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The company that owns the New Yorker is bleeding money - hhs
https://www.recode.net/2019/4/4/18295653/new-yorker-vogue-magazine-conde-nast-ceo
======
clydethefrog
I am part of the problem, I only read the New Yorker at my library. I am
always shocked at the price tag on the cover. I guess they pay their writers
really well. I also remember from footage from New York they have a really
nice location?
Conde Nast also own reddit.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17248210](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17248210)
That big service isn't profitable either?
~~~
Crosseye_Jack
Tech speaking Advance Publications “own” reddit as it’s largest share holder.
Advance Publications Also own Conde Nast.
Conde Nast used to own reddit. But a few years (2014) ago it split off as it’s
own entity but giving Advance Publications the majority shareholder state and
had a funding round at the same time. It’s had a couple more funding round
since with its most recent being $300M in feb.
Not sure about the financial state of Advance Publications though.
------
ddingus
Is the publication itself profitable?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hacker Monthly: One year old, 5000 subscribers - bearwithclaws
http://hackermonthly.posterous.com/one-year-old-5000-subscribers
======
bearwithclaws
This might sound a bit cliche but without the support of the readers and
subscribers (especially when we started charging for digital edition), the
help of contributors (most notably rdela in early issues), the authors and
commenters who graciously granting permission to publish their work, and most
of all the HN community, Hacker Monthly wouldn't be possible at all.
Thank you! I will continue to pump out great issue + free special issue (one
coming up in May) for a long time to come.
------
antirez
I love it, fortunately at some point I was asked to contribute an article and
I received a free electronic subscription. Then I purchased a Kindle. HM +
Kindle = a very cool way to consume interesting articles in a relaxing way
(the .mobi is one of the default formats you receive your electronic issues).
Also both the printed edition and the PDF are very well done from the point of
view of graphic design IMHO.
------
boyter
I will be honest and admit I didn't think that this would take off from the
beginning. Some rough calculations show this is now looking at $100,000+ a
year in revenue. Pretty impressive and goes to show that there can be a large
enough market for anything if you deliver a good product.
~~~
alain94040
Except the subscriber count includes students, so your revenue estimate is
probably completely off.
~~~
boyter
I factored that in somewhat. Going all digital is about 140,000 a year. Dead
tree is about double that. Either way I would guess over $100,000.
~~~
acangiano
Plus advertisers.
------
sasvari
I haven't done enough research about available options, but most probably you
could extend your subscriber base quite significantly offering a print edition
to _old europeans_ without ridiculously high shipping costs. would be awesome
to receive it here _on paper_ ...
~~~
zeugma
Indeed. To ship in the Netherland it would cost me $120 compared to $88 for a
subscription. May be finding a printer in Europe would help ?
~~~
sasvari
_May be finding a printer in Europe would help?_
it definitely would! I'm not aware of any _magcloud for europe_ , but I would
be happy if somebody proofs me wrong and HNM gets a distributor for europe.
------
hammerdr
Because I spend most of my days and half of my nights head down and working
hard, I miss many insightful articles that blow through the front page. Hacker
Monthly is the reason I feel that I can keep up.
Thanks and congrats to everyone that puts this together!
~~~
duck
Hacker Monthly is great and sometimes it is just hard to beat the reading
experience with paper. If you want another way to keep up you might check out
my side project - the weekly Hacker Newsletter
(<http://hackernewsletter.com>). Both projects compliment each other for
people that are too busy to visit HN daily.
~~~
bearwithclaws
Hacker Newsletter is great and I really recommend it.
~~~
duck
Thank you!
------
techsupporter
I keep forgetting to ask anyone about this, but I signed up as a student
(which I am) awhile back and never received any issues or a confirmation.
(This is one of those "meant to do" tasks.) Should I e-mail the general
inquiries address? It looks like the original offer isn't present any more or
I'd just try again.
~~~
bearwithclaws
Drop me an email.
