text
stringlengths 44
776k
| meta
dict |
|---|---|
Predictive Optimizing Code Loading - avodonosov
https://github.com/avodonosov/pocl#readme
======
khc
sounds very similar to [https://www.instartlogic.com/blog/dont-buy-the-
javascript-yo...](https://www.instartlogic.com/blog/dont-buy-the-javascript-
you-dont-use)
~~~
avodonosov
Indeed, very similar! This confirms I'm doing a right thing.
~~~
avodonosov
I've been pointed to another research of the same idea:
[http://research.microsoft.com/en-
us/projects/doloto/](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/doloto/)
------
ericclemmons
I was really curious to see code, but the README ends with:
It would be nice to find support for several month of work to continue investigating the POCL concept.
------
bananaboy
Nice idea. Kind of like a demand paging system for the web.
------
gmmeyer
This is cool, but it would be a lot cooler if I could see how it's done.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Overview of Quantum Computing - ukd1
http://blog.caffeinatedanalytics.com/an-overview-of-quantum-computing
======
redlollipop
This is really interesting. Do you have a recommendation for a good quantum
computing intro book?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Economists are often Cheapskates - cwan
http://online.wsj.com/article_email/SB126238854939012923-lMyQjAxMTIwNjAyMzMwODM4Wj.html
======
michaelkeenan
We often measure charity in dollars donated. Occasionally we measure charity
by percentage of wealth donated[1].
What would happen if we measured charity in terms of lives saved? As PG has
mentioned, things which you measure tend to improve[2]. I would rather improve
charity outcomes than inputs.
Economists sometimes claim that most charities are very inefficient[3]. Maybe
economists give to more efficient charities, so their dismal charity record
might look better when measured in lives saved rather than dollars donated.
(If this seems like a weak apology for the lack of charity of economists, I
agree. It is sad that a disproportionately high fraction of economists give
nothing at all to charity.)
[1] e.g. <http://www.mint.com/blog/trends/charity-who-cares/>
[2] Point 7 of Startups in 13 Sentences:
<http://www.paulgraham.com/13sentences.html>
[3] <http://blog.givewell.net/?p=480> and
<http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/09/lost-charity.html>
~~~
cwan
There's probably something to that. I do wonder whether for economists look at
something like Walmart and see them doing more social good by making goods
more affordable than XYZ charity (and arguably they do). I think when most of
us think of "social good" we tend to idealize not for profits more than for
profits, but there shouldn't be any reason why profitability doesn't equate to
social good - in fact, arguably it does given that revenues by definition
require that people want a service/product enough to pay for it.
~~~
lionhearted
This reminds me of something I think about quite a bit. Right now I'm in Los
Angeles for just a couple more days before heading off to Taiwan. I've spent a
little under a year here in LA, and - there's _a lot_ of homeless people here.
Good weather plus forgiving vagrancy laws plus charitable people makes Los
Angeles something of a homeless mecca.
I see people giving homeless people a dollar or two all the time. Then I see
the same homeless guy getting an 89 cent taco at Taco Bell, or a $1.60 coffee
at Starbucks. This whole thing seems like a tremendous waste to me.
Consider someone who gives $1 per weekday to homeless persons. That's
$260/year. That buys something like 116 tacos and 81 cups of coffee. Which is
nice.
Except - you know how many tacos a proper homeless shelter can cook with a
$260 donation? You know how much coffee costs in bulk? I know I was making
coffee that averaged me 4 cents/cup for decent stuff in bulk, and it wasn't a
crazy amount of bulk. You can prepare a decent full meal for under 50 cents if
buying rice, beans, lettuce, tortillas, and meat in bulk. That's a full meal
as compared to one small taco.
So y'know, that sucks. It also encourages begging, which is demeaning for the
beggar, and can scare, intimidate, and upset people passing by. It's a bad gig
all the way around.
So how come people give out $1 per day instead of cut a check for $260 to a
shelter? My thought - and it's somewhat cynical - is that people get a "hit of
good feelings" when they give the buck away. Writing a check for $260 once a
year doesn't give that same hit when you make $50,000. It feels very small.
But a dollar every weekday? Oh yeah, that's 260 hits on the "I'm a good
person" pipe.
Now, being an economics-minded individual, I'm not going to explain it like
this to people who patronize panhandlers. Oh no, I'm quite sure it wouldn't
work. Instead, I'm curious to ask - "How could we get people donating to
shelters instead of passing out change?"
Hard question. Maybe - just maybe - when you donate, the charity could give
you slips of paper to print from your computer to give to homeless people
letting them know that food and comfort is nearby. Or maybe we could encourage
people to save up and help a specific homeless person get an inexpensive hotel
room, shave, haircut, shower, and set of clean clothes once every few months
instead of a little petty change every day. Something like that.
It's something I roll over in my mind a fair bit - every time, in fact, that
I'm at the Westwood Taco Bell or Starbucks. It just seems like a tremendous
waste, as I've volunteered at shelters before and know they can get a heck of
a lot better economies of scale and make a heck of a lot more of a difference.
And paying people to beg sucks - begging must be miserable for a person's self
esteem, and has negative effects on people around too. Much better to give
that money to a charity and let a homeless person know where they can get
help.
~~~
Retric
From an economic standpoint begging is just another low paying job. It might
look like they are incapable of working in the real world but there is a
reason it's not wall to wall beggars in high traffic areas. It's fairly
violent and dangerous to keep a high traffic area so I suspect the homeless
person feels much the same as a carnival worker. Smile, play nice, and take
the chump for all he's worth.
------
Tichy
Is it bad to give friends 150$ to hire movers, instead of helping by oneself?
I was actually planning to do the same thing on the next occasion. Since I am
over 30 now, it probably is a lot cheaper too - not only in terms of my hourly
wage, but also if I multiply the odds of getting a lumbago with the costs of
treating it.
I know moving is supposed to be the occasion where true friends are revealed,
but doesn't it make too much sense to simply pay? Also, maybe true friends
wouldn't ask their friends to help moving, if they could afford to hire
movers?
As for charities, I admit I also have problems to donate or "invest fairly":
it seems a "fair price" is probably the market price, to investing fairly
seems alien indeed. At least unless there is more information (I don't want to
support exploitation). As for charities, I am also often not sure how much
good they will really do - I am much more interested in changing the
underlying causes.
------
ryansloan
I have a close friend who studied Economics. He always said he wasn't cheap,
just "opportunity cost aware."
------
houseabsolute
A nice piece of entertainment, but there's a lot of contradictory motivation
behind the actions of these economists. For example, some of them would rather
pay movers to save a few hours of work. Another will drive half an hour out of
his way to save $5. Similarly many of the quirks listed in this article are
just personality quirks which are perhaps associated with wanting to become an
economist, but which are not likely because of it.
This piece is entertainment not meant to inform, which is fine, but we need to
read it that way.
~~~
sokoloff
Saving a few hours of time in exchange for $150 vs saving $5 in exchange for
an hour (round-trip) of your time may be the right choice for the same person.
Moving is strenuous, boring physical labor with a relatively high probability
of being hurt/sore the next day. Driving around for an extra hour may be a
pleasant diversion, time alone to think, relax, listen to music, etc. It's not
apples to apples paying $50 an hour in one case against being paid $5 an hour
in the other case.
------
leelin
I'm guessing as a collective the HN community might be even more frugal than a
grab bag of economists, and it was computer science minds that hacked casinos
for far more by researching card counting. :P
Btw, casinos are getting wise to the trick of placing anti-correlated bets
using match-play coupons. When I was last at Atlantic City, the matchplay
coupon was only good for bets on Red for roulette and Pass for craps, so that
you couldn't pair up with someone betting on Black and Don't Pass.
~~~
tome
The surely you could just bet your own money on black and get 50% of the
leverage?
------
davidmathers
_Economist Robert Gordon, of Northwestern University, says he drives out of
his way to go to a grocery store where prices are cheaper than at the nearby
Whole Foods, even though it takes him an extra half hour to save no more than
$5._
...
_And the principles that can make economists seem cheap sometimes lead them
to hire help, because they are taught to value their own time._
Hmmm.
------
CapitalistCartr
To mangle Oscar Wilde, economists know the price of everything and the value
of nothing. An exaggeration but not by much.
~~~
cwan
Not sure I agree with that point. I admire those who are able to consistently
separate emotions from decision making - and that's what I think economics
training does for individuals when it comes to money and time. Of course, it
can be taken to extremes and what may seen logical and rational on its face
may not ultimately be viable/optimal especially when you take into account the
emotions and reactions of others.
~~~
chrischen
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think by "value" he didn't just mean
sentimental value.
Getting a Rolex because you found it for $5 is a value, getting a Fossil
because you found it for $5 is cheap.
------
shrughes
> _One year, Yale University economist Robert Shiller, who'd never gambled in
> his life, found himself at a casino there. He says that was because Wharton
> economist Jeremy Siegel realized that by using coupons offered to
> conventioneers, they could take opposing bets at the craps table with a 35
> out of 36 chance of winning $12.50 each. Over two nights, Mr. Shiller netted
> $87.50._
------
tigerthink
Too bad the article never really answered the question.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Can you submit a review of your VPS/dedicated provider on our website? - ServerHunter
https://www.serverhunter.com
======
ServerHunter
If you are or were subscribed to a VPS or dedicated server, we encourage you
to rate your server provider on serverhunter.com.
It would be much help to our growing community to learn about the price,
support, performance, and reliability of your provider.
Thank you! :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NPM has been partially down for a while now - harrychenca
See github thread: https://github.com/npm/npm/issues/13284
======
Juha
They are still down (7+ hours after creating that ticket), with zero
communication from NPM and status page showing all green. Not the way to go.
EDIT: They finally pushed an update to status page:
[http://status.npmjs.org/](http://status.npmjs.org/)
------
harrychenca
Seems like npm's team is awake. They are taking a look now.
------
mariogintili
LOL boy do I miss my bundler only days
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An introduction to integrated circuits - DyslexicAtheist
https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/i2c
======
twtw
The submitted title doesn't correspond to the true title.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: DevDash – Creating highly configurable dashboards in your terminal - thanato0s
https://github.com/Phantas0s/devdash
======
angelmass
Is there a significant difference between this and
[https://wtfutil.com/](https://wtfutil.com/) ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Microsoft's "Scroogled" Campaign Is Childish - srathi
http://itechtriad.com/articles/2013/12/30/why-microsofts-scroogled-campaign-is-childish
======
aspir
Did anyone really need convincing that the Scroogled campaign was childish?
This campaign is so bad, it's going to be used in case studies for years to
come.
We're literally looking at history in the making with this campaign. If MSFT
declines in the coming years, this will be regarded as a signal of the
beginning of the end. If they improve, this will be regarded as a "darkest
before the dawn" moment. There are plenty of varying degrees of "bad," but
"historical-record bad" is what Scroogled is.
~~~
cies
I came here to say the same.
It seems that chrome books are sooo good that MS feels sooo scared that they
have lost all dignity, and now spend big money in a joke that is not funny but
actually quite revealing of their sad situation.
------
notacoward
Yes, the campaign is childish, but so are the article's misrepresentations.
For example:
(1) Google Docs - not Drive - does not have "nearly the same capabilities" as
Office by any reasonable definition. FFS, they don't even seem to have proper
support for custom paragraph styles, widow/orphan control, etc. There are
certainly ways in which Google Docs improves over Office, especially wrt
collaborative editing, but there are also _massive_ gaps that make it almost
unusable for anything medium-size or larger.
(2) Microsoft's characterization of Chromebooks as "useless without the
internet" is not entirely wrong. Constant internet connectivity might be the
norm everywhere the author has gone, but it's still not something one can rely
on in every corner of the globe. That being the case, "suitable for use while
traveling" really might not apply sometimes. By the author's own cited
definition, Chromebooks - like the one I'm typing this on - might not be real
laptops for many people.
In both cases, the author starts with a grain of truth and then destroys his
own point with exaggeration. The piece would have been far more effective if
he had stuck with the facts - which are damning enough - instead of letting
his bias shine through.
~~~
anologwintermut
Not to mention, a lot of marketing is childish. The Mac vs. PC ads were
childish. They worked ( to the extent anyone can say TV ads work)
~~~
sigsergv
Mac vs. PC campaign was also very ironic and inspiring (probably because it
suggests and proposes new features, new way of thinking), but MSFT campaign is
really stupid (if not worse, because it's merely portrays google in a negative
light).
------
derekp7
Well, in spite of the silliness of those commercials, lately I have been
creeped out when I start getting blasted by adverts from all over the web
based on something I recently searched on. Often times, I'll quickly look up
something / fact check what I've read in an article (most recently was
"longevity insurance" annuities and reverse mortgages), and now I'm getting a
whole bunch of ads aimed at older / retired people on many sites that I visit.
And these ads have nothing to do with me, except that I happened to fact-check
something a couple times. Kind of makes me want to re-think any of my web
searches, and do them in a private browsing window.
I can't really say why this bothers me -- maybe it is because I know that
their ad matching algorithm gave inaccurate results (so it grates on my OCD,
maybe?), or maybe it just feels like I'm being stalked by people trying to
sell me something.
~~~
pgrote
Is there a way to turn that off? I don't mind the adwords ads since they
sometimes help me find what I am looking for. They are useless, though, if
they display ads for things I've searched for in the past.
~~~
pak
If you're on Chrome (in which case there will be no lasting victories, only
small ones), there's this extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iba-opt-out-by-
goo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/iba-opt-out-by-
google/gbiekjoijknlhijdjbaadobpkdhmoebb?hl=en)
This looks like it does the same thing for Firefox:
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/targeted-
adve...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/targeted-advertising-
cookie-op/)
There may be IBA opt-out extensions for other browsers. AFAICT all they do is
permanently block the DoubleClick and related cookies.
This, in combination with Adblock Plus, seems to do the job for me. There are
a lot of people complaining that the extensions don't work, but they probably
do not realize that these only block the collection of new data tied to your
browsing history, and not the display of the ads themselves, which is what you
need Adblock Plus for.
------
mikestew
Thanks, Captain Obvious. Now that we've established that the campaign is
childish, can we move on to the question of whether it's working? I viewed the
"Mac vs. PC" Apple ads to be a bit childish (and it's almost all Macs and iOS
at our house), but folks seemed to like them. Can the same be said for
"Scroogled"? Of the one or two I've seen, I think I'd go out of my way to
avoid the MSFT product out of spite. But that's just me. Maybe my judgement of
what people like is as poor as it was for the Apple campaign.
~~~
poopsintub
Exactly. Let's compare apples and oranges and make outrageous points that
don't even matter. My guess is that's what good marketing is.
------
jrochkind1
> _it was actually later proven that Bing brings many of its results from
> Google 's search engine_
What's he talking about? Making this claim without a cite is annoying. Making
copy-and-paste not work so I couldn't even copy and paste it here is even more
annoying.
~~~
throwawaykf03
Read both sides of the story rather than just Google's accusations:
[http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-
copying-...](http://searchengineland.com/google-bing-is-cheating-copying-our-
search-results-62914)
[http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-
ac...](http://searchengineland.com/bing-why-googles-wrong-in-its-
accusations-63279)
~~~
cbr
"Google alleges that Bing monitors what people search for on its site, if they
have Internet Explorer equipped with certain features. Bing doesn’t dispute
this. But Bing isn’t just monitoring what happens at Google. It monitors what
people do as they travel across the entire web."
I'd love to see that on the Scroogled page.
(I recognize that on the internet I have basically no privacy from people who
want to extract useful signals from my behavior. It sounds icky but in
practice it doesn't seem to be a problem and it's a huge pain to prohibit.
What bothers me is Microsoft pretending to be pro-privacy and anti-tracking
when it does the same kind of data collection and mining as everyone else.)
~~~
throwawaykf03
Users have to opt in to sharing click events with Bing for features like
suggested sites (" _if_ they have Internet Explorer equipped with certain
features"), and that's what they track. IMO, if users give permission, it's
fair game for MS to use that data -- that's still more of an option than what
most of the Internet gives users.
Also, AFAIK Hotmail (or live or outlook or whatever it's called now) does not,
and never has, targeted ads based on keywords in the email. I'm not that big
on privacy so I still use Gmail but at least MS is not being hypocritical in
that respect.
Bing search, on the other hand, does all the sorts of tracking and mining
Google (and Facebook etc.) does, but so far the Scroogled campaign hasn't said
anything about search.
------
computerslol
I found the ad hilarious. Google is an ad company. A brilliant ad company, but
still an ad company. As far as I know, this is something that is not on most
consumer's minds.
The scroogled ads are pretty good for microsoft standards.
My concern is less with the data collection, and more with the lack of native
application support. If it looks like a laptop, consumers like my parents will
think they found the best deal in the world when they come across it. I have
talked both of them out of buying one because it won't run the work
applications they need (they wanted to use it to replace their aging laptops).
If it was a tablet, I'd have no problem with it. Consumers are used to the
idea of tablets as toys (and don't expect them to run office and their
workplace's custom windows apps).
As a programmer, I really don't want another platform to write native apps
for; there are so many already. I'll learn it if they get enough market
penetration. I don't know enough about the native APIs for the chromebook; how
different is it to write a chromebook app than an android one? Is it web only?
Are you really cut off from any functionality if you aren't around wifi?
~~~
VLM
"how different is it to write a chromebook app than an android one?"
I almost bought my wife a chromebook for christmas, I researched this a bit
for fun. Might buy one for myself too.
Basically you google for "how to write chromebook app" (or Bing, LOL who am I
kidding no one uses bing) and eventually get to
[https://developers.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/index](https://developers.google.com/chrome/apps/docs/index)
You probably want "packaged app" which unsurprisingly turns out to be "how to
write a chrome browser app"
I thought it was all pretty interesting and have a few ideas to try.
"I really don't want another platform to write native apps for"
Careful careful, thats how cobol programmers and the like get stagnant and
then unemployable. I'm not saying dive in head first, but sticking a toe in to
see what the water is like, is perfectly reasonable. Go have some fun.
In practice, lets be realistic, its 2013 soon 2014, 99% of "apps" use web
pages as the presentation layer. I'm not going to write anything to use gmail
or hangouts or google drive or facebook or a bazillion other end user
applications. 99% of her time osx is just a Chrome bootloader for my wife, so
I'm thinking of moving it out of the way...
~~~
jasomill
Maybe so, but lots of people use the remaining 1% for most of their work, and
some of us _prefer_ the OS X (or Windows, or X11) desktop environment to the
browser for most applications. I sure do, though I also generally prefer well-
designed Web pages to native mobile apps for accessing information on the
Internet.
~~~
VLM
I totally get what you're saying, I'm just saying for the vast majority of
people who mostly live in a browser, "switching" into a browser doesn't have
much meaning because they're already there, this just works a little better
for them.
There exist a couple remote desktop apps, rdesktop rdp vnc whatever. And I
have a perfectly good virtualization compatible server in the basement, so in
the unlikely even she needed a "real" desktop, its not hard to remotely
access.
The biggest problem with chromebooks is the good ones are "always" sold out
and the bad ones have weird issues like the video drivers are not compatible
with normal codecs so do whatever you want as long as its not youtube /
netflix / prime video / whatever. And that is a problem. If you're sold out of
the good stuff, you don't need to buy advertising.
------
raganwald
This is the company that shamed its own customers by calling them "dinosaurs"
for not upgrading to new versions of Office. In a multi-million dollar
advertising campaign.
When it comes to their marketing, absolutely nothing surprises me any more.
------
throwawaykf03
1\. According to MS, this campaign came out of a survey where something like
45+% of users _didn 't know_ Gmail scans their emails, and 80+% of those
didn't approve of it (I think this is the survey
[http://www.scribd.com/doc/124257005/GfK-Email-Privacy-
Report](http://www.scribd.com/doc/124257005/GfK-Email-Privacy-Report)). That's
a pretty significant number of users.
2\. The "I'm a Mac" campaign was childish, and even though I was predominantly
on Windows then and the ads were so very wrong, I laughed along at them.
Similarly, I'm primarily a Gmail user, but that GmailMan character is
hilarious.
3\. However the campaign appears to us, apparently it's working?!
[http://adage.com/article/digital/microsoft-s-google-
bashing-...](http://adage.com/article/digital/microsoft-s-google-bashing-tv-
campaign-working/244691/)
On the other hand, some doubt if that's really translating into commercial
success: [http://marketingland.com/microsoft-scroogled-
campaign-61887](http://marketingland.com/microsoft-scroogled-campaign-61887)
~~~
dragonwriter
> According to MS, this campaign came out of a survey where something like
> 45+% of users didn't know Gmail scans their emails, and 80+% of those didn't
> approve of it
You think when they brought veteran political campaign pollster Mark Penn [1]
to run the anti-Google campaign, he brought political-campaign-style negative
ads but left the push polls [2] at home?
[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Penn](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Penn)
[2]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push_poll)
~~~
throwawaykf03
Right, and I guess this is the result of a push poll too:
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/technology/google-
accused-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/02/technology/google-accused-of-
wiretapping-in-gmail-scans.html?_r=0)
------
ChuckMcM
Warning Rant mode:
Wow, that is an insanely monetized blog. Does anyone else see random works
linking to search ads and if you select something you get a search query ad?
The content is also pretty muddy. In my opinion Microsoft's campaign isn't
childish, it's just lame. Does Google do all these things? Of course they do,
it makes them billions of dollars a quarter. Does it bother Microsoft that
they can't seem to get away with the same kinds of things? Of course it does,
their search ads monetize at 1/3 to 1/5th the rate that Google's do. Would
they like someone other than folks who understand how search works to "get"
this ? Sure.
But that is the same battle animal rights people have trying to convince egg
eaters that the eggs came out of tortured chickens. At one level it may be
true, and at a much larger level it may be totally irrelevant to the consumer.
So where does that put the OP who is trying exploit Microsoft's strategy to
pick up some AdSense coin out of Google? Does he care? Really? His subtext is
"Hey we're all gettin' rich here off the Goog, Microsoft. Go whine somewhere
else." Heck Google doesn't particularly care about their search results at the
level where this is being argued, they only care that they are tasty enough to
lure enough eyeballs to feed their customers, the advertisers. If they get
less tasty they will fix them, if someone gets mouthy about whether or not
their content should be considered tasty they will fix them too.
There is web search _technology_ which is one thing, and there is web search
_the business_ which is a completely different thing. Confusing them will make
it hard to reason coherently about them.
------
Blahah
Do we really need an article to explain why it's childish? It's face-
slappingly, consumer-insultingly childish.
~~~
vezzy-fnord
Mostly hypocritical, however.
"Look at how Google is spying on you! Here at Microsoft, we totally don't do
such shenanigans. I swear on me mum, mate!"
~~~
katcooke
The specific claim that they don't track users by phrases inside the texts of
their emails does check out.
~~~
jedmeyers
Who checked it? A "1 hour ago registered" astroturfer?
------
marknutter
It's also somewhat insidious. I was watching my local morning news show when
the anchors cut to a segment featuring a "tech reporter in Washington D.C."
who was going to give advice about buying tech gifts for the holiday season.
Laid out on the table were a bunch of Microsoft products and the reporter
proceeded to spew a hit piece aimed squarely at Chromebooks. Never was there
any indication that it was a sponsored story but it was clearly a Microsoft
backed segment. It was truly bizarre. I don't know how often companies pay
news shows to pimp their stuff but I've never seen anything that blatant
before.
~~~
VLM
The phrase you need to google for, err, I mean bing (LOL just kidding) is
"Video News Release"
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_news_release](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_news_release)
Its not new, although they've been growing in popularity for decades. I could
see a stream of nothing but VNRs eventually replacing TV infotainment as we
know it today.
------
ef47d35620c1
I recently bought a laptop for my daughter this Christmas. I considered all
makes and models and finally decided on a Dell running Windows 8. I looked
closely at Chrome Books, but felt she would be at a disadvantage without
Windows and Office. It cost more than the Chrome Books, but I felt it was the
right choice. She can still use Google services if she likes and MS software
and services as well. I thought it was the best, most versatile choice. Just
my own personal experience, I can see the value in Chrome Books too.
------
solve
> it was actually later proven that Bing brings many of it results from
> Google's Search engine
This turned out to be a lie, right?
~~~
nn3
IIRC it turned out to be a side effect of their "toolbar" data collection. If
most people using googles toolbar would use bing they would see a similar
effect. But calling it "they get search results from google" is stretching the
truth. Of course why anyone would submit all their surf history to any of
those big brother companies (M or G) in the first place is a complete mystery.
But overall bing is not too bad. It's a quite respectable search search engine
on its own right. It's not quite as good as google, but I use it regularly to
work around some google misfeatures. What really annoys me in google is that
you cannot cutnpaste PDF urls from search result. I'm sure there is some
workaround, but it's easier to just temporarily switch to bing in the search
bar to solve it (and it typically finds the same thing) bing seems to also
have less spam.
~~~
katcooke
Ironically, Google's own toolbar(which was bundled by OEMs who took money from
Google), sent people's web site visits even after configuring it to say no.
[http://www.benedelman.org/news/012610-1.html](http://www.benedelman.org/news/012610-1.html)
~~~
jedmeyers
Ironically, a lot of new accounts appeared on HN lately posting claims against
Microsoft competitors and telling stories about how a new Surface Pro helped
them do their engineering studies homework.
------
magicalist
If you really think that, giving it more attention isn't a great way to combat
it. I'm sure they knew full well that there was going to be some negative
reaction, but that the trade off for brand awareness (so much free coverage of
their ad campaign) and introducing some level of doubt in some consumers'
minds was worth it (see: negative political attack ads, Mark Penn, etc).
(and bringing up Bing copying Google's search results, and the ad campaign
backfiring and somehow leading to chromebook sales isn't going to lend itself
to a non-stupid HN discussion)
------
slm_HN
Microsoft's Scroogled campaign is hilarious.
Crying about Microsoft's Scroogled campaign is childish.
------
praptak
"Scroogled" is used by Googlers ironically as in "Scroogled again: only three
flavors of soy-free vegan whipped cream in the cafeteria today!"
------
code_duck
I like the "wearables" response also.
>When asked about the shirts, Google said that they "are very interested in
Microsoft's latest venture. The wearables market is becoming very
competitive".
This could be taken as a reference to Google Glass. MS and their vendors don't
seem to have anything near ready to show to compete with Glass, but apparently
they're on top of the T-shirt game.
------
chasing
Scroogled. Office 365. Surface. Xbox One. Microsoft's marketing seems to be
remarkably tone-deaf across-the-board.
------
jeremiep
I never understood companies who spend millions in marketing to promote their
software rather than spending that money on improving said software.
Why not just build great software that speaks for itself rather than try to
manipulate your potential customers with high risks of backfire, as in this
case.
~~~
tarblog
Diminishing returns. More money on R&D helps, but not as much as spending some
on advertising.
------
dsugarman
It may be childish but Apple's similar childish campaign completely destroyed
Microsoft's brand.
------
PetrolMan
I think I'd be less bothered by the campaign if they weren't selling
merchandise. For some reason, that seems to be the tipping point for me. The
campaign is idiotic and now seemingly hypocritical but the attempt to market
merchandise just feels weirdly desperate.
------
bdcravens
More or less childish than Samsung commercials who associate the iPhone with
brainless caricatures standing in line?
------
ThoreauAway
was it just me, or were the comments on that story unreadable until
highlighted?
------
mortyseinfeld
Great. I hope Microsoft goes after Google even more. SkyDrive blows away
GDrive. Windows tablets are coming into their own right, while Android is
pretty much "meh" these days. Google flails away aimlessly with their chromeOS
strategy, all the while doing lots of evil (with Eric Schmidt on the board
still how can it not).
~~~
aspir
If Microsoft products are truly better than Google/Apple, they should move the
conversation to those products, rather than discussing their competitors. I
hear more about Chromebooks from this campaign than I do from Google's own
ads.
~~~
dragonwriter
> If Microsoft products are truly better than Google/Apple, they should move
> the conversation to those products, rather than discussing their
> competitors.
If they were, they would be.
> I hear more about Chromebooks from this campaign than I do from Google's own
> ads.
And the main thing I hear from this campaign is that Microsoft is desperately
afraid that I might by a Chromebook.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Remy – Computer-generated TCP congestion algorithm - JoachimS
http://web.mit.edu/remy/
======
donavanm
A key point that's glossed over is computational complexity on the senders
side. The existing congestion & flow control mechanisms are quite simple. In
contrast these "algorithms have more than 150 rules." Additional state and
computation time on the sender side is non trivial when managing tens or
hundreds of thousands of concurrent flows.
These algorithms vary based on link/endpoint characteristics. This would
require a priori knowledge of the path & quality to each TCP receiver in order
to select an appropriate congestion control algorithm. This problem is
probably tractable for large scale implementations. The number of unique
networks an endpoint is exposed to is in the few million range, and roughly
stable over time. Collapsing adjacent and similar networks would get down in
to the tens of thousands of variant prefixes.
The characteristics of each prefix are roughly stable over time; a subnet of
consumer cable endpoints does not flip to become a CDMA mobile subnet. At a
guess the rate of change is 1-5% per day. If you can track the performance of
millions of subnets a 1% delta per day is certainly feasible. In practice any
single sender would need dozens, or hundreds, of different congestion control
variants.
And lastly they appear to simulate receivers with similar network
characteristics on a single contended link. In practice receivers will have
wildly different characteristics. Traffic to mobile, consumer fixed line isp,
and datacenter networks will all travel on common transit carriers.
Additionally even a single IP endpoint can have variable hidden receivers;
think 802.11, gbe, embedded clients, and a desktop OS behind a consumer NAT
device. Now the sender must track, and adapt, congestion control _per flow_.
In summary synthetic testing of a simplistic use case has out performed
generalized solutions. This should surprise no one. The details of practical
implementation are ignored, and significant.
~~~
keithwinstein
Thanks for these comments!
Humans have been designing congestion-control schemes for 30 years; what's
interesting about our work is that we are starting to learn how to teach a
computer to do the same thing from first principles. (And then learning from
what the computer comes up with to inform human designs...)
I can't tell you yet exactly how computationally taxing the computer-generated
algorithms will turn out to be, compared with TCP CUBIC or similar. So far
we've found that because the RemyCC's rules are just dumb lookups into a
precalculated lookup table, the CPU requirements are pretty mild. But we need
to play around with RemyCCs a lot more before I can speak more confidently.
We're close but not there yet.
To your other point about whether the algorithms "vary based on link/endpoint
characteristics" \-- I don't think they will have to. Quantitatively, a single
RemyCC has been able to outperform TCP CUBIC over a thousand-fold range of
link rates, and with similar results for ranges of latencies, etc.
Just as servers currently use a single TCP congestion-control scheme (often
CUBIC) to talk to many different clients over diverse network paths, there's
no particular reason you wouldn't use a single computer-generated algorithm to
do the same. Trying to "learn" different parameters for different ranges of
remote IP addresses is an interesting idea, but not one we have explored or
are proposing.
~~~
baruch
In my work on improving performance of the Linux TCP stack (part of my
involvement with HTCP) I never saw the congestion-control part in the
performance monitoring. There are such long linked lists that one goes over
that any small computation is lost in the noise, most of the time was spent
reaching uncached memory lines.
------
keithwinstein
Grateful to see everybody's interest in our 2013 paper! You may be interested
in our follow-on work, led by my colleague Anirudh Sivaraman. This will be
presented at the ACM SIGCOMM 2014 conference in a few weeks:
[http://web.mit.edu/keithw/www/Learnability-
SIGCOMM2014.pdf](http://web.mit.edu/keithw/www/Learnability-SIGCOMM2014.pdf)
------
contingencies
Wow, this looks pretty impressive.
My general understanding is that congestion control algorithms seek to provide
performance and efficiency in end to end TCP (transport-layer) connections
that are well-matched to the underlying network path characteristics (latency,
throughput, lossiness). Unfortunately, obtaining reliable information about
these characteristics can be difficult, and this is particularly the case with
dynamic paths (IP mobility, mobile while moving between congested/non-
congested cells, shared near-capacity networks, etc.).
Previously, the areas in which customizing these sorts of algorithms has
yielded particularly high returns have been satellite communications and other
extremely long distance/high latency/known characteristic deployments with
outlying or extreme properties.
My main two questions would then be: (1) To what range of network layer path
or individual link-layer characteristics do the claimed benefits of this
algorithm apply? (2) How much difference will this make to mobile access or
IPv6 IP mobility under a range of different realistic network link issue
scenarios?
If the claims in this paper are true (broadly applicable increase in
throughput and fairness) then I suppose we'll see a switch to this algorithm
en-masse, thus providing another handy covert operating system detection
mechanism to delimit the new generation of kernels.
~~~
suprjami
> (1) To what range of network layer path or individual link-layer
> characteristics do the claimed benefits of this algorithm apply?
The paper states their RemyCC outperformed currently-available CCs even when
link variables varied by an order of magnitude.
To put this into simple terms, you could write a RemyCC for a 1Gbps 10ms link,
and that RemyCC would still perform better (than other CC algos) through a
range of 100Mbps to 10Gbps, and 1ms to 100ms.
> (2) How much difference will this make to mobile access or IPv6 IP mobility
> under a range of different realistic network link issue scenarios?
The whole premise of the paper is that a well-written RemyCC would probably
handle such situations better than a traditional congestion control algorithm.
> then I suppose we'll see a switch to this algorithm en-masse
You are more optimistic than I. Several people have already solved bufferbloat
in theory, but it still exists in real life. Updating legacy devices, even
with something as "simple" as a TCP congestion control module, may not be
possible.
That being said, implementing a few pre-baked RemyCCs in major operating
systems surely would help. Say you had a "mobile" (5Mbps 500ms) and "home
broadband" (50Mbps 50ms) and "LAN" (1Gbps 5ms) RemyCC available in
Lin/Mac/Win/And/IOS, TCP performance would be several times better than what
we have today.
~~~
donavanm
> To put this into simple terms, you could write a RemyCC for a 1Gbps 10ms
> link, and that RemyCC would still perform better (than other CC algos)
> through a range of 100Mbps to 10Gbps, and 1ms to 100ms.
No, pg 133 of the paper. They accept design time input variables as a range,
differing by an order of magnitude. If the "assumptions aren’t met,
performance deteriorates." Throughput and delay look horrendous when the
actual characteristics dont match the model.
> That being said, implementing a few pre-baked RemyCCs in major operating
> systems surely would help. Say you had a mobile" (5Mbps 500ms) and "home
> broadband" (50Mbps 50ms) and "LAN" (1Gbps 5ms) RemyCC available in
> Lin/Mac/Win/And/IOS, TCP performance would be several times better than what
> we have today.
I'm also dubious of any actual adoption. However I believe youre
underestimating the number of variant algorithms required. The consumer
endpoints receive the vast bulk of the traffic, and are rarely contended on
transmit. Its the large scale deployments of senders (CDNs, Streaming
Services, etc) that would make a significant impact to global throughput.
~~~
keithwinstein
You're totally correct that the performance is terrible when the actual
network characteristics are something that the algorithm's "prior assumptions"
thought was impossible.
We think the same is true of traditional TCP. (For example, traditional TCP
assumes that in-network buffers will be small, and therefore that it's
acceptable to keep filling them until they start dropping packets, without
harming delay-sensitive cross traffic too much. Today's Internet no longer
matches TCP's implicit model, and the consequences are that you can't upload
to YouTube and use Skype at the same time on a consumer Internet connection.
We think it's better to at least make the assumptions explicit!)
In the second paper (now posted), we have improved the initial results in that
we can now train a RemyCC that outperforms TCP CUBIC-over-sfqCoDel over a
1000-fold range of link rates (instead of 10x in the first paper). But the
same basic point still holds.
~~~
dtaht
My problem with the new paper is that it computes for a baseline rtt of 100 or
150ms. Real world average rtts are in the range of 4 ms for Google fiber 18 ms
for fios and 38 ms for cable, with the ethernet rtt in a Datacenter far lower
than that. I would be very happy to see Remy produce a CC for these rtts one
day also.
~~~
keithwinstein
Stay tuned... or bug Anirudh for a sneak preview when you see him at SIGCOMM.
(Hi Dave!)
~~~
dtaht
I put up all I have to say on the subject at:
[https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/bloat/2014-August/00...](https://lists.bufferbloat.net/pipermail/bloat/2014-August/002045.html)
------
GhotiFish
Oh man, this is a heady subject, and I feel I might not be getting the full
effect for how much of it is going over my head.
As I'm coming to terms with this topic now, what kinds of applications could
this get applied to? A program to produce routing rules automatically based on
assumed and then derived network infrastructure, would that make more organic
networks more feasible in organizations? Or is this more a tool for telecoms?
Is there much history of machine learning when it comes to packet routing
technologies? I would of thought yes.
required reading I think:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLrBisNqEwQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLrBisNqEwQ)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_congestion_avoidance](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_congestion_avoidance)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUBIC_TCP](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CUBIC_TCP)
[http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/doc/node239.html](http://www.isi.edu/nsnam/ns/doc/node239.html)
------
riobard
It's from the same author who made Mosh, a mobile shell/SSH replacement that
will keep you sane with high latency/lossy connections to your servers.
------
dtaht
I do look forward to the day where such complex congestion control protocols
can be implemented in hardware...
Until then... fq codel is the best thing going.
------
redxblood
Awesome, just awesome. Is it possible to use this algorithm in my machine and
replace the existing one? Would that be too hard?
~~~
keithwinstein
We're trying to get there! Plan is to make a user-space process that uses
Linux network namespaces to intercept the outgoing TCP connections of a
subsidiary process (using DNAT) and then send datagrams according to whatever
congestion-control mechanism you'd like.
But not there yet -- stay tuned.
~~~
ultramancool
Any reason you're trying to do this in usermode instead of using the existing
framework for pluggable congestion control already present in the kernel?
Changing your algorithm is already as simple as echoing into a /proc file.
~~~
signa11
> Any reason you're trying to do this in usermode instead of using the
> existing framework
my _guess_ would be that doing this in userland is way more forgiving than the
kernel. once the basics are in place, moving it to kernel using the
aforementioned pluggable congestion control f/w would be more or less
'mechanical'
------
luu
I love that this has a big fat "reproduce the results" button with detailed
build instructions.
Why isn't reproducibility required to publish in CS? Unlike in fields like
psychology or chemistry, reproducing results should be trivial if the authors
provide instructions on how to do it.
~~~
_delirium
In the natural sciences, reproducibility means that a separate team run an
experiment on independent apparatus, configured from written information
(e.g., the paper). Not that you re-run the experiment on the original
apparatus set up by and made available by the original authors. Clicking a
button is not "reproducibility" in that sense, though it is better than not
being able to do even that. Shipping code/VMs/etc. and having a 2nd team just
re-run it has too much of the original lab in it to be real replication; it's
more like just inspection of the 1st setup. Which is better than no
inspection, but worse than independent reproduction of the results.
Applied to CS, there's really no way around it: reproduction requires that
researchers claiming to replicate a result implement it independently. If
there are not two independently produced implementations that both confirm the
result, the research hasn't been reproduced. The process of doing so helps to
discover cases where the original results were due to idiosyncracies of the
original implementation, test setup, etc. It'd even be ideal if replication
was done in as dissimilar a setup as possible, to find cases where the results
unexpectedly depend on details of the original setup not thought to be
important.
If anything I think there are quite some dangers that reproduction will be
_decreased_ by the current trend towards what's questionably called
"reproducible research" as a euphemism for "code reuse". If people reuse code
rather than doing their own independent reimplementation of methods as stated
in papers, erroneous results can lurk for years and infect other research as
well. (I think code reuse _is_ good for engineering practicality, and making
permissively licensed code available is also a good way of getting researchy
methods out of academia into the real world. But I think it is quite wrong to
call reusing the original researcher's setup, rather than independently
producing your own, "reproduction" in the scientific sense.)
~~~
sjwright
The necessity of truly independent reproduction diminishes when the
researchers/engineers can supply an implementation that does real work in real
situations. A very high bar of self-evidence, if you will.
True reproduction remains necessary to confirm that the stated underlying
science is the cause, and not some other variable that might be legitimate and
remarkable but undocumented.
~~~
drewcrawford
Providing an implementation of a network protocol is hardly doing "real work
in real situations". I mean, it ships the packets from here to there but so
does every other implementation of every other protocol.
The thing that is interesting or novel about _this_ protocol as opposed to the
thousands of other proposals is that it's supposed to be faster than the other
proposals for a broad range of applications with a broad range of link
topologies and across a broad range of software/hardware platforms.
Of course, to establish _that_ claim replication is completely critical.
~~~
sjwright
> Providing an implementation of a network protocol is hardly doing "real work
> in real situations".
In what sense is a functional implementation not able to do real work?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ajit Pai wants to cap spending on broadband for poor people and rural areas - onemoresoop
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/03/ajit-pai-wants-to-cap-spending-on-broadband-for-poor-people-and-rural-areas/
======
t3hprofit
Makes sense. I was thinking based on the title of the article that this would
be a good thing for low-income people, as in their spending on broadband would
be capped. but... it's Ajit Pai. Of course it's shit for the public. What a
travesty of a human being.
------
eledumb
Too bad there isn't any accountability on the spending, just like all the tax
credits to entice the telecom's to build out broadband, but they didn't spend
that money.
The telco's will claim to have spent that money, but they won't do anything,
and once the cap is reached the telco's and shut it down again until the
government gives them more incentives which they can use to line their
pockets.
What a racket.
------
pavel_lishin
> _Pai 's plan suggests an $11.4 billion annual cap on the total cost of the
> four programs, which is more than current spending but would put an upper
> bound on what the program could spend in the future._
This isn't as bad as the headline makes it sound to be.
~~~
alwaysanagenda
Agreed. The entire article rests upon the assumption that once the cap is
reached, and the government may not spend anymore money on subsidizing
broadband, all those reliant on those subsidies are now in peril.
It shows a narrow way of thinking, and also assumes quite a few things about
the US Govt / FCC.
After just glossing over the fact of fiscal responsibility, it assumes budget
constraints in this regard are bad, as if a single penny of government money
(taxpayer's money) is never wasted or poorly allocated.
Second, the article's attitude seems to take the position (and certainly the
comments do) that the government is one of the few (if any?) entities capable
of improving access to broadband in these affected areas. I doubt this.
I would also be interested to know if wireless telcos do a better job serving
these apparently under-served communities versus their broadband providers.
For example, what is the ratio of people who have slow broadband but
smartphones with LTE service?
A distant third is that somehow the issue of a budget cap cannot be readjusted
at a later date. Or that there are no programs outside of Universal Service
that can also augment and support rolling out broadband. Or that you cannot
create a new program targeting specific needs, etc...
This is a false dilemma.
It also makes the assumption that broadband equals improved economic
development. I don't discount the idea, but I question just how much of an
impact it has, in order to use this as leverage against the idea of the budget
cap.
Ultimately, we're seeing a lack of imagination to problem solving unless it
includes a blank check from Uncle Sam.
Oh, and we can slam Ajit Pai while we're at it -- let's not pass on that.
~~~
tracker1
While I mostly agree. Most wireless carriers do underserve huge areas of the
country. My vacation times are mostly spent on cross country road trips for
the past decade. About 2 years ago, I switched to Verizon specifically because
it had the best rural coverage. Huge areas of Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Minnesota
etc have no coverage by any other carrier. Where my mom lives in WY, there is
some spotty ATT coverage and meh VZ coverage. Definitely nothing to write home
about.
I also tend to mostly use tethering for my laptop in these areas, and can say,
it's been a crap-shoot for the most part.
I also feel that this spending probably shouldn't target any metro area with
more than say even half a million people in it. Simply because that is
generally enough to create actual market pressure where local solutions are
likely to be better and Federal funding will likely only help incumbents
anyway.
I'm not against a budget cap, that's part of what a "budget" is. I think this
is partially mis-sold, but in a lot of ways, I have almost no trust in current
FCC leadership.
------
tracker1
First, I'm a Libertarian. My opinions are not part of the LP, but my own. I am
not an-cap, but much more pragmatic here.
Second, I think that the Federal government should be in place to provide for
what is considered essential infrastructure. In the late 1700's, essential
infrastructure was enough road maintenance to support interstate commerce.
Through the 1900's that grew to encompass clean water, electricity and
telecommunications and radio. Today, I'd suggest that includes internet
access. IMHO, if you can get electricity, water and a phone line, you should
have access to high speed internet.
I'd rather see spending accountability and a focus on green markets over
admittedly aging infrastructure in urban areas where market pressure should be
forcing upgraded infrastructure and private spending for such measures. Also,
I do feel there should be a spending cap and budgeting in most things. It
isn't bad by itself, but it could be... the real thing comes down to "it
depends." Given the guy in charge, I'm not sure that it's a good thing in any
way.
------
craftinator
And I want Ajit Pai to stand trial for criminal and traitorous wrongdoing
against the United States of America! Hope we all get what we want.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Autistic Burnout: The Cost of Masking and Passing (2017) - depressed
https://boren.blog/2017/01/26/autistic-burnout-the-cost-of-coping-and-passing/
======
robotresearcher
"Common life strategy for autistic people: achieve/overachieve until burning
out and maybe the overachievement will result in enough social and economic
capital to see you through the burnout." @theoriesofminds (Twitter)
This jumped out to me.
~~~
bitL
Heh, but isn't that almost everyone these days? And even normal people get a
burnout when they have to run an internal virtual machine to conform to
quickly changing society/rules they don't believe to maintain their status,
and need a downtime to recover.
~~~
cortesoft
They called out this type of response in one of the articles linked from the
main article... saying, "I also have that problem!" to someone trying to
explain their autistic struggles is dismissing the extra difficulty they face.
While it comes from a good place (trying to relate and show empathy), it
actually can make them feel worse.
~~~
bitL
Yeah, I guess it's way more difficult for autistic persons :-( Aren't there
any supplements that could "boost" the brain to at least decrease the burnout
rate?
~~~
rexpop
It may not be as simple as "supplements," but there are probably dietary and
habitual augmentations to bolster these neuro-physiological resources. Sleep
is crucial for replenishing neurotransmitters. Exercise is crucial for
establishing biorhythms necessary to sleep. We're all fairly malnourished,
given the modern western diet is biased towards cheap calories. Copper. Zinc.
Iron. Deficiencies in all of these can cause mental health issues. Then
there's the notorious (tenuous?) connection between suicidality and gluten.
Anyway, you can do your own research but as for supplements to facilitate
extroversion... B vitamins?
------
sudosteph
> For seven months, I didn’t leave the house. I had started ordering my
> groceries online. I didn’t have any reason to go anywhere. I wasn’t
> agoraphobic or afraid to leave my apartment. I just didn’t feel like it.
This has been me for the last few months. I just can't bring myself to do
things I hate lately. I hate breathing cold, dry winter air and feeling it on
my face, I hate being accosted on the street for cash, I hate the loud
construction noise, I hate navigating through crowds of people and cars, I
hate the overwhelming smells from exhaust and food trucks. I was able to deal
with it for a while because I knew the expectations that came with living in a
city like Seattle. It's just that the downsides are so many, and the upsides
are so few. I want to preserve the facilities I have for doing things that I
like and that allow me to make a living.
I'm hoping an upcoming move I've got planned will make it more pleasurable to
engage with other people more regularly, but protecting my well-being still
has to come first. I'm so incredibly fortunate to have a career that allows me
enough income to offload menial things like shopping for groceries. I feel
terrible for those of us on the spectrum without that option, as if I couldn't
live this way I would end up being entirely dependent on my spouse or family.
I can imagine that burning out + feeling guilty about being a burden
financially makes recovery from that state even more difficult.
~~~
jpernst
Also from the Seattle area and this hits home as well, except I am a bit
agoraphobic and need to build up courage to go out.
I used to push myself to go to dev meetups and such, even gave a few
presentations, but eventually stopped. The emotional cost of going was high,
and when I would get back home feeling wiped out and reflecting on it, I
realized I actually gained very little from the experience. All the
socializing was just hollow small talk and no lasting connections were ever
formed. Interest-based meetups I've found to generally be transient,
ephemeral, and unfulfilling for those who can't muster the enormous social
buy-in to get any meaningful results. Volunteer work was more satisfying, but
also fleeting and temporary.
On the plus side I did gain experience in public speaking and discovered it
really doesn't bother me (although the mingling afterwards is social anxiety
hell). Unfortunately that skill on its own isn't terribly useful.
> I feel terrible for those of us on the spectrum without that option, as if I
> couldn't live this way I would end up being entirely dependent on my spouse
> or family. I can imagine that burning out + feeling guilty about being a
> burden financially makes recovery from that state even more difficult.
