1848.html)
------
rlvesco7
Verizon has a section of their site to turn off marketing and adjust privacy
settings. Notably absent is the ability to turn off location sharing. I
emailed the privacy department and they totally dodged my question. I still
would like, and think it's important to have, an option to opt out of all
location sharing. I don't care if it's for fraud prevention since that is
easily abused by companies.
~~~
josefresco
For those curious, here is where/how to do this with Verizon:
Login (verizonwireless.com) > My Profile > Privacy Settings
[https://nbillpay.verizonwireless.com/vzw/secure/setPrivacy.a...](https://nbillpay.verizonwireless.com/vzw/secure/setPrivacy.action)
"Customer Proprietary Network Information Settings" was enabled. "Business &
Marketing Insights" was disabled. "Relevant Mobile Advertising " was enabled.
Note, I had to disable Customer Proprietary Network Information Settings twice
after I found it was still enabled after my first attempt.
------
paulie_a
Does anyone know of a way to simply fake location data? I genuinely don't care
if it is technically illegal. Data collection has jumped the shark at this
point
~~~
mirimir
I doubt that there's any way to fake location based on cell towers. That's all
done in the baseband radio, which is not readily user accessible. And even if
you could mess with it, it's probably very illegal. It's certainly illegal to
spoof mobile subscriber identity (IMSI) because that allows theft of service.
It's much easier to disable GPS location capability. But even that's not very
reliable, because there are multiple software levels, most of which aren't
user controllable.
The best option that I know is turning devices off, and keeping them in
Faraday bags, except when in use. So you get to pick which locations get
reported. You're less reachable, but that's a necessary tradeoff. For long-
term storage in Faraday bags, it's important to remove the battery, because
otherwise the device may drain it, trying to ping towers, even though "turned
off".
~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I doubt that there 's any way to fake location based on cell towers. That's
> all done in the baseband radio, which is not readily user accessible. And
> even if you could mess with it, it's probably very illegal._
Also, it would probably cause your phone to simply stop working as a phone -
cell towers need this location data for their fundamental operations as a
cellular system.
~~~
mirimir
Yes, good point. So if you care about cell towers, you can just nuke the
radio, and use only VoIP via WiFi. But even that's iffy, I think, given
difficulty controlling apps. And finally, even if all that works, you don't
really have a "phone" anymore.
------
acjohnson55
What about T-Mobile?
~~~
ofcrpls
[https://twitter.com/JohnLegere/status/1009168217586061313](https://twitter.com/JohnLegere/status/1009168217586061313)
From earlier today.
~~~
acjohnson55
Great, so now I have to count on Mr. Legere's judgment of whether a given
middleman is "shady".
Why is it legal for these companies to sell our data to anyone? This is nuts.
~~~
iClaudiusX
The FCC in 2016 voted to require that ISPs and mobile providers must get opt-
in consent to share or sell customer data.
Then in 2017 Congress voted to overturn those rules and prevent the FCC from
implementing them in the future in a party-line vote in the House and Senate.
Adding further insult to injury, the current FCC chairman, Ajit Pai,
represented Securus (the company that sparked this revelation) in 2012 as an
attorney.
[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/for-sale-your-
pr...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/for-sale-your-private-
browsing-history/)
[https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/verizon-and-
att-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/06/verizon-and-att-will-
stop-selling-your-phones-location-to-data-brokers/)
------
gm-conspiracy
It will now be leased.
~~~
mtgx
Or bartered, just like Facebook didn't "sell" your data to data brokers, the
company just exchanged it for the brokers' own data on you (or others).
------
trumped
I was dumb enough to think that anyone would need a warrant to be able to get
that information...
------
colinbartlett
“Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint decide to cut out middlemen and sell directly to
location data consumers.”
~~~
dang
Please don't use quotation marks to make it look like quoting someone when you
aren't. And could you please not break the site guidelines by posting shallow
dismissals? If you have a substantive point, make it thoughtfully instead.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
~~~
colinbartlett
That’s fair, thanks dang!
------
jrs95
Don’t worry, the (federal) government will still have no problems getting
their hands on it.
Any progress on privacy is great, but it doesn’t buy much as long as
underlying issues aren’t solved. We still have a legal system that has no
issue with nearly unlimited surveillance by the federal government which is
set up by what is essentially secret law.