------
staunch
If you're willing to talk about number of subscribers you're revealing the
rough revenue. You might as well just talk about revenue directly. People love
to hear about someone making money, so it's much better link bait.
"Hacker Monthly breaks $100k in revenue!"
The Balsamiq Effect.
~~~
jackowayed
But Balsamiq isn't asking people for free content ...
~~~
boyter
Thats the exact reason I didn't expect it to work. Looking at the product
though, while the content you can get for free, the presentation is excellent.
The digital is somewhat lacking though and frankly I find instapaper + kindle
works just as well and is free.
------
tlrobinson
Hacker Monthly is great. It's a great way to catch up on the gems that I
missed even though I read HN daily.
Awesome support too. For some I never received a couple issues and they were
able to quickly get MagCloud to send me new copies.
------
robryan
The back issue package and having it formatted for kindle is great. Hadn't
looked into it much since the first issue but having the 10 of them on the
kindle to read on the go or just away from the comp will be great.
------
mhartl
Hacker Monthly is a great success story and should be more widely emulated.
You don't have to start the next Google, Facebook, or recently acquired
_Company X_ to have success as an entrepreneur.
------
crasshopper
This is beautiful. You should be very proud of yourself.
------
dchs
Congratulations! Just ordered my first one :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What is a better way of weighing up pros and cons? - nodata
I frequently have the problem, almost exclusively on mailing lists or in e-mail, where the pros and cons of an argument are sidetracked or waylaid or lost.<p>What are some better ways for weighing up pros and cons. I'm leaning towards a customised wiki of some kind with a points system led by a moderator. Important is that the flow of ideas and points does not get lost. Thoughts?
======
anigbrowl
Lots of forum sites have polls, but over time factions skew the result. In any
case, the most popular argument is not necessarily the best; I'd hazard a
guess that as the size of an open voting population rises, the disparity
increases.
Wave attempted to solve this problem, but the result was not very elegant on a
UI level. It's hard to offer both depth and breadth at the same time.
~~~
nodata
The problem with polls is that they are the end point of a discussion. All
history is lost. The options are equal. There is no opportunity to weigh
options differently using different scenarios. I'm looking for a way to
summarise different answers and let people change their mind as they go.
Something that enforces structure would do it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Case for Free Online Books - jimsojim
http://from-a-to-remzi.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-case-for-free-online-books-fobs.html
======
devnonymous
Reminds me of Alan Downey's Green Tea Press effort:
http://greenteapress.com/wp/
http://greenteapress.com/manifesto.html
http://greenteapress.com/easy.html
http://greenteapress.com/free_books.html
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Recommend an IDaaS/Login provider? - jdlshore
I've been using Mozilla Persona to manage logins for letscodejavascript.com since 2012. But Persona is reaching end-of-life in November.<p>I could replace it with my own code, but managing email queues, worrying about password security, and maintaining it all is work I'd rather not do. It's not core to my business.<p>I'm looking for a simple login provider that will be around for the long term. I'm just looking for the basics:<p>* Login. Ask for the user's email and password, confirm that they're correct, and give me the user's email address.<p>* Signup and email verification: Get a new user's password and send a confirmation mail to their email address.<p>* Lost password: Send a password reset email to the user's email address.<p>Any recommendations or experiences to share?
======
jdlshore
This hasn't garnered many responses, but I thought I'd share my research so
far.
I've narrowed it down to Stormpath and Auth0.
I also considered:
* AuthRocket - no uptime page, were still in beta as of July 2014 (two years ago) - not mature enough yet
* UserApp - got their seed funding in 2014, too immature
* Okta - enterprise-focused, no public pricing for their "for Developers" product
* IdentityNow - enterprised-focused, no public pricing
* OneLogin - IT-focused
* Callsign - apparently mobile-only, trying to be passwordless, no public pricing, overall trying to solve a different problem than what I want
* Dailycred - feels abandoned, launched 4 years ago but still lacks team (according to Crunchbase), concerned about longevity
* Amazon Cognito - AWS-focused
------
chrishuttonch
Callsign offer all of these. It uses your phone as an identifier and a pin
that can be used with all Callsign integrations.