It is. I was swinging a remote-work career and doing the whole order-
groceries-online shut-in routine as well. Eventually I succumbed to burnout
for a host of reasons and the career crumbled to dust. Extended unemployment
pulls you in like quicksand and I've been out of work for over a year now. I
live in a converted tool shed in my parents back yard, and the guilt and shame
is crushing. The erosion of self esteem saps your will to improve yourself,
creating a vicious circle.
My last recourse at this point is to try to use this as an opportunity for
learning and personal enrichment. While working I was myopically focused on
programming and industry issues, and utterly ignored the wider world. I'm now
trying to rectify that by reading more about philosophy, politics, history,
etc.
There's so much more to the world than tech or vocation, and I regret ignoring
that for so long. My advice to anyone in this situation is to, as much as your
circumstances permit, expose yourself to a wider range of culture and find
value and human dignity in ways other than your potential for capital
generation. The value of a life is not measured in dollars, and don't let the
world convince you that it is.
It feels like this is becoming a blog post or something, so I'll stop.
Needless to say this topic hits home for me, as it seems to for many others
here.
~~~
vorpalhex
> All the socializing was just hollow small talk and no lasting connections
> were ever formed.
You have to be the one who moves the conversation from chit-chat about the
weather to interesting topics. Sure, it's fine to show up to a dev meeting and
chat about your favorite APIs and all, but that won't help you make friends.
The vague process chart I personally use looks like this:
1\. Determine if you share common interests with the person (eg, small talk
about things you do)
2\. Talk at a higher level about a single interest. A good trick is to treat
the other person a bit like an expert about that interest - "Oh, what board
game would you recommend for X?"
3\. Make an offer to hangout in the future. It should be in a situation with
multiple people and a public place. You're not trying to invite them to a
date, but instead communicate that you're already doing something and want
them to join: "Hey, I hang out Tuesdays with some folks at the comicbook shop
and play boardgames. You should come join us."
4\. If the person finds that agreeable or reciprocates, exchange contact info.
I usually just hand them my phone with my contact info on the screen so they
can choose their preferred method, but you can also give them a personal card.
Congrats, you've now made a new person you know. Hang out with them, invite
them to things. Relationships are like gardens, they require regular tending
and maintenance at first but as they get established, they only need
occasional check-ins.
~~~
satokema
> You have to be the one that moves the conversation
Why is it always up to me? I feel the same as parent poster - I go to events
or work functions or what-have-you and the onus is always on me - the one with
stunted social skills - to advance things along.
Are there really no people that can at least bootstrap things for me? Or is it
the case that those people with social competence already have a healthy
social life and aren't actually interested in any deeper connection to begin
with?
Herein is where my "you're a dummy" thought loops kick in on this. I can see
it is a little spoiled to demand that a social life be handed to me with no
work involved, but on the other hand, I see a bootstrapping problem here:
How am I supposed to invite new people to the comic book shop when I don't
have the aforementioned "some folks" or the shop itself?
Gardens are great when you have good soil and plants already in place, but I
feel like I am tearing up old blacktop and trying to build a garden on top of
it.
~~~
vorpalhex
Having a deeper connection requires having shared interests and enough in
common to form that bond. There are plenty of people who may be perfectly
social, but not share much of anything in common with you (which you can
mitigate by expanding your interests).
> Are there really no people that can at least bootstrap things for me?
There are, it's whoever assembled your meetup/function/etc. Getting a bunch of
people in a room together who share at least some kind of commonality is a
borderline magic trick, and it's a ton of work.
Your job is to pair it down from there, because you don't have anyone who
knows you well enough to do that last mile for you. You might get there - if
you make good friends with organizers, you will be the person they introduce
new folks to.
> How am I supposed to invite new people to the comic book shop..
There's two elements to this. One of which is just actually leaving your house
to go to meetups or places on a regular basis - find your local board game
shop (or other interest - hiking, old movies, food, etc) and go to that thing
with some regularity.
The second element is to talk with folks. Maybe even folks with whom you don't
have a connection yet, but enough to exchange your lists of interests and
whatnot. If you struggle for things to talk about, use tools like FORD
(Family, Occupation, Recreation, Dreams) or the interview strategy ("Oh, and
what got you into hiking?").
You don't have to have a deep connection to have folks you enjoy spending time
with, even if it's just playing Catan once a week - but that's at least your
bootstrap.
------
arduanika
Wow.
> Ultimately, for me, passing as “normal” means that I am now a fake person,
> never able to be myself without putting my ability to make a living in
> jeopardy.
> An issue that was previously “fixed” can suddenly appear to be “broken”
> again. In fact, nothing has been fixed or broken. We simply have very fluid
> coping strategies that need to be continuously tweaked and balanced.
Bipolar I here. As an episodic disease, bipolar is extremely susceptible to
this passing/masking phenomenon. I have been "stable" for so many years that
even close co-workers can't detect anything, and I hardly even notice how much
effort I put into "passing". But the effort does tax you and build up over
time. This post really hits home for me, and I identify strongly with this
kind of play-acting and exhaustion (without claiming to understand, or taking
anything away from, the autism spectrum experience).
Moreover, I consistently underestimate the amount of detox and rest that I
need to recover from this constant performing. To borrow a line from Rogers &
Hammerstein, "whenever I fool the people I act neurotypical for, I fool myself
as well". I forget I need to take care of myself.
Thank you Ryan for aggregating & posting!
~~~
jackmodern
me too on both the diagnosis and "I forget I need to take care of myself."
It's really a struggle to maintain normalcy in the professional world and take
care of myself.
------
sdrothrock
This hits home for me and my experiences.
People often believe what they see and first impressions are strong. I seem
like a perfectly functional hearing person 97% of the time, but the 3% of the
time when I can't cover the gap, people tend to react with incredulity because
they can't believe I have an actual disability. Some days I just don't want to
deal with it because it's exhausting.
I've never really found a good solution to this that doesn't just require
patience and persistence from the start. The best approach I've found is to be
up-front from the start about my deafness and then to just "lie" about not
being able to hear periodically to reinforce the "he's got a hearing problem"
memory.
In the past, I used to try to be explicit and say things like "I'm sorry, but
the air conditioning or something is droning and I can't hear you well," but
that generally derails as people try to explain my own hearing to me with
things like "that's so quiet, how it is louder than me" or "if you can hear
THAT you should be able to hear me," etc.
~~~
candiodari
I'm not even sure what I've got. I can hear very well. With enough focus I can
follow people and animals around at pretty sizeable distances. I practice
that. Or perhaps I should say I enjoy doing that, in the dark in the small
pieces of forest that still remain where I live. I can easily follow a
conversation from 30 meters distance, with sufficient focus.
But I cannot process, and sometimes not focus on multiple people talking, even
when they're not talking through one another. I can tell you a lot generally
about their speech, just not what it says. Where they're standing, tone of
voice, are they moving, what their intentions are. But if there are 2
conversations in earshot of me I cannot tell you what anybody is saying even
if they're shouting to me. If 3 people are standing around and talking I can
only participate if I totally ignore one of them and just blindly shut them
out, whatever they're saying. Sometimes it gets worse and even with little
disturbance I just cannot tell anymore what people are saying to me.
People don't understand. In a 1:1 conversation I'm warm, open, attentive and
so on. In a 3 way or more conversation, I'm cold, absent, distracted, annoying
(because: very bored) ... Worse, often suddenly, from their perspective, I no
longer understand them. I've learned to just hide this, and guess, and find
some other excuse to turn the conversation back into a 1:1 conversation.
~~~
joker3
That sounds like auditory processing disorder.
~~~
candiodari
Reading it, it seems not to fit very well. I can process speech just fine, I
just don't seem to be able to switch from one person to another without a long
time to make it happen.
------
throwaway383961
We went through the ASD diagnostic process with our son, and it left us very
sceptical about the whole thing. I was never convinced he had ASD (and I'm
still not), but some psychologist talked us into it.
I really got the impression the psychologist was cherrypicking information
(especially in the parent interview) just to check things off the diagnostic
criteria. Everything he did that vaguely sounded like an ASD symptom was
attributed to ASD, with no real thought as to whether it actually is or not. I
compared her report to the DSM-5 criteria, I didn't get the impression she was
actually applying the criteria properly, just doing her own thing and then
invoking its name at the end as if it was some magic spell.
Her diagnostic report claimed our son (who was about to start school) needed
all this special education help (timers in school, sensory diet, etc), and she
really wanted us to give it to his school. The report sounded like a bad
caricature of our son. We decided not to give it to the school and not tell
them anything about it. And his teacher tells us he is going very well.
She also put him down in the report as being ASD Level 2, but she told us
verbally she only thought he was Level 1, but she always puts people down as
Level 2 or above because that's the cut-off for Australian government
disability funding ("NDIS List A").
He's mostly normal kid, rather like myself at the same age. He's very
intelligent, social stuff isn't his strong suit (but so what, it's never been
mine either.) He's very shy, but my wife says she was even worse at his age.
We did go through a period last year when his behaviour was becoming rather
unmanageable (aggression, defiance, hyperactivity), but he's much much better
now (so much so that we took him off his ADHD meds) and I think a lot of those
behaviour problems were due to family stresses (new baby), parental mental
illness (I have anxiety/depression, and I suspect my wife does too, although
she resists diagnosis), sub-optimal parenting skills, rather than ASD and/or
ADHD and/or whatever.
When people say that ASD is being overdiagnosed, and I look at what this
psychologist did, I think it really is.
~~~
justinjlynn
No, of course it's completely logical generalise the whole field of psychology
and the diagnosis and treatment of complex mental disorders from the singular
experience you had - especially when they've told you they're trying to get
you the most help they can from various government bureaucracies. It's also
perfectly logical to just take a face value your child's teacher's opinion
that "they're fine" when they've got 20+ other children to worry about and
monitor. Don't worry, you're the parent and you always know best - and you're
sure to tell other people too. /s
I was diagnosed with ADHD _three times_ as a child, my parents never believed
it and chose to never tell me or get me the help or medication or
accommodation I needed because "I was fine". By god, I'm getting treated now
and holy hell life would've been a billion times more enjoyable and productive
if they'd just listened, or even told me later so that _I_ could decide. I
know you're just trying to do the best you can, but jeez this is sad - if you
doubt the diagnosis, fine - get a second opinion, and a third, but think that
if they're all the same, you went there for a reason and they're probably
right.
~~~
throwaway988371
(same person, new throwaway, forgot password to the previous one)
> if you doubt the diagnosis, fine - get a second opinion
We actually tried to get a second opinion. We went to another psychologist for
one, she booked us in, but then her superiors cancelled it. They said if a
child has been diagnosed as having ASD Level 2, they didn't want to repeat the
assessment since there was a risk they might get undiagnosed or only diagnosed
as Level 1, which would remove his eligibility for government disability
funding (NDIS). (Which we still haven't applied for, because we aren't
convinced he needs it, and don't know what to spend it on anyway.) They wanted
us to go to see some paediatrician they like, who is actually a colleague of
our son's existing one.
Instead we took him back to his existing paediatrician. He said he too was a
bit sceptical about the diagnosis, but that psychological diagnosis isn't an
entirely objective process, and it doesn't really matter whether he has ASD or
not, and it would be a waste of time to repeat the assessment, so we should
just do nothing about it for 6-12 months, and see how he goes, and consider
repeating the assessment in another 2-3 years.
~~~
cbhl
The NDIS funding might be useful when your child is an adult, in the event
that your child has difficulty finding and keeping a full-time job.
As an adult with Asperger's/Autism in a full-time job -- I agree that your
child might not need the funding. But at this point, it is probably too early
to tell.
I can also imagine a situation where a person with Autism was relying on, say,
a bus funded by NDIS as part of their routine, was re-diagnosed as L1, had
their routine disrupted, and came back to the psychiatrist and had a meltdown
in the office. You'd only need one or two of these experiences to decide on a
blanket policy to not rediagnose folks.
------
soulnothing
For the longest time my high functioning autism, formerly aspergers. Took a
toll on me. I was second guessing every step at work.
Do I say hi, how do I make small talk. What's the appropriate distance for
personal space. I wasn't afraid of people. I was afraid of acting outside of
neurotically behavior, and causing an uncomfortable work place.
Now I'm at the other end of the spectrum. I take a very honey badger approach
to work. Zero shits given at work. This has made it much easier. Not that I
don't deliver work, or half ass it. I just put aside any personal attachment.
I did have the aspie burn out before getting into my own routine. Work as
above, but social interaction stimuli. Self discovery is key for anyone on the
spectrum. For me things like constantly having earbuds, textile I wear,
maintaining light (via sunglasses), etc.
One of my biggest pet peeves is noted in the article. Constantly being told
I'm not autistic. Just because I don't appear that way doesn't mean I'm not.
Right now my burnout is a sister symptom of the autism. In so much that it not
directly caused. But a resulting effect. Where in I'm constantly moving or
switching jobs. Because I don't feel stimulated at work, or challenged. The
other big item is I don't do politics. Which can be very detrimental.
I still view being on the spectrum as more of a benefit. But it does require a
fair amount of self awareness.
~~~
rijoja
Not doing politics is not a mental disorder it's being noble.
~~~
vibrato
I don't like politics, but I have to admit nearly every major human
achievement is a political effort.
~~~
int_19h
I think this referred to office politics.
~~~
vibrato
Are you implying offices aren’t involved in significant human achievement?
------
adamnemecek
Idk if I'm autistic, but I do identify with this post to a surprising degree.
My solution was quitting my job and working on projects hoping that one of
them will take off. I've talked about it here on HN many times and a lot of
people have reached out. I've convinced two of my friends to do the same and
they've never been happier.
It's viable, you might need to scale down your life-style a bit but I've never
been happier.
Programming on things you care about is a lot easier if you have a lot of
time.
------
everdrive
I really appreciate (and relate to) this discussion, but I wanted to point out
that some folks out there don't mind people who are a little on the spectrum.
You don't _always_ have to pretend to be somebody else. Some people will like
you the way you are, or, will tolerate and respect you even if they don't like
you.
It seems like the authors never attempted an alternative: pushing back on
people's assumptions and being themselves more often. People like and respect
Spock and Sherlock Holmes. I get that those are extreme and fictional
examples, but you don't have to be extroverted and "normal" to be liked. I'm
not saying it'll be perfect, or always easy for you, but there are societal
niches which don't mind that some people are weird. More importantly, they can
tell that you're altruistic and well-intending, even if you you come off a
little poorly socially.
~~~
twofig
I'm going to push back a bit on this. People like Spock and Sherlock only
because they are incredibly capable. That is, it's entirely predicated on
their instrumental value, not because of their personality. If they weren't as
capable, people wouldn't hesitate to kick them to the curb and never interact
with them.
~~~
Nasrudith
Not to mention they never have to deal with the "step one" of giving them a
chance. Even if they would find them indispensable if actually hired due to
being a 10x performer getting in the door is a challenge when they would
rather pay attention to irrelevancies of posture than actual qualifications.
That sort of talent filtering for stupid reasons is very not new - going back
at the very least sexist exclusion from fields and Jewish university quota
caps (as in maximum number of Jewish scholars) - let alone cases where people
with massive potential never had the resources for education.
~~~
everdrive
This got dark fast. I was just trying to say that autistic personalities
weren't universally hated.
------
winrid
Generally I am lucky enough to ride the burnout fine. But there are times when
I'm in a meeting and all the sudden I just can't talk and start studdering or
something. One time I said I had three points and could only remember two,
literally seconds later. Wow!
Probably happens twice a year during stressful times...
On the upside - I get a lot done! :)
~~~
nilkn
This happens to me as well. I sometimes avoid speaking in meetings because the
act of drawing the attention of the whole room on me tends to compromise my
ability to think and speak clearly. So I can start with a completely coherent
set of points I want to make, but when I start actually talking I can no
longer “remember” them, which in the worst case could make me seem
incompetent. I use quotes because I don’t believe it’s a legitimate lapse of
memory so much as it is a sort of social overload that shuts part of me down.
This doesn’t always happen and I’ve found the exact conditions that trigger it
to be complex. A huge factor is definitely whether I know everyone in the
meeting in advance and feel comfortable with them. This is partly why I choose
to stay at a job for years instead of job hopping — once I feel comfortable
and stable with coworkers, suddenly I’m not only able to speak coherently in
meetings but in fact I can even enjoy running large meetings with no issues.
~~~
retsibsi
I have a similar experience -- I was going to say that my intelligence seems
to vary inversely with my level of social anxiety, but I don't think it's
quite that consistent. Sometimes my intellect really seems to shut down for no
particularly good reason. If I may lapse into bullshit evo-psych for a moment:
I guess my brain sometimes decides that I'm in a social emergency (perhaps if
I say one more embarrassing thing I'll be ostracised from the tribe and left
for dead!) and it needs to devote 90% of its cognitive resources to that
problem.
~~~
bitcoinmoney
I have similar experience? Am I autistic?
~~~
retsibsi
> Am I autistic?
I wouldn't assume so, unless you have other reasons to think so. I'm not
diagnosed autistic, and I wouldn't self-diagnose either, though I do think I'm
on the autistic side of 'normal' for some traits.
------
miedpo
Hmm... so I have Asperger's Syndrome, and my thoughts on the article are a bit
varied.
Honestly I don't think I've experienced burnout from trying to normalize.
There are probably a lot of reasons for that... I have a pretty good support
system, I enjoy understanding other people, and perhaps I just don't always
take it fully seriously.
I have had burnout related to other things. I personally think all people get
burnt out if they are stressed out for a long period of time or deal with too
many changes at once. That's not something super tied to Autism in my
experience. Just tied to being human
I do relate to taking normalization a bit less seriously as I've gotten older.
Partly because sometimes the normal thing to do isn't the best option. So
perhaps I risk looking a bit weird at the cost of doing what I think is
better. Going on my mission helped with that quite a bit I think.
So yeah, kinda mixed feelings. I'm sure some have felt what's described, I
personally have not though.
------
sleepychu
Interesting, definitely had the experience of thinking "Am I becoming more
autistic?" but just put it down to caring less about what other people think
about it. Now I wonder if this is closer to the truth.
I'm not sure but I'm pretty confident I've experienced a degradation of
memory. I combat it with copious note taking and judicious use of a calendar
but it does feel unpleasant. I do wonder if it's simply because I do more
activities within a single day than I used to in my previous routine of
development on a single application one task at a time + social. Now I can
have to deal with many tasks for many customers all vying for my attention in
parallel.
EDIT: Found great improvement from wearing headphones and sunglasses outdoors
though. Helps me avoid too much new information in the morning when my brain
is best suited for taking on new information and I have the minimal number of
draws on my attention.
------
sametmax
Latest discovery on my part, after the burnout, a heavy magnesium supplement
helps a lot. Especially with the foggy brain, and the physical contact with
others.
------
drilldrive
I definitely commonly fall into a cyclic productivity setup, though I am not
sure if I would call it 'burnout'. I think that burnout is coupled with
disgust for the primary activity, while my lows are characterized by low
executive function, not quite at odds with disgust but personally I love my
work, and I am just not thinking right when I am at my lows.
There doesn't seem to be intrinsically grinding pain to neurotypical
behaviors. I say this because for the past couple months I have fixed the
productivity highs and lows into a nice marathon pace. I will see how long
this pans out of course.
------
firecall
As someone with ADHD and bi-polar like cycles, I can fully relate to this. I'm
burnt out right now - exactly as he describes. Problem is, the rollacoaster
doesnt let you get off.
------
ozzmotik
man I've been needing this for a while. this is basically what happens to me
any time I take a job in the corporate sector and have to heavily constrain
myself. it usually ends with me spiraling down into addiction self medicating
with whatever helps me manage to function even just 1% better (subjectively
speaking of course, i probably just get worse!)
nowadays im trying to just stick to cannabis and nootropics (namely memantine
as nmda antagonism also tends to help me function and maintain the
neurotypical façadre) though as they tend to get the job done without putting
my body and mind in danger. I have a job interview with wpengine coming up so
im hoping that maybe this time I can do it right because I don't really have
any other options. im essentially going to lose my place to live at the end of
the year so I really need to make sure I figure out a healthy way to maintain
if I get the job.
im open to advice if anyone has any suggestions, as ive tried to do this alone
my entire adult life, and i just can't seem to figure it out. you give me a
formal discipline, something I can quantify and study every aspect of and ill
have no problems figuring it out, but when it comes to figuring out how to irl
properly i am but an inchoate
~~~
captainredbeard
"im essentially going to lose my place to live at the end of the year so I
really need to make sure I figure out a healthy way to maintain if I get the
job"
Start with finding a healthy way to maintain _even if you don 't get the job_.
That will put you in a place where you'll be able to find and retain one.
~~~
ozzmotik
you know, i think that's what I meant to type because that makes a lot more
sense to me now that i think about it. evidently sitting in a hot bath makes
me lazier about my typing. who would have guessed
------
PaulHoule
see [https://www.amazon.com/Masks-Mirrors-Generation-Chameleon-
Pe...](https://www.amazon.com/Masks-Mirrors-Generation-Chameleon-
Personality/dp/0275973255/)
------
Balgair
I'm confused, what makes 'autistic burnout' any different than regular
'burnout'? The stories linked in the post seem to be just describing burnout,
though I've not clicked into the linked pages. What am I missing that makes
autistic burnout different?
~~~
samirm
Autistic burnout is partially a result of pretending to be "normal" around
other people (those who don't understand and judge autistic behaviour like
stimming). "Normal" people can also experience this burnout if they're also
pretending to be someone they are not (day in, day out).
Part of the problem is that people don't realize that everyone is on the
spectrum, autism isn't a binary "property". The other, bigger, part of the
problem is that there seems to be a negative stereotypical view of people with
mental illnesses or just people who aren't "normal". Unfortunately autistic
people fall towards that category in the current social context.
~~~
Balgair
> Autistic burnout is partially a result of pretending to be "normal" around
> other people (those who don't understand and judge autistic behaviour like
> stimming). "Normal" people can also experience this burnout if they're also
> pretending to be someone they are not (day in, day out).
Wait, so autistic burnout is just regular burnout, but from general social
interactions? I get that we're all on this autistic spectrum[0], but I think
we all just get burnt out from time to time when dealing with jerks and other
people in general. Is it just that autistic people get more tired from the
standard social guessing game? If this is a spectrum, then where is the cut-
off? Is it all self-diagnosis then?
Also, what is stimming?
Sorry for all the questions. Feel free to answer any/none of them. Thanks for
the answers thus far!
[0] Also, how is the spectrum any different than just the normal range of
being a human? It sounds like we've just got a new word for another normally
distributed human thing, like height or hearing ranges.
~~~
samirm
> It sounds like we've just got a new word for another normally distributed
> human thing
I was trying to find some stats on the distribution myself, but couldn't find
anything. All the data that's easily searchable is about people who have ASD
:/
> Is it just that autistic people get more tired from the standard social
> guessing game? If this is a spectrum, then where is the cut-off? Is it all
> self-diagnosis then?
I guess so, I'm no expert on this myself, just know that I'm relatively high
on the spectrum, but below this "magical" threshold you mention. From personal
experience most social interactions for me are very tiring, especially around
non close friends/family. However I can't comment on whether this is normal
for most people since I've always been this way. I self-diagnosed myself
through literature and a few online tests, but it's obviously not as accurate
as a real diagnosis done by a professional. You _can_ try to self-diagnose,
but you obviously have to take the results with a bucket of salt.
>Also, what is stimming?
Short for stimulating. Basically engaging your senses to make yourself feel
calmer/more comfortable. This explains it in more detail:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimming](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stimming)
~~~
Balgair
> Self-stimulatory behavior, also known as stimming[1] and self-
> stimulation,[2] is the repetition of physical movements, sounds, or words,
> or the repetitive movement of objects common in individuals with
> developmental disabilities and most prevalent in people on the autism
> spectrum.
... Holy Shit ... I do this all the time ... I'm autistic?
Where does one do more tests?
~~~
samirm
hahaha maybe a little, but that language is also pretty general.
This is the one I took: [https://psychology-tools.com/test/autism-spectrum-
quotient](https://psychology-tools.com/test/autism-spectrum-quotient)
And then "verified" with other random ones.
------
candiodari
Who else thinks that this autism was caused by this school and the fact that
this guy believed, for some reason, that he deserved such treatment ?
------
contingencies
Honestly I know this probably sounds insensitive which isn't my intent but I
feel like a substantial amount of noise around these mental condition labels
are people using them to subconsciously raise the victim flag instead of
dealing with shit, either personally or by proxy (parents claiming kids are
abnormal, when really they are just bad or absentee parents). There must be a
technical term for this perspective in the science, could anyone with a psych
background fill us in?
~~~
pjc50
I'm reminded of how some people complain that there are a lot more queer
people around and claim that they are somehow "fake" or "going through a
phase", when all that's happened is that visible signs are no longer quite so
violently suppressed. Or dead of AIDS.
~~~
abledon
well, rebelling against parents nowadays in a unique fashion, is hard to do,
our parents have already rebelled using so many facets available to them,
listened to punk music, drugs/mdma/acid, fashion etc... one of the areas to
rebel with , left untouched by previous generations, is gender.
~~~
pjc50
> left untouched by previous generations, is gender
Stonewall was 1969; gender-fluidity, androgyny, "glam" etc were a big part of
70s and early 80s pop. I do agree that there's a big fight between second-wave
feminists and trans people going on at the moment.
~~~
Nasrudith
Not to mention before that with women wearing pants as the rebellion,
suffragists and others - that was a rebellion against gender. You might say
those were different as "not really a part of gender" but the past would
vehemently disagree with you.
Look at photographs of secretly female soldiers - to the modern eye it is
obvious enough to serve as documentation but then her comrades didn't know
until after injury or death because they expected women in skirts and dresses
not uniforms.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twibble.io – A Better RSS-to-Twitter Automation Service - ryanlum
http://twibble.io/
======
jonocoulton
Nice job man.
~~~
ryanlum
Gracias.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why your data scientist interviewer won't ask Pandas questions - data4lyfe
https://www.interviewquery.com/blog/data-scientist-interviewer-wont-ask-pandas
======
enahs-sf
Literally every person I interview I look for a baseline understanding of sql.
Nothing tricky, but just the core concepts. So key to basically every aspect
of software today.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Can Brian Chesky Save Airbnb? - msoad
https://www.theinformation.com/articles/can-brian-chesky-save-airbnb
======
maxtesla
> Monopoly Lies
> Monopolists lie to protect themselves. They know that bragging about their
> great monopoly invites being audited, scrutinized, and attacked. Since they
> very much want their monopoly profits to continue unmolested, they tend to
> do whatever they can to conceal their monopoly—usually by exaggerating the
> power of their (nonexistent) competition.
Don't fuck up the culture, Brian!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Someone memorialized my Facebook profile but I'm still alive - phwd
http://webapps.stackexchange.com/q/28268/40
======
mkjones
I just searched for "memorialized" on our help center and got a link to the
page that lets you fix this: <http://mkjon.es/memorialize.png>
If I search for "facebook memorialized" on the google, the first result takes
me to <https://www.facebook.com/help/?page=185698814812082>, which has a link
to the right page (though it's at the bottom)-:.
I'm curious what path the OP took, and how we could improve ranking here (I
work at facebook, but not on help center). I imagine the majority of people
who search for this are looking to memorialize an account, not un-memorialize
it, so I think in general the current ranking is correct, even if it failed in
this case.
[EDIT: as ldbrandy points out below, we're making it so this is the first
thing you see when you log in as a memorialized account.]
~~~
jessedhillon
Why not have a special "unmemorialize" button when the account is logged in?
Either the person is really dead, in which case the user logging in is
probably in charge of managing the remembrance and would not press the button,
or the person is not dead and he/she is logging into their own account, which
has been pranked.
Why involve support here at all?
~~~
TeMPOraL
Or, someone hacked the account. Identity theft of a deceased person is more
disturbing than of a live individual - just imagine how friends of that person
would feel if the account would start broadcasting that its owner is still
alive.
------
swang
Facebook's Help Center isn't very helpful at least for reporting actual bugs.
First off it's tucked away into a dropup in the lower part of the right hand
column. The site seems to actively discourage you from report bugs (which may
be what Facebook wants in terms of reducing the volume of help tickets).
I had a problem in Facebook's Mobile app (iPhone) where sometimes after
uploading multiple pictures into a new album half the album wouldn't be
displayed. To me it looked like some kind of memory/display refresh issue
rather than Facebook not actually registering the images since if I could see
the images if I looked at it through the photos album.
But I could not find anywhere to register a bug/problem and I eventually just
gave up. I'm not sure if its been fixed since I stopped bothering to look for
a way to reproduce it since there's no place to submit a bug fix anyways.
Subsequently I've found other small bugs on the site, for example a couple of
days ago they made an update that moved the Facebook logo down 1px too much.
Since they use a CSS sprite, some of the white from the Facebook logo below it
was showing. How do I report that? Maybe they knew about it but it was about
for 1.5-2 days (it's fixed now it seems).
One more annoying problem: As a developer, I know that other developers will
want a lot of information about how the bug occurred and how to reproduce it.
So I waited until I got home so I could submit the bug through their website.
But if you goto the main website, they want you to go back to your phone and
report it through the Mobile Help Center.
Maybe there is a place to submit it, but I've actually spent a decent amount
of time looking for somewhere to send bug information to but I haven't found
it.
Sorry to hijack, but hopefully someone at Facebook will read this and can
suggest a solution.
~~~
Xuzz
In Facebook for iPhone, there is a way to report an issue: you can go to Help
Center -> Something's Broken -> Report an Issue -> "please let us know", which
then shows a page to file a report. It could be made even easier to find, but
there is a way.
------
lda
> IMPORTANT: Under penalty of perjury, this form is solely for the reporting
> of a deceased person to memorialise.
Sarcasm aside, I would be curious to see someone tried over an Internet form
in a court of law.
~~~
tptacek
They can't be, at least not for "perjury", because "under penalty of perjury"
has no force unless authorized by a court or, I guess, some specific statute.
The idea that you can stick the words "under penalty of perjury" on a random
form to create a legal requirement for truthful answers is one of those
Internet legal old-wives-tales, like adding "no copyright intended" to a
Youtube upload.
However, if you report that someone else is dead, and they or their family
suffer harm as a result, you can probably be sued easily, regardless of
whether you use Facebook to make the report, or a carrier pigeon.
~~~
Domenic_S
I don't get it. There are plenty of legally-enforceable forms online.
~~~
jlarocco
"Perjury" is lying under oath while testifying in court.
The use on the Facebook page is nonsensical.
~~~
Natsu
Not just while testifying in court. Statutes can also require declarations to
be made under penalty of perjury. Valid DMCA notices, for example, must
contain one.
------
jorgem
I hope no one writes a robot that memorializes every single facebook user.
~~~
praptak
... or bored trollforum users start doing it for teh lulz.
------
51Cards
Nice to see someone from FB apparently hopping on this right away and replying
on SE. Having a more direct interface would be something for them to consider
though as a lot of users aren't going to know how to raise an alert "where the
techies wander".
~~~
lbrandy
If you put the word 'memorialized' into the helpcenter you are greeted with 4
results, one of which is this exact issue, and leads to this form:
<https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/?id=292558237463098>,
A task has already been opened, internally, to display this information on
first login of memorialized accounts.
------
cldrope
Ah, when stackexchange and hacker news become "halp google 4 me plz"
------
zerostar07
Proof that you're alive?
------
lucian303
Wow, not to come off the wrong way, but this is the most hilarious thing I've
read in a long time.
------
TheAmazingIdiot
Hm. Since Facebook doesn't seem to care much for users (indivdual), perhaps
hitting a few high profile people would change their course on this?
Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (born May 14, 1984) ?
I think that'd get the point across.
~~~
dllthomas
If it's not completely automated, I expect that one wouldn't go through.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Note from Mark Zuckerberg - Icer5k
https://newsroom.fb.com/news/2019/03/a-note-from-mark-zuckerberg/
======
turtlegrids
I'm trying to not read too much into the fact that "Photo of Mark Zuckerberg
and Chris Cox" is under a "Downloads" heading at the end of the... "article".
Makes it feel more like a PR puff piece to me.
optics, yaknow?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A YouTube built for gamers - SalGnt
http://youtube-global.blogspot.com/2015/06/a-youtube-built-for-gamers.html
======
VikingCoder
Smart move to focus on this segment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
P = NP - gzanitti
http://feedly.com/k/1bh7aoX
======
saidajigumi
[Meta: please submit the direct link, not a link-shortened version]
This arXiv paper[1] is apparently from 2012. A good meta-resource and summary
of attempts on P ?= NP, including this one, can be found at [2]. From [2]:
> Among all these papers, there is only a single paper that has appeared in a
> peer-reviewed journal, that has thoroughly been verified by the experts in
> the area, and whose correctness is accepted by the general research
> community: The paper by Mihalis Yannakakis. (And this paper does not settle
> the P-versus-NP question, but "just" shows that a certain approach to
> settling this question will never work out.)
[1] arXiv summary:
[http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.0954](http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.0954)
[2] [http://www.win.tue.nl/~gwoegi/P-versus-
NP.htm](http://www.win.tue.nl/~gwoegi/P-versus-NP.htm)
------
fishtoaster
Some context would be helpful. Is the a credible computer scientist, or just
another crackpot? What has been the response of the mathematical community to
this? What, if any, are the criticisms of it?
It looks like there have been a number of versions of this paper since last
year: [http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.0954](http://arxiv.org/abs/1208.0954)
So, has anything changed?
------
mabbo
Wasn't this submitted this morning? At which point the community agreed that
it was a crackpot?
Why do I get the feeling the same person submitted it again hoping to catch
the late-night readers off-guard...
~~~
daenz
Do you have a link to that please?
------
alvare
[https://sites.google.com/site/sergeyvyakhontov/home/peqnp-
pa...](https://sites.google.com/site/sergeyvyakhontov/home/peqnp-paper-status)
------
Refefer
...this would be a huge deal if verified. Anyone with the background to
understand this able to reduce the paper presented into more manageable terms?
------
wtpiu
chrome can't verify authenticity of this link
~~~
ben0x539
What does that even mean? It looks like an authentic link to me.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Decoupled – A lightweight music player for iOS - tzahola
https://decoupled.app
======
jens-c
I have been looking for something like this for a long time on iOS. I am not
into streaming at all, but I have a large collection of physical media
converted into electronic form. (I also very much appreciate your no tracking
and analytics policy.)
One feature that I still do miss is to organize or browse my collection on the
app by a self-defined folder structure. Most apps offer to sort by artist,
album titles, genres etc., but I do not find this sufficient or convenient,
especially if your collection is very heterogenous.
For example, I have my pop albums sorted by artist, but my classical music by
composer (rather than artists/performer). I also have a large collection of
singles which I prefer to have in a separate folder (to not clutter the pop
artist directory too much), sorted chronologically. Similarly, I keep
compilations in a separate folder, and do not want every artist of a single
song in a compilation appear in my overall list, or have all compilations
lumped under "Various Artists".
As far as I can see, Decoupled already maintains the files in the user-given
folder structure, and technically I can just click on "Files" and then browse
through it. Would it be possible however to place this option more prominently
on the main screen that is visible when the app opens up? Or even make the
options on the main screen user-configurable, similar to how the iOS music
player allows enabling and disabling the "Artist", "Genre" etc. entries in the
media library?
~~~
tzahola
Hmm, how about putting “Files” in another tab at the bottom like “Library” and
“Playback”?
~~~
jens-c
That would be an option, too. Can I then set the app to open with the "Files"
view by default?
~~~
tzahola
Sure, that's how I would implement it.
------
tzahola
Around a year ago I've became tired of not being able to play FLAC or Opus on
my iPhone, so I've checked third-party apps in the AppStore which supported
these formats. Sadly, all of them looked very unpolished, so I've decided to
write my own.
~~~
arthurcolle
You should totally make this a few bucks
~~~
tzahola
Thanks, but I'm not planning to monetize it. If it gains adoption in its
niche, that's enough for me.
------
mStreamTeam
Hey there,
Would you be interested in collaborating on a music project. I'm working on a
selfhosted music streaming server called mStream that allows you to stream
music from a home computer to any device. I began writing it several years ago
when I couldn't find a good solution for FLAC streaming.
The main thing I'm missing is an iOS app. Let me know if you're interested.
The project:
[https://github.com/IrosTheBeggar/mStream](https://github.com/IrosTheBeggar/mStream)
~~~
confounded
Interesting. I’m looking to set something like this up soon. What are the
advantages compared to more established protocols with servers and clients,
like Subsonic/Airsonic, or Ampache?
~~~
mStreamTeam
Subsonic/Ampache wins when it comes to client support. mStream's biggest
downside is the lack of good mobile clients.
mStream has an advantage in the areas of DB and installation. mStream makes
use of LokiJS, an in-memory DB that is VERY fast. mStream also comes packaged
as a single click installer for Win/OSX (see the release pages for this).
These installers have no dependencies and are configurable via a GUI, making
very easy for non-technical people to setup their own home servers.
mStream is also taking a turn to support a different market in the future. I'm
working on adding eCommerce tools to the server, so bands and musicians can
use it as a way to sell music/merch without having a 3rd party take a cut of
the revenue.
Also mStream will always be FOSS, if that matters to you
------
wilsonnb
> An app for those who take music seriously.
> Do you like music streaming services?
> Do you enjoy companies telling you what you should listen to each week?
> Did you stop buying music years ago?
> If you answer with "yes" to any of these questions, Decoupled wasn't made
> for you. Sorry.
Why bother alienating people who enjoy streaming services? Plenty of people,
myself included, use Spotify but also have music that isn't on Spotify and
want a good player for it.
I would also argue that anyone who takes music seriously should love music
streaming services, because they offer an incredible value for the price.
~~~
tzahola
Sorry for making you feel alienated. It’s just a snarky tagline, that’s all.
You can have Spotify and Decoupled installed side by side.
------
jamesgeck0
This is very nice at first glance.
I liked the multitude of transfer options in VLC, but felt like the UI was too
busy. Decoupled has most of the same transfer options, but looks a lot more
like an iOS app.
One odd thing I noticed; I uploaded several directories of music using
AirDrop, and every single file I uploaded shows up on the device with a
corresponding 212 byte file with the prefix ._ mixed in. Does Decoupled add
that? It makes reading the file list a bit harder.
~~~
tzahola
That's called a resource fork:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_fork)
Those files contain out-of-band metadata for the given file. Now, for file
systems that don't natively support resource forks (read: anything but Apple's
own filesystem(s)), Finder insists on storing them as dot-underscore files.
E.g. Mac clients are notorious for littering SMB shares with these dot-
underscore files.
As for why it's created when sharing stuff through AirDrop, from one Apple
device to another, that's beyond me...
I think it might make sense to hide these dot-underscore files from the file
browser, along with .DS_Store and maybe thumbs.db (I'm not even sure whether
modern Windows still creates thumbs.db). Will do it in the next version.
Thanks for the feedback! I wanted exactly this iOS-native look & feel you're
talking about. I personally don't like other apps forcing their designers' UX
vision on me... A curated music library with quality artworks speaks for
itself. I don't want my app to stand between users and their libraries :)
~~~
Nadya
>I'm not even sure whether modern Windows still creates thumbs.db
Just chiming in here to let you know it does. Quite at random it seems (at
least that's what it feels like) - but it does! Also thanks for shedding some
light on the mysterious ._ folder/files that get created for me when I use
Beets ([http://beets.io/](http://beets.io/))
------
eyeball
Cool. As someone with a giant library of ripped cds organized in a nice file
structure, this is definitely interesting. I hate going through the iTunes
library.
Any chance you could let it access audio files stored in Dropbox?
~~~
tzahola
Hmm, I guess accessing files from Dropbox is not too hard in itself. You can
already do that in a somewhat roundabout way by choosing “Open in...” in the
Dropbox app and then selecting “Copy to Decoupled”.
Indexing and keeping track of all items in Dropbox, without actually storing
them locally is a bit harder. But then I guess you would need streaming for
those files too, which is another can of worms.
Long story short: possible in theory, but unlikely in near term.
------
JKCalhoun
Sent you an email. I would love to be able to add "weight" to songs in my
"shuffled" playlist so I can identify songs to play less often and other to
play on "heavy rotation".
~~~
tzahola
Got it! Check your inbox ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
------
richjdsmith
Nice work grabbing a .app domain!
~~~
tzahola
Actually Decoupled wasn’t the original name of the app, but when the .app TLD
was opened, that original name was already taken. So I had to come up with a
new name for the release.
------
kchr
You should add the application/project name to the post title.
~~~
tzahola
Hmmm, is it possible to edit post titles? :/
~~~
brudgers
For an hour or two, usually. Then it goes away. When it is possible to edit
the title, you will see an |edit| link under your submission.
~~~
tzahola
Meh. I'm way past that unfortunately. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HN has ads? - efnx
http://efnx.com/hn-has-ads/
======
super-serial
'Jobs? Where we're going we don't need jobs.'
I've always wanted to have a parody shirt with that phrase on it, with a pic
of Doc Brown wearing his metallic glasses... above it it would say
"Entrepreneur" in 'Back To The Future' text. If I had money I would pay an
artist to make that t-shirt design.
Sorry - that's what this "ad" reminded me of.
------
unimpressive
Look at the "jobs" tab, that's for YC partners to advertise positions.
~~~
efnx
Thanks. So does each job listing just slowly fall down the front page?
------
hayksaakian
I'm relatively new here and I realized this quickly.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ambient AI Is About to Devour the Software Industry - artsandsci
https://www.technologyreview.com/the-download/609635/ambient-ai-is-about-to-devour-the-software-industry/
======
jclay
Is anyone else clear on what this article is saying? Being able to call AWS
services from a cloud based IDE is going to "Devour the Software Industry"?
~~~
jandrese
It appears to be saying that because you can put an IDE in the cloud, it will
use some kind of machine learning to write programs for you or something.
Honestly, this article reads like it was written by a buzzword fed Markov
chain.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Avengers List PWA - amitmerchant
https://www.amitmerchant.com/pocket-avengers/#/
======
jgaudette
Awesome job! One suggestion, when going to a new page scroll the user back to
the top of the page automatically.
Great design!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
SoftBank's investment fund dumps entire $3.6B stake in Nvidia - trimbo
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/06/softbank-vision-fund-sells-nvidia-stake.html
======
FreedomToCreate
There is more to this sell off than simply Nvidia earnings report. With such a
large investment, this is a fairly short duration to sell after, especially
considering the gain for Softbank isn't as large as your would expect. Its
difficult to speculate on why but losing faith in the long term potential of
Nvidia being one of the leaders in compute for machine learnings seems
shortsighted at this point.
~~~
cududa
They look at enough companies that I think they’re qualified to make this
assessment
------
pizza
From an outside perspective, this seems really really short-sighted. Deep
learning applications aren't compiled to run on AMD GPUs, and Google TPUs are
still a pretty niche category AFAIK. NVIDIA is selling pickaxes during a gold
rush, I can't help but feel NVIDIA's deep learning initiatives are gonna pay
off, even if Chinese markets may be waning this year.
~~~
neetdeth
Possible that the hype around deep learning will dissipate as highly
anticipated applications turn out to be more challenging than expected,
technologists settle in for a long trek, and investors flee the space in
search of easier returns. We've seen this happen before.
The real growth opportunity seems to be with Tegra. If we see a boom in
autonomous vehicles and robotics, they're well positioned to profit. But we
may not.
It also appears AMD has finally arrived at the correct strategy to challenge
NVIDIA's datacenter moat with HIP (basically API compatibility with CUDA
modulo trademarks). Does not mean they have mindshare or a desirable product
line, but when you have a completely dominant market position that's baked
into the stock price you have to consider every threat.
NVIDIA is a great company with great products that will do well regardless,
just positing some reasons one might be short the stock apart from Chinese
market considerations.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
U.S. children read, but not well or often: report - kevin818
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/12/us-usa-reading-idUSKBN0DS04L20140512
======
ap22213
Recently, I stopped over a friends house. And, I was surprised to see a group
of 7 or so 9-11 year olds all watching their computers or devices. At first I
thought they were having a lan party, playing a game. So, I asked them what
they were doing, and they said they were watching youtube videos. I observed
them for a while and watched as they'd go back and forth between each other,
sharing different links then sitting in silence, watching. Then, they'd get
together and talk about it. I'm not sure what they were looking up, but they
were all engrossed, sharing in some sort of learning experience.
I'm not sure if this is good or bad (who can really say?). But, I see it in my
son, who is 9. I get frustrated that he's not reading at the level I was, when
I was his age. And, we certainly have lots of books around the house and
encourage good reading habits. However, he likes his videos and audio.
Didn't Marshall McLuhan predict this back in the 60s? The 'book' as we know it
has only been around for a few hundred years. And, certainly it's been quite
important to our progress and exchange of information. But, information has
been communicated for thousands of years, in different means, with success.
I'm fairly optimistic that new generations will rely on different types of
communication to exchange ideas and to learn. Books will not be irrelevant,
but books (and reading) are being replaced, in importance. What will happen
when we re-evaluate all of our knowledge outside the context of the 'Gutenberg
mind'?
~~~
johnchristopher
> I'm not sure if this is good or bad (who can really say?).
Actually, there are many people who can say whether it's good or bad.
> Didn't Marshall McLuhan predict this back in the 60s? The 'book' as we know
> it has only been around for a few hundred years. And, certainly it's been
> quite important to our progress and exchange of information. But,
> information has been communicated for thousands of years, in different
> means, with success. I'm fairly optimistic that new generations will rely on
> different types of communication to exchange ideas and to learn. Books will
> not be irrelevant, but books (and reading) are being replaced, in
> importance. What will happen when we re-evaluate all of our knowledge
> outside the context of the 'Gutenberg mind'?
I suggest you pick up a copy of
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shallows:_What_the_Internet...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shallows:_What_the_Internet_Is_Doing_to_Our_Brains)
to broaden your outlook.
~~~
ap22213
What I mean is: who can predict the future?
The 'book' had certainly impacted the structure of Human thinking, and McLuhan
suggested that this resulted in things that weren't necessarily 'good' (maybe
some good? some bad?). Likewise, new technologies will again change the
structure of Human thinking. But, we can't presume to know how this will turn
out.
~~~
mephi5t0
Exactly, nobody can. When we were drawing in horse crap - a car was a life
saver. Now everyone complain it's killing us with cancer and drawing us in the
future melted ice caps. Nobody can tell what impact it will have on human
brains in 100 years... I deff know that watching cartoons all day is bad. And
a lot of parents do just that - here is an iPad, just shut up and let me be.
But if it used for study... Who knows?!
------
msluyter
It's not just kids. About 6 months ago, I started reading "Constellation
Games," a really fun and clever sci-fi novel. Yet it now sits on my desk about
2/3 complete. I didn't lose interest or anything -- I simply find it
increasingly difficult to set aside time for pleasure reading, for a variety
of reasons. Even though I enjoy long form reading, it's now something I have
to schedule and force myself to do.
I'm not sure whether I'm actually reading less in total (I don't believe so),
or simply whether reading novels has been displaced by reading, say, HN and
blogs. If _I_ find it difficult these days, I can't imagine how difficult it
might be for kids with (presumably) much shorter attention spans.
~~~
segmondy
We are reading more crap. I read tons of blogs, HN, reddit, and useless stuff
every day. Seems important, but not. We are overloaded with shallow
information. When I was young and there was no internet, getting access to
information, especially one with depth was a delight. It opened up a new
world, where your imagination went to work. Today, there are very few things
that wow and have my mind racing as it did when I was much younger. The same
applies to kids today, with TV/Internet they have somehow seen it all, even if
it's just at the surface level, so very few get drawn to dig in deeper.
~~~
sitkack
I find my active creativity is _much_ higher when reading well thought out
print material like the New Yorker, fiction OR non-fiction book. My mind races
with new creations and combinations. This rarely happens with online material
which favors the NOW instead of the good. One cannot subsist off of newspapers
and blogs along, they are deficient in all the nutrients the mind needs.
The thoughts are shallow and hurried with repetitive easy to digest truisms. A
single sentence expanded to fill an entire article.
Reading something deeply takes work. Writing it even more.
------
fiatmoney
Subtext:
"About 46 percent of white children are considered “proficient” in reading,
compared with 18 percent of black children and 20 percent of Hispanic kids.
Those gaps remained relatively unchanged over the past 20 years, according to
the report."
I.e., it's likely that the change in the average is driven by a change in the
proportions of the components, not a shift in the by-component means.
------
Beliavsky
Doesn't the following quote from the article contradict the title's assertion
that kids are not reading as well?
"Despite the large percentage of children with below-basic reading skills,
reading scores among young children have improved since the 1970s, according
to one test that measures reading ability.
The reading scores among 17-year-olds, however, remained relatively unchanged
since the 1970s."