~~~
rlvesco7
Yes, but they have been bypassing due process by using 3rd parties instead of
going directly to telecoms. And the friendly folks at Palantir et al are only
too happy to share.
~~~
jrs95
The due process is basically just a rubber stamped sham anyways — the only
downside is that there’s a paper trail. But it seems that as a government
agency you can just lie to the FISA courts to get your warrants and there
won’t be any consequences later.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tech Razer - Voltaic
https://www.techrazer.com/
======
Voltaic
TechRazer is that gathering that you can call home. At TR you can hang easy in
the anteroom, talk tech with different individuals, hotshot your GFX work,
truly anything you would need to do! You can join numerous usergroups, or
purchase one and lead it yourself. We're generally open to proposals and
enhancements. There are additionally numerous open doors at TechRazer. Client
giveaways, custom usergroups, exceptional recompenses, unique gatherings, and
parts more. The conceivable outcomes are inestimable! Come go along with us,
and we we'll invite you with open arms!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Verizon MiFi Device Hacked - there
http://threatpost.com/en_us/blogs/verizon-mifi-device-hacked-020310
======
DenisM
More accurately they found a way to quickly crack the default WPA key.
Workaround? Change the default WPA key.
~~~
jnorthrop
Unfortunately the device does not allow you to change the key. I wish it did,
or maybe someone could explain how.
To make it consumer friendly it comes with the SSID and key printed on the
back of the device and no way to change that. You can see a picture of the
label in the picture in the article -- its right below the SSID.
~~~
rufo
This Engadget review has a screenshot, and mentions you can change both the
SSID and password via a web interface:
[http://mobile.engadget.com/2009/05/13/verizon-
mifi-2200-revi...](http://mobile.engadget.com/2009/05/13/verizon-
mifi-2200-review/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Molecular Computer That Mimics the Brain - coreyrecvlohe
http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/nanotechnology/a-molecular-computer-that-mimics-the-brain
======
RiderOfGiraffes
Dup: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1360847>
(although now that I've checked, there's no discussion there)
| {
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IOS Tutorial: Creating a chat room using Parse.com - tikhon
http://attila.tumblr.com/post/21180235691/ios-tutorial-creating-a-chat-room-using-parse-com
======
ZitchDog
I've been using parse for the last 3 weeks. One thing I've discovered is that
it works very well for situations like a chat room, where the app is expected
to always be online. For apps which need offline mode, like mine does, things
start to deteriorate quickly. Object associations, for example, can't be saved
while the app is offline. This has forced me to create my own hacky UUID
method of storing and looking up object associations which I'm not
particularly happy with.
These are joys of beta, closed source software, I suppose.
~~~
lacker
Hey ZitchDog, I'm sorry to hear you are having trouble with offline mode. We
try hard to make things work offline. You probably already get this, but it
isn't like a chat room in the sense that you need an open socket. The standard
model is more like an app like Foursquare uses, where you refresh at specified
times, but we do also let you cache network operations like saving data to run
once the internet is available again.
So, unless there's something here that I don't understand, this specific case
seems like something that should work. If you 'd like us to explain in more
detail how you can get things to work, drop us a line at [email protected]
and I will help get the appropriate folks involved.
~~~
ZitchDog
Note sent. Thanks!
Also, all crankiness aside, aside from this issue Parse has been very nice to
work with. I'm impressed at how easy it is to get a new project up and
running.
------
chrismealy
I can't write __block without grinding my teeth.
~~~
hobonumber1
Why?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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MAMR Breakthrough for Next-Gen HDDs - vanburen
https://www.anandtech.com/show/11925/western-digital-stuns-storage-industry-with-mamr-breakthrough-for-nextgen-hdds
======
otakucode
Mechanical storage is only efficient for bulk storage because NAND chips are
still being price-fixed just like LCD panels and RAM chips before that. It's
no accident it's the same manufacturers involved either. And just like those
other products eventually saw a large international investigation culminating
in "punishments" for global price-fixing, so will NAND. And when that happens,
the fact hard drives have material costs that radically outstrip basic NAND
chips (which are about as dead-simple as it gets) will very rapidly result in
NAND storage offering tens or hundreds of times as much capacity for the same
price. It's absurd the mechanical charade is being allowed to be perpetuated
as long as it has been.