See: [https://www.callsign.com](https://www.callsign.com)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PuTTY 0.68 has been released - based2
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/releases/0.68.html
======
based2
Release Notes:
Security fix: an integer overflow bug in the agent forwarding code. See vuln-agent-fwd-overflow.
Security fix: the Windows PuTTY binaries should no longer be vulnerable to hijacking
by specially named DLLs in the same directory (on versions of Windows where they previously were).
See vuln-indirect-dll-hijack.
Windows PuTTY no longer sets a restrictive process ACL by default, because this turned out
to inconvenience too many legitimate applications such as NVDA and TortoiseGit.
You can still manually request a restricted ACL using the command-line option -restrict-acl.
The Windows PuTTY tools now come in a 64-bit version.
The Windows PuTTY tools now have Windows's ASLR and DEP security features turned on.
Support for elliptic-curve cryptography (the NIST curves and 25519), for host keys,
user authentication keys, and key exchange.
Support for importing and exporting OpenSSH's new private key format.
Host key preference policy change: PuTTY prefers host key formats for which it already knows the key.
Run-time option (from the system menu / Ctrl-right-click menu) to retrieve other host keys from the same server
(which cross-certifies them using the session key established using an already-known key)
and add them to the known host-keys database.
The Unix GUI PuTTY tools can now be built against GTK 3.
There is now a Unix version of Pageant.
~~~
caf
Isn't this "DLL hijacking" thing a bit overblown? The directory an application
runs from on Windows has always been considered part of the security perimeter
of the application.
If you can drop a malicious DLL where putty.exe lives, can't you just drop a
malicious putty.exe?
~~~
__jal
Not a windows person, so I can't speak to how the directory is treated, but
I've watched enough people run applications from the Downloads directory to
wonder about it.
~~~
beachstartup
with putty i would be surprised if most didn't run it straight from the
desktop. i would be a dirty liar if i said i haven't, countless times.
~~~
monk_e_boy
This. Without an installer that puts a link into the start menu, everyone I've
ever worked with just dumps it on the desktop. I used to throw a symlink into
the start menu, but when other devs used my machine they expected it to be on
the desktop. Just one of those quirks of using PUTTY
~~~
marvy
But why not just use the installer?
~~~
hermitdev
For a long time, there wasn't an installer for putty, so a lot of us became
accustomed to just dropping the binary on our desktop or "bin" folder", but
there is an installer now. Also, certain corporate environments that preclude
the installer from working correctly, but won't mind you "installing" a
program to your desktop/local app data.
~~~
marvy
I find the corporate environment thing suspicious. I could imagine that if you
don't have admin access, you can't install to Program Files, but couldn't you
still install to your home directory, and still get those lovely start menu
shortcuts?
~~~
Jaruzel
Not really.
Windows, by default requests elevated rights from the user (the UAC dialog) if
you run any exe that has 'setup' or 'install' in the name, or if the manifest
inside/alongside the exe defines a requirement for elevated rights.
You can spot these files as they have a little Windows 'shield' overlay on
their icons (Windows overlays that itself if it detects a file needing
elevated rights).
So, unless you can elevate your rights (i.e. be admin, or type in admin
credentials), you can't run most installers.
However, prior to Windows 7 your personal start menu folder wasn't locked down
- and as a non-admin you could easily add/remove shortcuts from it. Since
Windows 7 onwards it's now protected, so you need to elevate to be able to
write to it.
Windows allows you to run (by default) software from ANY folder you like, but
you can only (by default, again) write to some of your user folders and the
the %TEMP% location.
So downloading the PuTTY exe and running it from the downloads folder or
desktop is perfectly legitimate, although not good practice.
As an aside: I'm not sure if Chrome still does it, but I recall that if you
try to install it and you don't have admin rights, it just puts an icon on
your desktop, and installs all the chrome files into a folder under
ProgramData which resides in your user hierarchy, instead of the locked down
Program Files area. Which is one way of getting around the lack of admin-
rights.