~~~
sitkack
This should have been communicated in some sort of chart.
Maybe children are progressing at a slow rate in their earlier years but
making it to the same plateau as 17 year olds? Our reading proficiency might
have been more of a step function / trapezoid, arrived early and then grew
slowly, vs constant slower growth.
------
j2kun
Am I the only one that finds it ironic that this article is in the "one
sentence per paragraph" form that I tend to associate with _bad writing_ (or
perhaps writing aimed at people who don't read long form)? I imagine the
journalists are somewhat to blame for this. I'm looking at you, Buzzfeed.
~~~
dalacv
No.
------
127001brewer
According to Jim Trelease's book, "The Read-Outloud Handbook", one of the most
important things to with your kid is to read to them every night.[1] The book,
from what my recollection, discusses how students in other countries, such as
Finland, perform better overall because their parents tend to read to them
every night.
Even someone like Warren Buffet focuses on reading - spending "80 percent" of
his workday ready.[2]
1\. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Trelease#The_Read-
Aloud_Han...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Trelease#The_Read-
Aloud_Handbook) 2\. [http://theweek.com/article/index/248655/the-warren-
buffett-f...](http://theweek.com/article/index/248655/the-warren-buffett-
formula-how-you-can-get-smarter)
------
Code_Poet
Even if YOU don't have children, this is a big deal—this essentially means a
highly-illiterate work force for the future. As an educator, I can read with
students in a classroom, have them read aloud, and even assign reading outside
of class (which they generally don't do, mind you), but it doesn't help if
adults and parents aren't making an effort to encourage by example.
If I'm a kid who wants to be a web developer one day, and I decide to follow
Paul Irish on Twitter, you had better bet your buttered biscuits it makes an
impact when Paul is doing nothing but tweeting links to industry articles left
and right. This goes beyond the simple need of just having mommy read you a
bedtime story...
~~~
zhemao
It would be worrying if reading ability was actually getting worse, but the
article mentions that this is not the case.
> Reading scores among young children have improved since the 1970s.
> The reading scores among 17-year-olds, however, remained relatively
> unchanged since the 1970s.
------
ensignavenger
The New York Times article on this study had a comment suggesting that kids
"text" but don't read. I thought it funny that the author thinks that kids
only write text messages, but don't ever read them!
Actually, this Reuters article touches on this:
"Rideout cautioned that there may be difference in how people encounter text
and the included studies may not take into account stories read online or on
social media."
And therein lies the problem with the study. Kids probably do more reading-
online, on social media, text messages and in video games.
Granted, the quality of writing encountered is likely substantially lower
(certainly a subjective claim), I think kids are probably reading a lot more
than this study suggests.
------
bryanlarsen
"Rideout cautioned that there may be difference in how people encounter text
and the included studies may not take into account stories read online or on
social media."
IOW, the study is completely invalid, but we'll report it anyways.
------
antidaily
_The reading scores among 17-year-olds, however, remained relatively unchanged
since the 1970s._
Interesting. At least they catch up.
Isn't this just another casualty of the war on public education and teaching
for these stupid common core tests?
~~~
watwut
Another quote: "... reading scores among young children have improved since
the 1970s, according to one test that measures reading ability. ..."
------
Xdes
I do not see the problem. I have never read books for pleasure. Most of the
books I own are technical or reference material that have practical
applications. Why would I want to read for pleasure? I did not find anything
interesting about The Catcher in the Rye, Lord of the Flies, or To Kill a
Mockingbird which were standard readings when I went to school. Maybe I do not
have the imaginative capacity like those people that "get lost" in books.
~~~
ronaldx
Story-telling is important for society.
It teaches us how people might react to situations we are not immediately
familiar with, and how to empathise with people (characters) who have a
different viewpoint than our own.
And, it teaches us how to communicate our own stories effectively (as you have
done here, in fact).
So, I find it strange that you have never enjoyed reading fiction books. It is
not necessary to read fiction to gain any particular skill, but reading
fiction helps you gain a wealth of skills.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storytelling#Storytelling_and_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Storytelling#Storytelling_and_learning)
~~~
the_af
It's true that story-telling is important for society, but I also find this
view a bit... utilitarian.
Story-telling and reading are important because they are enriching,
pleasurable activities; among the best there are, in fact. That they also make
you a better person is a welcome bonus.
~~~
JetSpiegel
It's really depressing that people are citing studies to justify reading
novels.
That's a story for the ages...
~~~
seren
At the age of Fitbit, Soylent, 4-hour work week, etc, and particularly on HN,
it seems you have to have some sort of reward or definite end-goal to partake
in any activity.
------
yp_all
Does the HN title accurately reflect the article? Was this a wordlwide study?
The title of the article is "U.S. children read, but not well or often:
report"
------
bluedino
its cuz of txtng
Not just texting, but it seems like any communication online is excused from
having to follow any sort of rules. People try to justify it in a sense of
'This is just how kids speak these days', but would any other field allow a
grotesque destruction of itself?
What's the lol-speak equivalent in math, science, or art?
~~~
VLM
"What's the lol-speak equivalent in math, science, or art?"
We should be proud no one mentioned Religion yet. Whoops.
------
brownbat
I'd really like to see a study of how many words are read by the average
person today vs. 30 years ago. Reading fewer novels may, but doesn't
necessarily, imply less reading overall.
------
nickthemagicman
In related news the sky is blue.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Myth of “In-Memory” - prostoalex
http://www.interana.com/blog/the-myth-of-in-memory
======
dalke
When this was posted yesterday, I commented at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10268465](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10268465)
about the following:
"The legend of “in-memory” seems to have been born from stories out of
Facebook. "
As a general statement, that's not correct. In my field of chemical
information, that 'legend' started in the mid-1990s.
The rest of my comment is at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10268604](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10268604)
.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pharmacy flu vaccine: Health insurance policies should cover drug store shots - jseliger
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_examiner/2015/09/pharmacy_flu_vaccine_health_insurance_policies_should_cover_drug_store_shots.html
======
dogma1138
Well out of all the cases against health insurers in the US this isn't much of
a case. Unless you are in a risk group (the old pre-2010 CDC, and the current,
WHO, European, Canadian and rest of the sane world recommendations) this isn't
something you need, and considering that the flu shot is one of the highest
complication risks vaccines currently out there (I am not anti-vaccination nut
job, all vaccines should be taken as recommended by health professionals),
with fairly limited effectiveness and pretty much it's only offered "over-the-
counter" in one country since 2010 (when the CDC decided to change it's
recommendations, or well issue 2 separate ones one which is aligned with the
WHO and another that says well anyone over 6 years should get it) and that's
the US.
Unless you are in a risk group this isn't a major health issue for you, all
studies point that this is a very limited effectiveness treatment and unlike
most vaccines doesn't provide a heard immunity effect since even vaccinated
people will be contagious if they get the flu even for a strain that was
covered by the yearly shot.
This vaccine is intended to give at risk groups (people with chronic lung
diseases, elderly, infant, people with a compromised immune system and at risk
workers such as medical professionals, people that work on pork and chicken
farms etc.) a better fighting chance it doesn't not provide an immunity to any
flu strain.
P.S. That nasal (LAIV) vaccine the one that is given in the US to pretty much
everyone is the worse of the bunch, it's the only version that actually
contains the live virus which can both give you the flu and make you
contagious, this is the one that you are supposed to call sick after you get
it if you need it but hardly anyone actually does it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GMail Can't Read a Period - mlaccetti
http://www.laccetti.com/post/225198201/this-is-interesting
======
shrike
Not a bug. Feature. GMail ignores periods in email addresses.
[http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/1-awesome-gmail-tip-you-dont-
kn...](http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/1-awesome-gmail-tip-you-dont-know-about-
seriously/)
It isn't possible for the accounts michael.laccetti@gma.. and
michaellaccetti@gma.. to belong to different users, as far as Google is
concerned it's the same user.
~~~
haseman
Yup. Feature. Allows you to do all sorts of fun things...like signing up for
many twitter accounts on one gmail address.
~~~
mustpax
You can also use the +subscript feature for that. [email protected]
[email protected]. Allows you to filter based on account as well.
~~~
Poiesis
Except it's still distressingly common for braindead email address validation
scripts to not accept the plus character.
So, I'll use the plus to sign up for something that may produce junk (to
differentiate it), and then attempt to unsubscribe--producing an error as the
web form email validation to unsubscribe doesn't accept the plus. Doh!
------
eli
I think the other michael doesn't know his own email address.
~~~
buugs
Most definitely, or it is indeed spam as spammers seem to be getting really
tricky these days.
------
weeksie
Because of this little feature I've ended up on several ultra right wing
mailing lists (subscriptions that were meant for someone who shares my name,
obviously). It's horrifying and hilarious at the same time.
~~~
JacobAldridge
Hilarious, until you think it's possibly also happening in reverse.
The weeksie doppleganger is probably over on a fox news forum talking about
how the communists at Google are pumping him with their liberal agenda,
sending through masses of material about 'brainwashing' and 'criminal gangs'
(I mean 'programming' and 'Hacker News').
~~~
weeksie
Oh, I think that makes it even more hilarious.
------
terrellm
My wife has [email protected] and she is constantly getting emails
to [email protected] intended for someone in another state.
According to
[http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...](http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=10313#)
: "Gmail doesn't recognize dots as characters within usernames, you can add or
remove the dots from a Gmail address without changing the actual destination
address; they'll all go to your inbox, and only yours"
------
vgoel
It is a feature of Gmail and I think that it is great. Person_A registers
[email protected]. All mail sent to franzjosef@, franz.josef@,
franzjos.ef@, fra.nzjosef@ will end up in person A's Gmail account. Now
someone wishing to send an e-mail to another Franz Josef (Person_B) but not
being sure of his Gmail address guesses and sends it to Person A's Gmail
address. Not Google's fault. Google will not let let another person register
franzjosef@ with or without a period in any location. All periods are ignored.
------
djehuty
To all the commenters here saying "it's not a bug it's a feature":
Ok, but how did the other michael sign up with the non-period name? That's the
bug, surely?
~~~
callahad
He probably didn't. He probably meant @ymail, or firstlast3@gmail or some
other permutation.
At least, that's been the case for most of the misdirected email I've
received.
------
Timothee
As said by others, this is a feature. I remember that this problem really
happened at the very beginning of Gmail (2004) but it was quickly sorted out
once they realized that some people had managed to sign up with different
accounts that were actually the same.
------
martingordon
For a while I was getting emails that were sent to <me>@googlemail.com (I have
<me>@gmail.com) destined for someone in the UK, including flight confirmations
and subway card top up reminders. Either that guy didn't know his email
address when he booked his flight and registered for a few other things, or
something was up with Google's handling of GMail/Google Mail addresses.
------
sankara
Just a theory. Could it be that google allowed dot as legitimate characters
(ie. i.rock and irock are completely different) during the initial launch of
Gmail and then moved to the present setting of ignoring dots? [Just tried
creating a new account very similar to my existing one and I couldn't do that.
This suggests this is not an existing bug for sure.]
------
sganesh
I have the same issue with gmail. I have fn.ln@gmail and all of the emails for
fnln@gmail shows up in my inbox. Oh, the info that shows up are his pay
information, job offers ... I don't use this address often, but when i do log
in, hilarity ensues :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Swift 5 Release Notes for Xcode 10.2 beta - Austin_Conlon
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/xcode_release_notes/xcode_10_2_beta_release_notes/swift_5_release_notes_for_xcode_10_2_beta
======
favorited
Though it is underplayed in the release notes, the biggest initiative with
Swift 5 is the stable ABI.
Now that the binary interface is locked down, the Swift runtime and standard
library can ship as part of an OS. That means that Swift can be used in system
frameworks, the runtime support libraries won't need to be vendored in each
app, and it opens the door to shipping (non-OS) binary frameworks.
~~~
ksec
How many MBs are the Standard Library for Swift? If it is 10MB then many user
could expect anywhere form 100MB+ savings on their iPhone.
I think I will just wait for 5.1 before taking another look. Not really
trusting Apple on how they describe Stable in their recent release.
~~~
favorited
Someone had an app go from 2.4 MB (compressed) all the way down to 24 KB.
[https://twitter.com/BalestraPatrick/status/10885653106916474...](https://twitter.com/BalestraPatrick/status/1088565310691647489)
------
zapzupnz
For those of us who struggled with Swift 1 and 2, something else to remember:
the pure Swift reimplementation of Foundation was pretty basic (or non-
existent), so what we used in the early days was basically the ObjC-based NS*
frameworks but in a different language - for the most part.
Nowadays, it's possible to avoid using Foundation for a lot of basic tasks.
This is great news for Linux developers (and eventually Windows developers
when Foundation is mature enough) because a lot of basic tasks that once
relied on ObjC no longer do.
------
jonplackett
I've been using Swift a few years now and at the start it was a massive pain
moving to the new versions (1-2 was awful, 2-3 was bad but at least 3 was so
much better it was worth it).
It seems to have stabilised a bit now through 3, 4 and so far as I can tell to
5.
How long does it normally take for a language to mature and stop changing so
drastically? Objective C seems to be basically the same as when I first
started iOS dev 10 years ago.
Anyone have any insight into the speed other languages have progressed?
~~~
adamnemecek
Objective C is a language from a different era. I actually like the swift
model. I feel like the changes are actually for the better and based on things
that users want.
~~~
jonplackett
Just to clarify - I totally agree and really love Swift now. Obj-c may be
stable, but it's never been a language I love, or even particularly like.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
One SaaS Marketing Experiment Produced These 80/20 Insights… - danhodgins
http://www.saastimes.com/saas-pay-per-click-marketing-experiment-data
======
jtchang
I'm not as familiar with adwords as I want to be. What exactly are the ad
groups? Is it the positioning he is referring to? What exactly is suppose to
jump out at me?
~~~
danhodgins
Adwords accounts are organized differently depending on the industry and/or
products being advertised. Generally, one concept or idea will get it's own ad
group with an associated array of keywords. An ad group is just a concept or a
topic that can be described in different ways by a variety of keywords.
Here's an example to illustrate.
Suppose you were promoting email marketing software for photographers. This is
a discreet concept that can be expressed many ways:
email marketing for photographers email marketing for photographer email
marketing photographer
The single concept, email marketing for photographers would get it's own 'ad
group'. Other related concepts such as email list building for photography
business are unique enough to merit a seperate ad group.
The reason why Adwords is organized this way is to ensure that advertisers are
laser-targeted with relevancy.
It's in both your and Google's best interests to ensure that your Adwords
account is generating as many clicks as possible, and by having separate ad
groups you can custom tailor the ads within each ad group to be super
relevant.
You end up with an army of 'mini sales people' that work 24/7/365. And that's
Adwords alone. When you combine Adwords with SEO and email marketing to drive
conversions you get a very powerful system indeed.
------
danhodgins
I'm always amazed at how an experiment-driven mindset helps uncover pockets of
extreme interest among people clicking carefully-crafted ads or links!
~~~
flippomedia
Interesting article. The cost of the ad reflects it's impact, but what about
other off-beat search terms that might not have the same cost and combined
could yield the same click rates?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
YC vs Reddit vs Digg: Orders of Magnitude of Difference, Literally - parker
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/ycombinator.com?site0=ycombinator.com&site1=reddit.com&site2=digg.com&y=t&z=3&h=300&w=610&u%5B%5D=ycombinator.com&u%5B%5D=reddit.com&u%5B%5D=digg.com&x=2008-03-27T23%3A11%3A03.000Z&check=www.alexa.com&signature=CFP%2FV95UyVd%2FCeYOyel%2BXKioDb0%3D&range=3y&size=Medium
======
ambition
Dangerous to use Alexa since there is a credible inverse correlation between
likelihood of contributing to Alexa statistics and choice of news site.
~~~
astrec
Here 'tis the compete data:
[http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ycombinator.com+digg.com+re...](http://siteanalytics.compete.com/ycombinator.com+digg.com+reddit.com/?metric=uv)
We're still niche.
------
parker
Before we worry too much about news.YC becoming inundated with smelly
vagrants, it's good to keep things in perspective. According to this obviously
questionable source, we're not quite at levels of controlled chaos(reddit) or
outright bufoonery (digg).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Are you writing a journal? - mindrun
After I heard good things about writing a personal journal from some friends a few months ago, I also started writing one myself.<p>But I recently stopped writing because I noticed that the Application I was using is saving all entries completely unencrypted in the Cloud. I started searching around a bit but didn't find a good alternative which keeps my notes save and also easily editable.<p>Because I don't want to switch to writing into an analog notebook or something like that, it brought me to the point of thinking about providing a good alternative by myself.<p>Thus I'd like to hear some thoughts and ideas from other people who also like writing a journal. Do you write your thoughts down? If so, where?
======
skylark
I keep a daily journal which I save in a Word document. I don't particularly
mind if it goes up in a ball of fire one day - I find that I never really go
back to look through what I've written in the past.
For me, the journal's purpose is not to document my life. The journal is a
daily check in - a tool which forces me to be honest about my current
situation and evaluate what I can be doing differently or better. There's just
something so real and raw about putting my thoughts into something physical.
It forces me to really grapple with the issues I'm facing in life and come up
with actionable solutions.
Even though that's my experience with journaling, it most likely won't be
yours as well. Journals turn the lens inwards and magnify the things which are
most important to you. Some people use journals to vent. Others just want to
document the experiences they live in life to keep a history of what they've
done.
You probably won't know what benefit a journal will give you until you just
start doing it. Give it a week or two - do it before you sleep or right when
you wake up. Before you know it, you'll be hooked. Or not, the cost is so low
you might as well give it a shot.
------
manmukh
Were you using Day One? It stores unencrypted entries in iCloud/Dropbox and
has the weakest password protection system I've seen. Your password isn't even
synced across different devices, you need to set it each time for each device!
I haven't yet stopped using it but I'm looking to make the transition to
something else.
OneNote allows you to password protect and encrypt an entire section, so you
could make a journal section an store all of your entries in there. It works
quite well from my experience. Evernote also offers encryption but you can
only encrypt a selection of text and it can be inconvenient to have to encrypt
each entry separately. Both options have mobile/desktop/web apps.
Another option is a private Wordpress journal.
A lot of people here recommend using a physical journal and a pen (I'm
planning on going this route eventually). You could also use good ol' text
files synced with dropbox (or something else) and encrypt them yourself.
~~~
mindrun
Yep, that's the app I was using before I figured out that it doesn't encrypt
my entries. Also it doesn't have a web-view, right?
I thought it might be great if I would build a great-looking web-application
which also has a well-documented API (you can't say that of any great
journaling app out there).
I think especially for people who are traveling 'round the world - and don't
keep devices like an iPhone, an MacBook, etc. with them - it would be perfect
(many of them are still using Internet Cafés).
But of course, the most people are writing on their own devices. For them, we
could write some native apps later.
Another tiny question: Would you pay for a service like that? I mean a few
dollars /month. In my opinion, there's currently no complete service out
there, which focusses only on journaling.
Okay, maybe a few poor-designed and -developed ones.
~~~
manmukh
> Would you pay for a service like that?
I wouldn't. There are enough free options (e.g. onenote, email, physical
journal, etc.) that work just fine for me. I personally don't see the value in
paying for a service that uploads and syncs my journals, even if it has a
really nice interface.
~~~
johntash
Agreed. You'd have to come up with a good feature, other than just
syncing/looking pretty, to make it worth paying for.
------
dangrover
I have kept a journal in a text file since 2011, synced via dropbox. It's
grown to be over a meg at this point. At that time, I was feeing depressed,
and it gave me tremendous sense of clarity and order to be able to put my
thoughts into writing and check in every day.
I haven't had this problem as much these days, but I have kept the habit. I
have a rule with myself that if I find myself ruminating over some stupid
thing that happened during the day, I may do so, but only in writing. For some
reason, typing my way through such thoughts, even for short periods of time,
tends to make them clearer and to more quickly reveal any
distortions/fallacies therein.
------
skrinko
I don't journal as much as I would like. I have been using Day1 as well, but
lately started using Hemingway app on Mac. You can make the interface very
minimal to keep out distraction, and have in the background ready for
thoughts. It can analyze level of grammar if you please. Save where you want,
and what you do to secure it is your choice.
------
arh68
I used to keep all my passwords in Emacs w/ Org Mode. You can encrypt a
heading, or an entire file, with a GPG key. This could work. Just store it in
Dropbox/etc. If you trust Dropbox's encryption, just use a simple j.txt as
manmukh says.
Or you could just email yourself, replying forever. That's pretty easy.
[link, almost forgot] [http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/encrypting-
files.html](http://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/encrypting-files.html)
~~~
mindrun
Thanks for those suggestions! For hackers (who also mostly write on their pc)
this could be a way to journal. But for the most people, that's not really an
option.
I also think in the longer term, that's not the right way to accomplish this -
because it's not really made for journaling and thus also too complicated, in
my opinion.
------
brudgers
I keep a journal on paper. In part because technology is a distraction both in
the moment and from a management perspective for exactly the reasons you
experienced. I've toyed with Emacs org-mode and Microsoft OneNote in the
cloud, but nothing really beats paper for me because I have control over the
process...and getting away from the computer means that I can wonder about the
answer to a question rather than stopping my writing and Googling it up.
------
atmosx
I use a personal journal with 'vim'[1]. I write only when I feel like writing
to it, usually when I'm under stress. The articles are encrypted with GPG,
synced through my dropbox account.
[1] [https://github.com/jmcantrell/vim-
journal](https://github.com/jmcantrell/vim-journal)
------
rb2k_
> Do you write your thoughts down?
No. But I'd be interested to hear why people would. What is the appeal?
(serious question)
~~~
brudgers
There are several reasons I've kept a journal:
\+ Writing is thinking.
\+ I believe it makes my writing better, even if only via the additional
practice.
\+ Journaling has been, at times, a sanity check. Writing about some craziness
in my life provides a way to stop ruminating over it.
\+ Journaling is a great way to explore ideas that I have.
Over the past three months or so. I've focused more on journaling as a writing
and exploration tool and much less as a safety valve over observations of
meanness or stupidity in the world or some sadness I might experience. Those
things are easy to write passionately about, however I'm generating enough
ideas I feel passionate about that I don't need to tap that resource.
------
bluerail
Wow.. just today I blogged about how there is no good secure journal solution,
and ended up writing one for my own..
I am building one currently which stores the entries directly to cloud
services and without all boatload of features.. just for writing..
------
NhanH
I asked a similar question a month ago, you may find some of the answer there
useful:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8976690](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8976690)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are the best European accelerators/incubators? - thecodingmonk
======
philippz
I hear mixed things about Techstars
~~~
thecodingmonk
> Techstars contributes $20,000, which is commonly used as a stipend to
> support living expenses during the program, and in return receives 6% common
> stock from each company.
I was considering Techstars, but the deal looks kind of unappealing,
especially compared to YC.
I mean, yes, they give you access to their network and "300k$ of cash
equivalent hosting, accounting and, legal support", but I suppose you also get
that at YC plus 120k more in cash.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
My crazy 2016 resolution: MVP every two weeks - olegkikin
http://www.olegkikin.com/devblog/2016/01/01/mvp-every-two-weeks/
======
bikamonki
Don't.
Better spend a couple of weeks selecting one and do a damn good product.
I know where you come from, I mean that feeling of having muchas 'great' ideas
and wanting to try them all. Many of us HN readers feel the same. That's
great, the world needs great ideas, but it also needs great ideas that turn
into great products (not necessarily talking money here).
If you are old enough you'll remember them CDs with 'one hundred PC games'. It
was fine to kill some time playing somewhat fun games but not one was a great
game. Same will happen with your 50 MVPs.
Pick one, run the full course. You will not get bored of adding features to a
successful product.
What to do with the other 49? Share them, write them down, colab with someone
already doing them, plan them for the future, etc.
~~~
olegkikin
I've tried that. Spent a few months working on one thing, and it got nowhere.
Then I developed two small sites in a week, and they've been making $150-300
per month ever since.
I assure you, if one of these MVP projects takes off, I will polish it to
perfection.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Real-time map of Uber surge pricing - markmassie
http://www.uphail.com/
======
Herald_MJ
If this isn't affiliated with Uber, isn't it pretty likely this will be shut
down?
------
rabbimarshak
SF is on fire now with Dreamforce in town!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Probably the most bicycle-friendly city in the world - lkozma
http://kevytliikenne.ytv.fi/?lang=en
======
mdemare
Bicycle culture in Amsterdam: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qk6YxhKH590>
------
ptman
Helsinki is not that bicycle-friendly at all. More space for bicycles on the
roads would help a lot more than a route planner. It is good progress, I don't
deny that, but it certainly doesn't make Helsinki the most bicycle-friendly
city in the world. Amsterdam and Copenhagen are probably years ahead of
Helsinki.
------
chengmi
Ever been to Davis, CA? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davis%2C_ca#Bicycling>
The city logo is a bicycle, and there's a bicycle statue too...
<http://daviswiki.org/Bicycling>
------
ivankirigin
Boston is also quite good. An avid cyclist friend in SF was very jealous of
our minuteman trail. I certainly love it, and there is talk of extending it
all the way downtown.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Beautiful People Are the Hardest to Draw: Interview with a Courtroom Artist - dwwoelfel
http://ratter.com/ratter/all/inverse-published/213837-courtroom-artist-l-d-chukman
======
tmalsburg2
Not an expert for face perception but I think faces are believed to be stored
in memory in terms of their deviation from the standard face (the average face
in your environment). Since beautiful faces happen to be precisely the faces
that are close to the average, it's completely unsurprising that they are hard
to capture because their deviations from the standard face are really subtle.
Storage of faces as differences from the standard face also explains why white
people find it hard to distinguish Asian faces (and the reverse): they all
deviate from a white standard face in a similar way. Caricatures can also
explain by this because a caricature is what you get when you amplify
someone's deviations from the standard face.
~~~
divan
Nice model, but unfortunately it's not true. Neocortex doesn't have 'special
face diff storage mechanism'. It doesn't work like this.
~~~
hugh4
Really? How do you know this? I thought that our knowledge about how things
are stored in the brain was extremely poor.
It seems that we do have some pretty specialised mechanisms in our heads for
dealing with human faces, given how good we are at recognising them compared
to other things. Even tiny changes in face shape (ie expression) are instantly
recognisable and can cause major emotional responses.
------
elchief
Here's poor Tom Brady (Patriots Quarterback) in court:
[https://usatftw.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/cmoycq4woaa2mt1....](https://usatftw.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/cmoycq4woaa2mt1.jpg?w=1000&h=750)
------
marincounty
"They're cutting each others' throats as vividly as they can."
The very last line of the interview is what scares me about our future. Yes,
we've always been cut throat, but in my life--right now--I see people whom are
willing to sell their souls in order make more money. Or, maybe since a lot of
us question whether their is a soul; we do horrid things in the name of
business? Or, maybe I'm too sensitive to how money can corrupt; my sister
pretty much put my mother on the streets with her greedy, money manipulating
mouth.
I wasen't part of the Hippy generation, but they did not act the way we are
acting now? At least they tried to change?
I don't find our current society progressive, or fashionable. The "Power
Couple", "I will do anything to make the Paper", "Buy that book on how to
manipulate people, and make money." "I'll build my scalable site so I can live
like that little weasel?" I honestly find it all disgusting--
(Off topic, but through out that interview; it just reminded me how ugly
society has gotten, and not just the defendants in the court rooms. I guess I
just was expecting a light article about art?)
~~~
sebkomianos
Only commenting to say you are not alone thinking about this.
------
evolve2k
It was an interesting read, but I'm frustrated at how link baity the title is.
There actually was no discussion of how "beautiful people" are hard to draw.
Read the whole article looking for the line. Very frustrating.
~~~
Steko
It was in the Tom Brady section.
_You know what 's hardest to draw? Beautiful people. Reproducing beauty is
hard. Beauty is usually based on very fine, careful proportions with no
irregularities. There are a couple judges who are just too handsome or too
pretty. It's a challenge going in to draw them. It's a challenge to get a good
likeness of them. A lot of beautiful people are just bland._
~~~
mirimir
Yes, some "beautiful people" are bland, with very symmetrical features, etc.
What seems to matter is some mix of averageness, and ratios of feature sizes
and arrangement.[0,1] But I've also noticed that some strikingly beautiful
people not at all like that. And in some contexts, they can be just as
dramatically ugly.
[0] [http://petapixel.com/2013/05/28/what-averaged-face-
photograp...](http://petapixel.com/2013/05/28/what-averaged-face-photographs-
reveal-about-human-beauty/)
[1]
[http://faceresearch.org/students/averageness](http://faceresearch.org/students/averageness)
------
afarrell
Pro tip: If you are ever trying to report on a high-profile court case and
there is an overflow room where they pipe in CCTV, go to that room because the
camera angles will be much more conducive to getting a good view of the
defendant.
~~~
sandworm101
Unless you want to see the reaction of the jury. Those cameras rarely cover
the jury in my experience.
------
sandworm101
>> There are a couple judges who are just too handsome or too pretty. It's a
challenge going in to draw them.
There are no beautiful people in courtrooms. Everyone is under some sort of
stress. Lawyers and defendants can win or loose, jurors don't want to be
there, the court officers are busy moving prisoners around and acting
authoritatively. Even the galleries are full of unhappy family members. It's
no surprise that this artist mentions the judges. They are in charge. They
know that no matter what happens they will still be in charge come the end of
the day. Confident people always look better than those under stress.
~~~
gnaritas
Stress doesn't make someone not beautiful, your premise is flawed.
------
pjbrunet
Men are easier to sketch because shadows, sharp angles and the
"irregularities" of your pencil line tend to look masculine. For example,
shadows tend to look like facial hair. The slightest flaw on a woman's face is
generally more dramatic and unflattering--you want a thinner, softer, smoother
line without shadows. Sketches by definition are quick and dirty--which
doesn't work out as well for people with delicate features.
------
jrapdx3
Don't know about we learn much about the difficulty of drawing beautiful
faces, however the images of the artist's work were impressive.
The traditional boundary between "art" and "illustration" isn't hard and fast.
The latter is valued for its utility, but there's always a possibility that
mere workman's duty will be exceeded, with the result carrying a sensibility
well above its intended purpose.
I think that may be the case for this particular sketch artist. The drawings
seem to capture not only how individuals look, but also portray something of
their emotional states, contrasts among them obvious, interesting and
surprising. The relational elements are echoed in the subtleties of spacing,
angles and proportion, factors that begin to delineate "art" from the prosaic.
The article shows the artist to be quite a character himself. In a way
reminiscent of 1940's newspaper photographer "Weegee" (Arthur Fellig), who
similarly transcended the common utilitarian aspects of his job, ranking among
the best photographers of the 20th century.
It's refreshing to know there are inspired souls putting forth such noteworthy
effort and contributing more than we could expect.
------
marsay
Is this drawing thing in court rooms specific to US? And why is drawing
allowed and not taking pictures?
~~~
wodenokoto
Because you have to draw the line somewhere.
It's kinda similar to how you can take notes, but not record.
------
ctdonath
The font used for the interviewer's text is striking. What is it?
~~~
Encosia
Freight Micro Pro: [https://typekit.com/fonts/freight-micro-
pro](https://typekit.com/fonts/freight-micro-pro)
------
rokhayakebe
Ah, that is why I am so un-photogenic. Explains it. Thanks.
~~~
ZenoArrow
It explains it how? Have people told you that you have an easy face to draw?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
MariaDB Cassandra Storage Engine - philips
http://kb.askmonty.org/en/cassandra-storage-engine/
======
simpsond
I like the idea but I am not familiar with dynamic columns in maria. Is it
possible to query dynamic columns in a way that map to a column slicing
operation in cassandra?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Bug in reply to comment on HN. - source99
Could be user error but it looks like some line breaks that are entered into the text box are not reflected properly.<p>Broken example - http://imgur.com/VR4WXBL<p>Working example (extra line break)- http://imgur.com/1vRF7G8<p>Screen shots were taken after clicking "update"
======
nkurz
Might get better response here:
[https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues](https://github.com/HackerNews/HN/issues)
(link at bottom of page)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bootstrapped Companies with 1 Million+ Revenue - pppggg
http://37signals.com/bootstrapped
======
hko
That list is a bit out of date: [http://gigaom.com/2012/07/09/github-finally-
raises-funding-1...](http://gigaom.com/2012/07/09/github-finally-raises-
funding-100m-from-andreessen-horowitz/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Replaces “Alphabet” Wiki with “Alphabet Inc” - thewisenerd
http://imgur.com/HKv31VZ
======
Nadya
The user is signed in which will skew their results. It is above the Alphabet
wiki, does not replace it, and both are far below articles related to Alphabet
Inc.
[0] [http://i.imgur.com/pFoR2hw.png](http://i.imgur.com/pFoR2hw.png)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Our Government Runs on a 60-Year-Old Coding Language, and Now Its Falling Apart - gHeadphone
https://onezero.medium.com/our-government-runs-on-a-60-year-old-coding-language-and-now-its-falling-apart-61ec0bc8e121
======
theincredulousk
COBOL isn’t falling apart, the systems are exceeding their design limits. “Oh
if it were just written in a modern language everything would be fine”. Not
true - we create modern systems every day that would choke and die if they had
to scale several orders of magnitude instantly - in fact it happens about
weekly when an unsuspecting link hits the HN front page. Also, I would wager
90%+ of software written today is 10-100x more fragile over time than whatever
COBOL software is on these machines. What do you think the chances are of
those 100 fancifully orchestrated micro-services running 10 abstraction layers
up on 3rd party infrastructure are of running at all a decade from now, never
mind within their original design constraints.
Old doesn’t necessarily mean worse and newer doesn’t necessarily mean better,
but that logical foundation is easy to forget in a tech culture so often
myopically focused on innovation(tm) and short-term profit or austerity above
robustness.
The relative rarity of COBOL programmers aside, this is a just an garden
variety f* up of keeping legacy systems around too long because they aren’t
“broken”. And like technical debt, the money and effort to fix them, despite
many warnings and pleas, is called a waste because there is no immediate
benefit or profit.
Then something like this happens, and everyone forgets the shortsighted
management or decision makers that ignored the risk and collected bonuses and
praise for saving the Corp/taxpayers money. Those who warned about the debt
coming due get nothing except being able to say “I told you so” for a few
weeks until the whole thing blows over.
~~~
gregjor
I agree with what you wrote, this is not a problem with the COBOL language,
except in the narrow sense that it’s not taught anymore and probably 95% of
programmers working today have never seen COBOL. A professional programmer
with some experience can learn COBOL in a few weeks. It’s not Linear A.
The cost of fixing technical debt has to outweigh the cost and risks of
replacing legacy systems. Most ground-up rewrites fail, and that’s even more
of a problem in the government sector. A working system with problems is still
better than an imaginary system that will probably never go live. Google IRS,
California DMV, Oregon utilities, etc. etc. for examples of how these rewrites
actually work out.
~~~
theincredulousk
Yes I do remember reading the one - maybe it was Google IRS - that they tried
replacing cobol with Java.
Maybe in some cases they just need a new IBM mainframe instead of re-written
software.
~~~
thu2111
Emulating mainframes isn't an uncommon approach.
But, switching to something like Java would be far better. COBOL on mainframes
has nothing to recommend it. There are good reasons nobody chooses to write
new systems that way. For one, it's a single vendor tech in which that vendor
is a huge firm in terminal decline and thus highly incentivised to squeeze
customers financially as hard as possible; government IT spending is already
wasteful without propping up the IBM share price.
There are few paths forward to improve such systems. Beyond the lack of
skilled personnel, there's no real open source community or any community
producing libraries or integrations.
The problems with these sorts of rewrites are that non-technical managers
don't really understand the concept of tech debt until it's way too late and
you have a situation like this one. There's no sense that constant improvement
should be expected, like what you find in the tech industry, indeed they
usually take pride in avoiding projects that are "technology for technologies
sake". And that _sounds_ very reasonable, right up until you discover people
have basic expectations that you can't fulfil in any plausibly fast manner, or
everyone who understands your system has retired and died.
So to justify any replatforming or upgrade project, it has to be done via
promising lots of new features as part of the rewrite and that screws with the
sequencing. Now it's not a tech upgrade project but rather a total upgrade of
many different things simultaneously, including often rigid business
processes.
------
jcrawfordor
Attributing these problems to COBOL is short sighted. While COBOL is obsolete
for good reasons, it does provide high performance and makes it relatively
easy to construct new batch-processing tasks quickly, due to its built-in data
model (a concept which is largely absent from modern programming languages but
does pop up from time to time in forms like MS LINQ - historically it was far
more common, see also MUMPS). Because COBOL applications run predominantly in
batch-mode they are also fairly robust and easy to troubleshoot compared to
many modern systems, isolating a problem being a matter of running the batch
jobs individually and finding the bad intermediary state, and recovering from
a failure being a matter of just restarting the job. Intermediate state is
almost always persisted to storage so it's easy to work back to where the
problem occurred, unlike in e.g. a microservice architecture where doing so
can require a dedicated tracing system and still be quite difficult.
Consider that we could write a headline like "Amazon runs on a 50-year-old
operating system, and now it's falling apart." The sentence is not entirely
untrue but rather misses the point.
The problem is this: these systems are old and, more significantly, have
received extremely limited maintenance and enhancement over their lifetimes.
This means that there are few people familiar with each system (a "bus factor"
problem) and, more broadly, that the talent-base of COBOL programmers has been
allowed to recede to near-zero. While a common modernization (or
"recapitalization," a term preferred in government contracting) route in the
tech industry might be to take a legacy system written in e.g. Java and
progressively reimplement it in e.g. Python with a simplified architecture, a
common recap route in government is to take a legacy system written in COBOL
or s/370 assembly and transition it to an s/370 emulator running on HPUX on
NonStop. I've been involved in such processes a couple of times. It has the
advantage of maintaining the reliability properties of the legacy system at
relatively low-cost since very little software work is involved. It has the
tremendous disadvantage of allowing the organization to continue to not touch
the software, with much of the work often outsourced to a vendor who need not
be very familiar with the codebase either
You certainly wouldn't write anything in COBOL in 2020, but COBOL itself does
have a robust and even fairly maintainable design. The problem is that any
application written 20 years ago or more, regardless of language, is going to
be tremendously difficult to modify to meet changing requirements and
increased demand. Unemployment insurance applications reaching six million per
week, for example, would strain a system designed using the most modern
methodology which was specified for a few hundred thousand. The difference is
that, with a newer system, there are likely to be in-house engineers or
vendors who are very familiar with the system and will be able to expand its
capacity more rapidly.
Another underlying problem is that legacy systems designed using a mainframe
methodology are intended for vertical scaling - to process more records you
buy a bigger machine (or expand the LPAR or what have you). While horizontal
scaling has its own disadvantages there's a reason it's so popular today -
it's a lot faster to buy more capacity from a cloud provider than to
requisition a larger mainframe^w midcomputer^w emulation host. There are few
vendors and government acquisitions are slow at the best of times, even under
emergency sole-source rules.
In a way the whole thing is ironic, because a lot of COBOL application
interfaces are faster than any software we use today. From the perspective of
a human operator they can be absolutely outstanding once you get over a
learning curve. However, the lack of any enhancements made to these systems
mean that requirements changes are often "patched in peopleware" if you will,
and you end up with clerks that can enter data an order of magnitude more
efficiently than with a likely modern solution, but they then have to send the
records to a virtual printer to be ingested into a Java EE solution... this
kind of "enterprise patching" rapidly adds up to an extremely inefficient
system.
------
jerzyt
What is far more scary than the old stuff our government is running in COBOL,
is the new stuff running in Excel. Excel became a de facto Common Business
Oriented Language (COBOL), accessibly to anybody. Old COBOL programs were
still developed with some software engineering discipline. Current Excel
spreadsheets have none of that. And, this doesn't apply to the government only
- private enterprise runs bazillions(?) untested, unverified spreadsheets.
Wish I could share what I've seen.
~~~
gHeadphone
That’s true. I used to work in one of the biggest banks in the world. More
than half the divisions were dependent on Excel. Every time there was an
audit, a huge bunch of spreadsheets were automated. By the time the automation
was complete, another hundred spreadsheets would have popped up. It was like
trying to spray weeds. I remember one spreadsheet that contained the only
formula for calculating risk in an almost billion dollar portfolio. Genuinely
scary stuff.
------
smcphile
My first computing job, many years ago, was maintaining a large, COBOL program
for an insurance company. I doubt the problem the American government is now
facing has much to do with COBOL in itself.
It probably has much more to do with the fact that these COBOL programs were
designed to run on IBM mainframe computers and to interact with various
proprietary IBM subsystems (with names like CICS, VSAM, VTAM, DB2, etc.) These
subsystems are non-trivial to learn and there’s been little/no incentive for
anyone new to learn them for the last (at least) twenty years.
Finally, back in the 80’s and 90’s, some programs were written in IBM
assembler language instead of COBOL, for example when there was a need for
greater speed. Understanding and maintaining (or porting these programs to a
non-mainframe environment) is also non-trivial.
I left the IBM mainframe world completely 20 years ago, switched over to
working only on Unix/Linux systems, did that for 20 years, and am now happily
retired. However I’m sure there are still lots of older IBM mainframe people
around to handle these problems, they just cost money.
~~~
gregjor
A lot of the problem stems from the databases. COBOL, and these legacy
systems, pre-date relational databases. They work with proprietary and custom
file formats, which COBOL was designed to work well with. Regardless of
technical debt or scaling problems, the data in these systems has tremendous
value, and converting it to a modern relational structure is a bigger job than
fixing some bugs in COBOL code.
------
sullyj3
Not a great headline really, C is nearly 50, but most people wouldn't consider
it a disaster for everything to be written in C. The problem isn't that COBOL
is old, it's that it's largely obsolete.
~~~
TomMarius
Who would not consider a information system application written in C a
disaster? Can't think of anyone who who would want to work on that.
I agree with your point though.
~~~
jatone
no, because literally every application except the most trivial touch c.
every major RBMS is c or c++.
you don't write frontend's with c/c++ but if you're interacting with a
datastore most are c.
the problem with c and c++'s age are legacy behaviors related to them we've
since determined are not beneficial to actual programs and make reasoning
about them harder.
~~~
jjeaff
Of course everything touches c. But it's mostly all open source stuff that is
maintained by a large community of coders and is mostly underlying
dependencies.
When you are developing software, you just want that stuff to work. You don't
want to have to dig around in the internals to figure things out.
That's why scripting languages have become so popular.
------
GnarfGnarf
The problem with rewriting the COBOL code base in a newer, sexier language, is
that this new language will itself become obsolete in ten or twenty years.
Then you're back to square one re-writing the app in another newer language.
So businesses faced with this problem have a choice: accept that their code is
written in an old language, and train programmers to learn it. Or pay big
money to convert their code into... a language that will soon be obsolete, in
an endless treadmill.
Isn't it better to be obsolete and not pay conversion costs, rather than be
obsolete and pay perpetual conversion costs?
Yes, programmers are more productive in newer languages. However, you are
never going to get rid of the old stuff, so you will always need some
programmers versed in every language, at every stage of your conversion
hamster wheel.
------
cafard
I think that The Onion should run an article: "Coders Shocked to Find
Accounting Systems Written in a Language Designed for Accounting Systems."
------
m463
It seems like the age of something is the argument.
I starting thinking of this and thought:
\- Much modern AI software depends on 63-year old fortran numerical methods
code.
\- the Brooklyn Bridge is 137 years old.
\- the White House is 220 years old
\- Aristotle was using logical reasoning over 2300 years ago.
------
gregjor
Now I know how to reply when someone posts “I have a week with nothing to do.
What language should I learn next?” COBOL.
Seriously, anyone with some programming experience can learn COBOL or any
other language in a few weeks. Maybe with so many hip startups for concierge
cat sitting closing down more programmers with time on their hands and no
paycheck will crack the McCracken book (the one I learned COBOL from ages
ago).
~~~
non-entity
If i could get hired with a good rate after just learning the COBOL language
maybe. Unfortunately, I don't have a mainframe for me to learn the rest of the
environment in.
~~~
lboc
IBM give away free year-long z/OS accounts:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20873531](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20873531)
------
throwaway888abc
Informative comments. Thanks!
------
_bxg1
*60-Year-Old software systems
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Minimizing Computations in your Rails App - artellectual
https://www.codemy.net/posts/optimizing-your-rails-app-part-2-minimize-computations
======
pedalpete
I don't know, they've got a lot of code to gain a 1.5 second lookup speed on
10 million lookups!
To me, that sounds like over engineering. Even at Facebook scale, can we say
we are talking 1/10 of a millisecond per lookup? Is it worth the extra
performance gain?
At the same time? I'm surprised the hash lookup isn't faster.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Crafting Interpreters – A handbook for making programming languages - munificent
http://www.craftinginterpreters.com/
======
trishume
A fantastic book covering similar things that you can read right now is
[https://pragprog.com/book/tpdsl/language-implementation-
patt...](https://pragprog.com/book/tpdsl/language-implementation-patterns).
It's the book that got me into interpreters and compilers, I highly recommend
it.
It's slightly less in depth than the roadmap of "Crafting Interpreters", but
again, it exists right now.
~~~
agumonkey
Ha yeah, Terence parr is a référence.
------
codebeaker
Seems to be a hot topic, a friend and colleague published this in December
2016 and I can __thoroughly __recommend it (Uses Go as an implementation
language):
\- [https://interpreterbook.com](https://interpreterbook.com)
~~~
bruth
I can recommend this book as well! It is easy to read and understand and the
choice of Go as the host language is also great.
I am in the process writing a semi-natural query language (boolean logic)
targeted at domain experts (in this case biomedical researchers) that compiles
to either database queries (e.g. SQL) or a function call for arbitrary logic.
The goal of the compiler bit is to abstract away where the data ultimately
lives (similar to GraphQL) or how it is structured.
------
mwcampbell
Looking forward to the chapters about the C interpreter. Meanwhile, it looks
like both interpreters are available to study now in the Git repo. [1]
[1]:
[https://github.com/munificent/craftinginterpreters](https://github.com/munificent/craftinginterpreters)
~~~
throwathrowaway
Nice project. What do all the
//> SomeName not-yet
in the code mean? Are they meant for some kind of automatic processing? Its a
bit hard to read with all of them there...
~~~
munificent
Sorry, yeah. Those are the markers that the build script uses to insert the
code snippets in the right place in each chapter.
I know it makes the code hard to read. I should probably slap together a
little script to strip them out.
------
msangi
I really enjoyed
[http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/](http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/) and
I've been looking forward for this book since I saw the link on munificent's
homepage
------
kovrik
Thank you so much for the book, please, continue!
I am currently working on Scheme R5RS implementation in Java. It is a hobby
project, but I'm really enjoying it. It is somewhat enlightening.
Look forward to reading the Optimization chapter: I couldn't find much useful
and practical info on that. I think it is quite easy to implement your
interpreter, but it is really difficult (at least for me) to make it fast.
Can anyone recommend any articles or books with common optimization tricks and
techniques?
~~~
ioddly
For making an efficient Scheme implementation: most everything written by R.
Kent Dybvig or his students. I'd start with his PHd thesis (Three
Implementation Models for Scheme, specifically the stack-based part).
[http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~dyb/](http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~dyb/)
(See also Lua's upvalues for a way to optimize closure variable access that's
a bit simpler than his display closures).
~~~
munificent
> See also Lua's upvalues for a way to optimize closure variable access
Yes! In fact, that's how the C version of the interpreter in my book
implements closures. It's pretty brilliant. <3 those Lua folks.
~~~
Flow
Will you cover anything about LuaJIT's "NaN-coding"?
Or perhaps do you have a link about how it works?
~~~
munificent
Yes, we'll do NaN-tagged values in the last chapter on optimization.
------
zitterbewegung
I've been reading [http://beautifulracket.com/](http://beautifulracket.com/)
and its a really good introduction on making interprets.
~~~
throwaway7645
Interesting! I like racket...just wish it was faster. Anybody know if there
will be a successor to "Realm of Racket"?
Edit: Now I remember it uses LGPL as the license. I understand the reasoning,
but I've always viewed the freedoms as giving the user freedom over the
implementer...kind of just trading power.
------
szabot
I clicked the link without looking at the poster, and by the end of the
"What’s the Catch?" paragraph I was thinking to myself that this really seems
like something written by The Munificent Bob. Then I read the first sentence
of the next paragraph :)
I really like your blog, I have read all of it, some posts even 2-3 times, and
not only because of the content, but your writing style. I will probably read
this book too ;)
Also, I think Magpie is awesome.
~~~
munificent
\o/
------
ftomassetti
One think I find lacking in books about building languages is a focus on tool.