You can't make devices that deal with motors and rare earth magnets and
spinning platters coated with ruthenium and other rare materials at insanely
exacting tolerances, encapsulated in hermetically sealed Helium bubbles for
cheaper than you can photolithographically lay out a bunch of NAND gates in
cheap bulk semiconductors. There really isn't any word for it other than
absurd. And the fact that NAND chips are in literally EVERYTHING means they
are commoditized. Which means economies of scale make them cost almost nothing
to manufacture. And yet... it still costs you 4x or more to get an SSD rather
than several pounds of spinning metal? Nah, that's not how things work without
help.
Why stop with microwaves? Why not make platters out of pure gold and the
read/write heads out of synthetic diamond? Maybe integrate a cryogenic cooling
system and store the data in a Bose-Einstein condensate? At this point it
seems people will believe even that is cheaper than some NAND chips run off a
line like printouts.
~~~
Adverblessly
I admit to not knowing anything about how either drive type is made, but if
what you are saying is true, then I wonder why other big players aren't just
stepping up and making their own SSDs?
If Google can make their own processing unit just for running ML, why aren't
they also making their own SSDs to drastically decrease storage costs and
improve storage performance?
~~~
JosephLark
> I wonder why other big players aren't just stepping up and making their own
> SSDs
There are only a handful of fabs making the required NAND chips. Spinning up a
new fab takes years and hundreds of millions of dollars, not to mention some
serious technological and manufacturing know how. So it's really not easy for
someone to just up and enter the NAND market.
I don't exactly doubt that price fixing is happening, but my understanding of
current high SSD and even RAM prices at the moment is that there is a serious
demand that outstrips the current fabs abilities. Mobile devices are eating up
a lot of the NAND output.
~~~
disconnected
In addition, chip fabrication processes are notoriously fickle, especially at
very high densities. I wouldn't be surprised if 10% of the NAND chips came out
DOA from the production line.
In the case of GPUs they can turn a defective GPU into a lower tier GPU by
disabling malfunctioning components, which means that it isn't a total loss. I
doubt NAND chips can be salvaged in the same way. Since they are so simple,
there's nothing to recover. It goes straight into the bin.
~~~
otakucode
The difference is that NAND doesn't need to BE high density except in those
mobile devices. For both consumer grade SSDs and enterprise SSDs, NAND already
has such a huge storage density advantage that if they actually used up the
space available inside a 2.5" or 3.5" case and weren't concentrating on
transfer speed as much, yields wouldn't be much of a problem.
NAND does actually have a degree of flaws it can tolerate as they are made
today in consumer SSDs. I am not certain, but SLC Enterprise SSDs made for
database servers and the like might get the best yield chips I'd guess. On
consumer grade devices, there is an amount of 'slack' space that the chips
actually can accomodate that is used for relocating data from damaged areas,
wear levelling, some bookkeeping, etc. So if you buy a 1TB SSD, there might be
enough actual storage on the chips to hold 1.1TB if all of it was made
available. I'd not be surprised if particularly bad runs come out and get
binned as 512GB devices because large portions of the chips are unreliable.
~~~
warrenm
This is not especially dissimilar from how CPUs were made and marketed for
years - CPUs that wouldn't clock at 1.6GHz would get sold as 1.4GHz, for
example
Kinda like how ladders are rated: they _say_ 300Lbs .. it'll _probably_ take
more than double that - but if it breaks when you overload it, the
manufacturer can point to the rating and say, "you exceeded its spec"
------
castratikron
I was a part of research on HAMR a few years ago. I remember one problem they
were having was the heating lasers would burn out after a few writes. There
was also research into spin torque MRAM, so it's interesting that spin-torque
was used to make something that replaced HAMR.
------
biggerfisch
Are data centers still using SATA to connect this big of drives? Seems like
when your disks gets much bigger than 10GB, using SATA gets pretty limiting
~~~
sp332
Even the 12TB drives are only advertising 250MB/s.
[https://www.anandtech.com/show/11903/seagate-ships-
consumerf...](https://www.anandtech.com/show/11903/seagate-ships-
consumerfocused-12tb-helium-drives) That's a lot higher than the 150 MB/s or
so you'd get from a 3TB drive, but it's not pushing the limits of SAS or SATA.
Unless you cheaped out and connected a bunch of drives to a single controller.
~~~
ksec
Yes, and funny enough the reason we got 6Gbps SATA was because of SSD.
------
ape4
This is cool. But I assume SSD is going to get better too.