~~~
marvy
Huh. I think that's a poor design choice on the part of the Windows folks, but
they probably know things I don't.
~~~
Jaruzel
You know in order to secure an old house, you just nail boards over all the
openings? Well, yeah, that's the Windows security model that is. :)
~~~
marvy
ouch
------
mytec
Long time user of Putty, like many here. I liked this quote from their FAQ
(A.3.3 What's the point of the Unix port? Unix has OpenSSH):
"There were development advantages as well; porting PuTTY to Unix was a
valuable path-finding effort for other future ports, and also allowed us to
use the excellent Linux tool Valgrind to help with debugging, which has
already improved PuTTY's stability on all platforms."
~~~
bch
This sort of development is often illuminating. I develop on *BSD, Linux,
Solaris (SPARC), and MacOS X when I can, and even though they're "all UNIX",
interesting insights abound, and dealing w different endianess (SPARC == big,
Intel == small), and library differences, etc is rarely more trouble than it's
worth.
------
jimmcslim
On Windows 10, with Windows Subsystem for Linux installed, I don't find myself
using Putty anymore.
~~~
SebiH
Are you using an insider build or a different shell than Windows' cmd? I find
myself using Putty to connect to a Linux subsystem ssh server just to get a
decent terminal emulator with full colour support!
~~~
Viper007Bond
The latest Insider builds are a lot better, including full color support.
~~~
vesinisa
It's apparently coming to stable in April:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13695267](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13695267)
------
hughes
It always makes me sad to see that the PuTTY download page is served over
unsecure HTTP.
~~~
r1ch
At least the binaries are authenticode signed now, so checking they are legit
is just a right click away.
~~~
anderskaseorg
How is that supposed to help? Even if the legitimate binaries are
Authenticode-signed now, a malicious non-Authenticode-signed binary
substituted by an attacker MITMing the insecure HTTP connection will appear to
the downloader to look just like the legitimate non-Authenticode-signed
binaries of previous versions that they’ve been downloading for years.
~~~
Godel_unicode
Because you can add the signing cert to your AppLocker whitelist, and now it
will be checked every time it runs. Then you push that out by GPO, and now
everyone has that same whitelist protection.
Also, as mentioned other places on the thread, the downloads are over HTTPS.
Edit: see the following [https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/dd723683(v=ws.10...](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/dd723683\(v=ws.10\).aspx)
------
wtbob
When I started my career nearly 20 years ago, back before one could convince a
Fortune-100 company to let its peons use Linux on our desktops and Apple
hadn't yet had its renascence, PuTTY was a veritable godsend: it did what was
needed, and did it remarkably well.
It's been years since I was allowed to add a Linux box, and years since I
switched to Linux full-time, and now I honestly think that I'd reject a job
offer which required Windows (and maybe even one which required macOS) — but
for all those years of Just Working™, thanks PuTTY!
------
mpoloton
PuTTY is a good example where the author resisted to turn it into bloatware.
It is minimal and does the thing it is supposed to do.
~~~
sumedh
That may or may not be a good thing. Personally I cannot live without tabs and
bookmarks so I use mRemoteNG.
~~~
lma21
I use PuTTY and connect to a tmux server afterwards.. tabs / sessions /
programmable interactions with the terminal are a life saver that tmux
provides. Give it a try.
------
drzaiusapelord
Pretty happy with the Kitty fork of putty, which is a lot less spartan with
features.
[https://www.fosshub.com/KiTTY.html](https://www.fosshub.com/KiTTY.html)
~~~
snksnk
And I would recommend MobaXterm, definitely also worth to try.
[http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/](http://mobaxterm.mobatek.net/)
~~~
atomicUpdate
It's definitely very good and has a lot to offer, but I still can't justify
$70 for some reason. The free version offers enough functionality to be a very
good PuTTY alternative though.