I am working on one (available for 0$ on leanpub: "How to create pragmatic,
lightweight languages"
[https://leanpub.com/create_languages](https://leanpub.com/create_languages) )
with the intention to focus more on building editors and simulator.
If you are interested in the subject you could take a look to my blog
([https://tomassetti.me](https://tomassetti.me)) I write 1-2 posts per week on
building languages. Most of the time I talk about DSL.
------
jonathanstrange
This is awesome, since I'm currently working on my own (toy) language! Thanks
for making this public!
On a side note, to anyone interested in an overview of high-level language
features and what their implementation requires, I can wholeheartedly
recommend Michael Scott's _Programming Language Pragmatics_. It doesn't go
into implementation details, but tells you a lot about the historical choices
and implementation possibilities of (mostly) mainstream languages.
~~~
munificent
_Yes!_ PL Pragmatics was the first book on languages I read and I really
enjoyed it.
------
Philomath
That's so cool! Learning to make a programming language is in my life's todo
list, just as doing my own (super simple) operating system. Thank's for
contributing with a free book, I very much appreciate it. Does anybody know of
something similar but for operating systems?
~~~
iKlsR
Not quite but this is a good read.
[https://littleosbook.github.io/](https://littleosbook.github.io/)
~~~
Philomath
This is good! It will definitely do.
Thank you very much!
------
nickpeterson
This looks great, for some reason the idea of creating a language from scratch
and then using it in some professional capacity always seemed really cool to
me.
------
GavinMcG
Really looking forward to this!
A much less involved language-building tutorial that's available now is
Beautiful Racket.[0] Racket is a Scheme, but it's also specially outfitted to
be a language workbench.
~~~
GavinMcG
And _16 hours_ later: [0]
[http://beautifulracket.com](http://beautifulracket.com)
------
whistlerbrk
A little late to the party here, but I'll throw another tutorial that I
absolutely loved, buildyourownlisp.com which guides you to building 'lispy' in
C.
------
xrayspec
Racket is also a great environment for making languages. See, e.g.:
[http://beautifulracket.com](http://beautifulracket.com)
------
d0m
One question here for the more advanced compiler writers.. How do you go about
writing a "pre-lexer" for LISP like language where you want to expand sexpr?
I.e. Does the lexer even see `(...), or does it get pre-extracted to (quote
..)? And if so, how does the pre-extraction work exactly? Is it built using
regex..? That can be tricky.
~~~
kazinator
Lisp dialects usually have an input mechanism called a "reader". It scans the
character syntax and produces the equivalent object, combining lexical
analysis and parsing. Special notations like 'x denoting the same thing (quote
x) are easily handled here. When the reader sees a quote, it consumes it,
calls itself recursively to scan the expression which follows to get an object
O and then returns the object (quote O).
------
plttn
Just from reading the first few pages of the book, I'm already a fan.
However my one tiny complaint is that the sign-up box is on every page, and
even after I've signed up, it still has to be closed every page I go to.
~~~
munificent
Yeah, that is annoying. I think for my previous book, I used a little cookie
support in JS to hide it persistently after the first time you closed it.
I'll try to resurrect that for this one.
[https://github.com/munificent/craftinginterpreters/issues/11](https://github.com/munificent/craftinginterpreters/issues/11)
------
bogomipz
This looks great. Thanks for sharing. Looking forward to updates.
------
dman
Any pointers to intermediate representations for compilers?
------
jnbiche
Another great-looking book on making _dynamic_ languages. There's been some
good ones recently, and this one looks like another good one covering how to
make a basic, interpreted language.
Some of us have written 1 or 2 dynamic, interpreted languages, feel pretty
comfortable with those concepts, and are interested in transiting to more
advanced, static type systems and writing a good type checker.
Anyone up for writing such a high-quality book as this one on statically-typed
languages, ideally functional languages? The only decent books I've found on
the subject are 20-30 year-old textbooks. I'm watching "Write You a Haskell"
with interest (and have partially read it), even though I'm more into ML and
Scala than Haskell, but it's still pretty unfinished.
There's also the plzoo, which is a great resource but not a book.
Oh, and I definitely need to read Pierce's Types and Programming Languages
textbook, I've ordered it and need to sit down with it. I suspect it will be
very enlightening.
But a more approachable book on statically-typed languages in the same genre
as this one is (popular, less academic) would also be welcome.
~~~
inconclusive
> more advanced, static type systems
Are static type systems more advanced than dynamic type systems? This sounds
surprising, given how much more one can do with a dynamic type system.
~~~
evincarofautumn
Basically, yes. You can do more with a dynamic type system than a static type
system because you don’t need to (and actually, aren’t allowed to) _prove_
that your code is consistent. Advancements in static checking and inference
mean you can prove more things about your programs, so you don’t have to fall
back on dynamic types and data structures so much.
------
peetle
'Git ta werk. ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How ContextLogic moved from Scribe to a cloud service to power their A/B testing - kzk_mover
http://blog.treasure-data.com/post/24923649237/using-treasure-data-at-contextlogic
======
kitevc
Really low friction way to get up and running with a super fast cloud data
warehouse. 5-6 x faster than standard mapreduce solutions out there!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ian Keough – How to Make Better Decisions Faster - nonoesp
http://gettingsimple.com/9
======
nonoesp
Ian Keough (@ikeough) is the founder of Hypar. He writes code from his garage
to automate the generation of the built environment to help stakeholders make
better decisions faster. Trained as a fine artist and architect—and known as
The Father of Dynamo—Ian believes efficiency breeds quality and automation
yields better, higher-quality products. This episode uncovers the Ian Keough
beyond Dynamo—including his life habits, tactics to get into the flow state
and avoid distractions, and his new adventure to disrupt the architecture,
engineering, and construction industry.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Theirself or Themself? - user_235711
http://cliffhays.weebly.com/1/post/2014/01/theirself-or-themself.html
======
BjoernKW
If you absolutely have to use one of those it would have to be 'themself'.
'their' clearly is wrong in that place because it's possessive pronoun.
The reason why 'their' can be used in the same position in the sentence is
that it's used as a modifier to the object, i.e. the position in the sentence
is the same but the syntax tree is different.
------
gr3yh47
"himself" is the technically correct word for singular reflexive when the
gender is unknown
~~~
70forty
By what authority is this the technically correct word? Some dictionary or
grammar book? Where did they get their authority to determine this?
Really the only way to decide what is "correct" where language usage is
concerned is to see how people actually speak/write, AKA a descriptive
approach. Do a corpus study and then you'll have some basis to make a claim
about what is and isn't standard usage.
~~~
gr3yh47
Saying I can only make a claim if I have done a certain study is somewhat
absurd, especially when you are, with that suggestion, claiming to be the
authority on how to determine what is correct.
~~~
normloman
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_description)
^^^
Read it for your own good.
~~~
gr3yh47
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_written_English](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_written_English)
^^^
Read it for your own good
~~~
normloman
And I'm sure if you asked editors at big publishing houses or english
teachers, most would tell you to prefer "themselves." Themself is a new
construction that hasn't caught on. Purveyors of "standard" English have to
err on the side of conservatism.
------
70forty
"themself" follows the same pattern as "himself", "herself", "ourself", etc.
As a commenter pointed out, "them" is frequently used as a singular object
pronoun:
_If a student has an inappropriate question, whatever you do, do not berate
them._
corpus.byu.edu/coca/ returns 95,000 hits for "themselves" vs only 43 for
"theirselves".
~~~
gr3yh47
This is, however, formally incorrect.
"If a student has an inappropriate question, whatever you do, do not berate
him."
would be formally correct
edit: and your corpus search correctly shows that the plural 'themselves' is
correct over 'theirselves' while having nothing to do with the discussion at
hand about the singular
~~~
Symmetry
What are you consulting to find that the correct replacement for 'them' in
formal writing is 'him' here? There isn't any College of the English Language
to make authoritative prescriptive statements, and the Chicago Manual of Style
at least has been against the use of 'him' here for several editions.
~~~
gr3yh47
I am not claiming that 'him' is a replacement for 'them'
'them' is plural and flatly incorrect when used as a singular pronoun.
edit: Again, 'them' is formally incorrect but informally acceptable in the
singular usage.
~~~
70forty
_' them' is plural and flatly incorrect when used as a singular pronoun._
Why? How do you know this?
------
normloman
Writer here. The author is a programmer. An expert in formal languages. Formal
languages have to be logically consistent. Not English.
"Themselves" is correct, even if it's inconsistent, because it's what most
people say and understand. That's the point of a natural language. Not to be
neat and orderly, but to be understood.
~~~
gr3yh47
"Themselves" is correct because it is plural. What of the singular?
~~~
jonnathanson
"Them" is a plural word in the first place, so attempting to hybridize it with
the singular and form "themself" is incorrect and awkward. There is no
singular "them." In the case where one uses "them" to refer to a singular
subject of indeterminate gender, "them" doesn't actually become singular;
rather, it's simply being used as a free variable.
It's increasingly acceptable to use "them" to refer to a singular subject when
the gender is unknown. All but the strictest prescriptivists would now accept
that usage. But if a writer picks "them" over "him/her," he should use it with
internal, self-referential consistency.
~~~
gr3yh47
> There is no singular "them."
exactly why it is incorrect to use in the singular.
and this is the difference between formal and informal.
there are rules that are widely accepted (formal) and then there are actual
usages that are widely accepted (informal)
~~~
jonnathanson
This is the view commonly understood and immediately sensible. It's the view I
was taught and grew up with, and it's the view to which I still adhere when
writing (fwiw, I'm an adamant user of "himself" or "herself" for the
singular). In this view, "them" is acceptable on an informal, common-usage
basis.
That said, linguists in recent years have been working out _formal_ methods of
acceptance for "themselves" as a singular-referring pronoun when the gender of
the subject is unknown. See my previous comments about "them" as a free
variable; this is the formalist's argument for the acceptability of "them." It
is an argument advanced by some of the more influential logicians of the mid
to late 20th century, such as W.V.O. Quine. It's an argument based more in
symbolic logic than in traditional linguistics, but it's gained a fair amount
of currency in the high-nerddom of syntax. It's by no means an established or
generally accepted stance, however. The general, traditionally formal rule is
that "them" is always plural, and the construction "singular subject = them"
is a bit like saying "1 = >1," i.e., illogical.
------
collyw
Does it really matter? That's the beauty of interacting with real people
rather than a computer. You can make small mistakes, and even bigger ones and
people will understand you. Hell I should know I live in Spain, and my Spanish
grammar is crap.
~~~
blueblob
People are working on getting computers to understand small mistakes as well.
There is more than one type of grammar in computer science. A generative
grammar which might be used for responses can be different than a grammar that
is used for recognition. The one used for recognition should understand
mistakes, but the one used for responses should not.
------
merrua
"Themself" or "thine self" or "thyself" or "theirself" all sound ok. But
theirself looks incorrect written down. I would use Themself if I was writing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why are English and Spanish the only languages that trend on Twitter? - CodeFoo
I'm especially surprised I never see trending in Arabic, Chinese, Korean or Japanese. Does Twitter intentionally hide them or do they just not Tweet much?
======
meerita
Probably is cultural. As a spaniard, my guess can be that people love gossip
but the amazing thing is, every tv show and many ad agencies use twitter
hashtags for their promotions. This didn't happened me at Berlin, for example,
but maybe I'm wrong and it's just something cultural.
------
vittore
It is not exactly like that, I saw both chinese and russian trends on twitter,
rember #дождь for example. I guess people just tend to twit in English, even
if it is not their primary language.
------
tokenadult
Chinese is hardly present on Twitter because of censorship in China and
competition within China from Chinese-language microblogging services (which
are very influential within China).
------
mathrawka
You just need to change your location... <http://cl.ly/image/3Z2U0v1H0r3v>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Features are faults redux - vog
http://www.tedunangst.com/flak/post/features-are-faults-redux
======
simplyalaa
Not directly tied, but another old simplifying call. And is considered by some
as extremist. [http://archive.is/YLh6I](http://archive.is/YLh6I)
This is a description of his method (by Jeff)
[http://www.ultratechnology.com/method.htm](http://www.ultratechnology.com/method.htm)
Another look at his way (contemplating problems with patients until reaching a
simpler solution - simple, not easy and rarely done nowadays)
[http://www.ultratechnology.com/mmeta.html](http://www.ultratechnology.com/mmeta.html)
Also from Jeff about reducing layering
[http://www.ultratechnology.com/levels.htm](http://www.ultratechnology.com/levels.htm)
Note: All are Forth (the philosophy) oriented.
------
sharms
In my experience this post is right on - there are so many bugs in so many
layers (especially where they intersect), that the logical conclusion is to
reduce and simplify.
These ideas are also emerging in the form of Go (simple) / Clojure (immutable)
where simplicity is the primary feature. My only wish is that OpenBSD had
additional vendor support for open source drivers (ie Intel / AMD / NVidia) so
that it's impact isn't so limited to servers, but desktops / client devices as
well.
~~~
lmm
All these faults seem to me to be the result of inadequate use of types. So
Go/Clojure are precisely the wrong response; the way forward is decent type
systems (i.e. ML-family languages) and replacing stringly-typed unix pipes
with something more structured.
~~~
JamesLeonis
I would love to see an implementation of `ls`, `grep`, and `pwd`, with said
pipes, in such a typed system of tools. `grep` is likely the most complex b/c
it must do string comparison and I'm unsure how you would do this with types.
I'm looking forward to seeing how such a system could be built.
~~~
lmm
Hopefully you'd replace grep with using the actual structure of what you're
looking for. I mean there are type-safe pipeline libraries (I use fs2 a fair
bit), it's just a question of modelling the things you want from a filesystem
(or similar structure). If you're giving up unix compatibility then there's
not so much value gained from having the unix filesystem model. So a better
point of comparison is to take a business problem that you would solve with
grep/ls/what-have-you, and solve it with fs2/conduit/... instead.
------
canadian_voter
What an interesting read. I also enjoy how the URLs display on hover. Stylin'.
~~~
TeMPOraL
> _I also enjoy how the URLs display on hover. Stylin '._
Isn't this something browsers do by default anyway (except in smaller print)?
~~~
canadian_voter
Sure, but I like the larger print. Maybe I'm just getting old. :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Reddit's unpaid "internship" offer is apparently against labor laws - vaksel
http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/c7vdo/call_for_interns/
======
viraptor
This is confusing... looking at it from the "if I was the target audience"
perspective:
General idea: unpaid work is a strange idea, but I didn't have anything else
planned - why not?
Looking at the blog: 20h/week - that's cool, they're not expecting any actual
work done. "Manage relationships with merchandise providers" - wait what?
"help negotiate new licensing agreements" - phone monkey? "manage workflow of
merchandise production from end to end" - doing actual work? with
_responsibilities_??
I'm confused about who they're looking for. It looks like they need unpaid
salespeople / junior account managers. But if someone can do the sales /
manager position with ~1-month training and be useful for the other 2
months... I'm sure s/he can find a better position which actually pays
commission.
~~~
alex_c
They're looking for people who are competent, but who are either naive,
terrible at selling themselves to an employer, or vastly underestimating their
ability to find a good paid position.
~~~
viraptor
Exactly, but that might work for example for a programmer (or some other not
customer-facing position). How can someone negotiate a good deal if they're
naive, underestimating, or terrible at selling themselves? Serious companies
would try to hire exactly the other kind of people...
------
jokermatt999
Direct link to the comment.
[http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/c7vdo/call_for_interns...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/c7vdo/call_for_interns/c0qq2iz?context=3)
According to the admins, Conde Naste's legal department cleared them, but I'm
not sure. It looks like this could get ugly. The reddit community has a nasty
habit of lashing out hard when they don't like something, but it usually blows
over after a week or two. However, I've never seen it in the case where there
could be legal action.
~~~
vaksel
with lawyers it's usually not a case of whether something is legal or
not...it's a case of whether or not there is a risk of something being
enforced.
I'm sure the admins attitude of "If you think it is illegal, don't apply."
isn't going to help them either.
------
tptacek
Why the hell isn't Conde Nast simply paying interns?
Guess: because they're actually really not OK with having interns (go! having
an HR department!) and so the only way for the Reddit team to synthesize
headcount was in this under-the-table fashion.
~~~
tedunangst
There's a comment saying Conde has hundreds of interns. They don't pay them
because nobody in publishing pays any of their interns.
~~~
samd
This has been a common practice at media companies for many years.
~~~
gte910h
And hopefully will be fixed with definitive enforcement, turning these
internships into jobs.
------
dantheman
I don't see why anyone would share care about the details of internship
contract, unless they personally involved. I see no problem with unpaid
internships -- i never did one, nor would I offer one. Unless of course I was
losing money on the deal and I was doing it to just be nice.
How is an unpaid internship different than becoming involved in an open source
project?
How is an unpaid internship different than helping a professor with their
research?
How is an unpaid internship different than volunteering at a soup kitchen or
some other nonprofit?
~~~
gte910h
>I don't see why anyone would share care about the details of internship
contract, unless they personally involved.
Depresses pay. Tilts the workforce towards those who come from wealthy
parents. Raises barriers to entry to career switching which decrease economic
flexibility
------
jpdbaugh
Just pay them minimum wage if that is all you can afford. This trend of kids
being forced to take an unpaid internship for college credit is really hurting
kids who pay their own way through school or just need to have a paying job in
the summer for one reason or another. Really, in the grand scheme of things it
can't cost much to pay minimum wage and I think better work will get done.
------
Zak
Regardless of the letter of the law, I don't see why anybody should be upset
about this. Laws intended to keep people from taking unfair advantage of
others who willingly agree to the arrangement are often horribly broken in
that they treat a variety of situations where all parties receive benefits
which are satisfactory to them as exploitative.
~~~
gte910h
It also discriminates towards people of means. If I had rich parents, I could
afford to work there for nothing. As a person who paid for myself, I'd be
unable to have done that at the start of my career
~~~
hugh3
So? Children of rich parents have all sorts of opportunities which aren't open
to children of poor parents. Tutors, private schools, painless grad school.
Interning at reddit is hardly at the top of the list.
------
kwyjibo
They don't have any money to pay the interns
([http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/c7vdo/call_for_interns...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/c7vdo/call_for_interns/c0qqfoe))
, but have money for 2 offices and money to hire a lawyer to check if their
internships are legal.
------
tvon
If they're going to be doing anything of value, pay them. What's the big deal?
------
justinph
I believe the commenter on reddit is mistaken. If you're doing an internship
for class credit (as is indicated in reddit's blog post), it can be unpaid.
Note: I'm not a tax lawyer, so don't quote me on this.
~~~
_delirium
It has to not seem like a sham class, though, at least if anyone actually
investigates it. Just the fact that you get course credit isn't really enough;
it also has to be mainly educational, not just a job relabeled as a class.
Here's the federal government's six-part test for it:
<http://www.dol.gov/whd/regs/compliance/whdfs71.pdf>
------
proee
The idea of an unpaid internship is abominable. Most interns in these
positions need money desperately to pay their student loans (or maybe their
living expenses???).
While it may not be illegal, it still generates a foul stench that reflects
poorly on the founders of the company.
I'd be more than happy to stand with a group of interns to help them protest
this madness. Give me a sign and I'll stand on the street corner with you
demanding justice.
Bottom line, the "haves" are not willing to give (even a little) to the "have-
nots".
------
tlrobinson
Unpaid internships are very common. As I understand it if you get course
credit they don't have to pay you, hence the "we're legally required to ask
you for a Letter of Credit".
~~~
vaksel
apparently they are all breaking the law
lots of info in this comment:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/c7vdo/call_for_interns...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/c7vdo/call_for_interns/c0qq6jd)
~~~
tlrobinson
If they are then the laws aren't being enforced very often.
Here's Reddit's response to these accusations:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/c7vdo/call_for_interns...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/c7vdo/call_for_interns/c0qqfoe)
~~~
scott_s
I found this response relevant:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/c7vdo/call_for_interns...](http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/c7vdo/call_for_interns/c0qr367)
------
smackfu
"Yeah, that's actually a labor violation in both California and New York. Many
upvotes to the Redditor that turns the admins in."
Man, those guys are dicks.
------
lionhearted
Under this definition, my internship at the Massachusetts Statehouse was
illegal unpaid labor.
This opportunity looks like a bad deal to me, I wouldn't do it personally, but
trying to criminalize voluntary exchanges is no good in my opinion. Someone
proactive about learning and making connections could benefit A LOT from this
sort of thing and gain a lot more than $7/hour in value. Not my cup of tea,
but I can see how it'd make sense for someone and I don't like seeing two
people forbidden from a voluntary exchange they both think would work well for
them.
~~~
vaksel
by that logic, minimum wage and child labor laws should be illegal. If a child
wants to work...who are you to stop them?
~~~
lionhearted
> by that logic, minimum wage
Minimum wage laws hurt people sometimes. They're not just benevolent laws that
increase pay. It means that some low margin businesses won't be operated, and
some low skilled people who aren't capable of doing work worth the minimum
wage won't be able to find jobs.
> and child labor laws should be illegal. If a child wants to work...who are
> you to stop them?
What's a "child"? Is someone 14 years old and mature, disciplined, and learned
a child? Should they be allowed to work if they want to? How about an
extremely bright 12 year old? No dice, no matter what?
I think people with a level of maturity and understanding should be allowed to
make voluntary transactions, yes. I won't stop them. In fact, I think anyone
who would stop two consenting adults from making a voluntary transaction, no
matter how well intentioned, is doing a bad thing.
~~~
vaksel
minimum wage laws mean you are making enough to live.
If you are making the minimum wage, and work 40 hours a week, that's $1,160 a
month/$2,320 if they work 80 hours a week.
Can someone really survive if they are being paid even less than that? Let's
say you pay someone $5 an hour because someone is desperate they'll take any
job...and they work 80 hours a week, that's only $1,600 a month. Can you
survive on that?
Yes some law margin businesses won't be operated, but that just means people
won't have to work like slaves just to pay rent.
So you would be fine with a 12 year old working in the coal mines? By law,
anyone under 18 is not considered an adult.
I guess by your logic, you'd have no problem with pedophilia, after all big
bad law is stopping a 30 year old from banging a 12 year old.
~~~
lionhearted
$13,900 per year ($1,160 per month) puts you in the top 15% of earners
worldwide. You can absolutely live on that anywhere, including any city in the
United States, including Tokyo, including Hong Kong, and so on. You'll be able
to get a bed, a shared bathroom, and enough healthy food at that money. And of
course, as soon as there's an opportunity to make more, you move on and do so.
If you want to talk about high cost of living in the USA, I agree with you.
Prices are artificially high in the USA for a number of reasons. If you
removed just a few laws that aren't doing much good, a solid meal would
probably cost around $1 to $2 - last time I was there, you could get a decent
$2 meal in Taipei and a 2 euro meal in Berlin for instance. Prices in America
are higher than they should be due to some corruption and stupidity, but even
with the artificially high prices $14k is a heck of a lot of money by almost
standard at almost any time in history.
As for the rest of your comment, I don't think the practice of running
immediately to extreme edge cases is the best way to have a discussion. I
started with the point that a 20 year old should be able to intern at a
company if they want to, and you want to move the discussion to coal mines and
pedophilia?
Edge cases are useful to discuss, but probably secondary in importance to
general principles. If you agree that in general stopping mature, capable
humans of doing voluntary transactions is a bad thing, then we can look at the
edge cases and try to figure out some lines. But to answer your main point,
absolutely $13,900 per year is a fantastically large amount of money that can
be lived fairly well on. No Starbucks, no $12 movie tickets, but food,
housing, and other necessities? Absolutely possible, that's a huge amount of
money. I've lived on much less comfortably, and most of the world would kill
to live on that $13,900 per year.
~~~
vaksel
sure you can live on $13,900 a year in some third world hell hole, but in that
third world hell hole, your $13,900 would actually be $2,900/yr.
Sure a solid meal would cost only $1 to $2...all we need to remove is the part
that doesn't allow companies to sell you contaminated beef, or the part that
states that a company needs to state nutritional information on the back of
the package.
You can't compare a salary, without taking cost of living into the equation.
Ok let's take that $1,160 a month..and cut off a 1/3 for taxes, unemlpoyment
insurance, social security etc. You are stuck with $765 a month.
Please tell me how you'd live on $765 a month. And remember to live, you need
to pay rent, pay for utilities, pay for food, pay for gas/bus tickets.
Sure you lived on less than that...but I bet at the time, you stayed with your
mommy and daddy...or you lived on campus where your loans or once again mommy
and daddy paid for rent.
Yes most of the world would kill to live on $13,900 a year....but most of the
world, doesn't have the same high cost of living as we do in US.
~~~
lionhearted
I'll answer this comment, but before I do, can I ask a question? - What's your
goal behind this discussion? Are you trying to learn, debate, convince me,
convince other people, just pass the time? I posted originally to share my
perspective with people, and then I try to respond to comments and inquiries
to get a good discussion going. Because I can answer your comment seriously if
you're open-minded and think there's a chance your views will evolve.
Likewise, I'm open to my views evolving if I see something good. Otherwise, if
it's for third parties or just entertainment, I'll probably break from this
comment thread since I've said the basics of what I think and probably not so
many people are following it any more. Anyways...
> Ok let's take that $1,160 a month..and cut off a 1/3 for taxes, unemlpoyment
> insurance, social security etc. You are stuck with $765 a month.
Well, three points. First, you pay a bit less than that in taxes at the low
end. Second, I already said I'm not in favor of this kind of forced law and
I'm not in favor of an income tax, uninsurance, or social security at all.
Third, if you are paying taxes that high, you're probably funding benefits
that you can get. So you're either living on $765 after taxes but then you get
government benefits, or most of $1160 with lower taxes. But let's say that's
roughly a wash and your real pay in cash and/or benefits is $1000 per month.
I did a quick search in the Chicago Craigslist just to pick a random big city.
There's quite a few roommates/shared bedrooms in the $400 to $500 per month
range. If you look, I'm sure you can find cheaper. I was in Hong Kong two
months ago. You can pay $15/night for very small private room/shared bathroom
in a cheap place on Kowloon. An all you can ride train pass is between $70 and
$120 in most large cities. So we're at $500 now for rent and transport in a
city. You can eat oatmeal and rice and beans as your staples, then mix in a
little tuna fish, chicken, and fruit and vegetables. Oatmeal and rice beans
are so cheap they're basically free, you're looking at $20 to $30 the entire
month total for 60 meals. Go crazy and say $5 worth of protein, fruits, and
vegetables per day and your food budget is $170. You drink tap water which is
almost free, instant coffee will run you $10 to $20 for the month. So that's
under $200. If you cook with people, you can eat better food for the same
prices. Buy whatever's on sale for meal, fruit, and vegetables, in Los Angeles
last year I was sometimes able to get a medium sized pack of Strawberries for
$2 at Ralph's when they'd shipped too many.
Really, anyone who doesn't think $1000/month is livable in the USA has been
incredibly blessed. Plenty of immigrants and people working their way up live
on much less. You share space with multiple people, maybe you only get 1/4th
of a large bedroom with three other roommates and share one bathroom and a
small kitchen. You cook most of your meals and don't eat out much. You take
public transit, walk, or a bicycle. It's not glamorous, it's not awesome, it's
not fun, but it's doable. And again, the goal isn't to stay in a low wage job
forever, we're doing all this math with a 40 hour work week, which is plenty
of time to look for other opportunities, train yourself, etc.
As for me when I lived poor - I dropped out of high school and left home at
16, and never took a dime in cash from my parents since leaving home. Not a
single dime. So the mommy and daddy comment isn't quite accurate. Ah, I was
about to share a story about what life was like back then, but it'd take a
while to type. It's not awesome, but you survive, grow, do what you can to
improve, and you make it.
But I'll ask if you don't mind answering: what's your objective here? Are you
open to changing your mind on this if I give reasonable, well thought answers
to your questions? I don't mind spending the time on this if something
positive could come of it.
~~~
vaksel
just having a discussion.
Technically you pay less in taxes on the low end, but those taxes get taken
out every two weeks, you just get a refund at the end of the year.
It doesn't really matter what you are in favor of, the taxes will still be
taken out of your paycheck. Of course you get things in exchange for your
taxes. It's nice to say "well in the perfect world you could live on X", but
we don't live in a perfect world. That's why I'm no longer a liberterian.
Fine let's say you have $1,000 per month in cash.
And fine, let's say you find a roommate deal at $450 a month.(btw once again,
don't bring up hong kong or other countries, we are talking about you wanting
to eliminate American minimum wage). Oh and let's not forget the $450 deals
are fairly rare, so if millions of people start getting paid below minimum
wage, those few good deals will be snagged up quickly.
Anyways that leaves $550.
Minus your $70 for the train pass, $480.
The food issue is a good one. The $200 you spend, gets you just enough not to
starve to death. Do you think 40 hours of labor shouldn't be enough to avoid
not starving?
So we are down to $280 a month.
But have you forgotten something? The water bill? The gas bill? The
electricity bill? The phone bill? What about all those other expenses? Like
health insurance, replacement clothing, etc?
And of course the goal is to get a better paying job. But by not having a
minimum wage, you have wage depression. When you can pay entry level slaves $3
an hour, you can pay the guy with 6 years experience $5 an hour. And what kind
of mobility do you think someone working at MickeyDs have?
The goal here, is for you to realize, that there needs to be a living wage.
Where working 40 hours a week, should be enough to make ends meet.
How about the ideal of the 50s? Where you could work 40 hours a week in an
entry level job, and could afford a house with white picket fence, a car, and
basic luxuries and could support your family?
Your whole argument is based around a young, single, healthy guy, going
through a rough patch. Not the situation, that the minimum wage laws were
created for.
What's with this idea that the people should be ground down into the dirt? We
already have 39.1 million people in poverty in United States, why do you think
we need to increase that number?
The difference between $7 an hour and $3 an hour for Mickey Ds, is measured in
them selling 1 extra big mac.
For every person who crawls out of poverty like you did, there are thousands
who stay there indefinitely. We live in America, not a 3rd world hellhole, and
our cost of living reflects that.
I doubt there is anything you can say, that'll make me agree that someone
living in New York City, should be allowed to be paid $3 an hour
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you share screenshots? - C0x
Here is my startup http://floomby.com. Floomby captures and shares screenshots.
What tools do you use to share screenshots?
======
asmosoinio
I use Jing: <http://www.jingproject.com/>
The way it works is really nice, it is easy to capture and share.
Unfortunately the application is a bit too heavy for my laptop (1 gig memory
etc). Starts really slow and takes up too much of memory.
~~~
thorax
I love it because it can upload to my own FTP and paste links from my own site
which is often faster than screencast.com for my audience.
Startup time really sucks, though. But once it's running, I'm super, super
pleased with it.
------
defann
I use: Printscreen + Adobe Photoshop + Gmail :)
~~~
defann
Nice tool, it's for win but works on linux+wine even. Good luck!
------
ned
Skitch !
~~~
defann
It's for Mac only?
~~~
bretthoerner
Sure is. And it's awesome.
------
ivank
Alt+Print Screen, paste to public Dropbox folder (Directory Opus supports
screenshot paste), right click->copy public link
~~~
defann
Dropbox rocks.
------
cjvino
Snapz Pro X for screenshots and department web site or email to share.
------
j0ncc
I use GrabUp (<http://grabup.com>). It's much quicker than skitch but it has a
stripped down feature set.
------
adilsaleem
It would be good if the application shows a preview of screen capture before
uploading
I am currently using Snagit
------
scottw
I have a little bash script I use on OS X:
screencapture -x screen.png && scp screen.png myserver:www
------
floozyspeak
Skitch, ScreenSteps, and another one I forget that starts with P, and its a
whole page capture tool on the mac.
------
ivankuznetsov
I'm use PrintScreen on Mac and Apple Mail
------
robhu
Definitely Skitch. Skitch is amazing.
------
DanielBMarkham
SnagIt -- best tool out there for Windows
------
swombat
Either skitch, or just Shift-Ctrl-Cmd-4 and paste into an iChat window.
~~~
hbien
Same here, but the Ctrl isn't required.
~~~
swombat
It is if you want to put the screenshot in the clipboard rather than on the
Desktop.
------
meqif
I use scrot and then upload the resulting screenshot to my slice.
------
RomanZolotarev
I use evernote.com
~~~
pmsaue0
wow. this program is the bomb
------
pacificleo
i use kam studio and SnagIT . will try your tool too
------
hs
import (ImageMagick) + hg (mercurial)
------
junglist313
super+drag (ubuntu) and Flickr
------
DabAsteroid
It looks like the Wikipedia article about your company was taken down already.
<http://www.google.com/search?q=floomby+wiki>
_Sep 4, 2008 ... Floomby - internet service for sharing screenshots and files
on the web. It was developed by Alexander Katasonov and Andrey Ivanichenko._
Do you have any relation to the individual posting in this thread as
ivankuznetsov?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Make Plutonium - brainopener
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/a27359/how-to-make-plutonium/
======
brainopener
NASA requires plutonium-238 for radioisotope power systems for spacecrafts.
Plutonium-238 was a by-product of now defunct Cold War–era nuclear weapon
factories.
Oak Ridge National Laboratory produced a 50-gram sample in late 2015—the first
since 1988. This year, having refined the process, the lab expects 300 grams.
They want to ramp up to 1.5 kilograms per year.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Running .NET apps in Docker containers - friism
http://friism.com/running-net-apps-on-docker
======
Guillaume86
I experimented wih docker a few month ago and made a docker image for the .NET
kooboo CMS running on monofastcgi/nginx as an exercise. Here's the link if
someone is interested:
[https://github.com/guillaume86/KoobooCMS](https://github.com/guillaume86/KoobooCMS)
------
jmnicolas
VirtualBox, Docker and Mono ... at one point you have to ask yourself isn't it
too much virtualization ?
~~~
jimmcslim
VirtualBox: the author is using a Windows machine so needs to run Linux in
order to experiment with Docker.
Docker: well, this is the subject of the post.
Mono: Mono is an application runtime (specifically an open-source
implementation of the CLR) just like the JVM (yes, a 'Virtual Machine' but not
virtualization, I would argue, in the sense that you are stating there is too
much of).
Obviously if you had .Net apps and a Windows server environment you would just
deploy .Net apps to it. But there might be scenarios in which this is useful.
Perhaps migrating away from Windows servers to Linux, but not wanting to
rewrite the C#/.Net apps in a new platform. Although whether Mono would be
able to run those apps satisfactorily (the coverage of the SDK is not
complete) is of course up for debate.
~~~
d0
The answer to your latter question is: no. Only pretty trivial stuff is
portable to Mono. I've tried it on every project I've worked on over the last
6 years to no avail. Show stopper every time.
~~~
skrebbel
This is nonsense. You just have to dev with Mono in mind from the start.
Basically, don't use WPF and WCF and you're all set.
I'm currently in a web app team with a C# backend. Two devs run Windows, one
has a Mac, and one runs Ubuntu. It works great. And yes, we deploy to Linux
using Docker.
~~~
camus2
> You just have to dev with Mono in mind from the start.
then it cannot replace .net .You can put it every ways you want serious C# and
.net development is windows only.
Mono doesnt run every C# library out there.
The people pushing mono here dont have to face the consequences of that
choice.
It's easy for them to say "it just works", they wont be around when one
realises it doesnt work. Dont use mono thinking it really works.It's an
experiment.
------
vinceguidry
After some careful thought, I can't see a place anymore for virtualization in
a development workflow. If your hosting provider uses it, sure, whatever, but
ideally you shouldn't be using it in development or working your production
environment around it.
Code should be written portably, it should depend on the language runtime,
vendored libraries and nothing else. Finicky OS/language combos should be
avoided, like Ruby on Windows. If you have to use virtualization to ensure
that your dev/prod environments are the same, then that's a code smell. It
should work the same on Ruby 2.1.0 on OSX in rbenv as it does on Ubuntu using
the 2.1.0 BrightBox PPA install.
The most important thing about 12 factor, in my opinion, is the separation of
code and configuration. Everything that varies between environments and
deploys should be considered configuration and off-loaded to a configuration
management system. The VagrantFile embeds configuration directly into your
code and makes your application less portable, not more.
Configuration management should provide encapsulation at the level of a
particular version of an operating system. You should be able to, by only
changing your CM scripts, change your OS between different versions of Ubuntu,
or even between Ubuntu and Red Hat. If you can't, that's a code smell.
Your hosting provider should also be abstracted over and encapsulated as well.
Changing hosting providers from Linode to Amazon should not require changing
your OS scripts.
All of this can and should be done without Big Design Up Front, it should not
take you any longer to do this than to configure your app to support Docker.
What this buys you is real robustness. Virtualization to me is a crutch that
protects lazy programmers, it's fixing the wrong problem. If you find yourself
relying on snapshots, it's a code smell and it will come back to bite you in
the ass.
If you think Docker is going to solve all your portability woes, you'll be in
for a shock the first time your OS stops being supported by the vendor and you
have to move to a new one. If you've done it the way I've described, then you
can copy your CM script for the old OS to the new OS, try a cold deploy, and
fix the small number of issues that will come up.
If not, then you'll be in for a long weekend. Or worse, you won't do it at
all, like the last five guys that came before me at my job.
~~~
camus2
> The most important thing about 12 factor, in my opinion, is the separation
> of code and configuration.
Nothing to do with configuration. Sometimes you need an envirronment where
components of that env are not available on your system. For instance redis or
nginx used to be linux only.
Also it's easier to pass around images in a team,than installing manually
every components or libraries one needs. No time is lost in setting up and
configuring this or that.
Further more virtualisation == 0 consequences on your machine.You can screw up
stuff and experiment without worrying about doing something wrong,it doesnt
matter.
So no side-effects,no configuration,os independent,easy to share images =>
better development env. You dont have to use docker ,i dont, but
cirtualisation really helps.
~~~
vinceguidry
> Also it's easier to pass around images in a team,than installing manually
> every components or libraries one needs.
You're right, Bundler in Ruby seems to have spoiled the hell out of me. I
don't think nginx belongs in your development environment. If something's not
available for your system, virtualization can be used effectively, if you run
one machine per service you're depending on, as it would be done in
production. Or architecture your app so that you can use dummy services in
development. With thin interfaces and continuous integration this shouldn't
introduce any problems.
But really, you should be picking mature services to depend on. One of the
signs of a mature software project is that it is available for multiple
environments and the configuration remains mostly similar. External service
configuration should be considered code and committed to your repo. All that's
in your project config should be where the service is at and what port it's
running on. You could make the argument that depending on something that's not
available for all the development environments you're working with is a smell.
> Further more virtualisation == 0 consequences on your machine.
Personally, I treat my development machine as "crash-only software". If
something goes wrong with it, I'll wipe it, re-install it, then git pull and
bundle install. All important files are kept elsewhere and my development
workflow is streamlined enough so that I can reinstall everything pretty
quickly. All of my tools are in my dock. Chrome, Sublime, Sequel Pro, iTerm,
and an SSH Tunnel Manager, the latter I consider an ugly hack and am working
to get rid of. Service dependencies are painless to install with Homebrew.
~~~
jmcqk6
>Personally, I treat my development machine as "crash-only software". If
something goes wrong with it, I'll wipe it, re-install it, then git pull and
bundle install. All important files are kept elsewhere and my development
workflow is streamlined enough so that I can reinstall everything pretty
quickly.
Hmm, you seem to basically be describing Vagrant, but with the added
complexity of resetting the rest of your computer as well.
~~~
vinceguidry
Do you install and run Chrome, Sublime Text and the like on Vagrant? I've
never actually had to do that, because I don't think you should need to, these
software packages shouldn't mess up your system, if they are then you're doing
something wrong.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Do without English in Computer architecture? - taiyangong
Is it theoretically or/and practically possible to make a new computer architecture and subsequent devices and technologies like Desktop, Tablet's, Smartphone, Camera, Video Recorder etc. without using the anything of the English Language from hardware level programming to high level. From the design of the motherboard to every aspect of Hardware and Software.
======
Geee
Out of curiosity, why are you asking this? Sure, most of those topics are
covered in other popular languages too. Most of it is translated though, so
I'm not sure if that would be allowed. You would have to reinvent the wheel
many times if you don't want anything that's in English.
~~~
taiyangong
I think that alternative to anything should be there even if it means
reinventing the wheel.
------
wmf
In theory, sure. In practice, it's easier to learn English than to translate
all the field's knowledge into another language (or reinvent it).
~~~
taiyangong
From where do I start, if I don't want the easier way of learning English but
reinvent it.
------
taiyangong
I am looking kind of a guide on where to start.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PEdump – Online PE Dump - peter_d_sherman
http://pedump.me/
======
peter_d_sherman
Related:
[https://github.com/zed-0xff/pedump](https://github.com/zed-0xff/pedump)
Also, if the page gives you a screwy popup (why would this be?), then disable
JavaScript -- and try again...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The True Purpose of Microsoft Solitaire, Minesweeper, and FreeCell - personjerry
http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-amazing-facts-about-Google-or-Microsoft/answer/Saran-Udayakumar?share=1
======
scholia
That's just someone quoting a whole blog post from mentalfloss.com
[http://mentalfloss.com/uk/technology/32106/the-true-
purpose-...](http://mentalfloss.com/uk/technology/32106/the-true-purpose-of-
solitaire-minesweeper-hearts-and-freecell)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Snapchat already has a 'sell' rating, and the analyst thinks it will crash 58% - rock57
http://www.businessinsider.com/snap-stock-sell-rating-pivotal-research-2017-3
======
fullshark
_The_ analyst said that??
~~~
detaro
the analyst behind "the" (singular) sell rating discussed in the article
probably?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Flatpak – Standalone Apps for Linux - macco
http://flatpak.org
======
SwellJoe
Previous discussion of Flatpak, including some technical discussion and useful
links:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11697678](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11697678)
------
Nullabillity
I'm not at all sold on this idea of "platform" vs "application" that seems to
have become so common. I'd much rather have a Nix-like system, where you still
get the isolation benefits (each package specifies an exact dependency
hierarchy), while also opportunistically sharing stuff that is identical
between packages.
~~~
nine_k
You can put a single file on a system otherwise not configured with nix
(however nice it is). So it's much more universal, and much easier to make
inroads into already established infrastructure without having to disrupt it,
or even care much about it.
~~~
orangeshark
Doesn't it still require flatpak to be installed? I don't see how much
different would it be compared to having Nix installed ontop of a distro.
------
jwildeboer
Embedded libraries that never get updated. That may expose security
vulnerabilities. Different apps including those different versions of
libraries. No. That's not progress. That's ridiculous.
~~~
wmf
Fortunately it also sandboxes apps so that most of those vulnerabilities will
be moot. But yeah, there's now a market for Flatpak image scanning. :-/
~~~
digi_owl
Just means whoever targets those exploits also have to account for breaking
out of the sandbox.
------
jkeler
While I like idea I don't completely understand it. What 'runtime' is actually
supposed to be? What if I need two runtimes? I will probably need to bundle
one of them with the app. E.g. if I write a C++ Qt application I will use Qt
runtime, if I write command line Python application I will use Python runtime,
but if I write Qt application in Python I will need to bundle either Python or
Qt with my app, correct?
Also, is there support for applications without any runtime?
~~~
alexlarsson
Runtimes are not package dependencies. They are not separated from the app to
allow dependency resolution. They are separated out in order to allow a
different entity to maintain and update them. The idea is that they are pretty
minimal (to some degree) and come with a well defined ABI and
stability/lifetime guarantee.
If, above this, you need more dependencies, in the flatpak model you need to
bundle them yourself. Such bundling can be done however you want. For instance
you can reuse existing packages from some distro, you can build the
yourselves, or whatever.
Technically you have to specify a runtime, or things will not run. But if you
want you can create your own runtime that is empty and use that. This means
you have to supply everything though, as you won't even have an ld.so.
------
sandGorgon
* Is Flatpak the same as xdg-app? Yes, while xdg-app was a fine name to use during development we wanted something with wider appeal and more sparkle to it than xdg-app could provide. So as part of formally launching Flatpak as ready for use we decided to pick a more accessible and fun name.*
Interesting - I wonder how it compares with Click packages.
~~~
digi_owl
Same idea, different implementation. And guess who gets yelled at for NIH-
ing...
~~~
aroman
Update: never mind. I was mistaken about the timeline, click definitely
predates xdg-app.
If you're implying that Canonical shouldn't be blamed for creating Click as an
NIH solution because they released it first, I'd disagree. xdg-app has been a
thing for way longer than click.
xdg-app was open, the architecture were documented, and Canonical probably
could have worked with it if they cared to. Same with Wayland and Mir.
~~~
lbenes
Do you have a source for that? From my investigation, this does not seem to be
true. xdg-app's initial release was Dec 17, 2014. [1] While click seems to go
back to 2013[2]
[1] [https://github.com/alexlarsson/xdg-
app/commits/master?page=3...](https://github.com/alexlarsson/xdg-
app/commits/master?page=38)
[2] [https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-
devel/2013-May/0370...](https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-
devel/2013-May/037074.html)
~~~
aroman
You're right, thanks for fact checking.
I was conflating snappy and click. I've updated my original post.
------
iamcreasy
Does anyone know how it stack against AppImage? I know some applications(i.e.
Krita) is already using AppImage.
~~~
digi_owl
appimage seems to be less elaborate in the security department, but appimage
do not require anything preinstalled on a distro to function.
~~~
mixedCase
As far as security goes, couldn't this be solved by a separate tool, in the
good ol' Unix style?
And it would be up to downstream to handle AppImage files with it for
sandboxing, or not.
~~~
mtgx
The whole point of flatpak is to standardize better security cross-platforms.
Allowing "some other tool" to do that for you, just means most apps and most
users will not take advantage of that security.
~~~
mixedCase
Why do we need to standardize sandboxing if that means having to install an
application to install applications that are supposed to not need external
dependency handling?
If Flatpak's main selling point is security, then it would be better served as
as a sandboxing tool for AppImage rather than falling for NIH syndroming as is
unfortunately too common in Red Hat's world.
~~~
digi_owl
Because as the old name indicated, xdg-app is/was a Freedesktop project
(though much of the docs are at Gnome, making one ponder porous project
boundaries). And Freedesktop is all about defining that one canonical (heh)
distro (making "free" something of a misnomer at best).
Observe flatpak becoming part of Fedora shortly, and then Poettering style
"nudging" implemented to get Debian and the rest to adopt it.
~~~
EmanueleAina
No need to nudge, `xdg-app` for Debian has already been in the works for quite
some time[1].
[1] [https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=813308](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=813308)
------
aidenn0
Does Flatpak do anything that nix doesn't do?
~~~
macco
It means one package for all Linux systems, which is a huge benefit from the
developer perspective.
~~~
takluyver
Assuming that all Linux systems adopt it, which is far from a given. Ubuntu
16.04 already has 'snappy' packages, which seem to have similar goals.
~~~
mtgx
If they have Gnome 3.20+, it should work on them. Unlike Snappy, flatpaks
require Wayland, which means they won't have the security issues that snappy
apps will (with X11):
[https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/42320.html](https://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/42320.html)
~~~
takluyver
So if you're using Wayland, they're equally secure, and if you're using X, you
can use snappy but not flatpak? That doesn't seem like a great point for
adoption of flatpak.
~~~
alexlarsson
flatpak works with X, it will just be less secure
------
defiancedigital
This looks like OSX distribution app. I prefer nix ...
~~~
zxcvcxz
I prefer doing things the way we're already doing them. Linux package
management is already better than pretty much every other main stream OS. But
that's the good thing about Linux is there is so much choice. I can choose to
use state of the art package management or really shitty package management.
On some systems you only get to use shitty package management.
------
declanqian
What does "[dupe]" mean?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Where are the complete PRISM slides? - captn3m0
The WP report mentions PRISM being described on a 41 slide presentation. Both Guardian and WP have only shared the first 4 slides only. Both the reports hardly mention any facts that are not mentioned in those 4 slides. It makes me put my tinfoil hat on, and wonder where are those rest of the slides? Is there a valid reason behind this hedging?
======
gbuddha
The documents that are released by anonymous are hosted at:
[http://thedocs.hostzi.com](http://thedocs.hostzi.com) It includes a 47 slide
presentation also.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Counting money 'makes people feel better about themselves' - fogus
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6199932/Counting-money-makes-people-feel-better-about-themselves.html
======
javery
I have always thought that money isn't the most important thing in life, but
it is the best way to keep score. Counting money, having more money, etc. all
make you feel like you are winning which explains the good emotions.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dying 'Last Lecture' Prof's New Book Becomes Runaway Best Seller - edw519
http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/04/dying-last-lect.html
======
nazgulnarsil
every few years something like this gets really popular so that people can go
"see? we like positive uplifting things!" then they go straight back to their
violence and misery fetish that the news people make their living on.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How many of you tried kickstarter for raising money - RuchitGarg
Did you find it useful? Did your attorney freaked out? Raised money for your tech project?