~~~
wyldfire
If SSDs were forecast to overtake magnetic drives, then WD would be unwise to
invest here. But the graph from the article shows a 10x cost/GB continuing
into 2028.
So, yes, SSDs will improve. But they exist in a different tier/market segment
until they can close that cost gap.
~~~
mark-r
Not just cost but density. I'm pulling these numbers out of the air, but
suppose you could have a $100 4TB SSD or a $600 24TB HDD some years from now.
Many datacenters will still prefer the HDD just for the rack space
considerations.
~~~
loeg
SSDs are already more dense than HDDs and will likely remain that way. The
only remaining barrier is $/GB.
~~~
mark-r
I was all set to doubt you, but then I found this:
[https://www.micron.com/products/solid-state-
storage/product-...](https://www.micron.com/products/solid-state-
storage/product-lines/5100#/). My ignorance is showing again.
~~~
loeg
There's even 15 TB available for sale today in the 2.5" form factor:
[https://www.cdw.com/shop/products/Samsung-
PM1633a-MZILS15THM...](https://www.cdw.com/shop/products/Samsung-
PM1633a-MZILS15THMLS-solid-state-drive-15.36-TB-
SAS-12Gb-s/4586754.aspx?pfm=srh)
And 60 TB in 3.5": [https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/seagate-
unveils-60tb...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/seagate-unveils-60tb-
ssd-the-worlds-largest-hard-drive/)
No spinning rust drive comes close.
------
awjr
So is this a reason to consider buying WD stock? This looks like they've
completely surprised the market with this technology leap.
~~~
LeifCarrotson
No, in my opinion. But not because I don't think it's a promising technology
announcement or a good company, but because _a casual reader of articles on HN
is not positioned to compete with the professional analysts._
They mentioned that they'd be hosting an event with innovation announcements
months ago. Some traders would have been buying WD stock in anticipation of
that event, and wagering whether or not that included MAMR, HAMR, etc, and
what each of those possibilities would mean to the company outlook.
The event and the article describing the MAMR breakthrough were posted
yesterday at 9:30 AM PT. Your 'window of opportunity' to respond to the
article was the few moments it took to figure out which of your guesses about
what they'd announce were confirmed or refuted at the event. Even then, you
may have been reading it literally by eye, while your competition was parsing
it with NLP, using a gigabit connection and server located near the wdc.com
servers, or perhaps using ones near the stock exchange.
[http://investor.wdc.com/eventdetail.cfm?EventID=185452](http://investor.wdc.com/eventdetail.cfm?EventID=185452)
[https://wdc.app.box.com/s/2o32m71nthf84ozbz8wlwyo59uqxb6og/f...](https://wdc.app.box.com/s/2o32m71nthf84ozbz8wlwyo59uqxb6og/file/236947127675)
As a result of this preparation, concurrent with the announcement and market
open, the stock 'jumped' from 84.27 to 86.22, and a somewhat remarkable volume
of 917k shares were traded instead of their daily average of 144k shares, but
have since moved around a bit and are gradually settling in:
[https://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:WDC](https://finance.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:WDC)
In short: you're literally 24 hours behind the real market. Don't try to play
it minute by minute based on Anandtech or HN publications.
But don't let that discourage you from buying companies based on what you
believe their long-term outlook to be. Or maybe do that, and just buy into
mutual or index funds instead.
~~~
pellucide
Its highly unlikely that an algorithm, however sophisticated can project the
outcome of such an announcement in such a short time.
But discussions like this on a news/analysis piece by a fairly technical new
source combined with above average human intelligence will project a more
likely outcome.
The stock may go up on this news like you mentioned. But it more often than
not settles down. But if OPs time horizon is medium term(a few quarters) or
more, then its worth investing on such news.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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US generates more electricity from renewables than coal for first time ever - rm2889
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jun/26/energy-renewable-electricity-coal-power
======
claymav
True but misleading. Natural gas has taken over, not renewables. Either way,
hope to see an article declaring renewables make more power than natural gas
soon.
~~~
lightgreen
Natural gas emits far less co2 per heat generated (don’t know how much
exactly). Burning natural gas is bad, but not as bad as burning coal.
~~~
beenBoutIT
Getting at the natural gas requires fracking which ruins the surrounding
environment. Large swaths of land across the US are uninhabitable with toxic
water, soil and air as a result of fracking.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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