~~~
petee
I was about to, until I read the fine print and realized it's $70 to buy, but
you'll only get updates for a year; after that you buy again or stick with
your current version - no bug fixes. Were there a more reasonable price for
non-commercial use, I would have no problem buying sooner.
On the other hand, its has the only windows Mosh implementation...the best
thing since sliced bread and tmux!
~~~
tokenizerrr
For mosh there's a cygwin build and also
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mosh/ooiklbnjmhbcg...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mosh/ooiklbnjmhbcgemelgfhaeaocllobloj)
------
INTPenis
Since I switched to cygwin for ssh on windows I haven't looked back, putty is
awful for someone coming from Linux normally and only forced to use Windows
for certain things.
~~~
aao
Yeah. I use a modified mintty-solarized-dark theme for cygwin, and symlinked
my windows home dir into the cygwin one.
I never got around on writing a blag about how to do this, but I like it a lot
~~~
INTPenis
Exactly the same for me, mintty with solarized theme because I use solarized
on all my other terminals in Fedora for example.
------
account1984
I used to use PuTTY as my go-to windows SSH client. After some time I decided
to integrate a piece of software with Pageant and I decided to open up the
source to PuTTY. The poor quality of the source code terrified me, it seemed
sort of "all over the place" and there seemed to be little to no concern for
security and defensive programming.
Secure software design and development is what I do for a living, so perhaps I
am a bit more paranoid than the casual user - but this is one of the most
widely deployed security tools in an enterprise, this shouldn't be "okay".
Some defensive efforts are just common sense and are recommended by your
compiler (eg. don't use sprintf and strcpy when you can snprintf and strncpy).
Also, it doesn't hurt to check error conditions consistently.
PS. To echo what a lot of folks have already said, how on earth can the author
implement cryptographic algorithms and simultaneously think there is any value
in publishing a hash of the binary "for security". Using a hash as a means of
integrity validation in the context of security raises huge red flags about
the authors mindset.
------
gcp
Putty used to be _the_ go-to tool for Windows SSH, but nowadays I'm using
Bitvise SSH client. It's worth a try.
~~~
el_duderino
Have you ever tried XShell5?
[https://www.netsarang.com/products/xsh_overview.html](https://www.netsarang.com/products/xsh_overview.html)
It's free for Home/school use. I have tried all Windows SSH clients, and it is
by far the best SSH client I have ever used.
~~~
hujun
+1 for xshell, tons of features and very good GUI, maybe secureCRT is still
the best, but xshell is very close, and it is free for home/school
------
Raticide
I've stopped using PuTTY and now use MinTTY with the Ubuntu subsystem and the
regular old Ubuntu SSH client. Specifically this thing:
[https://github.com/mintty/wsltty](https://github.com/mintty/wsltty)
It's real nice and even supports 24bit colour if you're into that.
~~~
ReverseCold
Another option: SSH inside WSL in windows 10.
~~~
Raticide
The default terminal was a bit limited for me, but I hear they're making big
improvements to it in later builds.
~~~
bubblethink
I tried that briefly too, and I couldn't launch screen. It seems to trigger
some old bug in screen. How far is the WSL terminal from the usual fanfare
(screen, tmux, proper colors in the terminal and text editors, and other edge
cases for scrollback etc.) ?
------
jjcm
Loved putty for years, but these days I've been using mosh over ssh. Having
persistent sessions and text prediction means no more dropped connections, no
more waiting a couple seconds if the wifi is buggy for whatever reason.
Personally I use chrome's mosh extension:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mosh/ooiklbnjmhbcg...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mosh/ooiklbnjmhbcgemelgfhaeaocllobloj?hl=en)
Works great and I can pin it to my taskbar.
Relevant recent discussion on mosh:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11572146](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11572146)
~~~
JdeBP
The State Synchronization Protocol still does not have specification doco, as
far as I am aware.
------
nkkollaw
Amazing, I used to use it many, many years ago when I started developing, and
it's still a 0.x release...
Is there a reason to not call it 1.0?
~~~
lma21
You moved to another platform or another terminal?