======
MaysonL
While I haven't used it, a good friend of mine has used it successfully twice,
once to help send a play [i.e. the actors, and musicians] she wrote to
Edinburgh for the Fringe Festival, and again to send another play to New York
from LA.
~~~
RuchitGarg
That is what my concern is. Is that good for things like doing a theater/play
and for some legal issue does not work well for tech startups who envision it
to be a high growth company and have C/S corp incorporated.
I know there are certain limitation on how many private investors a C-corp can
have. Would these people putting in money via kickstarter be called as
investors?
~~~
vitovito
Legally and technically, they're not investors.
Kickstarter cuts you a check via Amazon. You don't have any contact with the
donators except as mediated via Kickstarter. There's not even a requirement
that you fulfill your promised obligations to your backers (although they'd
probably never let you use them again).
People are literally giving you money out of goodwill.
That said, Kickstarter is a terrible platform if you don't already have a
social network into which you can cast a wide enough net. It works best as the
way you enable all the friends you already have and who are already willing to
give you money, to do so.
It doesn't have a huge pile of people who are just looking to spend money on
hairbrained startups with no return. That active curation, cutting out
projects like that, is why it's succeeding.
~~~
DyumanBhatt
This. Kickstarter is generating revenue in exchange for goods and services
you're providing. It is not investment. I believe this is described in the
Kickstarter FAQ.
I however disagree that it isn't worth doing if you aren't already popular.
You can use it as a place to become more popular than you already are, or use
it as a means to show some traction even if you only raise $10,000.
------
dholowiski
Sadly, I live in Canada, so no Kickstarter for me.
~~~
jamesflorentino
Ditto. I don't live in the US too. I've been eyeing to crowdfund a personal
project in indiegogo instead. But haven't really looked into how the process
goes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CDN for all the other scripts (backbone.js, modernizr, etc.) - ryankirkman
http://www.cdnjs.com/
======
KuraFire
I checked out this site the moment it got linked on Twitter, but I haven’t
been able to connect to it still. I asked on Twitter, and it seems quite a few
people are having issues connecting to it:
<http://twitter.com/#!/search/%40KuraFire>
For a CDN, having a home page not work for so many people is a serious
problem. If it just recently had its DNS changed, then it shouldn’t have been
announced, period. If not that, this connectivity is even more concerning.
I’m really excited about seeing dedicated JS CDNs for things like Modernizr
(which I lead/run), but a CDN that has such a troublesome start will need to
prove itself a couple times over before I can consider it seriously. Mainly,
this kind of start doesn’t inspire confidence that the people running it know
every little thing there is to know about hosting and DNS. The fact that one
of the three examples in this thread, linked by who appears to be the creator
of the site, doesn’t actually work, makes me even more concerned.
I’m all for seeing Modernizr and other JS scripts on a CDN, but the CDN should
work for that, so I hope that this one gets its act together real soon.
Whatever the cause, being largely unavailable for a lot of people in a lot of
different countries is obviously unacceptable as a CDN resource—even if it may
be only temporary.
~~~
hooligan
I am also very excited to see a CDN for the smaller libraries.
The service seems to be hosted on Amazon which is great and gives me a vote of
confidence in using the service. Also very cheap to pull off something like
this and with community donations are very possible solution.
It's disappointing to see the propagation errors but I have personally worked
with the Amazon back end and CNAME records and recall the same issues when I
sent a site live. Hard to test how your site works around the globe especially
when third party tools report that its working.
~~~
KuraFire
This is why it’s always better to get some real world testing done, rather
than third-party tools. Ask people of whom you know are in various locations
around the world to see how fast things are (and if they’re not working at
all, that’ll become evident right away). Get data from the grindstone through
other people if you can’t get it on your own (e.g. if you’re a small team in
only one location).
DNS is a fickle bitch, but it’s also one that is the easiest to take care of
before launch: just wait. (though if after 3 days it’s still not working, you
messed it up)
------
maverhick
If you aren't able to sustain the site at some point in the future, there
would be major downtime and broken scripts across sites. That is the reason
why people would trust google or other more trustworthy sites for hosting
their main js files, or prefer to do it themselves
------
ladon86
I hate to say it, but the site isn't loading for me.
~~~
ryankirkman
If it doesn't work for you right now, you can go to:
<http://122.201.100.216/~cdnjs/>
For some reason, the main site is taking ages to propagate to some DNS
servers.
You're probably covered by one of the servers with an (x) here:
<http://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/cdnjs.com>
This doesn't actually affect the CDN side, which hosts the scripts.
EDIT:
For example:
[http://ajax.cdnjs.com/ajax/libs/backbone.js/0.3.3/backbone-m...](http://ajax.cdnjs.com/ajax/libs/backbone.js/0.3.3/backbone-
min.js)
[http://ajax.cdnjs.com/ajax/libs/underscore.js/1.1.4/undersco...](http://ajax.cdnjs.com/ajax/libs/underscore.js/1.1.4/underscore-
min.js)
[http://ajax.cdnjs.com/ajax/libs/modernizr/1.6/modernizr-1.6....](http://ajax.cdnjs.com/ajax/libs/modernizr/1.6/modernizr-1.6.min.js)
~~~
corin_
Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.cdnjs.com.
Regardless of the reason, doesn't inspire much confidence.
Additionally, one of your links,
[http://ajax.cdnjs.com/ajax/libs/backbone.js/0.3.3/backbone-m...](http://ajax.cdnjs.com/ajax/libs/backbone.js/0.3.3/backbone-
min.js) returns an XML "Access Denied" response.
Not a great start ;/
~~~
ryankirkman
EDIT 2: This issue has now been resolved. The reason you couldn't access this
file was that read permissions for the user group "Everyone" were removed on
this specific file. We'll endeavor to ensure this doesn't happen in the
future.
\-----------
We might have to put that one down to initial technical difficulties.
Not sure why you are getting access denied for that particular resource. May
have to invalidate that object from CloudFront cache locations.
EDIT: We are using Amazon CloudFront to host the scripts.
------
simonw
cdnjs.com doesn't obey the Accept-Encoding header - it just serves everything
gzipped. This is a limitation of CloudFront when backed by S3 - as of a few
months ago it's possible to vary on the Accept-Encoding header through
CloudFront but only if you run your own origin server rather than using S3.
The Google Ajax CDN varies on Accept-Encoding just fine.
~~~
ryankirkman
That's a limitation we have to live with for now, unfortunately. We are
looking into rectifying this.
~~~
simonw
You can fix it by running an nginx somewhere that serves the files, then
setting your CloudFront distribution to point to that.
... of course, then you'll need to make sure the nginx server is properly
redundant.
~~~
ryankirkman
That is definitely one of our options.
We're looking into jumping ship to Rackspace once they complete their move to
Akamai for Cloud Files (anticipated to be finished by the end of Q1 this
year). It seems like they will support the Accept-Encoding header:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2097491>
------
davej
Sizzle would be a nice addition: <http://sizzlejs.com/>
~~~
ryankirkman
Hosted and minified:
<http://ajax.cdnjs.com/ajax/libs/sizzle/1.4.4/sizzle.min.js>
~~~
thomasdavis
Could we get msutache? <https://github.com/janl/mustache.js/>
~~~
ryankirkman
Will look into it.
------
Stuk
How is it going to be paid for?
~~~
ryankirkman
Good question. So far, we are only hosting tiny files (almost everything is
well under 10kb).
Given the how cheap CloudFront works out to be for files of that size, we can
support quite a lot of growth, even if we have to incur the expense
personally.
We do plan to monetize it at some stage. Some ideas are premium accounts that
mash all of your resources together and host them for you.
~~~
simonw
The key benefit of hosting common scripts on a single CDN is that everyone who
uses a script can point to the same URL, hence dramatically increasing the
chance that a page visitor will already have the file in their browser cache
and won't have to fetch it at all.
For that to work, you need to be used on a bunch of large sites and hence be
serving a lot of traffic - which at CloudFront's rates will quickly become
expensive.
------
Charuru
No, this website doesn't engender trust, and that's vital for a cdn of this
nature.
~~~
ryankirkman
Would you care to elaborate?
Would putting some links to our profiles on things like Twitter and LinkedIn
help add credibility?
~~~
shantanubala
It's much more than that. When people use a CDN for their applications, they
want to be 100% (or 1000% if that were possible) sure that the CDN will not be
compromised. They also want to be sure that the people running the CDN do not
have nefarious intentions. They also want 100% uptime. They also want the CDN
to stick around as long as their web app is around.
That's why CDN's from Microsoft, Google, and the official jQuery CDN's are
trusted (and will inevitably be trusted) more than this one.
As awesome as this is, I'd quite honestly rather host my JS myself than use
it. Once Google adds more libraries, I may use their CDN.
EDIT: I don't mean to come off too harsh, but a lot of people don't use CDN's
altogether because of the potential for downtime. Combine that with a not-
globally-recognized brand and it may not work too well.
~~~
ryankirkman
Great point.
Trust has to be earned. The goal of this website is to decrease the barrier of
entry for people wanting to try out some cool new libraries and/or jQuery
plugins on their site, so we aren't really targeting the upper end of the
market.
Having said that, we have been using this for all of our personal and business
endeavors, so it will be around for the foreseeable future.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft's trivial patent on two-pass compression - alecco
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/6037883/description.html
======
alecco
Even if there's prior art I wouldn't have the money to fight something like
this. So there goes a week of work on a faster gzip.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Study of Face Masks Finds One Type That's Worse Than No Mask at All - pseudolus
https://gothamist.com/news/study-face-masks-finds-one-type-s-worse-no-mask-all
======
chordalkeyboard
here is the link to the study:
[https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/07/sci...](https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/08/07/sciadv.abd3083/tab-
pdf)
Note that they used an easily replicated experimental setup and some of the
trials were conducted with only one speaker. I'm very interested to see if
these findings are replicated.
------
thinkingemote
The mask was no. 11 fleece mask.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: pricing question - kinj28
whats better for SaaS pricing - pay per user or per usage? eg. we have a link sharing tool for teams. should the pricing be based on #of links shared or #of users?
======
fasteo
"per user". The problem "per usage" is that most of the time the potential
customer does not have a clue about what his usage will be, shifting his mind
from "should I sign up ?" to "I need first to calculate how much this thing
will cost me"
------
hcatlin
If it's "for teams", then users seems like a better option. You wouldn't want
to punish usage. Remember, you are creating value and you want to make sure
that the user gets as much value as possible... and that's by sharing more
often, typically. And, as the user base within a company grows (hopefully),
the price should go up. This stuff is always hard to figure out and I don't
think most companies are always 100% happy with how they are charging, but if
you are a team-based app where you can easily measure by employees using it,
then user is probably the clear winner, even with the little information
you've given.
~~~
kinj28
Some more information: we are called
[http://www.teamgum.com](http://www.teamgum.com).
our competition: mostly they have all user based pricing
my view: i think value of the product will be more visible if no. of users in
the network are increased & no. of links shared are also increased.
my concern: if we price per user & end up restricting free flow of users then
do you think we may end up turning off many of the acquired teams?
------
ASquare
Some good posts on this topic:
[https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140512065424-7...](https://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20140512065424-7018284-both-
pay-as-you-go-and-subscription-pricing-for-saas)
[http://www.tomtunguz.com/pricing-
experimentation](http://www.tomtunguz.com/pricing-experimentation)
~~~
kinj28
thanks for sharing :)
------
adrianhoward
Depends on your customers and your product. Could be neither. Could be both
depending on how you segment your customers.
------
cardeo
In this case I think number of users makes the most sense
------
adventured
All of this said without knowing what your actual business does.
Ideally whichever is easiest to calculate use for by the customer (assuming
you can keep your pricing structure similar in terms of what you earn as
well).
If users might be sharing anywhere from 5 to 500 or 5,000 links, that's a
pricing nightmare in which the customer doesn't know their costs and it might
be very hard to estimate ahead of time. That's a non-starter for most
businesses.
When something has such low per unit costs and value as an individual link,
I'd tend to argue in favor of a layer above that which simplifies the pricing:
in this case, the per user pricing model. If you can provide unlimited links
per user in that model, all the better.
~~~
kinj28
good point. but dont you think if their link shares are increasing then they
will be happy to pay more?
Agreed that estimating the links will be difficult for customers. looks like
identifying the optimum team size (for viral adoption) for a freemium model is
quite challenging.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I need a user friendly and easy to add live chat application for my website - jemmybutton
I need that live chat application to provide online customer support and to analyze performance of my website.
======
louiswilson
Compatible and uncomplicated live chat features makes your live chat session
more effective where website visitors conveniently interact with you. So, I
would refer you may integrate eAssistance Pro live chat on your website, that
is easy to install and operate, fully customizable and secure.
For free trial to just signup here
[https://account.eassistancepro.com/register.php](https://account.eassistancepro.com/register.php)
------
dragonbonheur
Softpedia has lots of scripts that you can embed in your websites if you're in
a rush. [http://webscripts.softpedia.com/cat/Chat-Scripts-
list-25-1-0...](http://webscripts.softpedia.com/cat/Chat-Scripts-
list-25-1-0-0.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NetApp CEO departs - sfbay
http://www.wsj.com/articles/netapp-ceo-tom-georgens-to-depart-1433191002
======
sfbay
[http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/01/netapp-moves-
ceo-i...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/06/01/netapp-moves-ceo-
idUSL3N0YN55220150601)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google might be screwed - numair
https://medium.com/@numair/google-might-be-screwed-740023587cf4
======
lisivka
In my case, Google always shows sites located in Russia first (first 10
results are always in .ru), despite that I located in Ukraine, and write
queries in Ukrainian language, even lang:uk does not help, so I must restrict
results with site:ua. IMHO, Google just sold places on their first page, so
Google is not screwed and will never be.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Voice.Google.com insecure connection - hellbanner
Hangouts.google.com works, but not voice. Please advise / report to Google<p>Secure Connection Failed<p>An error occurred during a connection to voice.google.com. The OCSP server experienced an internal error. Error code: SEC_ERROR_OCSP_SERVER_ERROR<p><pre><code> The page you are trying to view cannot be shown because the authenticity of the received data could not be verified.
Please contact the website owners to inform them of this problem.</code></pre>
======
krisives
voice.google.com uses their wildcard cert, which is valid for me and was last
changed Jan 10
[https://i.imgur.com/CouTrxC.png](https://i.imgur.com/CouTrxC.png)
~~~
hellbanner
Any reason why it would go down for ~2+ minutes?
------
hellbanner
It's back up. Was down for about 2 minutes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Finished Minecraft CPU Calculates the Fibonacci Sequence [video] - ugh
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sNge0Ywz-M
======
ugh
Accompanying notes from the creator on reddit:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/e49q7/demonstrating_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/e49q7/demonstrating_my_minecraft_cpu_or_yet_another/c156351)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Building a BASIC Interpreter, '80s style - new_here
https://able.bio/kerrishotts/building-a-basic-interpreter-80s-style--79a9d703
======
rbanffy
In most 8-bit BASIC interpreters, the LIST command is, actually, a pretty
printer: it reads and parses the tokenized source from memory and outputs it
to the "terminal". On the Apple II, for instance, we see upper-case versions
with added spaces for clarity (and some annoyance for editing the on-screen
code on very long lines).
It just occurred to me we missed an opportunity there, with computers that
could display some form of screen attributes (Atari, VIC-20, C-64 and
countless text terminals), to make use of color and typography to enhance
screen presentation with a negligible cost in ROM.
It'd have been really cool to have color syntax highlighting on 8-bit
computers in the late 70's...
~~~
pmiller2
That's true, but it's typically not a very _nice_ pretty printer. For example,
I don't know of any old school version of BASIC where the LIST command shows
any sort of indentation.
~~~
photokandy
A quick search indicates that BBC Basic had a LISTO command that could add
indents. I should see if I can add something similar.
------
photokandy
Author here & wow! Didn't expect to see this get posted anywhere, but happy to
see that there are people as interested in this stuff as I am.
If you do play with Retroputer at all, it is still very much WIP -- so lots of
things aren't implemented (or don't work). It's proven a fun project to
reacquaint myself with lower-level concepts after having been in very high
level languages for several years.
One thing I really loved about the computers like the C64 I grew up on: it was
possible to hold the entire workings of the machine in your head. While things
often appeared magical at first glance, it wasn't that hard to figure out how
and why they worked, and then to use that to your advantage. I don't _know_ if
that's a benefit when writing high level code today, but I like to think that
having that low-level understanding is useful.
It's also proven useful as a project to learn _new_ things. I'm figuring out
some back-end coding, Twitter bots, and at some point would love to make this
thing in hardware with an fpga. One of these days... ;-)
~~~
wizzwizz4
I think you could make your lowercase loop shorter – and definitely faster –
by jumping into a second loop when inside a string, instead of setting a flag.
~~~
photokandy
You’re right! I’ll do that. :-)
I haven’t done a lot of optimization yet-probably lots of things like this.
:-)
------
new_here
Online version of the interpreter here: [https://blissful-bose-
ff8542.netlify.app/](https://blissful-bose-ff8542.netlify.app/)
~~~
Jaruzel
Nice! - looking forward to the follow up articles.
------
photokandy
I finally had time to revisit the suggestions in the comments -- what great
ideas. :-)
I wrote them up in a post here: [https://able.bio/kerrishotts/building-a-
basic-interpreter-80...](https://able.bio/kerrishotts/building-a-basic-
interpreter-80s-style-redux--4323d1db)
I also included some links to resources that may prove useful to others trying
to do similar things.
------
rchase
Very cool article. Having grown up on msoft BASIC and assembly on the C64, I
really appreciate the low-level insights.
------
trec
Nice work.
I have been following similar series from various sources and hope that this
will reach end. Sadly all similar material is always abandoned when arriving
interesting parts..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple and Samsung Are Friendly Again, and the Competition Should Be Terrified - adventured
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-05-01/apple-and-samsung-are-friendly-again-and-the-competition-should-be-terrified
======
enlightenedfool
some one finally realized that Samsung and Android in general are not really a
threat to Apple and its device business. They both got their own markets.
~~~
hyperpallium
Android is also Apple's antitrust friend, just as Apple was for MS in another
era. And a popular free operating system protects Apple from entrants (like
Windows Phone) because it's hard to compete with free. Yet, it suits Apple
because their focus is premium products and premium profits - they aren't
suited to, and don't want to, cover low-end commodity markets. So there'd be a
gap there anyway.
~~~
adventured
As Jobs noted at the D5 conference (the interview with Gates), Apple's
business doesn't work without Microsoft type companies. Those guys provide the
lower 2/3 of the market, and Apple can be BMW / Porsche.
------
EwanG
Wonder if it occurred to someone that Apple could simply buy Samsung...
~~~
bane
I don't think you understand how big Samsung is. Any fanciful acquisition
notion is more likely to go the other way around and Apple would merely be one
of the larger divisions of the conglomerate.
~~~
visakanv
According to Forbes, Google's market capitalization currently stands at around
$382 billion, while Samsung is currently worth $186 billion. That would enable
Apple to buy, and shut down, two of its biggest rivals in the consumer
electronics space.
– [http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/11/what-you-could-buy-
with-a...](http://www.engadget.com/2015/02/11/what-you-could-buy-with-
apple-700-billion-market-cap/)
~~~
bane
Samsung's yearly revenue is in excess of $300 billion/year and growing. About
2x Apple's.
Samsung _Electronics_ is a division of Samsung and accounts for $186
billion/year.
Put another way, Samsung's Electronics division earns more revenue that all of
Apple.
~~~
wesnerm2
This may not really be true anymore. Apple may earn more revenue than Samsung
in 2015. Apple reported 74.6 billion in sales versus Samsung's 48.8 in
calendar 2014 Q4. The most recent quarter saw pretty even results with Samsung
slightly ahead with 43.6 billion vs Apple's 42.1 billion.
~~~
bane
Than Samsung _Electronics_. Again, an important distinction. We're comparing
revenue of all of Apple against a division of Samsung.
------
ChuckMcM
_After Apple, SanDisk’s biggest customer is Samsung, according to data
compiled by Bloomberg._
Really this is just a 'short SanDisk' article :-) But more seriously, it is
interesting when supply chains get squeezed down to a single supplier, it is
an unstable configuration historically as the supplier inevitably feels they
aren't getting enough of the value[1] which then disrupts overall supply.
I am also really surprised that Intel hasn't more aggressively stepped in
here, seems like there is some margin for the bottom line they can pick up.
[1] In all economics you're at a good balance if the seller thinks you paid to
little and you think you paid too much.
~~~
rdsnsca
The only way Intel will get Apples business is to make ARM chips for it.
If you read the iPad chapter in Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson, you would see
that Intel was Jobs original pick for the iPad CPU. They fell out over a few
issues, power consumption and control of the chip design being but two of
them.
------
artmageddon
I thought Samsung was already providing Apple with hardware for the iPhone?
~~~
egwynn
I think the story is that they were, and then they weren’t, and now they will
again.
~~~
agumonkey
It's a weird love/hate relationship. The previous fallout seemed pretty bad,
sued for Billions of dollar; yet business brought them back together. Mutual
interest is a strong force.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Uber CEO Indicted in South Korea Over Its Taxi Service - webhat
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-12-24/uber-ceo-indicted-in-south-korea-over-its-taxi-service.html
======
debacle
> “Uber does not believe it is appropriate for authorities to seek to punish
> drivers who are trying to make a living through this service,” Uber said in
> today’s e-mail.
Uber needs to slow down the spin. It might work in metros in the US, but it's
not going to work in Seoul.
~~~
gnu8
The heavy spin is necessary to preserve the image that Uber represents the
drivers. Uber really just provides technical infrastructure and marketing, and
rakes off most of the profit. Almost all of that wealth should be flowing back
to the drivers who provide Uber's actual service.
The drivers need to unionize and break Uber's back before Uber replaces them
all with self-driving cars. It shouldn't be too hard for them to organize,
since they all have smartphones and they all end up dissatisfied when Uber
cuts their rates.
~~~
wozniacki
I am perfectly aware that we live in deeply partisan times. Partisan in not
just political ideologies but also in ways we see the world and our place in
it. At times, it seems all middle ground has vanished. But that discussion is
for another time.
Unionizing is a contentious issue not just for the employers but also for the
consumers, especially when you look at how unions - in the industries and
sectors where they have a stranglehold on affairs - seem to always serve the
interests of just the union members and in no particular way improve the
experience of the consumers.
As a disinterested observer, I ask this in good faith :
Are there documented cases of industries or even governmental sectors where
unionizing - whether in America or abroad, say France - has proved immensely
beneficial to the consumers and patrons?
Are they not just self-serving instruments and political vote banks?
I am yet to find a single heavily-unionized entity proving to enhance my
experience as a consumer.
~~~
freehunter
Unionizing wasn't such a contentious issue when employers were working their
employees to death and paying them in credit to be used at the company store.
~~~
ihnorton
That is incorrect. Unionizing was strongly opposed throughout the industrial
revolution. Look up Pinkerton's efforts, the Haymarket incident, many others.
~~~
freehunter
Yeah, of course the bosses didn't want it. It hurt them and their profits. But
back then, the _people_ wanted it. The difference between then and now is, now
when the bosses say "you don't want a union", the workers actually believe
them.
------
cpplinuxdude
> "worries over the safety of consumers"
Can't consumers decide what their safety requirements are? If they prefer a
different service, for safety reasons, can't they just use that service
instead?
~~~
noelwelsh
Not really, because of information asymmetry. Users of taxi services, like
users of medicine, are vastly less informed about the quality of the service
than those that provide it.
Contrary to Uber's propaganda, legislation around taxis is not there, for the
most part, to increase the revenue of taxi operators.
~~~
austerity
I don't understand your analogy to medical service. Surely I can assess the
quality of taxi service I just received to the highest degree imaginable. And
we now have fantastic systems in place to spread this information (e.g. Yelp,
Facebook, etc.).
~~~
noelwelsh
You generally want some guarantees before you consume the service.
Most would agree it is suboptimal if the first point you can assess the
quality of your taxi service is after being raped and dumped out of town (or
waking up deaf because your doctor was an alcoholic, which happened to someone
I know; the doctor was of course struck off).
As to whether other systems like Yelp or Facebook are substitutes for the
licensing process -- well, that is a reasonable argument to put forward. It's
not the usual one we hear on HN though, which is just libertarian free-market-
uber-alles ranting. One complaint I would have about using Yelp or Facebook is
that they are private companies, and thus not accountable to the public in the
way that government licensing services are.
------
wonjun
The issue goes beyond the technology and law. It's more about the culture of
place where Uber operates in. Making a living as a taxi driver in Seoul is
different from how it is to do the same in San Francisco. Consumers have
different expectations and are wary about different safety issues.
This must be true for each country. I don't think Uber can pervade the entire
globe as much as facebook or google. Each place will lag but eventually come
up with their own version of Uber that has better understanding of their
locale. I think it's different from how people wish to have the same
McDonald's experience across the globe. And there is no economy of scale by
operating in two very difference places. Consumers in Seoul do not benefit
from Uber's operation in San Francisco. Perhaps there is economy of scale in
developing the technology, but not in operations.
Uber is the pioneer but is not meant to take over the entire globe.
------
Shizka
> "[...]from next week will offer rewards of as much as 1 million won ($905)
> to people who provide information on Uber’s services. "
> "The maximum penalty for Uber’s alleged legal violation is a two-year prison
> sentence or a fine of as much as 20 million won[...]"
Can anyone clarify this for me?
I read it as two years in prison or pay a 20.000$ fine. The difference between
two years in prison and 20.000$ seems very large to me. It seems slightly
illogical to me if this is the case.
~~~
ceejayoz
There are lots of crimes in the US punishable by a year in prison or a fine of
up to $1k. I suspect the fines are leftover from when $1k was significantly
more money.
------
jastr
"...will offer rewards of as much as 1 million won ($905)..."
"The maximum penalty for Uber’s alleged legal violation is a two-year prison
sentence or a fine of as much as 20 million won..."
So the fine would be at most ~$20,000. That seems low compared to 2 years in
jail!
~~~
colinbartlett
This kind of asymmetry is usual. "Littering is punishable by up to $500 fine
or 6 months in prison." \- that sort of thing I've seen a zillion times.
~~~
juliangregorian
Yup, because if you don't have $500 you're probably one of those homeless
criminal types and should be locked up anyway.
I've noticed this too, is this a relic from the times when the dollar amount
would have been a lot more proportionate to time served?
------
bello
To anyone who knows more about law, is it legally/morally justifiable to hold
individual executives liable for company tactics to this extent? Why don't
they just ban/fine the company instead?
~~~
PMan74
IANAL but (in Ireland) liability usually stops with the company unless the
directors are shown to have acted outside company law.
Given that Uber's business model seems to be based on "fuck the law, we'll do
what we want" \- in my view is that the management, morally, can't rely on
that same legal system to insulate them from punishment.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Easy AngularJS Forms with angular-formly - kentcdodds
https://scotch.io/tutorials/easy-angularjs-forms-with-angular-formly
======
kentcdodds
If you're using AngularJS, I highly recommend you look into angular-formly.
This is a fantastic introduction to angular-formly. There's a lot more
power/flexibility behind angular-formly than this article covers, but as the
author of the library, I can say it's very good. Learn more at
[http://learn.angular-formly.com](http://learn.angular-formly.com)
------
matty0187
Thats some beautiful documentation
------
matty0187
Some beautiful documentation!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Are you keeping your product team focused and data driven? - patothon
http://blog.experiments.io/post/54424766279/are-you-keeping-your-product-team-focused-and-data-drive
======
beg
It's hard to align Marketing, Sales and Product team around common goals.
~~~
patothon
that's why I think you should have missions for each member, with a common
goal for the team.
------
patothon
Simple process, but efficient for me to start.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Change in Real Home Prices Since 2000 - wjossey
http://harvard-cga.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=0e9603b62db14611834fd3dfd8645316
======
ucaetano
Oh, looking at this it is worth remembering that NIMBYism and real estate
prices are one of the biggest drivers of inequality in the world.
Housing doesn't have to be expensive. It is, mostly, due to political reasons.
[https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-
economics/2164734...](https://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-
economics/21647349-rising-house-prices-may-be-chiefly-responsible-rising-
inequality-through)
~~~
api
"Real estate cannot simultaneously be affordable and a good investment."
As soon as someone becomes a homeowner, it becomes in his/her best interests
to make sure others cannot become homeowners at anything but a higher price.
It's one of the most extreme perverse incentives in modern economies.
~~~
Retric
Taxes can be a counterpoint to this. So, you want low value unless you're
going to sell soon.
~~~
raldi
To provide a little more detail on davidw's comment: In several US states,
your property tax is locked in when you buy a house.
So you could have two identical houses next door to each other, one last sold
in 1975, the other 2015, and their property taxes would likely differ by a
factor of at least 30x.
~~~
mikeyouse
To Raldi's point.. Two random houses near Pacific Heights:
[https://i.imgur.com/kltiDm4.png?1](https://i.imgur.com/kltiDm4.png?1)
But at least people with $10 million houses are spared the indignity of paying
for local services.
------
notadoc
In many west coast locations, house prices are far beyond the prior housing
bubble peaks, I often come across places that are 75% to 100% more than they
were during the mid-2000s bubble.
Pick any popular western location, city, or neighborhood, and you'll find
prices 300% and 500% higher than they were in 2000 and often double or more
what they were in the first housing boom. And no, incomes have not increased
that much. Many of these areas have price-to-income ratios into the absurd of
10x-15x. Outside of San Francisco, does anyone really think that is
sustainable?
~~~
mistermann
How many new multimillionaires does China produce each year?
~~~
api
I'd love to see some real data on just how much Chinese and other flight
capital being dumped into RE is contributing to these price increases.
~~~
refurb
Rich Chinese we're blamed for the housing bubble in Vancouver and Toronto.
They finally started tracking it and it was barely above 5% (all foreign
purchases). And only if you focused on certain neighborhoods.
95% of purchasers were Canadian citizens or permanent residents. Low interest
rates and willingness to take on a lot of debt is what drove the bubble in
Canada.
~~~
soperj
In Vancouver it was over 5%. In some suburbs - Burnaby and Richmond - (not
neighbourhoods) it was over 15% of purchases. When you consider that most of
these purchasers aren't selling houses at the same time, then it becomes an
even bigger % of actual demand.
edit: just looked at the stats. Metro Vancouver was at about 12.5% of sales,
and Richmond was at nearly 25% of sales before they put in the foreign buyers
tax.
~~~
ericd
This is a very good point - many normal purchasers will be selling a house at
the same time that they're buying one, so there's a net zeroing in additional
housing demand. Renters who are buying a house will leave a rental unit open,
and cause a tiny decrease in rent prices. But investors frequently just take
housing off the market, and contribute to a shortage. And as with most life
necessities, housing is somewhat inelastic in terms of demand, so shortages
cause skyrocketing prices.
------
rm999
Fill in the gaps with blue, and you have something very similar to the
population density map of the USA:
[https://mwlibertyfest.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/us-pop-
dis...](https://mwlibertyfest.files.wordpress.com/2009/06/us-pop-dist.gif)
This seems to reflect the "graying" of rural America:
[https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/the-
gra...](https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/the-graying-of-
rural-america/485159). Younger generations are moving to denser areas, driving
property values up. This isn't a bad thing per se (denser populations are more
environmentally friendly), but is probably driving some of the division in the
USA today.
~~~
yessql
I was just thinking how well this correlates with the presidential election
map.
------
wjossey
The differences between the middle of the country and the east & west coast,
since 2000, is startling.
I'd love to see this sort of graphic normalized against wage inflation as
well. Is what we're seeing just fairly flat wage stagnation in the midwest,
but wage inflation on the coasts (leading to a rise in housing prices)? If we
start to see salary multiples of 3x, 4x, or 5x, if you just live on a
coastline, what will that end up doing to interstate trade and commerce? Will
the middle of the country begin to lose some of their buying power, purely
because their inflation rates are lower?
~~~
lotsofpulp
I bet it's a combination of things. West coast cities are more desirable for
younger people, there's better weather, a more socially liberal climate, more
employers and other young people to interact with, and the networking
opportunities. Plus overseas investors looking to put their cash in safe
haven, but I would ascribe most of it to it just being a more desirable place
to live.
~~~
zzbzq
According to all the generation-war articles, young people don't have any
money, so in that view the places desirable to young people would be declining
in value.
I have a feeling the truth might be simple. Normal home values are mostly
stagnant or down (due to the 2000s bubble), no further explanation needed.
Regions that are exceptionally down are just actually in decline economically.
Regions that have risen slightly are economically rising. Regions that are
exceptionally up are a combination of economic success and intentional real
estate manipulation for financial motives (for example, property owners
purposefully obstructing the development of new homes, which is a common
accusation in bay area threads on this very site.)
~~~
lotsofpulp
Not necessarily. Young people might not have enough money (or income security)
to afford a down payment and mortgage, but they do have enough money to split
rent for an apartment/condominium/house with 1 or more other people. And the
folks migrating to the desirable cities are probably more resourceful than the
ones who are not, but their extra earnings are captured by landlords, who can
then use the higher rents to justify higher property prices.
Edit: I wonder if it's possible the quantify the role income security, or lack
thereof, plays in home prices.
------
jorblumesea
Everyone here is talking about bubble, overpricing, inflations etc. But the
long term demographic shift is coastal growth at the expense of the rest of
the country. The West coast especially has a booming economy and is growing at
a very rapid pace.
I think most of the price increase is just a supply/demand issue. Lots of
people moving to coastal areas and American cities are terrible are high
density housing and planning.
------
geogra4
Man, buffalo and pittsburgh must be doing something special compared to the
rest of the rust belt? I wonder what's going on there.
~~~
aphextron
Pittsburgh has a thriving tech and financial sector, driven by CMU and PNC
respectively. Buffalo has never quite been part of the "rust belt", they're
more east coast. They have lot of stable government employment because of New
York state.
~~~
protomyth
Doesn't Buffalo benefit by being right across from Toronto?
~~~
temp-dude-87844
Surprisingly, no. Though the Buffalo areas' ports of entry draw about as much
cross-border traffic as Detroit (but not including Port Huron-Sarnia also in
Michigan), Toronto's proximity to Buffalo is not often felt.
A few trade and investment groups have been working in the last 15 years to
attract Canadian companies to Buffalo with good success, but largely Canada's
influence grows towards Michigan and approaching Chicago, and it's the US'
influence that grows along the Niagara border into Canada's Greater Toronto
area.
------
temp-dude-87844
There are a few that surprise me here -- declines for Indianapolis, Columbus
-- these first two are really odd, but also Columbia, Augusta, and almost all
of Alabama.
I know none of these places have the draw of the coasts, but are solid metros
that have seen some growth since the recession.
Is it just that they're being outcompeted by larger regional neighbors, like
Atlanta, Charlotte, and Charleston?
Why is all of Indiana and Ohio so blue when the two state capitals and their
suburbs have been recovering much better than that region's other cities?
~~~
scruple
> Why is all of Indiana and Ohio so blue when the two state capitals and their
> suburbs have been recovering much better than that region's other cities?
I'd _love_ to have an answer to this question, too. I grew up in rural central
Ohio. There is still some industry hanging on, but just barely. All that I can
hazard to speculate now is that it will be very interesting to see what
happens to those areas when the coming trucking-industry revolution hits.
------
jordache
Why does arcGIS have the non conforming UI where scroll of the mouse wheel
moves the map vertically instead of being the zoom?
~~~
bumblebeard
I dunno if they've changed it since you looked but scroll is zoom for me
(Firefox 52 on Debian).
~~~
jordache
today on latest chrome on OS X... scroll pans the map up and down.
Shift+scroll pans the map left and right.
the most convoluted web app in the world
------
babesh
Overlay the Presidential election results.
~~~
JBReefer
Totally agree. Also, compare with this map of heroin deaths per capita [0].
They're shockingly close.
[https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-
apps/imrs.php?src=https://...](https://img.washingtonpost.com/wp-
apps/imrs.php?src=https://img.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/files/2016/12/opiate_maps-021.png&w=1484)
------
charred_toast
This is going to sound paranoid, obviously, but I was thinking if China ever
wanted to start a war with North America, it has quite a sizable population in
the US and Canada that could potentially contribute to that aim.
~~~
CountSessine
Much of middle-America (and Canada) was settled by huge numbers of German
immigrants. At the start of WW1, there were similar concerns about German
sympathies.
It just doesn't work that way. These people have made their homes here and
count themselves as Canadians and Americans. They might have sympathies for
the old country (much as many of us in North America do), but the stronger
these sympathies are, the less likely we'll go to war in the first place.
~~~
loeber
German-Americans were, for a long time, the largest national-ethnic group in
the US. After the World Wars, calling oneself a German-American went out of
fashion.
There are some interesting articles on the matter:
[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/opinion/whatever-
happened...](https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/23/opinion/whatever-happened-to-
german-america.html)
[2] [https://www.economist.com/news/united-
states/21642222-americ...](https://www.economist.com/news/united-
states/21642222-americas-largest-ethnic-group-has-assimilated-so-well-people-
barely-notice-it)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The aliens are silent because they're dead - bootload
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/01/160121110932.htm
======
orionblastar
Or they could be so far away that we never got a signal from them yet.
I can see how hard it is for life to survive and see that Mars and Venus are
two examples of the planet going the wrong way to not support life. That not
having enough greenhouse gas to keep warm or having too much of it can kill
off life.
I then remembered that the Earth is in-between ice ages.
[http://www.astrobio.net/topic/solar-system/earth/swinging-
be...](http://www.astrobio.net/topic/solar-system/earth/swinging-between-ice-
ages/)
That the Earth has gone through climate changes over time, and right now as we
burn fossil fuels we are changing the Earth and making things worse for us.
If aliens existed they might have had an ice age were they died or they burned
fossil fuels until they made their planet inhabitable for them as well.
We need to focus on our planet and making sure we don't wipe ourselves out.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Zuckerberg Seeks Personal Privacy, Then Removes Online Privacy Feature - talhof8
http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/229364
======
blakesterz
"But as Facebook makes it more difficult for users to maintain privacy, its
co-founder is taking drastic measures to protect his own. Ironic timing, isn't
it?"
Doesn't it seem like we're conflating 2 really different definitions of
privacy here? One being online, on facebook, and the other offline, at home.
This doesn't seem ironic at all, we're talking about one person's decision to
do something that he thinks will make his life better vs. a corporation's
decision to try and make more money.
(I'm in no way defending Facebook here, just seems silly to think these 2
things are at all really related. It's like saying Ronald McDonald at a
vegetable and it's ironic McDonalds just introduced a triple giant bacon
burger or something)
~~~
selmnoo
I see what you're getting at, and I kind of agree, but the comparison isn't
altogether wrong, it's just a little stretched.
Anyway, we should really make something out of the frustration we feel over
getting our privacy rights trampled upon by the likes of Facebook. What can we
do to bring it down? Make privacy-oriented alternative networking sites? Maybe
ones that operate on a pay-model, so there isn't a grotesque incentive to
violate basic rights? Or maybe tell Facebook to buckle down and change
direction in favor of the common user's interests?
------
melling
It would be great if we could limit the spin on HN. I had to go to the WSJ to
get the fact that he bought the houses then leased them back. He got wind of a
developer considering buying up nearby property, developing it then selling
the location next to Zuckerberg as a "feature."
It might not change your mind about any irony, but it's certainly worth
mentioning.
~~~
rwmj
Off topic, but is living next to Mark Zuckerberg a thing? You can ask him over
aperitifs for an angel investment in your social network company, is that the
thinking?
~~~
fiatmoney
More indicative of "this is likely a Good Neighborhood with low crime, good
schools, etc. if a man who can live anywhere lives here".
------
Sagat
No matter how many times people bring up privacy issues or the "haha users are
dumb fucks" quote in order to characterize Zuckerberg as evil, the fact
remains that he has absurd amounts of money and power and is likely to remain
that way for a very, very long time if medical science continues to advance in
leaps and bounds.
It's his company, and he can do what he wants. Your opinions are insignificant
to him. We as a society need to start learning how to deal with this, accept
our place in the food chain, and obey those more fortunate. We created
Zuckerberg ourselves by collectively choosing to use Facebook to regulate our
social lives; we must now accept the consequences and embrace the loss of our
rights.
Zuckerberg will forever win, and you will forever lose. He will own you for
the entire duration of your life. You won't enjoy it, and neither will I, but
it is a fact as immutable as the human condition itself.
~~~
Samuel_Michon
> It's his company, and he can do what he wants.
Facebook is a publicly held company. Mark Zuckerberg has less than 30% of its
shares.
> We created Zuckerberg ourselves by collectively choosing to use Facebook to
> regulate our social lives
And people will let it until they lose trust in Facebook or if an alternative
comes along that serves their needs better. AOL, Friendster, and MySpace came
before, they screwed up, and are insignificant now.
~~~
belandrew
It's not that simple. Facebook has two classes of shares. While Zuckerberg
only kept 28% of the shares, he kept 57% of the voting rights. So it's still
entirely his decisions.
~~~
seiji
It's amusing and tragic how the big money people figured out how to subvert
the stock = ownership = voting rights equation. It feels technically legal,
but actually wrong on a couple levels.
Their entire premise is "We're smarter than the rest of the world and you poor
people can't be trusted with the big important decisions of us billionaires."
This is social media on the internet after all—the most important advancement
in humanity's collective history.
------
Havoc
Well he did famously say that users (are) “dumb f*#ks” for trusting him with
their data.
~~~
ryanmerket
Users are dumb f%#@$ for trusting ANYONE with their data.
------
pasbesoin
I live close to an area where, in a previous "gilded age", business magnates
acquired large tracts upon which they established estates.
Over the subsequent decades, many of those were sold off and turned into --
often quite nice -- housing... well, "tracts", doesn't really fit. Nor does
"sub-division"; the use of that word came later and also does not connote the
upper scale nature many of these areas.
(Hey, as I suddenly recall, my home is more modest and is not located in the
heart of the area I'm thinking of, but _I_ live on what was formerly a
substantial country estate of one of these magnates.)
Anyway, my point is, the trend for several decades has been that old estates
have been broken up into smaller units. Sometimes, a smaller "core" of the
estate remains as an actual estate, perhaps even in the original family, but
land-wise, people have "downscaled".
Now... We in the U.S. appear to on the verge of having a new round of estate
creation. Gilded age, indeed.
------
DigitalSea
This is like comparing apples to oranges here. Two completely different forms
of privacy, it was a nice attempt, but this just came across as a desperate
attempt to try and write an article that didn't really make an impact.
------
RafiqM
Bit of a stretch, no? I agree that any removal of privacy features isn't good,
but what Zuckerberg did was stop someone else cashing in on his
name/reputation.
Not entirely about privacy.
~~~
bsullivan01
_but what Zuckerberg did was stop someone else cashing in on his name
/reputation._
That's the official line, it may not be entirely true. Although super rich, he
still has the "I wear a hoodie" shtick so he might have felt his average guy
rep going down if seen as buying 4-5 houses to build a bigger one.
~~~
jack-r-abbit
but he's not building a bigger one. He is leasing those newly purchased houses
back to their owners. So he has paid to ensure he knows exactly who is living
next door to him.
~~~
bsullivan01
but he's not building a bigger one....yet.
~~~
jack-r-abbit
There is an endless list of things he has not done... yet. We should focus on
what is he is doing... which is leasing the homes back to the previous owners.
------
bsullivan01
_Zuckerberg Seeks Personal Privacy, Then Removes Online Privacy Feature_
Zuckerberg Pays $30 Million For Personal Privacy, Then Removes Online Privacy
Feature.
The evil twins, Google and FB, got almost nothing on me because I rarely post
and use them from a separate browser.
~~~
TomaszZielinski
Fuzzy matching does wonders.
------
gtCameron
It's a high bar to clear in today's media, but I think this might be the
dumbest article I have ever read.
I guess the original headline "Rich guy in big house doesn't want close
neighbors" didn't generate enough Internet Outrage (tm).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Qualcomm Insider: Apple 64-Bit Chip `Hit Us in the Gut' - bane
http://blog.hubspot.com/uattr/qualcomm-apple-64-bit-chip-hit-us-in-gut
======
danielsju6
A lot of people miss how big of an advantage Apple is continually taking by
being first to market.
People try to pin their mobile success on Apple fanboys or their "magic" user
experience/ecosystem but Apple is simply just x-many months ahead of
everyone's product roadmap and continually throwing curveballs at the rest of
the players in the market. "Real world" benchmarks aside their 64-bit CPU has
everyone else distracted, rethinking their product roadmaps, and demanding it
in their devices while Apple works on it's next trick.
~~~
w1ntermute
There is no "magic" that having more computing power on a phone can enable.
The vast majority of consumers are more than happy with the speed of their
phone. The most impactful ways that Apple could significantly improve the
iPhone right now would be to (a) double or triple the battery life, (b) make
the screen unbreakable, and (c) make the screen bigger. These are the most
common complaints I hear from iPhone users. Everything else really isn't that
important. And I don't see any progress in any of those areas.
~~~
TrainedMonkey
a - I agree, I would pay for thicker/heavier iphone with 2x battery life.
However this will fracture Apple's product lineup, thus economically
unfeasible.
b - screen on iphone 5S is already very strong.
c - After lots of thinking I agree with Apple. Current form factor is just
right for communication device [1]. If you need bigger screen, chances are you
do not want a phone - you want a tablet.
[1] Iphone user here, take this with a grain of salt. Over 3 models of iphone
I never had a case. Phone is small enough for a proper grip with one hand
while using thumb to control it.
Anecdotal experience: I know 12 people with phones that have large screens. 7
of them had screens cracked due to dropping the phone. Every single one has a
case (People who dropped their phones got a case after). What is the point of
getting super light and thin phone just to put bulky case on it?
~~~
epsylon
> If you need bigger screen, chances are you do not want a phone - you want a
> tablet.
This kind of remarks is really annoying because it suggests that you know
better than us (the people who want larger screens) when you really don't.
Either that, or you are incredibly blind to the difference between a freaking
tablet (7", designed for browsing on WiFi) and a telephone with a decently
sized screen (4.7 ~4.8" compared to the 4" of the iPhone - this makes a HUGE
difference).
~~~
jballanc
I doubt this is a case of hubris, but rather of the Pareto principle. For 80%
of all users, the iPhone is either the right size or they want a tablet. What
you (and others making similar comments in reply) fail to account for is that
this still leaves 20% of users who actually _do_ want a bigger screen on their
phone.
Yes, 20% of all users is still _a lot_ of users, but it's not the 80% that
Apple has traditionally targeted.
------
ffk
"But now Apple can also claim an advantage in raw horsepower. The new 64-bit
A7 chip is the smartphone equivalent of a big V12 engine."
Except these performance gains most likely would of been seen on a 32 bit
version of the chip.
It's interesting to see how much marketing is put around 32 vs 64 bit chips
and the effect it has on how people market. The biggest benefit is the ability
to access more than 4GB of memory. For reference, the iPhone 5S has 1GB of
memory. Eliminating the need for PAE and other expensive workarounds is
definitely a bug plus. i64 and cheap doubles are certainly a bonus too.
I suspect the primary reason for moving to 64 bit is not for performance gains
now, but for future compatibility. Eventually, the iPhone 5S will be the
oldest supported iPhone and running a 64 bit processor will reduce maintenance
costs of needing to maintain a 32 and 64 bit line of software.
I think this would be a much more informative article if the author had
interviewed a few experts to discuss the benefits of 64 bits over 32 bits
rather than just say they go faster which at this point is debatable.
~~~
beagle3
> The biggest benefit is the ability to access more than 4GB of memory. For
> reference, the iPhone 5S has 1GB of memory.
No. The biggest benefit as having an addressable virtual address space which
is in the tera/peta/exa byte range. Which makes a lot of things simple and
efficient, even if you don't have a lot of physical memory. Read about e.g.
LMDB's design or Varnish's design for good examples.
The other significant benefit is more registers.
~~~
ffk
I'm familiar with this, which is the reason I mentioned "PAE and other
expensive workarounds" which allows you to break the 4GB limit.
It was badly worded on my part, I was in a hurry. :)
------
gonzo
I can't really say it better than Mike Ash, so:
<quote>
Conclusion The "64-bit" A7 is not just a marketing gimmic, but neither is it
an amazing breakthrough that enables a new class of applications. The truth,
as happens often, lies in between.
The simple fact of moving to 64-bit does little. It makes for slightly faster
computations in some cases, somewhat higher memory usage for most programs,
and makes certain programming techniques more viable. Overall, it's not hugely
significant.
The ARM architecture changed a bunch of other things in its transition to
64-bit. An increased number of registers and a revised, streamlined
instruction set make for a nice performance gain over 32-bit ARM.
Apple took advantage of the transition to make some changes of their own. The
biggest change is an inline retain count, which eliminates the need to perform
a costly hash table lookup for retain and release operations in the common
case. Since those operations are so common in most Objective-C code, this is a
big win. Per-object resource cleanup flags make object deallocation quite a
bit faster in certain cases. All in all, the cost of creating and destroying
an object is roughly cut in half. Tagged pointers also make for a nice
performance win as well as reduced memory use.
</quote>
[https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-
qa-2013-09-27-arm64-an...](https://www.mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-
qa-2013-09-27-arm64-and-you.html)
Android's Java runtime is going to need a lot of work to make it pull off a
runtime feat like tagged pointers.
~~~
lucian1900
Some JVMs already use tagged pointers for various things, often called
"compressed pointers". It is of unclear utility for a language like Java and
it could be easily added to ART if deemed useful.
------
nilsbunger
Anandtech had a good overview page of what 64-bit (and more generally, Armv8)
does for performance:
[http://anandtech.com/show/7335/the-
iphone-5s-review/4](http://anandtech.com/show/7335/the-iphone-5s-review/4)
Basically, the new arch increased registers, increased register widths, and
cleaned up some architectural warts in Arm that hurt performance.
The "4GB memory" issue is a red herring -- 64-bit is about making all the
paths through the chip wider to process more per cycle.
~~~
drill_sarge
It reminds me of AMD Athlon64 period. Everyone claimed 64bit to be responsible
for everything. In fact the majority of the performance came from the
improvements over the k7 architecture (like integrated memory controller,
hyper transport, better prediction, improved pipelines, cache etc.), new
instruction sets and so on.
------
WalterSear
Except that 64 bits is still nothing but a marketing gimmick as far as the
memory sizes in smart phones is concerned.
All those companies are panicking, not because they are being left behind
technologically, but they are being left behind in the buzzword war.
~~~
colanderman
_64 bits … memory sizes_
Processor word width has absolutely nothing to do with memory size. e.g. 8-bit
processors regularly interface with 16-bit-wide memory buses, and 64-bit
processors often allow use of 32-bit-wide pointers.
What the word width _does_ affect is how much data can be processed by each
instruction. Certain algorithms benefit immensely from this (you can easily
double throughput), but the code needs to be written to take advantage of this
(or at least, not to squander the advantage), and needs to be compiled to use
64-bit-wide registers.
~~~
pmelendez
> "Processor word width has absolutely nothing to do with memory size."
Huh? How would you address high positions on your 8Gb memory with a 32 bits
pointer that will overflow after 4Gb?
~~~
colanderman
If your processor _doesn 't_ have special pointer registers, you can use
banked memory. (e.g. the high bits are selected on a page-by-page basis by the
OS, which understands 64-bit-wide pointers.)
If the processor _does_ have special pointer registers (e.g. 6502, 6809, 8086,
AVR, etc.), you use those.
------
leejoramo
How close is Google to supporting 64-bit in Android?
For Apple the story is much more than the 64-bit A7 chip, but iOS 7 and Xcode
all being released with highly polished support for the A7.
------
salient
Prediction: Qualcomm wasn't actually ready to release an ARMv8 chip even at
the end of 2014. They may try to do it _now_ , but I don't think they were
planning for it. From recent news it seems they were more interested in
jumping on the "8-core" bandwagon (you'd think they learned their lesson when
they rushed out their first quad core chip, the S4 Pro, in order to catch-up
to everyone else and also have a "quad core chip", but no, they didn't).
So how do I figure this? Because their first 64-bit chip they've just
announced a few days ago (Snapdragon 410) is an ARM one! That blew my mind.
Why? Because Qualcomm licenses ARM's architecture in order to build its own
cores, and that _should_ mean that they are coming out with a next-gen core
_faster_ than ARM's "stock cores". And yet their very first 64-bit chip is
based on ARM's stock cores?
That made it pretty obvious that Qualcomm was not prepared at all to make an
ARMv8 chip, and I think it was mainly laziness, because of the nice position
they enjoy in the Android market right now. They thought they could squeeze 3
years out of the 32-bit Krait, when normally it should've been two.
Well the joke is on them. I certainly won't buy any phone in 2014 that isn't
64-bit, since I usually change my phones every 2-3 years, and I don't want to
buy one of the _very last_ 32-bit phones.
I was actually expecting Qualcomm to release its own custom-made ARMv8 core
_early 2014_ \- and on 20nm! So I can't believe Qualcomm was actually going to
rest on its laurels to such degree that they weren't even planning to switch
to 64-bit, and probably 20nm either, even in 2014! That's insane, and only a
company that thinks it has too much monopoly power in a market would do that.
As Andy Grove used to say - stay paranoid about your competition. A paranoid
company would've expected at least to _some degree_ Apple to release its first
64-bit chip this year. But they didn't even have to do that. They just had to
follow the _original_ plan. The one that says release a new core every 24
months, and on a new process node (the one ARM is also following). What ever
happened to that plan?
------
DigitalSea
While 64 bit mobile processors are certainly a significant step forward for
mobile computing, at present 64 bit processors for mobile are a gimmick
because it's going to be a long time before the capabilities of such a chip
can be taken advantage of. All this means is that we'll be seeing phones hit
the market that have 16gb plus of RAM and well, I think we are a long way off
seeing phones with that much memory hit the market. We are only seeing phones
with 3gb of RAM that require equally as large batteries to power them like the
Samsung phones.
It took years for the PC market to transition from 32 to 64, and it'll take
years for mobile to do the same. The amount of time it will take means
competitors shouldn't worry because by the time 64 bit processors make sense,
everyone will be manufacturing one. Sure memory addressing is just part of the
picture and a 64 bit processor means data bandwidth is double that of a 32 bit
chip which can be seen below 4gb of RAM, I think at present the iPhone isn't
taking advantage of such improvements.
~~~
jjtheblunt
The processor, in 32bit mode, offers more on-core registers, and a beefier
instruction set.
Programs compiled by a compiler aware of those distictions should
significantly, measurably, perceptibly outperform those compiled for the older
more constrained architectures.
------
socialist_coder
If only Apple would give us bigger screens! I love iOS but the bigger screens
of the top Android phones really have me wanting.
~~~
jlarocco
Please no. Some of the Android phones are so large they just look ridiculous.
If a person wants a tablet, they should buy a tablet.
~~~
epsylon
There's a huge difference between a tablet and a screen size larger than the
iPhone's.
------
gnator
I think Apple pulled a good one on Android and other mobile OSes. With
Android's ecosystem being so fragmented and Windows is still trying to get a
foot hold on the apps market, a push to 64bit will further fragment their
ecosystem.
~~~
w1ntermute
> With Android's ecosystem being so fragmented
Except that's just FUD: [http://www.phonearena.com/news/New-Android-and-iOS-
fragmenta...](http://www.phonearena.com/news/New-Android-and-iOS-
fragmentation-charts-are-just-as-flawed-as-the-term_id50332)
~~~
acdha
[http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html](http://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html)
shows it's not, although it's definitely improving. The best way for that to
continue is not to pretend the problem doesn't exist but rather to keep
reminding carriers and vendors that this is one of the reasons they're less
successful than they hope.
------
ramsaysnuuhh
Can anyone explain to me why being 64 bit matters on a phone?
~~~
michaelt
Often when a CPU becomes "64 bit" it's not just the memory bus that's
expanded, but all the CPU registers become wider, and often more are added.
For example A32 had 14 32-bit registers, whereas A64 has 31 64-bit registers.
This can speed up a variety of calculations.
For example adding 64-bit numbers; finding the end of zero-terminated strings;
certain hashing and encryption operations; and so on.
It's also good marketing, of course.
~~~
colanderman
Yes, the importance of _more_ (and to some extent _larger_ ) registers can't
be understated. If you're not paying close attention, register spills (i.e.
when the compiler doesn't have enough registers so decides to stick stuff on
the stack) can easily turn decently performing code into poorly performing
code if the register spill happens in a tight loop.
14 registers is pretty tight. 31 registers are better, and doubling the width
helps for structure locals and parameters (which Clang/LLVM fortunately does a
good job of keeping in registers). (I do a lot of work on a processor 60-odd
64-bit registers, and even then GCC decides to spill registers now and then.)
------
squozzer
My fear is that touting a certain number of bits in the instruction set as a
proxy for technological leadership will bite Apple in the ass. It's never been
something they emphasized with much success -- e.g. the early PowerPC chips
were arguably superior to their x86 contemporaries but it wasn't enough to
compel users to switch.
And whether Apple wants to buy into the chip game, well, good luck with that.
------
7952
Companies like Apple and Google have significant power to direct the
investment efforts of their competitors. Adopting something just to catch up
with Apple is a marketing gimmick. Using that money to add more RAM or improve
the integration of the software is not a gimmick and could give an edge. Just
like how Microsoft got distracted by Bing whilst Google built an OS.
------
noobiemcfoob
anyone who argues that 64-bit at the mobile level is worth anything other than
being a marketing gimmick is an idiot. We've had 64-bit at the desktop level
for years and the large majority of desktop programs have yet to find a way to
take true advantage of it.
All 64-bit does at the mobile level is introduce a ton of power loss for no
real performance gain. The power usage Apple is reporting is likely due to
other technological improvements that more than compensate for 64-bit's loss.
The first poster had it right. All this does is screw up the rest of the
industry, make them scramble, while Apple can buy time to figure out what to
do next.
Side note, Qualcomm's layoffs have little to do with their processor line...
------
data-cat
This makes me wonder when 128 bit processing will come around.
~~~
codeflo
We already have 128-bit registers for vector computations (for example, the
SSE registers in x86).
As for addressing 128 bits of memory: that's more than a century off even if
memory continues to double every two years (which doesn't seem likely to begin
with). It's actually plausible that the step to 64-bit addressing was the last
one, ever.
~~~
dragontamer
64-bit ARM means passing around 64-bit pointers by default.
In most code settings, this pollutes the cache (you can only hold half as many
pointers), and leads to slightly weaker performance.
64-bit computing is NOT an advantage in the phone world. It is a massive
advantage for database applications or large web services... but certainly not
for phone apps in the near future.
~~~
codeflo
I know what 64-bit computing is. And I didn't say anything about phone chips,
or ARM. It seems like you're posting this rant to every subthread, regardless
of content?
------
sifarat
Ah! remind of the times, he fucked up himself. Now the baby (fakestevejobs) is
on the right track. _chuckles to himself selfishly_
------
jjdro
Apple needs to capitalize on this by abandoning their current lameass
numbering scheme and releasing the iPhone64 next year.
------
adamnemecek
> A 64-bit processor handles data in bigger chunks than 32-bit processors, so
> it can get jobs done faster.
If it is faster, it's not because it 'handles data in bigger chunks'.
~~~
coldtea
Well, partly it is because of that.
~~~
adamnemecek
Explain please. Are you talking about the fact that if you are doing
calculations on 64-bit operands that it might take you fewer cycles?
~~~
colanderman
Yes; this is true of any vector operations in algorithms that are not
constrained by memory bandwidth.
------
guttermaw
Tim Cook should do the next keynote in an invisible nano-robe.
The whole industry will be naked in a week.
~~~
wmf
To be fair, iOS is getting performance improvements from ARMv8. That leaves me
with the question of whether such improvements apply to non-ObjC code and if
so why the rest of the industry didn't realize that.
~~~
danielsju6
Objective-C has some really interested 64-bit tricks, here's a great blog post
on the changes and how they affect things [https://mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-
qa-2013-09-27-arm64-and-yo...](https://mikeash.com/pyblog/friday-
qa-2013-09-27-arm64-and-you.html)
------
goggles99
Android has basically been a three legged horse in the speed/performance
because of the Dalvic runtime anyway. Who cares about 32/64 bits. When Android
comes out with it's new java compilation model and runtime (ART) in version 5
and claims that your phone OS and apps can now execute twice as fast, where
does that leave Apple in the performance race?
All of this does not really matter anyway. iPhone has always had better
performance than almost every android phone. This has not saved them from
losing massive market share. The PC/Mac history is repeating with Android/IOS.
~~~
MaysonL
_The PC /Mac history is repeating with Android/IOS._
Exactly: Apple dominates the high end, and is at 0% of the low (some might say
junk) end.
~~~
goggles99
>* Apple dominates the high end, and is at 0% of the low (some might say junk)
end.*
Where did you get the idea that Apple dominates at the high end? They haven't
for a while now.
The Galaxy S4 was outselling the iPhone 5 all by itself for several months
(before the 5s came out). The collective of high end Androids have taken over
the high end market on a seemingly permanent basis. Apple is at less than 50%
and is on a steady decline vs the (high end) Android collective of phones.
------
wnevets
"says the Qualcomm employee."
sounds legit to me.
------
Nursie
It it hit them in the gut it's because they wanted to supply the chips, and
had a good thing going. 64 bit? Meh.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google’s DeepMind AI can lip-read TV shows better than a pro - seycombi
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2113299-googles-deepmind-ai-can-lip-read-tv-shows-better-than-a-pro/
======
bryanrasmussen
this is a definitely a boon to espionage/police work.
I wonder if you would have to get a warrant to make a video in public of
someone walking and talking and then running it through your AI to find out
what they were talking about.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Set up a Gmail account as a journal for my two year old and Google closed it - gremlinsinc
So, I setup a gmail account for my two year old to send journal posts to, images, videos, etc...Also to preserve his name as a username.<p>Basically a way to communicate with him in case something happens to me.<p>Google closed it for violating policies, no reason nothing. I responded that this was the purpose of the account and that I was not familiar with any violations and so far no response to that.<p>Seriously, this really makes me dislike google. I'm a huge PAID google user including: Fi, YoutubeTV, Play Music Premium-family account.<p>Anyone have any similar horror stories? Any resolution?
======
pwg
> Any resolution?
Reduce your google usage to as close to zero as you can achieve.
Really, if you have data you value, and wish to preserve long term, there is
no real alternative than to host it yourself and take care of it yourself.
Placing it on anyone else's computer leaves you open to the whims of that
"anyone else". You can't violate a TOS when there is no TOS because you are
storing the data on your own machine that you own and control.
And, if you want an email address for him that is more permanent then buy a
domain name for him, at which point he will have (provided the domain payments
are made on time) an email address that can't disappear at the whims of a
corporate entity. You don't have to actually run the hosting yourself (there
are entities that will operate the email hosting for you linked your own
domain) but you should make sure to always have a copy of all the email
traffic on a machine you own and control to avoid the problems of again being
at the whims of others. I've had the exact same email address myself for a bit
over twenty years now, it has been operated over five different ISP's, but all
of the content I've chosen not to delete is sitting on disks I own, and backed
up to other disks I own.
------
crhatfield
I did a quick search and found out that you can use something called the
"Family Link" app. Here is an article regarding it.
[https://support.google.com/families/answer/7103338?hl=en](https://support.google.com/families/answer/7103338?hl=en)
I have several email addresses that I reserved for my children and grandchild
way-way back when gmail was by invite-only, I guess I just got lucky and none
of them got dropped (yet), but I guess the times are changing. I'm going to
give this a shot too, just to cover my rear end.
------
idoh
A while back there was a Gmail ad that touted doing exactly this,
[https://youtu.be/zhPklt9nYas](https://youtu.be/zhPklt9nYas)
...so why did they ban it?
~~~
rckoepke
Impressively relevant link. OP may be able to include this in his messages to
Google.
OP: Is google at least providing you with the ability to "Take Out"[0] your
data from that account , or are the messages truly lost for now?
0: [https://takeout.google.com/](https://takeout.google.com/)
------
gtirloni
People open secondary Gmail accounts all the time and they are never closed. I
don't think the reason your account was closed was that it was for your son.
Were you uploading a lot of images/videos? That might have triggered some
alert that you were using the account as backup/storage. That has been against
their policy for a long time.
------
przeor
gmail is for contacting people, what was your job to be done ? sounds like it
was smth else aka backup data?
~~~
frou_dh
They were contacting their son. Only that the son won't be inclined to check
his email until years into the future.
Of course there are other ways to achieve much the same thing.
------
DrNuke
has to be with children law or similar, irrespective of you being his/her dad?
------
moocow01
COPPA
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Introducing NodeJS-Dashboard - weareformidable
https://formidable.com/blog/2016/10/12/introducing-nodejs-dashboard/
======
STRML
A nice little dash. Surprisingly, I found the most valuable part of it is
honestly just splitting stdout/stderr, as the rest of the data is relatively
easy to access (except event loop lag, but there are packages like
toobusy[[https://www.npmjs.com/package/toobusy-
js](https://www.npmjs.com/package/toobusy-js)] to help with this).
It doesn't work in combination with nodemon or babel-watch (yet), but the code
looks very clean & simple so I assume it'll be an easy update.
If you're looking for more granular reporting & monitoring I can heartily
recommend pm2's web dashes
[[https://github.com/Unitech/pm2](https://github.com/Unitech/pm2)]. There are
also terminal dashes around like pm2-gui
[[https://www.npmjs.com/package/pm2-gui](https://www.npmjs.com/package/pm2-gui)].
Nice (and clean) work @formidable.
------
michaelmior
Anyone interested in this sort of thing should definitely check out blessed-
contrib[0] which this is based on.
[0] [https://github.com/yaronn/blessed-
contrib](https://github.com/yaronn/blessed-contrib)
------
partycoder
Not necessarily good to separate stdout from stderr. Sometimes you want to see
an error in its context.
Then, if you have 800 requests per second, reading logs in this way will not
be very valuable.
Best way I have found to manage logs is:
\- give requests a unique id. use that id when logging anything related to
that request.
\- have logs in unformatted json format for size. e.g: use bunyan to save
them, use bunyan-cli or jq to read them.
\- use unix tools like grep, sort, uniq, wc, etc. to find things...
\- you can also feed your logs to elasticsearch/kibana or another aggregator.
e.g: logio.org.
Again, jq is very useful processing json. it can help you query logs and find
what you need, and format results in any arbitrary way. Make your logs
queryable, don't save formatted logs. you will make your life difficult in
this way.
------
AriaMinaei
Nice! And I love webpack-dashboard[1] too!
Long, unreadable stack traces are still an issue though. pretty-error[2]
helps.
[1] [https://github.com/FormidableLabs/webpack-
dashboard](https://github.com/FormidableLabs/webpack-dashboard) [2]
[https://npmjs.org/package/pretty-error](https://npmjs.org/package/pretty-
error)
~~~
ionwake
Pretty-error sounded cool until I read this: ...could potentially break
packages that rely on node's original stack traces
=[
~~~
AriaMinaei
Yeah I haven't run into that issue for a long time. It's there so that on the
off chance that you do run into it, you know where to check first :)
Give it a whirl. If it breaks something, disable it (takes one line), and open
an issue :)
~~~
ionwake
Ok will do thanks!
------
afarrell
Is there anyone interested in improving the UX of the stock nodejs in-terminal
debugger but who just needs money to do so? Because the experience of "run
this single test and pop into the debugger at line 14 to poke around" has
several warts that I'm surprised haven't been fixed yet:
1) Having to call `cont` at the beginning rather than the debugger stopping at
the actual place where the `debugger` line is placed.
2) Having to call `repl` in order to start printing things
3) After calling `repl`, not being able to get back to the mode where you can
go to the next line and jump into functions.
4) If jumping into an express.js route, inspecting the request sometimes just
results in the message "no frames".
~~~
AgentME
Why not use chrome devtools to debug node? It's now a built-in feature as of
v6.3.0 and no longer requires the 3rd-party and kinda buggy node-inspector
module. Just use the --inspect command-line flag. (--debug-brk too if you want
it to start paused on the first line.)
~~~
nnq
maybe you're on a test server (no GUI) and for whatever reason you also don't
want to remote debug with node-inspector, you want it all quick and dirty via
ssh ;)
Python's "baked in" command line debugger that you get via `import pdb;
pdb.set_trace()` is awesome for this kind of quick and dirty ssh debugging so
if you're looking for inspiration on how node's command line debugger should
work, check it out. I always miss python's pdb when working with JS or PHP
or... anything else.
~~~
AgentME
I believe you could use SSH's -L flag to forward a port from the server, so
you could run `node --inspect ...` on the server and use Chrome on your local
machine.
------
Kiro
Extremely stupid question but when does it write to stderr without crashing
the whole app?
~~~
popey456963
Whenever there's an error which is non-fatal. Do console.error("Your error")
and it'll write to stderr or alternatively process.stderr.write("Your
Error\n").
Albeit rare in normal JS because it seems most things are fatal when they
break, lots of libraries use it.
------
igl
Couldn't make it work nicely with child-processes :(
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rejection improves eventual impact of manuscripts - ananyob
http://www.nature.com/news/rejection-improves-eventual-impact-of-manuscripts-1.11583
======
JamisonM
This makes sense from my experience, decent papers that are rejected are
rejected by reviewers, who themselves are doing related research and
publishing papers. This means that they have been exposed to a larger group of
people who would want to cite them later, writers, not readers.
If you review and reject a decent paper that needs improvements when you see
the revised version published (or an un-revised version for that matter) you
are likely to be drawn to read it again and it is likely to come to mind when
you are later doing research that can use that information.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Least Liked Programming Languages - Garbage
https://www.oreilly.com/radar/the-least-liked-programming-languages/
======
goto11
I found this funny:
> Ruby more disliked than Java? What’s going on? I’ve had some fun programming
> in Ruby; it is, for the most part, a “do what I meant, not what I said”
> language, and 15 years ago, that promise made lots of programmers fall in
> love.
Yes, and now someone else have to maintain your fun code! The problem of
maintaining "do what I meant, not what I said"-code is that after a while it
becomes "does what some guy (who is long gone) meant at one time."
------
randomcarbloke
Expected to see Q here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Burrows-Wheeler Transform [video] - bane
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WRANhDiSHM
======
daemonk
Wow this is a great video. I was able to implement a simple python version of
the BWT as described in the video here:
[https://gist.github.com/damiankao/908fe1fd6562dc75f40c](https://gist.github.com/damiankao/908fe1fd6562dc75f40c)
------
dkural
This algorithm is widely used in genomics. Here's an explanation by Ben
Langmead, a computational biologist, with some Python code as well:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n7NPk5lwbI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4n7NPk5lwbI)
The original paper, interestingly, only published as a report:
[http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/SRC-
RR-124.pdf](http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/Compaq-DEC/SRC-RR-124.pdf)
------
dalke
Fun! Now I'm going to watch the whole 'Compressor Head' series. Thanks,
Googler Developers!
------
jldugger
Finally, an explanation that kinda sorta makes sense of why it's reversable.
~~~
dnautics
if only it explained how it works!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
William S. Lind, fourth generation warfare, conservatism, and “cultural Marxism” - aspenmayer
https://4thgenwar.wordpress.com/2016/07/03/trump-meets-man-who-inspired-2011-terror-attack-deadlier-than-orlando-shooting/
======
aspenmayer
Original title was clickbait and lacked context. It was:
Donald Trump Meets William S. Lind
Background
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Lind](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_S._Lind)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-
generation_warfare](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth-generation_warfare)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rudimentary Currying and Partial Application in Python - ighost
http://gist.github.com/128202
======
jmillikin
[http://docs.python.org/library/functools.html#functools.part...](http://docs.python.org/library/functools.html#functools.partial)
This already exists in the standard library as functools.partial, except the
stdlib version is better in nearly every way.
~~~
brutimus
The one place where the functools.partial failed me was in partialing on class
methods. functools.partial actually gives you a callable class, instead of the
functional closure that this example gives you (though I don't really consider
this to be that great of an example). When a class is instantiated, the method
functions (unbound methods) are turned into bound methods, something a class
can't be. Guido talks about this a bit whole process here... [http://python-
history.blogspot.com/2009/02/first-class-every...](http://python-
history.blogspot.com/2009/02/first-class-everything.html)
~~~
ighost
So python guys are still looking for the One True Way to do this? How
unpythonic.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Best Espresso in NYC - bluepanda_
http://hery.ratsimihah.com/blog/nycafe/
======
bluepanda_
Feel free to add spots by sending a pull request at
[https://github.com/hery/hery.github.com/blob/master/_posts/2...](https://github.com/hery/hery.github.com/blob/master/_posts/2013-03-12-nycafe.markdown)
pull or emailing me changes at [email protected].
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tim Cook Speaks Up - replicatorblog
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-10-30/tim-cook-im-proud-to-be-gay
======
ForrestN
I am incredibly grateful to Cook for this, not least because of how it will
affect young gay people.
When I was a child, I felt generally good about myself. I was reasonably
smart, well-spoken, curious, and so on, and I wanted to do something important
with my life. Some nagging part of me suspected I was gay from very early on,
but I resisted it intensely. I wasn't really afraid of being mistreated,
although I probably should have been. People were already calling me names so
I wasn't worried about that. More important for me was my sense that being gay
meant being marginal.
There hasn't been a gay President, and at least when I was a child there
weren't many gay people visible to me at all. The image of gay people
presented to me were not powerful, focused on frivolous things, and consumed
by attitude and lifestyle. If I wanted to do something important, I couldn't
possibly be gay. It just didn't fit.
Knowing that the CEO of not only the most powerful company, but also the most
admirable company, is gay would have helped me enormously. I always wanted
apple products even before I could afford them, and this would have meant a
clearly visible path forward. I can't imagine how happy this must be making
some confused young people, given how happy it's making me right now.
~~~
dwild
At first I didn't like the news. Tim Cook is gay, so what? I though 5 seconds
about it and then I realized how actually we still need this... we still need
to remind people that there's nothing wrong with being gay. That's sad that we
are still at this point.
~~~
angersock
Yep.
Now if only we could remind people that there's nothing wrong with having an
unpopular opinion.
After all, Brendan Eich has done more for computing than Cook ever will.
~~~
Tloewald
Brendan Eich is entitled to his opinion, and a large not for profit is
entitled not to want someone with that opinion as a figurehead.
As for who has done more for what — web browsers were going to have a
scripting language. Is Javascript so astoundingly good that we can only assume
any alternative would have been worse?
~~~
downandout
I don't believe in the cause that Eich donated to. But taking away someone's
job over a political donation is preposterous and disturbing. If he had
donated to a liberal cause and was forced out because conservative employees
had a problem with it, the entire media would have come down on Mozilla like a
ton of bricks. Instead his resignation was celebrated.
Chilling political discourse by threatening the livelihoods of those you
disagree with is a threat to democracy itself and should not ever be allowed
to happen. Eich's forced resignation was an offense against everything America
allegedly stands for.
~~~
smtddr
_> >I don't believe in the cause that Eich donated to. But taking away
someone's job over a political donation is preposterous and disturbing._
Let's keep in mind nobody legally kicked him out. He left because he couldn't
deal with the consequences of his actions. The law protects your free speech,
but does not protect you from the consequences of it.
[http://xkcd.com/1357/](http://xkcd.com/1357/)
Also, let's not forget how nasty the whole prop8 campaign was...
[http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/brendan_eich_s...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/outward/2014/04/04/brendan_eich_supported_prop_8_which_was_worse_than_you_remember.html)
....Eich could have donated to prop- 2,147,483,647, to ban interracial
marriage. It would be his right, but I hope society would backlash at him the
same way as prop-8 donation caused.
~~~
downandout
He was forced out, as everyone is well aware. You are advocating for a society
where political intimidation is acceptable. There are many examples of such
countries around the world. None have worked out well.
~~~
smtddr
If I understand your position correctly, then if there really was a prop to
ban interracial marriage we should all be okay with that? I don't see any
difference between a ban on gay marriage and a ban on interracial marriage.
I just want to be sure I understand your calibration settings. If you think a
prop on banning interracial marriage should be just as acceptable as what you
seem to be saying for prop8, then I'm done discussing this with you.
~~~
scintill76
Since you linked xkcd: [https://xkcd.com/1431/](https://xkcd.com/1431/) It's
easy to look down on interracial marriage bans from our oh-so-enlightened
modern view, but it took a long time to even get there. You have to look at
these ideologies in the context that they were formed in. If the graph is
correct, then when Eich donated, same-sex marriage didn't have majority
support. (Setting aside what California's specific numbers were.) This isn't
to say that "might makes right", but that Eich expressed his vision for how
society should be, and it's only fair to also consider how the rest of the
society felt about it.
In other words, how do you know views you hold today won't be considered the
vilest bigotry in 30 years? Is your moral compass so special, that you would
have fought for interracial marriage, even if you were born a white in the
southern US in the 1800's?
~~~
icebraining
_If the graph is correct, then when Eich donated, same-sex marriage didn 't
have majority support._
It did among the society composed of Mozilla supporters. This idea that
society is not people you interact and work with (and in this case, even
direct) but the random populace in your general geographic area was wrong
before the Internet, and it's completely wrong today.
If he didn't realize that, I'd say his out of touch with the people he was
supposed to work with.
_Is your moral compass so special, that you would have fought for interracial
marriage, even if you were born a white in the southern US in the 1800 's?_
What's with this topic and strawmen? Nobody demanded he fought for gay rights.
Most people don't fight for gay rights, and you don't see them get criticized
(in this community). Just not to invest his time and money to fight against
it.
Regardless of either his ousting was justified or not (personally, I'm
conflicted), most arguments here are terrible.
~~~
waps
I find this extremely hypocritical. Does this justify obstructing his career
and publicly nailing him to the cross ? NO.
If you're a liberal : please explain why Mozillans don't have the right to
their own political opinion, right to do whatever they want with their money,
...
If I ever met anyone who expressed this opinion to me, you or anyone else, I'd
do the very best I can to remove them from my presence, company, sabotage
their career, whatever I can.
And I'll feel as smug about it as you. I'm defending freedom and democracy by
doing that.
~~~
icebraining
I specifically said that I'm divided on the issue and I haven't taken position
one way or the other, I just disagree with those particular arguments.
If you want to make me into the enemy, go ahead, but you're the Quixote here.
------
avinassh
Excellent news. I am from India where being gay is a crime in this country.
Leaders of this country believe that being gay is a disease and it can be
'cured'[0]. According to Indian Penal Code 377[1], if you are gay you can be
imprisoned for life. I had a friend and two years ago he committed suicide
because he was gay. In India it's not easy to be gay. Parents and societal
pressures can make anyones life living hell. His parents made his life
horrible, as if he had committed some crime and they never accepted him.
Everyone around him were mocking. After his suicide also, his parents behave
as if it was good riddance for them and they don't miss him at all. And rather
they are happy because now they don't have to answer society.
Just today morning I read a news[2] that a software engineer working in
Infosys was booked for Sec 377 and put in jail. In June 2014, seven people
were booked under Section 377 by the Bangalore Police [3]. So far 200 people
have been prosecuted under this law [4].
That's the reason I don't see any famous Indian, those who work in movies or
HNI, coming out and accepting they are gay. I really hope people in other
countries also encourage actions of Tim Cook so that people have freedom to
express their wishes and sexuality.
[0] - [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/05/india-health-
minist...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/05/india-health-minister-
ghulam-nabi-azad-homosexuality-a-disease_n_890143.html)
[1] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_377_of_the_Indian_Penal...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_377_of_the_Indian_Penal_Code)
[2] - [http://www.bangaloremirror.com/bangalore/cover-
story/Sec-377...](http://www.bangaloremirror.com/bangalore/cover-
story/Sec-377-slapped-on-Infosys-techie-after-wife-catches-his-gay-acts-on-
spycam/articleshow/44964745.cms)
[3] - [http://www.bangaloremirror.com/bangalore/cover-story/Six-
mon...](http://www.bangaloremirror.com/bangalore/cover-story/Six-months-after-
SC-verdict-seven-booked-under-homophobic-law/articleshow/36777540.cms)
[4] -
[http://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/imgs1.aspx?filename=41070](http://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/imgs1.aspx?filename=41070)
~~~
srean
While what you say is true, for the benefit of the readers not very familiar
with India I would like to add a few things for context. If from the name of
the politician linked by the parent comment you come to the conclusion that
homosexuality is frowned upon only by muslim politicians, you couldnt be more
wrong. India is an incredibly high variance country. In some metros you would
find gay pubs and bars, open kissing on the streets among gay partners with no
one bothered a bit (if your state is one of the right wing ones then YMMV).
Then again there are states (correlated with Hindi and Haryanvi speaking
regions) where parents and family would kill their children, subject them to
community sanctioned gang-rape because they married or proposed to marry
someone considered different. Note that these 'punishments' and 'corrective
measures' have popular sanction within the community and the perpetrators
often voluntarily surrender after the incident.
It is as if India remains frozen in different centuries in different regions,
ranging from the modern to the grotesquely medieval. If you ask your local
hindu rightwinger, its of course all the muslim invaders fault that they have
to keep continuing these practices. Hinduism of course has done nobody no
wrong, just been stabbed in the back (this should sound familiar).
Anal sex (in fact anything apart from missionary position) continues to be a
crime according to law but it is not something that gets enforced unless the
enforcer has some specific axe to grind. That law certainly does not represent
practice. Indian legal system is another weird thing. Most of the laws were
set down by the colonizers, not to set a framework for justice but to
facilitate control. We as Indians have done little to dispose that baggage,
rather it has been actively embraced by those in power to exercise similar
control, often with a lot of popular support.
Quite interestingly, a marginalized community would see nothing wrong in cruel
treatment of another marginalized community, often happily taking the lead in
the harassment. A low caste person in a caste'ist state would see nothing
wrong in hounding someone just because he is muslim, or belongs to a caste
that is even lower. A gay person in such a state may see nothing wrong in
persecuting other minorities.
~~~
avinassh
> In metros you would find gay pubs and bars, open kissing on the streets
> among gay partners with no one bothered a bit
I really doubt this. Kissing in public is highly frowned upon for
heterosexuals only and there will be a shitstorm if gay couple found openly
kissing. Take this incident, happened in September 2014 in Mumbai/Bombay, two
couples were harassed by police just because they hugged publicly[0]. Police
harass couples all the time if they found indulging in PDA. Read this BBC news
report for instance[1].
Wiki [2] says: "Public display of affection is regarded as unacceptable in
India. Kissing and hugging are taboo."
[0] - [http://www.mid-day.com/articles/mumbai-couple-harassed-
fined...](http://www.mid-day.com/articles/mumbai-couple-harassed-fined-for-
hugging-outside-mall/15609152)
[1] -
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7871304.stm](http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/7871304.stm)
[2] -
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_display_of_affection#Ind...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_display_of_affection#India)
~~~
srean
> I really doubt this.
You have not been frequenting the right places then. Come to Bombay, come to
Delhi, its a frequent sight outside the gay bars, more so in Bombay than
Delhi. Have to admit that the first time I saw it I was indeed caught by
surprise.
In some places you might get beaten up (yeah even possibly by the cops), or
have acid thrown at your face (this punishment is reserved exclusive for women
and applied mainly when they cut across caste or religious boundaries).
According to many in the the current ruling political party, such acts of
violence are eminently condonable and justified.
As I said, it is very high variance place, I am firmly in my thirties now and
yet I never stop learning / experiencing something new about my country as I
travel. The key is to cut across those invisible boundaries. Come to the North
East its a whole different country, different value system different culture.
Given that you posted about Bangalore current events, I am sure you know of
that sri ram sene idiot
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Ram_Sena](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sri_Ram_Sena)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pramod_Muthalik](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pramod_Muthalik)
EDIT: Yep!! some downvotes on all of my comments on this thread. Those took a
while to come, I am expecting more. The belief system that I am complaining
about does have their champions, and at politically significant levels.
~~~
argonaut
> EDIT: Yep!! some downvotes on all of my comments on this thread.
I downvoted you because mentioning how you've been downvoted is quite possibly
one of the most dull things you can say on HN.
~~~
zorbo
Downvotes on all your comments is rather rare, and usually an indication of
downvote brigading. Nothing wrong with pointing it out, IMHO.
~~~
snogglethorpe
... and the mention of downvoting was a small part of an otherwise excellent
comment anyway!
------
broodbucket
Being in such a progressive community (i.e. young nerdy people), it's easy to
forget that this is an enormous deal for some people. A friend of mine
recently came out as transgender and the general response was "oh, cool, good
for you". It's hard to fathom what it's like for people who aren't in such a
supportive environment.
There are undoubtedly many people who will no longer purchase Apple products
because of this, and I don't know society can fix this with anything but time.
~~~
efaref
If they won't buy Apple products because the CEO is gay, they probably
shouldn't buy any computers at all, seeing as the entire field is built on the
work of a gay man.
~~~
_pmf_
Konrad Zuse was not gay.
~~~
aikah
hmm ,i guess he is talking about Alan Turing who was literaly sentenced to a
horrible treatment for being gay.
That's one of the greatest shame of UK,it symbolizes bigotery in its purest
form.
~~~
oracuk
It was one of our (many) great failings and as a nation we have accepted that:
Prime Ministers Apology: [http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/11/pm-
apology-to-a...](http://www.theguardian.com/world/2009/sep/11/pm-apology-to-
alan-turing)
Royal Pardon: [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-
two/10536246/Al...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-
two/10536246/Alan-Turing-granted-Royal-pardon-by-the-Queen.html)
~~~
natch
Is it possible to knight someone posthumously? Has this happened?
~~~
crazypyro
No. No. In fact, in past times ( of kings and queens), one man was killed in a
battle and his brother was given a much higher title because you cannot give
the honorable title to a deceased individual.
~~~
codeoclock
Not only can you not knight deceased people, but when knights die they lose
their title. #QuiteInteresting. #whenwillhnsupporthashtags.
------
kshatrea
This made me well up inside. Being from a country that considers homosexuality
to be illegal (India) and having a close friend who left that country as well
as his religion (Islam) solely due to being gay, I applaud this man's spirit.
It is not only the government that must accept equality of different ways, but
so must society. Religion, culture and political climates are no reason to
deny fundamental human freedoms - the right to have consensual sex with the
people of your choice being one of them. Amazing that the one thing that we
hold up as a pinnacle of political theory - democracy - is the one that keeps
many minorities from exercising their rights. I am sure, for example, that a
referendum on Article 377 would fail in most small Indian towns. Someone
correct me if I am wrong. I hope that prominent Indians take this up as well
(there are at least a couple of Bollywood directors who are rumoured to be gay
as well as at least one business tycoon) and come out of the closet.
~~~
aragot
Tim Cook faces 2 years in jail in Singapore if he has activity even in a
private room.
Three days ago, the Court of Appeal has just judged the law was conform to the
constitution, because everyone is guaranteed equal rights no matter their sex,
race or religion, and this doesn't include sexuality.
The Straits Times: [http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/courts-
crime/stor...](http://www.straitstimes.com/news/singapore/courts-
crime/story/court-appeal-rules-section-377a-criminalises-sex-between-men-
const)
The original judgement:
[https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1348...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1348608/singapore-
judgment-for-377a-29-10-14.pdf)
~~~
cookiecaper
Performing a sexual act is a conscious behavior, wilfully chosen by the
participants (except in cases of rape, which is not relevant to this
discussion). Law is meant to regulate behaviors. It's valid to make sexual
acts illegal. It doesn't violate non-discrimination rights because wilful
participation by _any person_ is just as illegal as participation by _any
other person_. Laws that say "this is legal for people with this involuntary
attribute but illegal for people with a different involuntary attribute" are
discriminatory. If they say "sexual activity with a person of the same sex is
illegal", it's equally illegal for everyone, regardless of that person's
unchangeable, involuntarily physical attributes. Saying some people can do
something (like "only white people can engage in sexual activity with a person
of the same sex") while others can't is discriminatory. Making something
illegal _for everyone_ is not. It's just normal lawmaking.
We may disagree with Singapore and think that most sexual acts shouldn't be
illegal. But how can we go around saying law can't regulate behavior? This is
one of my big problems with the gay "rights" lobby of today -- they're trying
to make it illegal to legislate _basically anything_. If you disagree with the
law, change the law, don't codify sweeping generalizations that set a
precedent of "I was born this way and I can't control it" as an excuse for any
illegal behavior.
Only the most basic principles are protected by things like the American Bill
of Rights, and the specific behavior must be tested by the courts to see if it
conforms to the principles enshrined as fundamental rights.
~~~
courtf
I think your logic is good, but your application is lacking. Same-sex "sexual
activity" is not what has been outlawed in Singapore. There is no law that
fits the description you have outlined and it is essentially a straw-man
argument.
The law that exists states explicitly that anal and oral sex, only between
members of the same sex, is illegal. Both of these acts have been
_specifically_ made legal for a heterosexual pair.
The only difference between these two scenarios? The gender of one
participant. A woman may receive anal sex from a man, but a man may not.
Discrimination based on gender.
~~~
aragot
> Same sex sexual activity is not what has been outlawed in Singapore
Besides that I generally approve your comment, let's quote the section that
was judged by the Court of Appeal 3 days ago as conform to the constitution:
""" Article 377A
Any male person who, in public or in private, commits, or abets the commission
of, or procures or attempts to procure the commission by any male person of,
any act of gross indecency with another male person, shall be punished with
imprisonment for a term which may extend to 2 years.
"""
------
Jedd
I wonder how carefully crafted this line was:
... I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me.
It seems a particularly odd thing to slip in, on so many levels.
~~~
dodyg
Tim Cook is a Christian. This is a message to the Church.
~~~
blktiger
I have a hard time thinking of anyone as Christian if they ignore the basic
tenants of what the Bible says. Homosexuality is very clearly spelled out as
wrong. So are plenty of other things of course and the Bible doesn't specify
homosexual behavior as any more or less wrong than any other sinful act.
Christians shouldn't be treating homosexuals any different than anyone else,
but that includes letting people know that God views that behavior as sin.
~~~
arnarbi
Millions of Christians don't take the Bible as the literal word of God.
Several Christian churches have no problem with blessing the marriage of gay
couples.
A Christian is just someone who believes in Jesus Christ as a messiah. You are
referring to something much more specific.
~~~
code4life
A christian is someone that believes in the teachings of Jesus Christ, namely
salvation and sanctification. We come to salvation by believing Jesus Christ
is God and his teachings are absolute, and that he is the Word of God, the
Bible. We come to sanctification by striving daily to know God more, which
happens through the indwelling Holy Spirit we receive during salvation and
happens by reading and applying the Word of God in our soul, and then
outwardly through our body.
Being homosexual or lusting after a women in your mind are equally damning,
but rejecting these thoughts and actions and leaving them at the Cross is the
message of the Bible.
~~~
lotsofmangos
Lots, possibly most Christians, consider the bible to be a heavily edited
political work containing aspects of revelation. Some Christians explicitly
deny the bible as a historical work and even go as far as to refuse to base
their beliefs on the idea that Jesus had to exist, Jefferson being a notable
example. For my money, I am in agreement with him that Paul's stuff shouldn't
be trusted as far as you could throw it, but then I am not a Christian.
------
colinramsay
Strangely enough I'd see pictures of him at some gay pride thing and it never
even occurred to me he might be gay. I think, more accurately, it didn't
trigger anything in my brain that thought it mattered either way. Obviously
this is the way it should be!
It seems like Tim Cook isn't under any pressure to publicly announce this, so
it seems he's doing it as a way of leveraging his position to help others who
are experiencing adversity. Some will say this is a stunt for Apple, and no
doubt it does draw attention to Apple in a way, but I think you'd have to be
pretty cynical to say that this is anything more nefarious than an admirable
gesture.
~~~
computerjunkie
_> >> it didn't trigger anything in my brain that thought it mattered either
way_
This. It doesn't matter at all. Its great that people are embracing their
sexuality, but there was no need to come out to the press about it. It doesn't
change the way I see Apple as a company or even Tim Cook. He is still the same
person before and after this article.
~~~
steve-benjamins
>> there was no need to come out to the press about it
Sure there was. Here's Cook on why it was worth caming out to the press about
it:
"So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to
come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels
alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the
trade-off with my own privacy."
------
Bud
In case you think this is no big deal, here's the updated list of Fortune 500
CEOs who are openly gay:
Tim Cook
~~~
adventured
What does being openly gay mean exactly? And how do you know there aren't
others on the list?
About 2% of people self-identify as gay. So 10 people on that 500 list are
likely to be gay, give or take.
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/2014...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-
conspiracy/wp/2014/07/15/what-percentage-of-the-u-s-population-is-gay-lesbian-
or-bisexual/)
Is your theory that the remaining nine should issue press releases? How do you
know others aren't openly gay with the only people that matter: friends,
family, loved ones; as opposed to feeling the need to broadcast it to the
media.
Straight people don't go around declaring their sexuality, nor ever feel the
need to. Gay people shouldn't feel the need to either. That is a critical
hallmark of equality.
Do I have to email the press to declare that I'm openly gay and running a
Fortune 500 company?
Should I declare that I'm openly straight and running a Fortune 500 company?
It's an absurd premise, and it presumes that we all need to be declaring our
sexuality. That another person has a right to know my sexual orientation. It's
not only false but disgusting.
~~~
mdavidn
About 50% of people self-identify as female. Why are there only 26 female CEOs
in the 500?
~~~
WorldWideWayne
Women are 97 percent of preschool and kindergarten teachers, 80 percent of
social workers, 82 percent of librarians and 92 percent of dietitians and
nutritionists and registered nurses.
Is that a problem too?
~~~
alexbecker
The usual answer is "yes", but am I correct in assuming you think it's "no"?
~~~
WorldWideWayne
I don't know. I don't _think_ so ~ what's the rationale? How do you know that
perfect equality presents as perfectly equal percentages of any given
profession?
I wonder what the ratio of male/female food servers is? If they are roughly
equal, would you say we have true equality among food servers or is something
else going on?
~~~
exodust
Exactly. Stepping back a bit, in nature there are all sorts of variation and
swings in numbers from one characteristic to another.
Nobody wants women to be pushed out by force or denied opportunity to reach
their deserved position. But is that really happening whenever we see more of
one gender in a particular role than another? I don't think so.
I remember in highschool (20 years ago), only 2 girls were in my electronics
class. Those 2 girls were not given any special treatment, or picked on, or
anything. It was simply how the cards fell for that class due to most girls in
the school NOT being interested in electronics.
I suppose we could've started a campaign designed to attract more "women in
electronics". Okay, but they were never unwelcome in the first place. They
simply didn't enrol in that course.
~~~
alexbecker
> It was simply how the cards fell for that class due to most girls in the
> school NOT being interested in electronics.
It seems likely that the fact that so few girls expressed an interest in
electronics is a result of differences in the way society treats men and
women. Whether or not this is inherently a bad thing is something I think can
be reasonably debated (and at great length), but ultimately I think it is.
------
s_q_b
While everyone already knew, the act of public announcement is one of great
meaning and catharsis. Coming out is an important event for a gay person, and
for a prominent person such as Tim Cook, for our society as well. As an ally,
congratulations for having the courage to be who you are.
~~~
flexie
Everyone except me, apparently :-)
~~~
goatforce5
You subscription to Out magazine must have lapsed. He was their #1 most
powerful gay man or woman in American last year:
[http://www.out.com/out-
exclusives/power-50/2013/04/10/power-...](http://www.out.com/out-
exclusives/power-50/2013/04/10/power-list-2013?page=0,4)
I think it was one of those things where everyone knew it, but no one talked
about it because it just wasn't that big a deal.
~~~
mikestew
As a man who is straighter than most measuring rulers, you'll forgive me if I
missed that issue. :-) Myself, I had heard murmuring, but I never cared enough
to confirm. Just kind of "meh, ya gotta figure there's at least _one_ Fortune
500 CEO who's gay. Now to the issue at hand: how's my AAPL stock doing?"
Now, I'm not saying that isn't an important announcement. I have to admit that
even Mr. Straighter-than-Straight over here found his eyes kind of welling up
while reading Tim's words. Powerful stuff, and a great example for those
coming of age while dealing with who they are. But as a person whose portfolio
is weighted way too heavily in AAPL, and an owner of lots of stuff with apples
on them, I no more care about who Tim Cook shares his bed with than I do about
what sports team he favors. That's his own business, and doesn't affect me in
the slightest.
In summary, not everyone knew it if only because some of us don't care enough
one way or the other to find out.
~~~
goatforce5
I went and checked the stock price after I read the headline about Cook coming
out, but before I read his statement. I'm a bad person.
"His truest loyalty, beyond even Apple, may be to the Auburn Tigers football
team, whose memorabilia is said to stud his home and office."
...says Gawker. So now you know that too.
------
scragg
I am a white male married to a black female with 2 mixed kids living in Texas.
While we haven't experienced much bigotry our way, it has happened. The first
time I was filled with disbelief and shortly after rage while my wife (then
gf) cried.
Our lives would be different if we were born a generation ago. Thank you MLK
and Tim Cook.
~~~
dwild
Have you experienced that only from older people? We can only hope that this
kind of bigotry go away with new generations.