~~~
nkkollaw
Another platform, used to use Windows, then Linux, then Mac.
------
ulkesh
Putty is great and has been for a very long time. Always glad to see it still
in active development.
Though, for Windows, once I found MobaXterm I never looked back. Of course on
the Linux side nothing to me beats tmux or terminator.
~~~
mkj
And the SSH part of MobaXterm is based on PuTTY
~~~
BrandoElFollito
Yes, and unfortunately you have to use the version in there (you can't upgrade
nor use another client). Otherwise I love mobaxterm and bought a few licenses.
------
antidaily
Pfft... not touching it until they get to a version 1.0 beta.
~~~
Pharylon
Lol. I wonder why they're still sub-1.0.
~~~
Aloha
Vanity version numbering is a thing.
------
sengork
I wish they would finally implement file transfers via copy/paste mechanism
inside an active terminal window. As far as I know this feature would be
unique across platforms.
If someone does know of an SSH terminal client that does this, please reply.
~~~
ianmcgowan
Reminds me of the bad old days of kermit and x/y/zmodem.
[http://www.extraputty.com/features/xmodem.html](http://www.extraputty.com/features/xmodem.html)
looks like a throwback to those days, over an ssh session. I wonder what you
have to run on the server side for it to work?
Does uuencode or base64 work for you? I use it a lot to move stuff (aka my
toolkit) to systems where I'm connected via citrix -> rdp -> ssh -> ssh.
Amazingly, it works fine, though it can be slow.
$uuencode sheet1.xml sheet1.xml | pbcopy
(switch to remote session)
$uudecode (paste, which varies depending on how I'm connected)
$ls -l sheet1.xml
Ta-da!
~~~
sengork
There is another throwback for me here when one of our clients had disabled
Citrix file transfers and only allowed text based clipboard (due to imposed
security policies).
So we had to:
- zip a directory hierarchy or a single file uuencode
- copy to shared clipboard
- paste into a terminal on the other end using a here document
- uudecode the output
- checksum the source/destination copy for file integrity purposes
This worked on Windows too (using Notepad and saving the file as .uu for use
with WinZip). Luckily file transfers were not a frequent use case.
------
wst_
Years ago, when I worked on Windows, putty was a great soft. Since that time I
switched to MacOS/Linux with Fish shell at work and running just a simple ssh
command from terminal is a bliss. I still have Windows machine at home and I
am missing terminal every time I must click though to login to my remote
machine. Putty is no fun anymore... User interface has not been improved for
years and, sadly, it's not working for me anymore.
~~~
dingo_bat
Try WSL, I think it is a good putty substitute.
------
chrissnell
Putty is fantastically fast on Linux! I wish there was a way to use it as an
xterm replacement without having to SSH to localhost.
Has anybody figured out how to do this?
~~~
morecoffee
Putty is actually quite slow, due to not implementing AES with the Intel
intrinsics. Trying to transfer files using pscp, or WinSCP (which uses putty)
over a local network link runs into a CPU bottleneck.
------
scandox
Has much changed since this?
[https://noncombatant.org/2014/03/03/downloading-software-
saf...](https://noncombatant.org/2014/03/03/downloading-software-safely-is-
nearly-impossible/)
Related comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9577861](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9577861)
------
jwatte
I'd like the putty download to be over https and the installer to be signed.
Or, at least, sha512 hashes available on the https download site. As it is,
the download source for putty is one of the weakest chains in internet
security!
~~~
Sunset
The downloaded binary is served over https, it's signed.
------
arca_vorago
Putty always served me well when stuck on a windows boxen, so it's good to
know it hasn't been forgotten.
Two things for those of you who use putty I think would be mosh (chromium if
you have to, cygwin my preffered), and winscp.
------
moftz
When is PuTTY going to support URL highlighting? Even plain old xterm can do
it. Someone made a patch for it once but I'd rather have the support built in.
------
bobsgame
I've got 4 instances open right now. Thanks, Simon and co!