~~~
scragg
Older. Negative experiences with younger people were just ignorant and
probably did not intend harm. Some older folks will say things with pure hate
and complete disregard to our feelings. I understand when Cook mentions the
empathy you gain when being a part of a minority. I get anxious when walking
into a restaurant that I am unfamiliar with. I think to myself... are we are
going to be welcome here, is someone going to say something, what should I do
if that happens etc. I've never had these feelings the first 25 years of my
life.
On the other hand, there were occasions complete strangers (usually older)
have said very nice things to us in public. These positive experiences greatly
out number the negative.
~~~
dwild
We still have hope then, thanks!
------
praptak
I found this one very striking: _" Still, there are laws on the books in a
majority of states that allow employers to fire people based solely on their
sexual orientation."_
Could anyone provide details? I wonder whether it is an explicit "Being gay is
grounds for firing" or rather just plain lack of protection from firing for
being gay?
~~~
GI_Josh
I'm no expert, but I suspect this is just referring to work "at will" states,
where you can be fired without being given a reason. Thus, it could actually
be for anything: Your orientation, your work performance, that ugly shirt you
wore yesterday. Doesn't matter.
~~~
chrisBob
The issue is that there _are_ specific protections for things like age, race
and religion, but not sexual orientation. I consider orientation, like race,
to be something that you are born with that deserves the same protections.
~~~
wtbob
Of course, there's a huge difference between orientation and behaviour. One
can't help how one's born, but one can help how one behaves.
~~~
mkr-hn
There's no good reason for an employer to require me to be celibate and single
for life.
------
dsjoerg
The shocking news here is that Tim Cook is religious.
~~~
mikeash
Indeed. Oh, he's gay, we all knew that. Wait, the CEO of Apple is a Christian?
That I did not know. Judging by the comment thread here, it seems to be new to
a lot of people. It's not a big deal, but it did surprise me. It's easy to
assume that a gay man living in the Bay Area is going to be an atheist.
~~~
jshevek
He is gay, white, male, lives in the bay area, is a brilliant CEO of a tech
company...
Yes, a lot of reasons to think he would most likely be completely non-
religious, if not atheist.
I didn't know he grew up in the south, though.
~~~
refurb
Stop putting people in convenient boxes!
~~~
mikeash
But it's so convenient!
------
bobcostas55
>I’m proud to be gay, and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God
has given me.
Americans are so weird.
~~~
Fastidious
One of the things my father told me when I was very young was, you should not
be proud of things you cannot control (birthplace, sex, race, etc.). He also
told me that God (or gods) do not exist. I have not found a reason to discard
those two.
~~~
acangiano
Some people take issue with the word 'pride', because you can't really say
'I'm proud to be straight'. When Tim Cook says, 'I'm proud to be gay' however,
what he's really saying is, 'Contrary to what society expects, I am not
ashamed of being gay, because there isn't anything shameful about it.'
~~~
wicker
I completely agree with this interpretation. I'm gay and I don't find it
something to be proud of -- same as how I don't find my brown hair or blue
eyes things to be particularly 'proud' of. Unfortunately, saying "I'm not
ashamed to be gay" may be more accurate but it also feels like I'm agreeing to
frame the conversation in terms of whether being gay is something to feel
ashamed about. I don't even want that idea tied to it so, in the absence of
other options, I'll err on the side of gay pride.
I didn't think it would matter to read this from Tim Cook but it turns out I
feel very encouraged by his words. When he says "engineer" among his
attributes, well, I'm also an engineer and it gives me a sense of possibility.
~~~
acangiano
Role models are hugely important. I never found Joan Rivers particularly
funny, but I noticed on Twitter how her passing truly upset many female
comedians. It turns out that funny or not, she was a pioneer as a female
comedian and in turn managed to inspire a whole new generation of female
comedians who felt, as you aptly put it, a sense of possibility.
That's why if we want to be successful in diversifying the world of
programming we need Tim Cook to come out, we need successful women and
minorities to be vocal about their passion and work in our field (much more so
than the usual narrative of "tech discriminating against X").
------
Mahn
I wish we lived in a society where people weren't pressured into "publically
acknowledge" their sexual orientation just because it's different than the
norm. You don't see heterosexual CEOs publically acknowledging they are
banging their wife, why should it be different for other sexual orientations?
Just let everyone be.
~~~
adrianb
Heterosexual CEOs have wives...
~~~
simonrobb
Um. Women can be CEOs too.
~~~
adrianb
My point was: heterosexuals can be married. They don't need to make
statements, they can just bring their husband/wife to the company party.
------
tomasien
Warning: for the sake of your faith in HN and in humanity, do not read this
thread, especially not from the bottom up. I did - big mistake, day ruined.
~~~
general_failure
I was going to close the tab until I saw your comment. So much entertainment
below. Don't miss it!
~~~
tomasien
OMG please miss it
------
unknownBits
I am hetero, and I always asked myself: why all that fuzz about people being
gay or anything else. I don't need to be proud to be gay or hetero or
whatever, I just don't get it.. I have gay friends and never had anything
against people with other sexuality, but I truly hate the Gay Pride in our
country. I think it is pathetic to be proud of your sexual orientation and
feeling a need to show that off.
This will definitely cost me some points, I know, not being gay and not
promoting them is just dreadful.
~~~
potatolicious
You don't need to be proud of being straight because being straight is the
default - and society doesn't give you any shit for being straight.
Pride - in race, in sexuality, in gender, in whatever else - comes from
ostracism and marginalization. You band together, develop a group identity,
form communities, etc, because the world treats you poorly. Gay Pride is a
development out of necessity, not just for parade floats.
This goes beyond sexuality - there is a massive "geek" community out there
that gathers for conventions, concerts, and whatever else you can think of.
Much of this community formed as a result of ostracism, both real and
perceived.
Ditto race. Blacks, Asians, and Latinos band together - both formally in
organizations, or informally in communities - to combat the racism its members
experience, and support its victims.
When you find any description of people marginalized, odds are you will find
communities and organizations that have formed around it. Pride is a natural
response - a collective "there is nothing wrong with being us!" is a natural
response to a society that tells you that what you are is wrong.
Now, to address your context of your comment - you're incredibly lucky if you
don't "get" gay pride. I think most marginalized people would like to live
like you - never having to belong to a collective to defend your being, or
having society treat you like an individual instead of a constant outsider. To
be in a position where this marginalization is invisible to you is a fortunate
circumstance indeed.
So it's particularly annoying to those of us who are still marginalized in
society - in whatever ways - that you've turned this around to play the
victim. You live an enviable life, where you don't need to band together with
other marginalized people out of desperation or necessity, yet you have the
gall to turn it around as if you're being punished for it.
~~~
byEngineer
I'm Proud Catholic. Now let's see how many down votes I will get. Probably
voted by the same people who apparently don't care about your sex orientation.
Or religion...
Most gays _hate_ Catholic Church. Do they believe in freedoms that they demand
then?
------
wuschel
The "skin of a rhinoceros" \- I liked that the most, as it reflects the
development one makes when being part of a minority, no matter if it is
sexual, financial ethnical or political nature.
------
DonHopkins
I hope he brings back the old Apple logo:
[http://cdn3.pcadvisor.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3343143/Apple_l...](http://cdn3.pcadvisor.co.uk/cmsdata/features/3343143/Apple_logo.jpg)
------
Gigablah
I'd like a world where announcements like this are considered utterly mundane.
~~~
coldtea
We'll first have to pass from the stage were announcement like this are not
that courageous (sure might annoy some BS far right minority who nobody cares
about), and are actually the in vogue thing to say for kudos and hi-fives.
Which I think is were we are now.
The people who really had the guts, "came out" when it really mattered and
made a difference, back in the seventies and eighties.
~~~
matthewmacleod
That's a pretty offensive accusation.
Like Cook points out, the US is still country in which gay people are subject
to life-altering discrimination all the time. Most other countries are even
worse.
I suspect you're overestimating how accepted homosexuality is outside of your
bubble.
~~~
kelvin0
How is that offensive? Clearly homosexuality is much closer to being
mainstream as 20-30 or 50 years ago. TV Shows and movies and music trends all
make it much more acceptable in the mainstream. All he is saying is that it
was much more difficult for people back then to come out, much more than
today. That being said, there is clearly some distance to go until it becomes
egalitarian. That's how I interpreted the comment. Some people could also use
that 'coming out' nowadays to gain some type of social sympathy to their
advantage, which was not the case 50 years ago where they would have been
ostracized or even killed...
~~~
mkr-hn
> _TV Shows and movies and music trends all make it much more acceptable in
> the mainstream._
What you see in mainstream media is the mainstream-approved version, but it's
nowhere close to representative. Queer As Folk had more diversity in
representation in a few seasons than the decade of culture that followed it.
------
darrellsilver
Why do you think he chose to come out now?
~~~
tux3
Perhaps because everyone who cares/matters already knew, there isn't really a
point in denying or hiding it anymore.
A month or two ago some journalist accidentally said it on air if I remember
correctly.
~~~
aikah
Yep on CNBC i believe( I hate that channel,it's just ridiculous). What was
stupid is that one journalist said T.Cook was gay,others insisted he
wasnt.Like "noooooooooooo he's not!" multiple times.
That sums up the whole NBC network for me.
Frankly,nobody cared about Jobs sexual life,and he did a good job at shielding
his family from the media frenzy.
~~~
calvin_c
I'm pretty sure the reporter said that Tim Cook was open about being guy,
which led to everyone reminding him that he isn't, in fact, open about it.
------
mkr-hn
Someone isn't out until they out themselves. Until then, it's gossip and
speculation from second-hand (or worse) sources.
I'm glad the culture around him reached the point where he felt comfortable
and safe being out. Hopefully this will be a kick in the pants to the culture
around me. It's hard to date when most people are in the closet.
------
antirez
Well played, this surely can help because even many of the homophobic idiots
recognize in Tim Cook a role model, and can start questioning their ideas
about diversity.
~~~
DrJokepu
Sadly, that's not how cognitive dissonance works. When people receive new
information that conflicts with their existing beliefs they very rarely update
their beliefs. Instead, they tend to either question the credibility of the
new information or downplay its significance.
~~~
antirez
Well I hope that there is at least a small percentage that can recognize in
their homophobic believes a huge limit and improve. What is otherwise the
thing to do for somebody as regarded as Tim Cook, to remain very private about
their sexuality?
------
kelvin0
I guess Tim Cook and Brendan Eich don't see eye to eye on some issues.
~~~
facepalm
Being opposed to gay marriage does not imply being against homosexuals. But
they presumably don't see eye to eye on the subject of gay marriage.
~~~
king_jester
> Being opposed to gay marriage does not imply being against homosexuals.
How is that even possible? How is enforcing legal restrictions against a
minority class of people not inherently discriminatory?
~~~
wtbob
> How is enforcing legal restrictions against a minority class of people not
> inherently discriminatory?
That's begging the question: you're assuming that failure to recognise a
homosexual relationship is a legal restriction, which really doesn't make
sense. I can declare myself King of England, no-one in America will recognise
me as such, but that doesn't impose any legal restriction on me.
There's the side issue of all the other things which 'marriage' acts as a
legal shorthand for, but that is a side issue.
You're also assuming that discrimination is an inherently bad thing; it is, of
course, not. Discriminating between a green and a red light is a pretty useful
survival skill whilst driving, for example. Discriminating between
reproductive and non-reproductive relationships is also useful; there's a
difference.
My own personal view is that marriage is a religious matter, and that the
State should no longer recognise it at all. If two men want to say that
they're married, that's their right, just as it is mine to declare myself
Grand Vizier of the Martian Republic—and no-one should be compelled by
violence (which is what the law ultimately is) to heed either them or me.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's a cool view, but not how it works. The 'side issue' you dismiss is
really the center of it: the government denies full participation to a class
of people based on a questionable moral stance. Anything less that recognition
is a 'back of the bus' argument: if the bus goes to the same place, why do you
care if you have to sit in the back?
~~~
facepalm
Well married homosexuals get the right to adopt children (I assume). I don't
think it's just a moral stance. Maybe some people really are convinced that
having two dads is bad for children psychologically. They would probably be
wrong, but it's not a question of morals (unless you dismiss the protection of
children's wellbeing as a goal). I am not sure if science has really shown
it's not bad for children. I personally don't think so, but I can't blame
other people for thinking so.
How does adoption in general work? For example it can happen through "natural
causes" that a child has only one dad and no mother. It seems likely that
having two dads would be better than just one. But if somebody wants to adopt,
they might have to be "better than average"? Like would a single dad have a
good chance of adopting? Or does some office consider the likelihood of a
child's wellbeing in a family - so presumably they would try to find two
parents, not just one, which is discriminatory against singles? And then if
the "adoption office" (or whoever is responsible) has the choice between a
heterosexual and a homosexual couple, things become difficult?
~~~
JoeAltmaier
All that is government meddling in someone else's affairs in the most
egregious way possible. Its not as far as taking kids from single parents etc.
because they don't fit someone's model of a perfect family, but nearly there.
My cousin has 4 kids, and is married to the love of her life Lisa. Their kids
are certifiably the kindest, most considerate kids I know. There's been no
psychological damage, at least not at their hands. Ignorant outsiders may say
mean things but to blame that on these excellent parents would be twisted
logic.
Anywho, the decision about adoption is so far down the road from marriage as
to be a red herring.
~~~
facepalm
Sure, that is what I said in another comment: if you argue homosexual couples
are somehow unfit to raise children, you would also have to question other
people's fitness.
But I think you are wrong about adoption. I think it's one of the main
concerns opponents of gay marriage have. What other rights would people be
concerned about? The other one I can think of is the right to bring your
spouse into your country.
Are people going to the barricades because they don't want gays to be able to
visit their partners in hospital? I rather doubt it. Adoption is one of the
big issues.
~~~
JoeAltmaier
Adoption rules are covered under different laws. Why not attack those rules,
instead of marriage? It seems indirect. As you suggest, why not arrest, or
execute, or lobotomize as well? Unmarried people can adopt - so what's the
connection then?
I think, because the argument is thrown up semi-randomly - See! They might
adopt! That would be awful! Just another red herring, saying anything at all
that might convince a voter to strike down the right to marry.
------
leejoramo
> When I arrive in my office each morning, I’m greeted by framed photos of Dr.
> King and Robert F. Kennedy.
Personally, I was struck as much or more by this statement. This certainly
does not follow the standard political & business script that we are force
feed in the USA. I look forward to hearing more from Cook speaking to social
issues.
------
steven2012
This was pretty well known ever since Tim Cook took reins as CEO. I think
Felix Salmon "outed" him at the time, although I don't think Tim Cook ever hid
it, or was ashamed in any respect. He, however, never addressed it publicly
until now.
It's great that he has gone on record to officially address this. I'm curious
though if there will be any repercussions from much less tolerant countries
around the world. Hopefully not, and hopefully this opens up a new era of
acceptance, although some countries that outlaw homosexuality might do stupid
things. Thank goodness they are small and insignificant for the most part,
although the reaction from countries like China and Indonesia worry me.
------
lukeqsee
What struck me about this piece is how effectively and with such clarity it
was crafted: I could hear Tim saying every single one of these words in my
head. To make the written word as convincing and powerful as the well-crafted
spoken word is truly genius.
------
sarciszewski
This thread is growing faster than I can read it. Yeah, Tim Cook coming out as
gay is a positive thing, but it's not particularly novel or revolutionary.
If I were a young closeted gay person and someone said, "Apple's CEO, Tim
Cook, just came out as gay," I wouldn't jump for joy for the future of gay
people in technology. I'd instead make damn sure I didn't carry any Apple
products in public for fear of some stranger connecting the dots and bullying
me. But, hell, I grew up in a very oppressive town. (I also don't own any
Apple products.)
What matters more is that Tim Cook is not the only one to speak up about this.
I'd like to hear more CEOs come out without fear.
~~~
yourad_io
> I'd instead make damn sure I didn't carry any Apple products in public for
> fear of some stranger connecting the dots and bullying me.
This makes little sense in a world where every second device you see is an
iDevice.
~~~
sarciszewski
The key word in my sentence that I believe you overlooked is fear. Fear is
often irrational.
I can guarantee, however, that there's some bully somewhere using the fact
that some poor kid owns an iPod as today's premise for insinuating that his
victim is [insert homophobic slur here]. More than likely, this is happening
in my home town. (Fuck that place.)
------
webXL
Good for him. At first my reaction was "meh", but I think this is a net win
for gays and Apple. Homophobes probably weren't buying many Apple products to
begin with, and potential/reasonable homophobes now see another successful
leader who just so happens to be gay. The message to those people is pretty
clear: better not mistreat people because of their sexual preference; not only
will you look like an ass, but you run the risk of pissing off the person who
might be signing your paycheck one day. Not to mention designing some cool
piece of tech that you brag about owning.
------
tempodox
Props for speaking up like this. My sister is gay and I know what she's been
going through. I still hold out hope that mankind will see the day where
things like that won't matter any more.
------
stevewilhelm
Apple will go to great lengths to steal Microsoft's thunder.
I jest. This is a momentous announcement. But, I look forward to the day when
being a gay CEO (politician, sports figure, etc.) is not newsworthy.
~~~
Shivetya
No, this is because there is a midterm election in a few days.
It has nothing to do with Microsoft or Apple. It is identity politics pure and
simple.
~~~
forgotpasswd3x
Ridiculous. "I wasn't going to vote, but now that Tim Cook came out as gay, I
think I just might!" \- said no one ever.
------
rudeboy347
Big up to Tim Cook for making this move. So many people struggle with issues
of identity and live with or in fear of discrimination. Equal rights and
justice for all.
------
jjoe
Is this submission supposed to remain on the front page of HN? I was confident
the mods would have killed it very early on.
------
eyeareque
It's heart warming to see the world become a better place. I'm glad Tim did
this; While it is a small article, it will be remembered and it will change
some people's live. Just as others have done before him, and will after him,
it will lead us to a more accepting culture that we need to continue to
striving to be.
------
gioioso
I'm happy for not being gay.
Of course, this is not politically correct (because only gays are allowed to
make such a statement).
Did you note anything?
------
zoba
Congrats to Tim! I've been waiting for this for a while. I've wondered though
if he will have any problems traveling to foreign countries now. I don't know
how much he travels, but, Russia has some bad anti-gay propaganda laws so
there's at least one semi-important country to avoid.
~~~
bruceb
He will have no problems. He is the head of one of the most high profile
companies on the planet.
------
_navaneethan
This is the point I admire him irrespective of his sexuality:
_So if hearing that the CEO of Apple is gay can help someone struggling to
come to terms with who he or she is, or bring comfort to anyone who feels
alone, or inspire people to insist on their equality, then it’s worth the
trade-off with my own privacy._
------
scrumper
This is good, well done Tim Cook. A good event for gay people everywhere, like
any other prominent figure coming out publicly.
"It’s also given me the skin of a rhinoceros"
And doubly well done for rejecting the skincare regime stereotypically
associated with his sexual orientation.
------
danieldelouya
Good for him. Must be a relief.
------
sgt
I mostly agree with the sentiment that this is hardly news-worthy. But I am
sure it does a lot to the self confidence of this minority group (particularly
children, as Cook pointed out), and that can only be a good thing.
------
Wintamute
"I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me."
I'm 100% behind this, it's a great article with a great motive but this struck
me as a curious note. What do you think he's getting at?
------
rouma7
one of the many things i appreciate the most about this essay is his sense of
responsibility. its easy to see the leader of a large organization as an
extraordinarily powerful individual, but he notes the seeming smallness of
this announcement. he doesn't aim to change the world, but simply do his part.
the last paragraph is so poignant because we all witness injustices and often
act as bystanders. this is not a new phenomenon, but its important to remember
to look at ourselves first and what we're each doing in our everyday lives
------
paulojreis
"(...) and I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me". I
can only imagine the reactions if the same was said by a heterosexual person,
about heterosexual orientation... :)
~~~
ghshephard
That's the entire point being made here though - being straight isn't a
particularly large challenge in today's society. What Tim is saying here, is
that much of his empathy, and ability to appreciate minorities, and the
oppressed, derives directly from being a member of a heretofore marginalized
group. And, his ability to appreciate the importance of diversity, and to
truly understand Dr. King and his message, is a result of that, "gift from
god."
~~~
paulojreis
I understand that point. The impact of something such as this on your shaping
is incommensurable; I can only imagine how much being part of a minority
(particularly, one which is prejudiced, mocked and even attacked) shaped his
way of understanding and appreciating difference.
However, I can't agree with putting it in "that" way ("among the greatest
gifts God has given me"). Even taking into account how much such a thing will
shape a person, it seems exaggerated (to me). It sounds like he is who (and
where) he is because of his sexual orientation. He was, however, born in a
developed (and rich country); he had food, parents and housing; he also
education (and a good one, in great schools) and the privilege of working at
IBM and Apple.
~~~
ghshephard
I was responding to your comment about why this statement would have been
controversial if it had been "being heterosexual among the greatest gifts God
has given me", and explaining why taking pride in being in the
Majority/Dominant group (I am proud to be White, I am proud to be Straight, I
am Proud to be a Man) is so different than taking pride in being a member of a
marginalized group.
Clearly there were a lot of things that put Tim Cook in the position that he
is, far, far, far more important than his orientation; I.E. the fact that he
is on earth, that he is human, born after 2000 BC, etc... are all more
significant, but now we're going down a different rabbit hole than your
original comment.
------
davesque
Excellent news. For someone who has often been described as very private and
opaque, I feel like I understand him a lot better now. Not to mention the
positive social impact this will probably have.
------
brudgers
_Still, there are laws on the books in a majority of states that allow
employers to fire people based solely on their sexual orientation._
That includes Alabama where Tim Cook was born and attended university.
------
redguava
This is great. Well done!
------
equoid
I don't think it is an original observation but Steve Jobs chose a very
capable and worthy successor. Tim Cook gets more impressive each time you hear
anything about him.
------
danatkinson
Way to go, Tim! It's a shame that he had to 'come out', but I hope that being
the CEO of one of the world's biggest companies will help the LGBT cause.
~~~
Artemis2
It's a shame that this is so exceptional.
------
ulfw
Kudos to Tim!
------
andrewthornton
What kind of chair is he sitting on in the first image?
~~~
quux
It's a Freedom Chair by Humanscale
------
barking
"I consider being gay among the greatest gifts God has given me."
I don't like that statement.
Replace gay with one of white, male or straight and see how it sounds.
------
vayarajesh
Never expected that! but still lot of respect for him.. it takes lot of guts
to speak up being the CEO of the worlds biggest company!..
------
Throwaway1224
I'm prepared to get negative points for this, but who really cares if he is
gay or straight?
~~~
castis
There are a lot of people that care, in both directions. One day in humanity's
future, sexual orientation will be a non-issue. However, this day and age,
there is still a fight to be fought.
I don't care that he's gay, and it's nice that people can be who they are and
not be persecuted for it. However, other countries do far worse than vent
their frustrations about the morality and social pioneering of it all on
messageboards. You're not wrong for asking who really cares in the least bit.
It's actually kind of nice that you don't care. Not from an apathetic
standpoint, but that it's so little of a deal to you that you remain wholly
unaffected.
As weird as this may sound, I wish more people were like you.
------
ngcazz
Wasn't this public knowledge?
------
kphild
It is so extremely sad that society is so evil that this makes a big news.
------
cryowaffle
Good on him, nice work Tim.
------
deepuj
Had he come out earlier, would he still have become CEO?
------
sidcool
Greatness is not a slave to sexual orientation.
------
return0
This shouldn't be even news. Some guy says he's gay? Big whoop, it's 2014
guys.
~~~
mkr-hn
2014: still can't get married, can be fired for what I am, can't donate blood,
still deal with homophobic comments online and in person, still don't see any
non-stereotypical gay characters outside written fiction.
What's so special about 2014?
------
Istof
Who cares, make an iImplant for the Apple fans
------
MrZongle2
This is going to sound callous, but my reaction is: _big deal_.
And this should be everybody's reaction, IMO. I'll explain momentarily.
Being gay isn't easy if you aren't in a supportive environment. Hell, being
gay will get you _killed_ in some cultures and countries. In some places
you'll merely be shunned and disowned by your family and friends. As a
straight guy, I know this. How?
Because for the last 20 years or so, I've heard this again and again. The LGBT
movement is nothing if not vocal and persistent, even to the point of being
heavy-handed. I'm not saying I'm unsympathetic, I'm just saying that if
there's a target demographic for "awareness", I haven't classified to be in
that group for _years_.
So when Tim Cook officially announces his sexuality, I'm well aware that this
isn't something as casually mentioned as being left-handed, having AB- blood
type or a peanut allergy, preferring cats over dogs, or liking the color
yellow. I'm also aware that for LGBT folks who _haven 't_ come out, seeing a
successful person do so can be encouraging and inspiring.
Now regarding my "big deal" reaction...
While civilization will never be without bigots of one form or another, if we
as a society are ever going to get past racial/gender/sexual issues, then
disclosures like Cook's _need_ to be unremarkable. Comparing America's
reaction to Billy Crystal simply _playing_ a gay man on "Soap" in the 80s to
today, it seems like we've come a long way in a relatively short time compared
to other social movements.
By the same token, an incident earlier this year demonstrated that the tech
industry is probably the one of most gay- _friendly_ business sectors to be
in. Ironically, Brendan Eich was attacked, ostracized and shunned for his
beliefs because they _weren 't_ gay-friendly. As an outsider, it does not
appear that being a gay CEO in the California high-tech industry is as much of
a burden as, say, a restaurant owner in Istanbul.
Finally, Tim Cook is worth upwards of $400 million. Like all wealthy
individuals, he is generally insulated from contact with the rest of us simply
because of his lifestyle: he doesn't take the bus, doesn't live in an
apartment or typical suburban neighborhood, and certainly doesn't work in a
cubicle. He likely won't encounter _hate_ unless he tries to personally
negotiate the opening of an Apple store in Moscow or Tehran. He's not a
monster because he's rich (as far as I know he might be a really nice guy),
but he's hardly an "everyman". For what it's worth, I had a similar reaction
when many people were showering Mark Zuckerberg with praise for learning
Chinese: hell, if I was that rich, _I 'd_ have time (and money) to learn
Chinese from the best tutors.
In short, _anyone_ announcing that they're gay _should_ garner a "so what?"
reaction because as a society we _should_ be moving towards a person's actions
being more important than their appearance, beliefs, or sexual orientation.
And a multimillionaire making such an announcement today should elicit yawns
because he is not representative of a typical person.
Edit: Not surprised by the downvote without explanation. Congratulations, sir
or ma'am: _you 're part of the problem._
------
greenpinguin
Go Tim!
------
chenster
Did Steve Jobs know about it?
------
venomsnake
That's weird ... I though he had come out. I remember reading in Nytimes and
Reuters why it was a big deal that Apple will have openly gay CEO a couple of
years ago.
Anyway good for him.
------
notastartup
I had a boss who was gay. Actually lot of gay people in that company. It was
actually the best company I had ever worked for.
------
igay_timcook
Strange, all this debate about homosexuality. I wonder what the conversation
would be like if the truth was known about it...
Epigenetics is the science of how our genes express themselves. They can be
altered by many factors. Environmental, even certain strains of bacteria.
So being gay is actually not the intent of genetics, but an error in the
expression on the sexual orientation gene. This will become very public and
irrifutable in the next decade.
There will literally be a pill that will turn a gay person straight. Where
will the debate lead then? It doesn't really matter. Within two generations,
there will no longer be gay individuals (from erring epigenetics) in first
world countries.
There is a second means of being gay. Neurol pathways are formed which
redirect certain thoughts and impulses in a different way. These are strictly
experience based anomalies, usually caused by trama or
desperation/rationalization. These comprise only a very minor number of the
homosexual population.
Does this change your opinion on anything?
------
rrobbins04
uh..
------
Ad_Nauseam
Practically everybody knew that Tim Cook is gay, that's why they said that
Apple users are faggot and only faggot use Apple products.
~~~
szatkus
Well, people called it gayphone before Cook became CEO.
------
EdSharkey
Who cares about Tim Cook's personal life and preferences? Answer: no one
should care.
Tim Cook is a exceedingly boring man talking about the most
boring/banal/useless topic there is: sex preferences. Get out of my face
identity pols!
------
socceroos
I'm not sure why this is on Hacker News? I didn't think this was the place for
these types of articles. Perhaps I'm wrong in that assumption, but I'm unsure
how HN differs from Reddit if this is the case.
------
gchokov
$AAPL down 1% pre-market :)
~~~
rjtavares
That would value a CEO's sexuality at 6 billion dollars. I sincerely hope that
has nothing to do with this news.
~~~
eloisant
Well, shareholders may fear that some conservative consumers will want to
boycott Apple because of that announce. Not completely illogical.
Or they think that other shareholders will think that and lead to a drop in
the share value.
~~~
atonse
Apple, among other tech companies, has been championing gay rights pretty
publicly for a few years now. Also they've had quite a stance on renewable
energy and rebuffed investors that were climate-change deniers.
I think the type of people that would boycott Apple over this, have already
boycotted apple over the other things.
------
general_failure
While this is already known, this does show us the world is not black and
white. Tricky the whole thing.
Mozilla as a company fights for privacy and creates a lot of free software for
the general good. But people couldn't stand it's CEO being anti-gay. Now we
have the most dangerous (imo) company of all time whose CEO is gay.
Ah, good times.
~~~
stephenr
The most dangerous company of all time?
~~~
general_failure
Yes, dangerous because of it's reach. I am not very excited to live in a
walled garden. A massive one as that.
~~~
oldmanjay
Do you fear that the world gov't will pass the "everyone must use apple act"
soon?
------
emcrazyone
I simply don't get why he has to mix this article along with Apple's view of
"The company I am so fortunate to lead has long advocated for human rights and
equality for all. We’ve taken a strong stand in support of a workplace
equality bill before Congress, just as we stood for marriage equality in our
home state of California."
And in general, I think it's inappropriate to mix personal views with business
matters. No body fucking cares if your gay or what color you are. If they do,
then they are not people I would want to associate to begin with. What we do
care about, are your products the company produces, support, what you're doing
to fix bugs, etc...
Stop bringing personal BS to the business tables. Cook is way out of line for
using his position at Apple (iPhone6 in the background) as a stage to push
some personal gay message about himself.
~~~
ArtDev
Why does it matter? Because of intolerance.
The tech community needs a good hard look in the mirror. Most of us are white,
straight and male.
~~~
P4u1
I work in a tech company and most of our men are gay, seriously. Take a look
around man, it might come as a surprise for you but gays are everywhere, IT
included. By the way since when is this news(for hacker news)? Did anyone here
not know he's gay(honest question)?
------
_pmf_
Is it OK to be proud to be a gay man?
Is it OK to be proud to be a gay white man?
If you answer one question with yes and one with no, there might be a problem.
~~~
oneeyedpigeon
(Assuming you're talking about in the Western world)
Do you not see a difference between being gay and being white? Really? Is it
not obvious that one group has been historically repressed, attacked,
discriminated against, etc. by its 'counter group', whilst the other has been
the oppressor? These are about the most simplistic facts in social history, so
I find it very difficult to believe you unaware of them; it seems more likely
that you're choosing to ignore them in order to push some bizarre agenda. Just
be honest and state the point you're actually trying to make.
~~~
meowface
I actually think he makes a reasonable point, if you read his last sentence
carefully.
Realistically, it doesn't make much sense to be "proud" of being gay, just
like it doesn't make sense to be "proud" of being white.
It makes sense to be proud for staying strong in the face of discrimination
and hate speech, but being gay itself is not worthy of any pride.
~~~
oneeyedpigeon
In this context, when someone says they are "proud to be gay", I think they
are strongly inferring the "staying strong in the face of discrimination"
aspect since, unfortunately, that's pretty much a given. Also, historically,
people have thought being gay is something to be 'ashamed' of, and I think
this use of 'proud' is in contrast to that - cf. gay pride marches. No one
ever thought being white was something to be ashamed of.
~~~
V-2
No one ever thought being white was something to be ashamed of.
Really? Quite a lot of people think so.
~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Maybe, but only out of guilt, as a reaction to what has occurred throughout
history. Not 'just because' they're white.
~~~
wuliwong
It is not only out of guilt. In sports or music, many people are ashamed of
being white. In the U.S. it is nearly a foregone conclusion that you will not
be a good musician or athlete if you are white. White kids who desire to
pursue those things definitely can feel shame which has no feeling of guilt
attached to it. I'm not trying to make some grand statement about racism or
the effects, just giving a pretty cut and dry counter point to the idea that
white people never feel shame about their skin color aside from guilt.
~~~
V-2
I think the notion that "no one ever thought being white was something to be
ashamed of [for reason other than guilt]" does not stem from observaton or
experience as much as it is an _ideological_ construct - ie. it is needed to
fit nicely into a preassumed political theory
------
wozniacki
One has to wonder how - in this world filled with anonymity enabling services
like Tor or even Pastebin - it is still possible to hide a secret, out in the
open.
This is old news. Felix Salmon spelled it out in no uncertain terms when
Mr.Cook was first named CEO, in 2011. [1]
The best place to hide something - not that Mr.Cook himself wanted his
sexuality hidden; he merely did not want it to grab all the attention, away
from Apple - is still in plain sight.[2]
This also begs the question, if enough vested interests or powerful people
want something not to be talked about, is the fact still worthy of its truth
value?
This applies to the trivial case at hand - of Mr. Cook's sexuality - as it
does to the countless secrets of great gravity that were largely ignored -
concerning at least a dozen nations not including the U.S. - that Wikileaks
exposed.
[1] Don’t ignore Tim Cook’s sexuality
[http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/25/dont-
ignore...](http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/08/25/dont-ignore-tim-
cooks-sexuality/)
[2] The Purloined Letter
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purloined_Letter#Plot_summa...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Purloined_Letter#Plot_summary)
~~~
wozniacki
Huh!
What reason would you have to find even this observation disagreeable?
~~~
Karunamon
Probably because you bring Wikileaks to an unrelated Apple article. There is a
time and a place for discussing the failings of the world's governments. A
thread discussing a CEO who is able to come out of the closet is not that time
or place.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google details Chrome’s latest speed boost - Red_
http://venturebeat.com/2015/03/18/google-details-chromes-latest-speed-boost-thanks-to-script-streaming-and-code-caching/
======
X-combinator
Congrats for making the third front page.
[http://i.imgur.com/A07YxCp.png?1](http://i.imgur.com/A07YxCp.png?1)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Browsing Craigslist Made Easy - pic browsing - jerryblack
we just launched launched this new feature that allows to browse craigslist by looking at the product images. Here is the link below:<p>http://spotli.com/index.cfm?activity=0&dept_id=1&store_id=6<p>please feel free to leave a comment for any changes that you think should be some to make it even easier to use.
======
queensnake
hm; I wonder if there's a loophole in craigslist's terms-of-service that let
you make money /with other parts of a site/, as long as it's not the
craigslist part.
------
mickyblueeyes
search by zipcode would be nice!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Interspire Email Marketer - Remote Admin Authentication Bypass - redsec
https://security.infoteam.ch/en/blog/posts/narrative-of-an-incident-response-from-compromise-to-the-publication-of-the-weakness.html
======
sokolovanton
How much time did it take to spot this ? nice article by the way
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
War reporters like me will cease to exist if the web giants aren’t stopped - humantiy
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/aug/28/war-reporters-internet-giants-news-journalism-facebook-google-eu-vote-copyright
======
nailer
> But they (Google, Facebook) get paid for the advertising linked to content
> that journalists produce.
News orgs are not forced to appear on search engines or aggregator apps and
can choose not to at any time. News org profits are down because people aren't
as interested in news anymore and clickbait and outrage are generally more
popular. The non-Wikileaks people who brought you the big revelations when
they worked at The Graun (Janine Gibson, James Ball) work at Buzzfeed now.
------
cppqt_pingpong
Many war reporters also twist facts, mislead everyone who trusts them. It's
the facebook and twitter who allow everyone to be a journalist.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Block Size Increase Is Not a Solution to High Fees for Bitcoin - funyug
https://blockchaind.net/block-size-increase-not-solution-fees/
======
sova
Good writeup, have you looked into iotacoin?
~~~
funyug
I have not looked into their tech but i have heard that they have similar
issues to bitcoin when bitcoin was 0 fee i.e spam attacks and other stuff.
~~~
sova
interesting. That may very well be a huge obstacle. Because they are all about
no-fee adjoinders to the tangle. Hmmm. Other paradigms have the fee built in
as this article mentioned. That might be a way for them to mitigate this, with
some sort of implied starting transaction velocity / stickiness that could
decrease. Like a way to outdate spammy attackings and disregard their info.
Damn though, all that takes tabulation and overhead, which is where you want
to pack it all down with cryption. Man. That is a toughie.
~~~
funyug
Outdating spam attacks and disregarding their info kills the immutability part
of the system. There is currently no solution to this issue as if fee reduces
spam becomes more prominent and bloats the blockchain. Their needs to be a
balance.
~~~
sova
As as the fee goes down, spam of the tangle goes up. Wow man, this is hard
problem. Thanks for your words & study. Hope they can get it figured out. Do
you think Lightning will have it down pat?
~~~
funyug
Lightning is a great solution but it is still years away from production use.
Ethereum is doing something similar but their tech is also scheduled to be
ready in 2019. Nothing is available right now.
~~~
sova
Wonderful. Thank you for the information. I look forward to investing into
Ethereum if they get it all together. Do you feel like geopolitics will affect
the network's latency?
~~~
funyug
Yes 100%
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hacker Toolbox - st3f4no
What are the tools to help you get set and start developing awesome web products?
======
st3f4no
# Coding
[https://atom.io/](https://atom.io/) \- A hackable text editor
[http://brackets.io/](http://brackets.io/) \- Lightweight opensource code
editor
# Local Server
[http://www.mamp.info/en/](http://www.mamp.info/en/) \- Run dynamic web sites
on Apple Macintosh
# Web Design
[http://getbootstrap.com/](http://getbootstrap.com/) \- Robust and solid
framework for responsive projects
[http://fontawesome.io/](http://fontawesome.io/) \- Icons out of the box
[https://www.google.com/fonts](https://www.google.com/fonts) \- Hundred of
Fonts ready to use
[http://theolabrothers.com/sip/](http://theolabrothers.com/sip/) \- Color
picker for developers
# Collaboration
[https://github.com](https://github.com) \- Code review, and code management
[https://trello.com/](https://trello.com/) \- Free web-based project
management
[https://www.wunderlist.com/](https://www.wunderlist.com/) \- ToDo list made
easy
# Hosting
[http://aws.amazon.com/](http://aws.amazon.com/) \- Rock solid hosting
[http://www.dreamhost.com/](http://www.dreamhost.com/) \- Easy Hosting
# Analytics
[http://www.google.com/analytics/](http://www.google.com/analytics/) \-
Detailed statistics for your website
[https://mixpanel.com](https://mixpanel.com) \- Advanced analytics platform
# Mail
[http://mailchimp.com/](http://mailchimp.com/) \- Mailing list done the cool
way
# Blog
[https://wordpress.org/](https://wordpress.org/) \- Install your blog in
minutes
[https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-
seo/](https://wordpress.org/plugins/wordpress-seo/) \- Easy SEO for your blog
# Resources
[http://www.feedthebot.com/](http://www.feedthebot.com/) \- Test and improve
website for search engine
[http://stackoverflow.com/](http://stackoverflow.com/) \- Question and answer
for your project
[http://growthhackers.com/](http://growthhackers.com/) \- Unlock growth
[http://www.producthunt.com/](http://www.producthunt.com/) \- Ready to ship
your product?
# Files
[https://www.wetransfer.com/](https://www.wetransfer.com/) \- Send big or
small files from A to B.
[https://www.dropbox.com/](https://www.dropbox.com/) \- Backup, sync and share
files
# Focus
[http://www.noisli.com/](http://www.noisli.com/) \- Improve focus and boost
productivity with sounds
# Bonus
[http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/](http://lightheadsw.com/caffeine/) \-
Prevent your Mac from automatically going to sleep
[https://justgetflux.com/](https://justgetflux.com/) \- Don't get blinded by
your computer screen
------
keviv
#Coding
Sublime Text 3 - [http://www.sublimetext.com/3](http://www.sublimetext.com/3)
Coda 2 - [http://panic.com/coda/](http://panic.com/coda/) ($99)
#Local Server
Laravel Homestead -
[http://laravel.com/docs/4.2/homestead](http://laravel.com/docs/4.2/homestead)
#Hosting
DigitalOcean -
[https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=4d7fb2079a96](https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=4d7fb2079a96)
(Use my referral link and get $10 credits)
Collaboration:
Bitbucket: [https://bitbucket.org/](https://bitbucket.org/) (Free private
git/mercurial repos) Asana: [https://asana.com/](https://asana.com/) (Task
Management) Hipchat: [https://www.hipchat.com/](https://www.hipchat.com/)
(Team Chat)
#Mailing list
Madmimi:
[https://madmimi.com/short_ref/iMk](https://madmimi.com/short_ref/iMk)
(referral link)
~~~
st3f4no
I will try Madmimi :) how does it compare with Mailchimp?
~~~
keviv
It's pretty good.
------
wanghq
Oh, what a coincidence! I thought someone posted my project here :) I just
made a toolbox last weekend during the rails rumble. It's
[http://hackertoolbox.com](http://hackertoolbox.com) (right now it's being
judged by judges and other teams so I have to redirect it to railsrumble
site). The seed data is from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5235137](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5235137)
so all the tools are suggested by HN hackers.
I will add any tools posted here. And of course, you're welcome to post your
favorite tools to hackertoolbox.com or/and review them.
Lastly, thanks for asking the question :)
~~~
st3f4no
Great!
------
MalcolmDiggs
A big ass whiteboard, some pizza, some beer, and some people who are smarter
than me.
------
mtmail
seems related Hackernew Tools of the Trade 2014
[https://github.com/cjbarber/ToolsOfTheTrade](https://github.com/cjbarber/ToolsOfTheTrade)
~~~
st3f4no
Thank you for the link.
------
atomical
How does Caffeine compare to the NoSleep extension?
~~~
st3f4no
Didn't know NoSleep extension. I will try it.
------
kentbrew
Um, Dreamhost? No. Nightmare.
~~~
st3f4no
Really? Never had problems with them. Where do you host?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mobile is Eating the World - tomazstolfa
http://a16z.com/2014/10/28/mobile-is-eating-the-world/
======
cageface
_There is no point in drawing a distinction between the future of technology
and the future of mobile._
I find Evans' analysis of mobile a bit hyperbolic. Yes the growth of mobile is
explosive and, in some cases, it's displacing older technology. But for a lot
of use cases small touch screen devices are simply inadequate. It's probably
true that a lot of people that used to use desktop or laptop computers just to
check email and Facebook have shifted that activity to their phones and
tablets. But its equally true that these devices are still really only good
for quick, informal communication and browsing. Despite the best efforts of
Apple and Samsung to persuade us otherwise, tablets are lousy for getting real
work done.
So we find ourselves in the ironic situation of a domain that is experiencing
almost unprecedented growth but in which almost nobody is making money except
Facebook and the vendors of what are essentially gimmicky slot machine games.
My take on this is that the market for richer desktop/laptop software isn't
going anywhere soon. People that need to edit complex spreadsheets, compose
scores for films, analyze genomes, and render 3d effects need real computers.
As a developer this kind of customer is in many ways a better customer to
serve than a teen snapping selfies on a phone.
~~~
pfitzsimmons
If you look at the biomechanics, it does seem like a keyboard + mouse + >=20"
screen is the optimal setup for doing actual work. A keyboard is simply the
most efficient way to get information into a computer (the exception is that
some graphics editors work might work better with a multitouch screen, it will
be interesting to see if someone builds a touch-first photoshop killer). That
said, there might be a convergence where mobile devices learn to run desktop
software, and can be docked to a mouse/keyboard/monitor. But we are still a
long ways from that point, and there is no great incentive to build office
suites for mobile devices that are efficient for power/work users.
Mobile is great for 1) consuming content 2) interacting with your extended
environment when you are not grounded to a computer (summoning an Uber, paying
with an app, etc.) The money in content consumption will go to either the
content creators or the digital sharecroppers (Facebook).
So the question is, are there large untapped areas where a phone could be used
to interact with ones environment? What kind of day-to-day things could be
enhanced with internet connected software?
~~~
erikpukinskis
Your assumption, which I think is wrong, is that WPM (or maybe APM) is the
bottleneck for most work. I suspect reading/comprehension, problem solving,
planning, usability, and access to the right tool, discovery of tools,
responsiveness of tools, teamwork... These things are much more likely to be
the bottleneck.
As a programmer, I suspect I could probably type the entirity of a days work
into the computer in a half hour.
~~~
jacquesm
I can't even read a phone screen without reading glasses on, I absolutely
loathe reading more than a paragraph of text on one and I really couldn't
imagine getting any significant amount of work done on a mobile platform.
If we count tablets as mobile too (they're wireless after all and plenty of
them come with SIM slots) then the consumption part gets a bit better, in
landscape mode you can read PDFs on them but the part of work that requires
significant input would - for me - not be an option.
------
fidotron
Is this actually true? My perception is that the smartphone bubble is
bursting. Yes, there are lots more people to come online, but all they're
going to do is use WhatsApp and Facebook.
The big disappointment of mobile is that all this stuff doesn't seem to result
in enabling people to do their jobs better or more easily. Web apps really
exploded with things like Basecamp, but the most mobile has brought along for
that seems to be mobile email. (Edit to add, the only exceptions I can think
of to this are actually the SMS apps deployed in the places pegged to explode
in smartphone usage).
Having lots of people mindlessly addicted to notifications is not really that
interesting.
~~~
nickonline
Your focus on jobs and notifications is a little frustrating as there's a lot
more to life than working. For example, I just traveled to the USA for the
first time.
How do I get somewhere? Google maps will tell me the route, another app is
telling me when the bus next comes.
Where should I eat in this brand new city? Yelp will find me somewhere good.
Coffee (I'm not a fan of American style drip coffee)? Yelp again.
What should I check out today? Originally fully researched before leaving the
apartment/hotel, now I go to breakfast and look around, if it rains halfway
through the day I can come up with a new plan that involves being inside.
Getting my boarding pass? No longer do I need to print anything, just show
them my screen and they can scan the barcode off that.
Want to call home? No need for an expensive phone card, I can just use
whatsapp or viber to chat to my parents.
Get in a cab and don't want to be ripped off because of accent? Maps again
("please take the FDR, the traffic there isn't too bad").
For work: My contract is currently approaching it's end, I managed to set up
two interviews in my home from another country while on the go, never having
to stop and pull out my laptop
I would say that without my smartphone I would have had to spend a lot of time
asking locals, researching on a computer ahead of time, and generally looking
like a tourist with a massive tourist map (a good way to get pick pocketed).
As a result I was able to do most of my research on the move and really
streamline my holiday to something where I didn't need to sit down for a
couple hours each night to work out what to do tomorrow.
~~~
ececconi
This answer is excellent. It's also a great example of how technology just
disappears and allows you to get what you want to get done.
------
ams6110
From one of the slides: _Email is for grandparents_
I think this varies. I'm not a grandparent, but am close to 50 years old and
have been working in computer technology my entire adult life. I have an
Android smartphone (got my first one this year) but have not installed any
apps on it. Email, web browser, text messages, calendar, contacts, and maps
are all there and I can't really think of anything else useful I'd want it to
do.
My mother-in-law on the other hand IS a grandmother and she's constantly using
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and half a dozen other things on her phone. I
don't see the point in any of it and don't use any of those things.
Not sure who is the outlier.
~~~
jrkelly
Yeah, my email usage at age 12-15 was also almost nil and that was in the 90s.
Doubt stats at 12-15 correlate well to whether those kids will use email when
they hit college.
~~~
jff
Agreed, I didn't have much use for email at 15, because I interacted with all
my classmates and teachers every day; coordinating things was simple, and all
my schoolwork was submitted in person. I primarily used email for asking
questions on Linux mailing lists, and even that pretty rarely--15 year old me
would probably be pretty shocked at my current level of email traffic.
------
Ologn
I mainly program Android apps, many for my side business.
Some people here have said "mobile has peaked". I go around with my Android
mobile phone, and I have trouble finding out what time stores close. I have
trouble finding nearby supermarkets. I certainly can't find out if
supermarkets have an item in stock, or if the item on sale. I can't find a
nearby bathroom to use.
We are nowhere near mobile peaking. Yes, there may be a little bubble now that
fizzles out before it comes back again. Kind of like how there was a website
bubble, which fizzled in 2000, and then four years later Facebook was started.
The day I can punch into my phone asking where I can buy a chair, and get back
most of the local stores, and what they have in stock, and for what price -
that is when the "smartphone bubble" is soon to "burst".
~~~
bbarn
And on that note, the more places mobile puts it's fingers, ultimately, the
more places that someone needs to make sure the finger points to the right
thing. Every google maps, yelp review, craigslist post, etc., needs someone
ultimately to vet it's place in reality before said reality can be made
useless by it. I think we're on the cusp of mobile overload, where we're going
to see more and more specialized mobile services made useless because we
simply don't have the manpower to wire them up well without taking that
manpower from something else.
So, while we may not be peaked in terms of what could be done, we're nearing
the point where what WILL be done is starting to look more and more focused on
the things that grab quick money.
Oddly, I think the next big revolution will be the generation that's tired of
being chained to their devices and subscriptions and services, and starts to
devolve back to actual interpersonal relationships. I'm seeing it every day
with those of us who grew up without it, had it, and realized that it's not
quite the silver bullet for living it marketed itself as.
Siri still sucks, Google maps still gets you lost, and visual studio still
blows on a touchscreen laptop.
------
diltonm
My smartphone has 2 Gigs of RAM and most of it is wasted. Games on phones
aren't even interesting because my fingers slide right off the screen when the
action gets fast. Give me a PC with 2 Gigs of RAM and I can do amazing things
with it, a mouse and a keyboard. Every single phone app I use is an exercise
in futility or it feels that way. Touch is a terrible HID. Smart phones are
handy when you don't have anything else but man I really prefer anything else,
I'm considering buying a Chrome laptop or Surface if I can wipe them and
install Ubuntu on them and can plug in a SIM card; not a bigger phone, a real
computer.
~~~
CalRobert
Remember when phones had keyboards? Like, actual physical keyboards that slid
out when you needed them and tucked away neatly when you didn't?
I really miss them :-(
~~~
tacoman
Given how huge the mobile phone industry, it don't understand why some
manufacturer* hasn't carved out a niche for keyboard phones. Since all the
manufactures have arrived at the roughly the same form factor and spec, maybe
we'll start to see one of them try something different again.
* Other than Blackberry. Despite being a BB10 user, I can understand why the general population isn't attracted to it.
~~~
CalRobert
You know, maybe it's time to see about sourcing a small keyboard, 4.5" or so
display, and trying to squeeze down an Odroid to make your own phone. Might
even make sense to make it wifi only and rely on Voip for some use cases.
------
Cyther606
By these figures, 80% of the world will be carrying a mobile spy tool by 2020.
I refuse to do anything on a mobile phone that is conceivably worse than
PG-13. Until mobile hardware is free and open, I only view the proliferation
of mobile Internet as a tool for human enslavement.
~~~
general_failure
Its not like PC hardware is open fully.
~~~
dublinben
It can be though, and generally is more open than any mobile hardware.
[https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/gluglug](https://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/gluglug)
------
jerf
The western world right now is in a bit of a defeatist mood and pessimism
reigns supreme. And while I can't deny that all things end and in some sense
civilization is scheduled for some receding, I find myself wondering what
impact this sort of technology will have on that process. Technology is
speeding everything up so much and so fast... what if technology speeds up our
next "dark age" from centuries to decades... or decade... or mere years? What
if we're even already halfway through the decline?
We know technology is a big game changer. Sometimes we overestimate that
impact, but sometimes we underestimate it too. What will it do for everyone to
have a smartphone? Heck if I know! But perhaps it's reason for at least a
smidge of hope.
~~~
sillysaurus3
Well, smartphones simply enable you to do things that you can't otherwise do.
I don't think they'll have much of an effect on how long our next Dark Ages
lasts. The dark ages were primarily due to culture, not ability. Smartphones
enable culture to morph in interesting ways, but they don't override it.
People will still be people.
~~~
diltonm
>> Well, smartphones simply enable you to do things that you can't otherwise
do.
No, that's not true at all. They are more compact and with the touch HID more
frustrating but certainly far from better.
~~~
sillysaurus3
People take exponentially more photos and videos now that they have
smartphones. That's the definition of "enable people to do something they
can't otherwise do."
~~~
diltonm
The guy said, "smartphones simply enable you to do things that you can't
otherwise do". People were taking pictures with their cameras long before
smartphones and uploading them. I was using Microsoft StreetMaps (I think that
was the name) and a $100 GPS serial device to map trips around the SFBA.
People have used a compass to navigate for thousands of years. So yes,
smartphones don't do things you can't do otherwise; they are just compact and
more fun, if you can them in your pocket. If you can't then you might want to
look at a small laptop or notebook, more bang for the buck.
~~~
sillysaurus3
I don't know why this is controversial. You aren't going to carry a camera
around with you everywhere you go, nor a GPS, nor a laptop. But you'll carry
your smartphone. So you can do more things because you have your smartphone
with you.
Anyway, my main point was that culture was the reason for the dark ages, not
ability to do things. And smartphones don't override culture.
~~~
pixl97
>And smartphones don't override culture.
What does override culture?
Talking to the people around you? Newspapers? Books? Telephones? Peoples
options? News?
_Culture: the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement
regarded collectively._
If you don't think that an instantaneous audio/graphical communications device
cannot be used as a means to effect culture you are highly confused about what
culture is.
~~~
sillysaurus3
Another day, another snarky HN comment...
As I said, smartphones morph culture in interesting ways. That's a direct
product of having access to all of the things you mention. But people are
still fundamentally people. If the world believes that war is necessary,
smartphones aren't going to change that. And that belief was one of the main
reasons for the dark ages.
------
InclinedPlane
The evolution of mobile technology has ironically been held back by its
success. Today it's too easy to make money in mobile devices, just make things
thinner, shinier, faster, and prettier and you're most of the way there. And
then you can rake in massive profit margins in a market where people replace
their devices on a timeframe measured in months. It's practically raining cash
in the land of successful mobile manfuacturers.
But once we get past this early stage of mobile success people will be looking
to gain more productivity out of their devices. Today have the power and OS
chops to handle beefy tasks, but for the most part the UX and peripheral
experience isn't there. But that'll change. There will be more attachable
keyboards, more desktop docking stations, etc. And then the use of tablets and
smartphones in business will drive the manufacturers to service that market
more and more to meet those needs.
Meanwhile, the low end of mobile will get cheaper as the developing world
starts to gain access to computing and folks find out how valuable that market
is and figure out how to serve it.
This is the 2nd wave of the personal computing revolution and it's only just
barely started, what we'll see in the next 10 years will blow the doors off
the last decade.
------
ThomPete
This remind me of the race towards smaller phones we experienced in the pre-
smartphone era I don't see Sonys ultra small mobiles being in vogue anymore.
We seem to forget a simple fact.
The smartphone was not a better phone but a smaller computer. The idea that
mobile is somehow replacing most of the other platforms and their usage is
simply misplaced.
Mobile is part of a diverting technology trend not converging.
------
sinofsky
At every moment of disruption in technology people saying that the new
technology doesn't replace the incumbent. By definition disruptive
technologies are less functional and inadequate "replacements".
First, folks tend to talk about all the things that the new technology can't
do that the old one does do. In the Steve Jobs interview at All Things D
referenced in the comments, he goes on to talk about how software needs to get
written--"it is just software" he says. In the near term history we have seen
this same dynamic in the advent of the GUI relative to CUI or in the way
browser/HTML subsumed the GUI client-server apps. People are writing more code
all the time that is "mobile only" even if some of it reinvents or reimagines
the desktop/laptop world. I was struck by Adobe's recent developer conference
where they showed many mobile apps. As an always aspiring photog we can see
how the field is transitioning.
Second, people tend to underestimate the way that new tools, as ineffective as
they are, drive changes in the very definition of work. Said another way,
people forget that tools can also define the work and jobs people have. It
isn't like work was always "mail around a 10MB presentation before the
meeting". In fact a long time ago meeting agendas were typed out in courier by
a typist -- that job was defined by the Selectric. The tools that created
presentations, attachments, and follow up email defined a style of working.
While we're reading all this, the exponential rise of mobile is changing what
it means to work--to go to a meeting, to collaborate, to decide, to create,
etc.
What is so fascinating about this transition is that we might be seeing a
divide where creators of tools will use different tools, at least for some
time, than the masses that use tools. Let's not project the needs of
developers on to the whole space. We might reach a point where different tools
are needed. Two years ago I might have said this applies to a lot of fields,
but the rapid rise of mobile and tablet based software for many things is
making that argument weak. Cash registers, MRI machines, video annotation, and
more are all scenarios I have seen recently where one might have said "needs a
real OS" or "this need sa full PC". As with the the idea of underestimating
software, our own desire to find an anchor pushes us to view things through a
lens where our own work doesn't change.
All of this is happening. In parts of the world they are skipping over PCs
(Africa and China). Everyone is seeing their time in front of a screen go up
enormous amounts and most of that is additive, but for many there is a
substitute effect. This doesn't happen overnight or for everyone. TO deny it
though is to deny the very changes that led to supporting the idea that the
mouse, overlapping windows, and color once displaced other technologies where
people said those were not substitutes for the speed, efficiency, or
capabilities of what was in use.
~~~
purpletoned
If you're really Steven Sinofski, pretty damn amazing to see you on hn.
Watching you introduce Windows 8 at build two years back, I couldn't have ever
imagined seeing you post on hn or any other discussion forum for that matter.
~~~
acqq
Discovering that Steven Sinofsky is now a board partner at a big VC firm, it's
not so surprising to see him here. Welcome.
~~~
sinofsky
It is me. I've always participated in forums like HN while at Microsoft (and
now). I think you can even find me on USENET archives :-)
------
jacquesm
Very hard to compare two worlds (mobile and 'immobile' computers) without
taking into account that the one is brand new and people seem to want one (and
there is a very large push to own the latest and greatest) and the other is
simply mature technology that works until the hardware dies. It's obvious
you're going to sell more of things that sit in peoples pockets that
_replaced_ their previous phone, something they were doing with some
regularity before smartphones appeared.
Smartphones and tablets are interesting, they may enable new applications,
they take over some of the functionality of desktops and laptops but it's more
of a continuum than a very strong difference, you go from small and on your
person to phablets (what a word), tablets, laptops, touch screen all-in-one
PCs, regular PCs all the way to servers.
So mobile simply completed the spectrum and as long as there is a fashion
element to it they'll be sold in very large numbers (the fact that the
batteries die is another push to upgrade them, ditto laptops).
In the longer term it will slow down a bit but mobile phones will always be
sold in larger numbers than desktop computers because of these reasons.
There is one way in which 'mobile is eating the world', which is in terms of
resources consumption, and that is going to be a real problem without better
and more structured ways of thinking about disposing phones during the design
phase as well as some kind of rebate program.
------
forgotAgain
Its worth it to keep in mind that A&H are in the business of selling investors
on their investment ideas. This is a marketing piece not a technology piece.
------
api
Don't disagree with the market numbers, but there's a problem with mobile. It
is best illustrated by the fact that I csnnot develop a mobile app on a mobile
device.
There won't be any "convergence" until mobile OSes are uncrippled.
I personally see a three device ecosystem. Mobile will cut into PC on the low
end, but it's really growing into a space not served by PC or server.
Computing in general is expanding.
~~~
Ologn
> I cannot develop a mobile app on a mobile device.
You can develop an Android app on an Android device.
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui)
~~~
jgalt212
It's probably better stated:
cannot _effectively_ develop a mobile app on a mobile device.
Productivity largely correlates with screensize.
[https://www.google.com/#q=productivity+screen+size](https://www.google.com/#q=productivity+screen+size)
------
LVB
I don't get the "Tech Brands Are Huge" slide, specifically the comparison to
the same companies in 2004. Wouldnt you compare to the top four tech companies
at the time (MSFT, AOL, whatever) to demonstrate that the share of global
brand value in tech is much higher now?
------
mark_l_watson
I have been hoping for a world where developers and content creators produced
reactive HTML 5 web apps that worked beautifully on all devices from phones to
laptops to large screen desktops and TVs.
An analogy: writing and production tools have been getting better with output
to PDF, Kindle, iBook, and print books. The overhead for creativity decreases
so more effort goes to producing great content. This is what I would like for
interactive web applications.
There is a lot of niche content and special interests and there will continue
to be a wide range of devices. Lots very inexpensive phones in developing
countries and a wide range of devices upscale. Content providers and
application developers should have access to all users, world wide, with low
development overhead.
~~~
CmonDev
I am hoping for a world where developers have a choice of a technology,
without being limited to legacy semi-modernized languages like HTML and JS.
~~~
mark_l_watson
True! Of course technology choices are good.
------
ck2
Mobile is how I know I am old.
After 5 minutes on a iphone or android phone I am like f* this give me a damn
desktop.
~~~
mrweasel
I think my iPad ran out of battery three months ago, I haven't looked at it
since. If you don't use it for entertainment, it's pretty much useless.
Touchscreens and the fullscreen apps just doesn't work for me.
------
marknutter
Mobile is not the future. We're in that future right now, and it's largely
stabilized. I fully believe VR is the future. Anyone who's tried the Oculus
and who has even an ounce of entrepreneurial imagination would agree. Just
like when the iPhone came out in '07, the right convergence of technology has
made it possible for truly convincing VR to make it into the mainstream. It
will revolutionize gaming, commerce, socialization, productivity, and more.
Those who understand this are already skating towards that puck. Everyone else
is fighting over the few remaining scraps that the mobile table has to offer.
~~~
megablast
> Anyone who's tried the Oculus and who has even an ounce of entrepreneurial
> imagination would agree.
People have been saying exactly the same thing since the first VR came about.
For some reason, VR really excited some people. Even though there is no way it
is replacing a computer or a smartphone, since they have different uses.
Unless you are suggesting VR will improve writing emails or entering data into
a spreadsheet?
~~~
marknutter
>Even though there is no way it is replacing a computer or a smartphone, since
they have different uses.
Of course VR won't replace a smartphone or a computer. It's a completely
different tool solving a completely different problem.
>Unless you are suggesting VR will improve writing emails or entering data
into a spreadsheet?
Reminds me of the comments people first made about the iPhone when it came
out; like "how are you supposed to type without a physical keyboard?" It's an
inability to think creatively. VR isn't going to improve writing emails or
entering data into a spreadsheet, those activities are already well served by
laptops. Use your imagination. VR will help you buy your next car because you
can actually sit and test drive hundreds before you try the real thing. VR
will let you visit other countries before you plan an expensive vacation. VR
will let you connect with your friends across the world in ways you simply
cannot do today. VR will let you walk around in your custom built home before
a single nail is driven.
> People have been saying exactly the same thing since the first VR came
> about.
So the value is obvious, then. It's just that the technology hasn't been there
to make it viable. People were talking up handheld devices for _years_ as
well, but it wasn't until it became technologically feasible to create a user
friendly experience that it finally exploded in popularity.
~~~
dingaling
>Reminds me of the comments people first made about the iPhone when it came
out; like "how are you supposed to type without a physical keyboard?"
I don't know if that was a common conception at the time; after all touch-
screen kiosks have been common since the 1990s. And Palm had discarded
physical keyboards in their PDAs as far back as 1996.
More it was a case of 'typing will be much less efficient without a keyboard',
which was true and has only been addressed by lateral thinking such as
Swype[0], an analogue of which Apple have finally implemented after five
generations.
[0] _or, as I 've just been reminded, Graffiti on the Palm PDAs_
------
hownottowrite
Actually, we are eating the world.
[http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population%20of%20the%2...](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population%20of%20the%20earth)
------
wslh
The problem is the definition of mobile. Mobile seems to be more like a form
factor than an operating system. If at the end I can convert a tablet into a
full featured PC (i.e Microsoft Surface running Visual Studio) or I can plug a
future mobile phone to a keyboard and monitor and run Microsoft Office there
then there is no division between mobile, desktop PC, and web.
------
joshrael
I'm not sure I understand the "three phases of technology deployment" slide.
Specifically, I can't think of a good example of a company that writes a check
to buy technology (or the analogy to a plant on the following slide). Are
these three types of companies distinct?
------
lnanek2
Did a double take at the "Glass is eating the world" slide before finally
realizing they were talking about LCDs and not Google's failed wearable.
------
ddbb01
Technology gets cheaper and easier to use - a consistent story over time.
Interestin stats.
------
chevas
I doubt this presentation was created on a mobile device.
------
fanssex
probably because PCs had already eaten the world
------
lazylizard
but batteries?
------
sstas
Hmm, Good Information ...
------
maxsavin
I saw Eric Schmidt's quote "By the summer of 2012, the majority of the
televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded" and stopped there.
~~~
burkaman
I really hate comments like this. What is the point of leaving this "review"?
Are you proud of not spending the 2 minutes to finish the slideshow? You
mention a quote you didn't like, but then immediately invalidate the criticism
by saying you didn't keep reading to see if there was anything further to back
it up or refute it.
I'm not disagreeing with your complaint, I just really hate the way you framed
it.
~~~
maxsavin
It makes me question the entire context of the presentation.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bioethicist proposes adding lithium to US drinking water - Alex3917
http://bigthink.com/ideas/21538
======
hugh3
Seems more like professional-grade trolling than a serious suggestion.
Still, on the offchance they do start doing it, I'll be first in line for
rainwater tanks, so I can protect the purity of my precious bodily fluids.
~~~
narrator
Bioethics attracts all the weirdos who want to propose really off the wall
crazy crap, like drugging the water supply, and call it "ethics".
Let's take a look at the Table of Contents of the Journal of Bioethics shall
we (<http://www.bioethics.net/journal/>)
* Should Human Beings Have Sex? Sexual Dimorphism and Human Enhancement
* The Risks of “Sexual Normalcy”
* Humans Should Be Free of All Biological Limitations Including Sex
* Response to Open Peer Commentaries on “Human Dignity and Transhumanism: Do Anthro-Technological Devices [nonbiological entities introduced into or attached to the human body] Have Moral Status?”
The whole discipline of bioethics is basically about trolling... or they're
serious :/.
~~~
palish
Haha. That is amazing.
I thought "Bioethics attracts all the weirdos who want to propose really off
the wall crazy crap" until I read that list. People actually get paid to write
stuff like that?
~~~
gaius
An anything-ethicist is someone who failed in that field but still thinks they
ought to get a say in what gets funded. Ignore them.
~~~
EliRivers
I can't build (for example) a doomsday device that will eliminate all life on
Earth. I still think I should be allowed to disagree with the building of one.
~~~
EliRivers
Alright, let's ignore research because it complicates the matter. Correct
doomsday device scenario to "I've never carried out genocide, but I still
think I should be able to disagree with it."
------
nphase
"One person's right to drink lithium-free water is no greater than another's
right to drink lithium-enhanced water."
Um... If you feel this strongly about it, then go put lithium in your water.
Don't make me buy bottled water. I've been on lithium before. I'd prefer to
spend the rest of my life as far away from ingesting it as possible.
~~~
nphase
Also, I highly doubt anyone has done a study on what tiny amounts of lithium
ingested regularly would do to your kidneys. There is a reason your doctor
wants you to get semi-regular kidney function tests if you're on lithium.
~~~
astrange
I would expect someone has done a study.
<http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=renal+lithium+therapy>
~~~
nphase
These seem to be for normal doses, not tiny ones as the article suggests
------
JacobAldridge
I must admit, I railed against adding Flouride for many years, mostly from a
liberty / choice perspective, before finally accepting almost a century of
scientific evidence and becoming a supporter. I need to know more about the
science, both positive and negative effects, before doing the same here, but
it is a nifty precendent.
As with fluoride, I wouldn't want my community to be the first to test it -
perhaps if I can convince my neighbours to support a local nuclear power plant
we would be spared being guinea pigs on the lithium issue.
~~~
angusgr
_I wouldn't want my community to be the first to test it_
At the levels they are talking about, it seems like there are communities who
for decades or longer have been "testing" drinking water with the proposed
levels of lithium.
Of course, that's assuming that the deliberately introduced lithium is in the
same form, with the same chemical availability. I would hope that would be a
requirement if anyone actually decided to try and do this.
~~~
JacobAldridge
True. I know we had issues where I am (Brisbane, Australia) when fluoride was
introduced. There was a lot of trial and error in ensuring the right amount
made it into the water supply (not too little or too much), although the
errors made (that we found out about at least) were all well within 'safe'
levels.
------
KevinMS
Maybe they should check, or already have, if small doses of lithium make
citizens more compliant and less critical of authority, especially with
increasing the dosage of lithium in the water :)
------
_delirium
This certainly does seem like a step above anything that's been done before.
Fluoride is intended to be basically inert as far as ingestion goes--- its
purpose is to improve tooth strength, but not to have any medically noticeable
internal effects when the water's drunk. Adding a substance that _is_
medically active when internally ingested as a default drinking-water option
would be quite a step. At the very least, we might want to get a lot better
handle on what the possible downsides are. There are these studies showing a
good preventative association with suicides, but does increasing lithium
intake do anything negative? It would be surprising if it had _no_ possible
negative effects, so the question is more what they are and how likely/serious
they are.
------
adulau
The toxicity of lithium is a reality. To monitor the level of toxicity you
need to check the concentration level in the blood. If you start to distribute
lithium in water, how can you ensure that the level of lithium remains below
toxicity in the blood of each water drinker (even if you control the
concentration as you don't control the quantity of water used by everyone)?
Lithium is often a salt and what will be the effect of the concentration when
cooking or taking a shower?
Even if lithium was added in 7up[1] before the fifties, it's not drinking
water and you don't take your bath with 7up or cook your potatoes with it...
[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithium_pharmacology>
------
euccastro
Regarding the success story provided as precedent: I don't know the quantities
involved, but if it is known that swallowing a toothpaste tube's worth of
fluoride can kill a child, I'm not comfortable with the idea of tainting the
drinking water with even "safe" amounts of this poison just so it will briefly
pass by your teeth in its way to your digestive tract. Sounds reckless and
extremely disrespectful to me.
<http://www.fluoridealert.org/toothpaste.html>
~~~
maxjg
So I think what you're trying to say is that it's an international Communist
conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids?
~~~
narrator
Anytime anybody brings up fluoride somebody else brings up Dr. StrangeLove, it
might as well be a knock knock joke. I wish people would actually look into
the science. People thought DDT was unquestionably great too.
~~~
billswift
Banning DDT was one of the stupider things the government has done. The EPA
studies showed no reason for it; the first EPA administrator just up and did
it - against the professional scientists' recommendations. Rachel Carson's
_Silent Spring_ , which was the original "justification" for it was pure BS.
------
jim_h
Ever see the movie 'Equilibrium'..?
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equilibrium_%28film%29>
I think we need to make changes to how we live our lives before we resort to
using drugs if we can avoid it. What's next? Dieting drugs in our water?
~~~
sliverstorm
It's not like this is an anti-obesity drug to fight poor life choices and life
styles. I really hope you don't feel that the majority of suicides were by
people who simply made 'poor life choices' and needed to change how they
lived.
And, even when the condition can be remedied by life changes, good or bad (is
moving to Seattle and suffering from depression deserving of criticism?)
doesn't it make sense to buy time by treating the major life threatening
symptoms, i.e. trying to kill yourself?
~~~
jim_h
What are the majority of suicides caused by? (I am actually curious.)
I'm merely saying that living a healthy, active and happy life would produce
good results and help to avoid needing to take drugs. Is that wrong? Naive?
~~~
Qz
Naive, yes.
~~~
jim_h
Well, you can't avoid all drugs, but you would agree that it would reduce the
ones you can actively avoid. Right?
Naive or not, I think an active healthy lifestyle is something that we should
all strive for. Work and hope for the best.
~~~
Qz
We should all strive for it, but the reality is that most people who don't
have an 'active healthy lifestyle' arrived at that condition before they were
adults. People who learn unhealthy habits in their childhood or adolescence
have a tremendously hard time breaking those habits or even recognizing that
they are unhealthy.
I speak as someone who, despite my parents best intentions, was not raised to
approach life in a 'healthy active' manner, and have only arrived at that
point after leaving my parents' well-meaning clutches.
So, the people who this would most help are generally not that way by choice
or even responsibility, so to talk of their right to not drink lithium water
seems off the mark. I'd love to give people the right not to have incapable
parents, because that would do a whole lot more for this cause than anything
else.
------
ivancho
The bullshit is strong in this one. Look, I have 4 data points, 2 each in some
very psychotic societies. We are going to extrapolate to the entire world and
then try and add some psychoactive substances to their water. Seriously, I've
been near a couple of politicians - we can totally pull this off.
------
prodigal_erik
This seems likely to bring a bunch of people to being almost but _not quite_
miserable and hopeless enough to commit suicide, without any plans to ever
rescue them from that state. To me that sounds more sadistic than helpful.
------
exit
will the decline in suicide represent people who are no longer depressed, or
people who are slightly less depressed but constantly at the edge of
committing suicide?
------
darushimo
Serenity?
~~~
wisty
More like Equilibrium, given the effects of lithium. Of course, we are talking
about _really_ small doses.
It does beg the question though. If small doses are effective, why do people
only get prescribed massively higher doses?
~~~
biotech
I think the gp was referencing the movie "Serenity". Good movie :)
~~~
darushimo
yea i was, both title and storyline. :)
------
fuzzythinker
Really, why is this on HN?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Accurate CRT Simulation - jsnell
http://gamasutra.com/blogs/KylePittman/20150420/241442/CRT_Simulation_in_Super_Win_the_Game.php
======
jloughry
In the _analogtv.c_ source code, by Trevor Blackwell (part of XScreenSaver) is
this comment [1]:
A maxim of technology is that failures reveal underlying
mechanism. A good way to learn how something works is to
push it to failure. The way it fails will usually tell you
a lot about how it works.
To mimic the image on a 1970s-era colour TV, XScreenSaver uses an accurate DSP
simulation of all the analogue circuitry, including bandwidth limits, noise,
and distortion. A gigahertz processor is _just_ capable of keeping up with
this.
[1] In _XScreenSaver: a collection of free screen savers for X11 and MacOS_ by
Jamie Zawinski [2].
Edit: if you want to read the source code---highly recommended!---retype the
address below by hand or you'll become acquainted with jwz's countermeasures.
[2]
[https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/xscreensaver-5.34.tar.gz](https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/xscreensaver-5.34.tar.gz)
~~~
zaius
Ironic that JWZ takes offense to the link since the code in question is by
Trevor, who is a cofounder of YC.
Mirror here:
[http://web.mit.edu/ghudson/dev/nokrb/third/xscreensaver/hack...](http://web.mit.edu/ghudson/dev/nokrb/third/xscreensaver/hacks/analogtv.c)
~~~
alayne
I think he's had that HN redirect for years. He is blocking hotlinking
directly to files.
Try [https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/](https://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/)
~~~
nitrogen
No, he blocks/redirects all traffic with HN as referrer. Kind of a jerk move,
which sucks because his site is full of useful stuff.
~~~
dekhn
jwz is a smart guy, but ultimately ... a bit inflexible and jerkish. I used to
argue with him over using C++ in xscreensaver (I wrote a couple savers,
glplanet, pulsar and glextrusion). I wanted to write a full scene graph
implementation, a physics library, and a bytecode VM to implement screensavers
without having to write a ton of low-level C++ code. Unfortunately, jwz's
constraints include "Every screensaver must be a single C file" and "no C++",
which while possibly wise when he first expressed it, has become a canard.
~~~
binarycrusader
There's nothing wrong with asserting "no C++" in systems software, especially
on *NIX. The stability of the C++ ABI has generally been terrible for a long
time, and by avoiding C++ in a component that's heavily used, a lot of
maintenance headaches are avoided.
As one of the maintainers of the C++ ABI for an operating system, I assure
you, it is best avoided for system components unless there's a compelling
justification.
~~~
dekhn
xscreensaver is not a "system" component. Nor is it systems software. It's a
game engine that only rarely takes user input.
~~~
binarycrusader
It's a system component in the sense that it's typically distributed as part
of an operating system. Not in the sense that it's a "kernel" or something
like that.
As someone that helps build an operating system distribution, we consider
Xscreensaver to be a system component.
Also, for licensing purposes, the GPL, as an example, considers software
distributed with the system to be a system component in some scenarios. For
example, "GPLv3 has adjusted the definition of System Library to include
software that may not come directly with the operating system, but that all
users of the software can reasonably be expected to have."
~~~
dekhn
Your definition is weird. Which distribution is this?
xscreensaver is X11, not GPL.
Why does a C++ ABI really matter in a system distribution? All the distros
I've used are internally consistent in their ABI and update all their deps
when the C++ ABI is updated.
~~~
binarycrusader
_Your definition is weird._
Not from a distributor's perspective ;-)
_xscreensaver is X11, not GPL._
Correct, but since it is distributed as part of the system, or is a component
that most users will have, then, as an example, if you link your GPL'd code to
Xscreensaver's API, that's ok, because it's considered a "system library".
Really, I was referring to more for the purposes of definition than anything.
_Why does a C++ ABI really matter in a system distribution?_
Because ABIs create a point of synchronization, and internally for that
distributor, that create a flag day where a given set of components must be
rebuilt at the same time.
Ideally, for a distributor, you don't rebuild the entire world every time one
component changes. You only rebuild what you have to, since every delivery
causes new binaries to be produced, which then in turn increases the amount of
downtime for consumers that are upgrading.
As such, changing ABIs (thankfully GCC's doesn't change as much as it used to)
create unnecessary churn, and if you can easily avoid them, you usually do (as
a distributor).
------
Animats
From the article: _" As the electron guns sweep across the screen, varying
their intensity to adjust brightness, they tend to overshoot their desired
value and bounce back a short time later. This creates alternating vertical
bands of light and dark seen at the edges of high contrast changes in
brightness."_
That's caused by a different effect. NTSC has terrible color bandwidth. The
YIQ signal is really an I (intensity) signal at full bandwidth, and YQ signals
with severely limited bandwidth (because, during the transition from black and
white to color, they had to be stuck in subcarriers of the main black and
white signal. NTSC Color TV is really greyscale TV with color tweaks
superimposed.
You can only go through the YQ color space about 10 times across the width of
the screen. The way to simulate this is to convert to YIQ, apply a low-pass
filter horizontally to the Y and Q components, then convert back. Note that
this is a horizontal issue only; in the vertical direction, every line can be
a different color without problems.
~~~
imtringued
>NTSC Color is really greyscale TV
My old CRT only supported PAL. So this is the reason why NTSC inputs were
displayed without color.
~~~
hausen
Your old CRT is probably PAL-M, a variant of PAL. Was it made in Brazil?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL-M#Compatibility](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PAL-M#Compatibility)
~~~
boomlinde
I (scandinavian) have a few old TVs and monitors that are able to synchronize
to the NTSC clock, but are unable to decode NTSC colors. It's not uncommon,
and even my 1084S does it. As far as I understand this, PAL is just a color
encoding standard, and the synchronization characteristics typically
associated with it are broadcast standards, e.g. PAL-M, PAL-B etc. If you have
a TV that decodes PAL at 50Hz there is a good chance that it will decode PAL
at 60 Hz even outside countries that had these broadcast standards.
For NTSC, since it's only really the timing and color encoding that differs
it's then not uncommon to get a grayscale picture from NTSC input.
------
rasz_pl
In civilized world we used SCART or JP-21 to achieve pure RGB and avoid most
of the artefacts author is so nostalgic about.
[http://retrorgb.com/rgbguide.html](http://retrorgb.com/rgbguide.html)
so no, our consoles didnt look like
[http://i.imgur.com/Pq2Yra4.png](http://i.imgur.com/Pq2Yra4.png), they did
indeed look pixel perfect
[http://retrorgb.com/images/Link%20RGB%20Compare.jpg](http://retrorgb.com/images/Link%20RGB%20Compare.jpg)
~~~
PhasmaFelis
Well, the important thing is that you got a chance to be smug about your
30-year-old TV.
~~~
rasz_pl
This whole article is a "smug about someones really BAD 30-year-old TV"
~~~
PhasmaFelis
If you think that lovingly describing the details of an obsolete technology is
"smug," then you are seriously on the wrong website.
(BTW, did you notice the part where the author specifically says he's talking
about NTSC, and other standards work differently? Because, to be honest,
getting all nationalistic over obsolete TV connection standards is kinda
weird.)
------
Sami_Lehtinen
Some claimed that low refresh rate on screen caused it to flash. But that
wasn't true, as long as the screen had slow enough phosphor. With older CRT
displays it was totally possible to read the text from the screen after three
seconds of turning the display off or giving clear screen command. You could
also play with magnets on the screen, not all screens got great degauss
feature, so little magnet play was fun. It's also important to monitor that
CRTs aren't equal. If you used regular 70s color TV it was very different from
high end 21" Trinitron CRT used before flat panels became popular. Here you
can see one nice CRT:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IweoaOb53XQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IweoaOb53XQ)
One of the reasons why many computers didn't use 80 char line length was that
TVs didn't produce sharp enough image and it was impossible to read 80 char
lines. Of course it was also possible to modify displays to produce sharper
image. With Spectravideo it was possible to use separate card to produce
sharper image and 80 columns. [http://www.samdal.com/SVIDOCS/STM-
I_SVI806.pdf](http://www.samdal.com/SVIDOCS/STM-I_SVI806.pdf)
~~~
kuschku
Funnily, my family still uses a Trinitron daily – it’s our youngest and
largest TV. Around 30", amazing quality.
~~~
Pxtl
Jeeze, that thing must weigh as much as a vw bug.
~~~
jcadam
There were CRT-based 1080i 16:9 Trinitron HDTVs available (briefly) during the
early days of HDTV. My parents had a 34-inch model. Heaviest television set
I've ever had the displeasure of moving. Definitely a two-man lift.
Awesome picture quality, though.
~~~
dekhn
Yeah, I had one of these. It was great for its day, but definitely far too
heavy to be practical. Having that device carted out of my house (the mover
said he could have carried it on his back, but they used two people and then
nearly dropped it anyway) was one of my greatest days.
------
Coincoin
At first I though the curvature was exaggerated but then I looked at some
pictures and it was actually even worse.
This reminds me the first time I used one of those flat CRT, I was so used to
the convex curve that the flat one looked concave.
~~~
makomk
Well, anything Trinitron-based didn't have nearly as much curvature for
technical reasons, so if you always used higher-end sets and monitors you
might never have had one with this kind of curvature.
------
mholt
If you're on Mac (or iOS), I highly recommend the Cathode app[1]. It's a
terminal in the style of old CRTs, and I always get a kick out of using it.
[1]:
[http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/](http://www.secretgeometry.com/apps/cathode/)
~~~
Razengan
And it's free text-editor cousin:
[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blinky/id550873221?mt=12](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/blinky/id550873221?mt=12)
Very cool and pretty fun.
~~~
karmakaze
Fun, Thanks. Noticing that 'Pokey' in the 8-bit Atari emulation is actually
the analog in/sound chip--ANTIC was display.
------
chadaustin
I love this topic and compiled a slew of related links last year:
[https://chadaustin.me/2015/11/crts-pixels-and-video-
games/](https://chadaustin.me/2015/11/crts-pixels-and-video-games/)
------
Stratoscope
This is a fun and interesting article!
There are a few minor errors in this section:
> Cathode ray tube displays work by repeatedly sweeping an electron gun back
> and forth across the extents of a fluorescent screen. The strength of the
> electron beam may vary during this sweep, and this in turn affects the
> brightness of the phosphors it illuminates. In early black-and-white models,
> only a single electron gun was necessary; with the introduction of color
> TVs, three electron guns were used, each tuned to a different phosphor,
> which would appear as the color red, green, or blue.
> The points of light created by this interaction are too diffuse to produce a
> sharp image, so a shadow mask is used to focus the electron beams before
> they reach the screen. A shadow mask consists of a metal plate with holes or
> apertures designed to filter out unwanted electrons. The shape of the shadow
> mask and the configuration of its holes vary by model and contribute greatly
> to the characteristics of the resulting image. The shadow mask also defines
> the dot pitch of the display, effectively limiting its highest possible
> resolution. As we will see later on, the dot pitch of the display does not
> necessarily correspond to the resolution of the displayed image.
The three electron guns in a color CRT aren't _tuned_ to the different color
phosphors, they are physically positioned so that the holes in the shadow mask
or the gaps in the aperture grille block the beams from hitting the unwanted
color phosphors and only hit the phosphor that each beam should light up.
In a shadow mask CRT, there is a triad of phosphor dots (or stripes in newer
TVs) for each hole in the shadow mask. The electron beam from each gun goes
through this hole at a different angle, so it only hits the correct phosphor
and is blocked from the other two.
An aperture grille CRT uses a similar concept, but instead of mask with holes
in it and triads of dots, it has a series of parallel vertical wires and
vertical phosphor stripes serving the same function.
The mask or grille is not there because the electron beam is too diffuse to
produce a sharp image. A monochrome CRT has no shadow mask or aperture grille,
and with proper focusing it can be plenty sharp. The mask or grille is there
simply to block the the beams from hitting the wrong color phosphors.
More information is in the Wikipedia articles on shadow masks and aperture
grilles:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_mask](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_mask)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_grille](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aperture_grille)
~~~
Someone
One thing with wire-based aperture grilles: tapping the side of the monitor
will make the wires in the aperture grille vibrate, throwing of the colors.
So, if you want to emulate a Trinitron display really, really well, you need
an acceleration sensor and, for good measure, a microphone (to detect loud
noises at the right frequency to make the wires vibrate)
I also have a question some reader might be able to answer: if you do the
simple implementation, (at least) 2/3rds of your electrons will hit the
aperture mask. To improve power efficiency, you would need finer control over
the video signal. did any television ever do that? Or did they already have to
do it to prevent the electron beams for different color from interfering with
each other?
------
fake-name
Maybe it's just me, but I think the old CRTs looked horrible, and I find games
and other applications which strive to mimic them as closely as possible
extremely visually unpleasant.
Sure, there's the nostalgia factor, but 20 seconds later I'm over it. If you
have a game or something that has a CRT emulation mode, __let me turn it off
__.
------
jhallenworld
I looked into early camera tubes recently- it's amazing that they work at all
:-)
The "image orthicon"
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_camera_tube#Image_orthic...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_camera_tube#Image_orthicon)
can only be described as a Rube-Goldberg device.
------
SixSigma
NTSC - Never The Same Color
------
hellbanner
I'm seeing a game development article on the front page almost every time I
check HN now.
How many of you are making games?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Golo 1.1.0 - lelf
http://golo-lang.org/news/2014/09/22/golo-1.1.0/
======
dozzie
If it is for JVM, the language is not "lightweight" by definition.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What is your favourite technical interview question? - svag
I ask this question after reading this post http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840774 [My Favorite Engineering Interview Question(skife.org)]<p>I didn't find any similar question in HN after a quick search in google, so please give your favourite interview question.
======
spokey
I "stole" this question from a friend, who may not have invented it either but
cultural/language barriers aside [1] I'll often ask something like:
* Larry Wall wrote "We will encourage you to develop the three great virtues of a programmer: laziness, impatience, and hubris." Pick one of these three "virtues" and tell me about a time you exhibited it.
[1] - Some less-than-perfectly-fluent English speakers are unfairly thrown by
this question, it has a lot of relatively obscure vocabulary, and then layers
irony on top. BTW, even among native English speakers the single most common
response is "what is hubris"?
Also, a standard although not necessarily favorite general interview question
I use (technical or not) is something like:
* Suppose we brought you on board at Firm X and found that you were doing an excellent job. What kinds of things could we do to reward you?
followed by:
* No job lasts forever. What sorts of things do you think would make you want to leave Firm X eventually?
~~~
svag
For the hubris definition, here <http://www.thefreedictionary.com/hubris> :)
Very interesting questions the last two, I am wondering what are the answers
that you get and how do you evaluate them.
~~~
spokey
For the record, I know what "hubris" means, it's the candidates that don't.
This may say something sad about the level of liberal arts education among
developers.
Now that I think about it, this also may say something about the candidates
ability to think on their feet and/or the degree to which their curiosity
exceeds their reluctance to appear ignorant, since the way the question is
structured it is fairly obvious you don't need know what hubris means to
answer the question. You can just pick another "virtue". I'm pretty sure
that's what I'd do in that scenario, but maybe I'm less candid than others in
interviews.
A couple of interesting things about that first question:
* My friend who introduced me to this question said he once had a candidate pick "impatience" and then proceeded to tell the story of how and why he threw a chair through a glass window during a meeting. That guy did not get the job. There probably would have been other red flags with that candidate, but it is interesting to note how few questions would likely lead to the candidate volunteering that anecdote. Throwing a chair through a window in a business setting is very bad. Not having the sense to keep that story to yourself during a job interview is the icing on the cake.
* I'm surprised how often candidates will miss or choose to ignore the "pick _one_ " aspect of the question and proceed to give one example for each. This doesn't necessarily strike me a positive or negative (actually, maybe a little positive), but it happens probably 60% of the time.
* For the some candidates this can be a good "employer branding" question in the sense that it suggests the hiring manager is at least a little bit clueful and appreciative of "hacker" culture. (And vice versa. Most answers to this question are acceptable, but language/culture issues aside I'm always a little troubled by candidates that don't understand how one could possibly consider those virtues. More to the point I don't see how a good developer could not recognize the importance of a little bit of laziness, impatience or hubris to their craft.)
Regrading the latter two questions:
Clearly the intent of the questions are to get a sense of what motivates the
potential employee (both positively and negatively).
I didn't know it when I first started using them, but it turns out these
questions are most valuable after the candidate has been hired, as they
provides significant insight into how to manage and motivate the employee.
It's nearly essential to understand how to motivate an employee, and this
turns out to be an easy way to get at that information. You could (and I have)
ask this question after the candidate is hired, but in my experience people
are candid about different things before and after being hired, sometimes it's
useful to plan for that.
I've come to realize that there isn't really a bad answer to this question.
(Well, maybe if the candidate couldn't come up with _any_ reward or cause for
leaving, but that's never happened.)
Answers I frequently hear for the first question include "give me more money",
"give me a promotion", "give me more time off" or "give me more
freedom/flexibility/autonomy". There's nothing really negative about any of
these answers, in fact I think each of them are pretty respectable, but more
importantly they say something about what the candidate values.
At some cash-strapped places I've worked the "more money" answer was a little
problematic, not for anything it says about the candidate as much as it
suggests they won't be happy in the environment that we could provide them. At
one firm I worked at "work/life balance" was non-existent, so "give me time
off" suggested a poor culture fit.
For most environments I've worked in a good answer to the first question is
something like "Once I've proven my competence I'd appreciate the opportunity
to take on new or broader responsibilities, or to work on more interesting,
more important or higher visibility projects." A good answer to the second
question is something like "If I wasn't learning anything new". (An very
valuable answer to the second question is something like "if my job became X"
or "if I no longer had the opportunity to do Y".)
Generally I'd prefer to work with people that are motivated by doing new and
interesting things well, people who are willing to take on new challenges. I
guess this answer also demonstrates a bit of ambition, which is a good thing
in moderation. It also may show a degree of political savvy, in the sense that
"pay me more", while honest, is probably not something most potential
employers want to hear (at least for many job categories; on Wall Street or
for a sales job I guess that might be just the answer you're looking for, but
those folks are usually compensated on a commission basis to begin with).
------
DirtyAndy
For windows based web development: How would you create a web page that said
"Hello World"?
It the answer is not _start notepad (I'll accept Notepad+), type in Hello
World and save it as .htm or .html and put it on a webserver_ then for most of
the places I have done interviewing for over the years they have missed the
first requirement, get it done as easily and quickly as you can.
I fully appreciate that this varies massively by company, and I would want to
know that the person can answer certain levels of technical questions but
finding people who don't overcomplicate problems is hard, finding people who
learnt recursion at university or as another commentator mentioned, can define
polymorphism is actually not that hard.
~~~
thetylerhayes
Interesting. Even though I fully subscribe to the minimalist notion, I would
have opened notepad and at least entered valid HTML:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<title>Hello page</title>
<p>Hello world</p>
Thanks for sharing that viewpoint. I never thought of it that way. (Perhaps
freelancing has made me forget good habits.)
------
zem
programming: "how would you take a word list and partition it into sets of
anagrams?". touches on some very basic data structures and algorithms, shows
that the candidate is at least familiar with arrays and hashes and knows when
to use which. it's amazing how many people don't get it, even when given an
hour to do it on an actual computer.
design (with the aid of a whiteboard): how would you go about writing a call-
graph explorer? start with the high level pieces and go into more detail as
asked.
algorithms: "there are data structures that make tradeoffs between various
operations (give examples). can you design one that has O(1) insert and O(1)
extract-minimum, with everything else running in as much time as you like?"
if you're asking about my favourite question i've been asked, it was "given a
set of numbers from 0 to 2^n-1, with one missing, how would you find the
missing number in one pass through the set and using at most n bits of extra
storage" (took me embarrassingly many tries to get it, but it was a satisfying
question to solve)
------
rdmlx
A technical question, or a question in a tech job interview?
Non-technical: What are you passionate about? (This can tell you a lot about
someone.)
Technical: How would you solve problem x? (Where x is an actual problem we
have had to solve working on our application. Relevancy is important and cuts
through the 99 common interview questions fluff).
------
frankc
My favorite programming question to ask is: Write a function that given an
integer n returns the number 1 to n in random order
I find this is a good mix of not too trivial but not overwhelming, I don't
expect people to come up with the fastest possible algorithm on the spot. If
they code the naive solution, that's OK if it makes sense and they can
describe the performance characteristics. Then we'll talk over the algorithm
and I lead them to something better and see how the conversation develops.
------
qollin
If I interview Java programmers I always start with letting them write a
method to reverse a String on the whiteboard. ~30% fail, for the others it's
an easy warmup. I then ask how much memory this method consumes and if they
could think of a better way to do it if this were C and not Java. This leads
to the concept of immutability of Strings and you now can have a discussion on
why the Java folks chose to make String immutable in the first place...
------
demiart
Well... the answer to that question really depends upon what set of
technologies the applicant is approaching the position with. One question,
however, that seems to always tell a lot about the person being interviewed
is: "You are asked to mentor a new developer, fresh out of school. What
habits/best-practices, language-specific and general, have you learned through
your years of working that you feel should be offered to the new hire?"
------
djb_hackernews
Not my favorite, but interesting:
You are given two eggs and a hundred story building. You need to tell me,
using as few drops as possible, what the highest floor you can drop an egg
from and it won't break.
~~~
spokey
Is the answer you're looking for a binary search algorithm, or do you have
some lateral thinking solution in mind?
~~~
MountainDrew
Because you only have 2 eggs I don't think you can use a binary search
algorithm (assuming I understood the question correctly). I think you'd have
to start at floor 2, if that passed then jump to floor 4, etc. until you have
an egg break (lets call this floor n). Then, you go to the floor below the one
that broke the egg to see if an egg survives that drop. You'll then know,
using only 2 eggs the highest floor you could drop from without breaking an
egg (either n, n-1, or n-2).
~~~
spokey
Spot on. I missed the _2_ part, which makes this question much more
interesting. By the way, I think I do could it in one drop; drop one from
floor 1. If it breaks the answer is 0, else 1 because I don't think many eggs
could survive a two story drop.
------
burnman
I understand they are trying to get an idea that i have a very basic knowledge
of programming, but, this has been a pretty good gauge on the quality of a
company.
"Define polymorphism."
~~~
korch
Maybe it's just me, and maybe I'm wrong or over-thinking it, but this question
bugs me. I think this is a trick question, because there is no single right
answer unless the question is prefaced with "in [language X], define
polymorphism." I've lost track of the number of times I've been interviewed
and had that awful question tossed at me.
Without fail, every single interviewer in my experience was looking for an
answer strictly in terms of whatever language(s) they're using at the company,
or whatever language the interviewer is most familiar with. If you stray
outside of what they know and what they're looking for, they have no idea what
you're talking about.
Polymorphism in Java is slightly different than for Ruby than for C than for
Haskell than for yadda, yadda. No matter what, it's always going to be
somewhat arbitrary and tied to some kind of language dependent implementation
or feature. If your language doesn't even have classes, the answer is
different, if your language doesn't have functions, it's different, etc, etc.
I suppose the closest thing to a right answer would be to define it in pure
mathematical terms using Turing machine notation, so as to make it universal.
However I have no idea if such an answer even exists. If anyone has seen such
a thing, please do share it.
A better version I would ask would be: define polymorphism using x86 AT&T
assembly. or: define what polymorphism _represents_
------
svag
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1840774>
------
phalien
What browser would you take with you on an isolated island?
~~~
Robin_Message
One that doesn't auto-upgrade itself (in case they send a broken upgrade, then
I'll have no browser.)
------
MountainDrew
When can you start?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.