------
CyberMuz
The default colour scheme on Putty is not very good in my opinion. know I can
change it manually but it would be nice if the default for new connections was
better.
------
xeeeeeeeeeeenu
Lack of of Ed25519 support is a deal-breaker for me. It's one of the reasons
why I'm using SecureCRT instead.
~~~
krallja
Isn't Ed25519 support added in this release?
~~~
xeeeeeeeeeeenu
Oops, indeed, I somehow missed that.
------
bananaboy
PuTTY is one of the first things I install when setting up a new Windows
machine!
------
geoffmcc
Now if only I could click a link and have it open in a browser.
~~~
dannysu
I'm currently using a PuTTY fork called KiTTY and it has that feature as well:
[https://www.9bis.net/kitty/?page=URL%20hyperlinks](https://www.9bis.net/kitty/?page=URL%20hyperlinks)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Stay in west coast tech scene or join hedge fund? - throwaway91243
I'm a fairly senior data scientist/machine learning engineer at a major tech company. I recently got invited to apply at a major hedge fund, and decided to give it a shot. It looks like I might get an offer, which surprises me, given how selective I perceive them to be.<p>Setting aside my impostor syndrome, what would I be getting myself into by taking the offer? I can expect all of the typical perks of working at a hedge fund, but it would involve a move. I have a family, but the move actually puts me much closer to my extended family. I can assume that there will be more work, on a wildly uneven tech stack.<p>Has anyone been in a similar situation? How did it play out, and were there any regrets?
======
PaulHoule
Hedge funds are much more heterogenous than investment banks. Some of them are
very disciplined, other ones are overgrown family offices.
I know someone who worked at a famous hedge fund in Connecticut whose name
starts with B and ends with R. He told me they hire a lot of superstars and
put them to work doing things that leave them feeling underemployed even if
overpaid. He left. Like many places the dominant analysis tool is Excel and
lately they have gotten into desktop virtualization so that employees can't
walk off with laptops full of valuable data.
Other ones are more tech focused, I had a guy from Renassiance jump on me at a
vendor conference circa 2005 because I asked a question about "distributed
main memory databases"
Outside of finance I am a huge fan of the startup scene in NYC.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Enabling of Ad Blocking in Apple’s iOS 9 Prompts Backlash - santaclaus
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/19/technology/apple-ios-9s-enabling-of-ad-blocking-prompts-backlash.html
======
ratfacemcgee
Actually asking a genuine question here, do you feel that the fear and hate
that web publishers feel towards ad-blocking is comparable to the Luddite
movement?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Enabling innovation isn't magic (Adobe) - fjabre
http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplatform/2010/01/enabling_innovation_isnt_magic.html
======
steveklabnik
> On the iPad, it looks like developers won't be able to write applications in
> Java, .net, Python, Ruby, Perl, or any number of other languages (including
> Flash).
Aren't there cross compilers for some of this? And why can't you use the
Flash-to-Objective-C cross compiler Adobe themselves made for the iPad?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Announcing Image Scanning for Amazon ECR - smn1234
https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2019/10/announcing-image-scanning-for-amazon-ecr/
======
smn1234
[https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECR/latest/userguide/image...](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonECR/latest/userguide/image-
scanning.html) indicates the use of the Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures
(CVEs) database from the open source CoreOS Clair project
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scala Vector operations aren't “Effectively Constant” time - dmit
http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/ScalaVectoroperationsarentEffectivelyConstanttime.html
======
kbenson
I'm a little disappointed that I bothered to read what turned out to be a
massive act of pedantry.
A few sections are devoted to showing that O(log32(n)) is the same as
O(log(n)). This is entirely correct, as shown, because the difference between
them is reducible to a constant multiplier, which big-O notation does not care
about. It's also, from the problematic sources given, and entirely made up
argument, given that I didn't find O(log32(n)) mentioned in any of them that I
was able to view. Plenty of notes in them about it being logarithmic though...
I understand making sure people know that it's not constant time, but when all
the examples of problematic descriptions you give make sure to say that it _is
logarithmic_ time and _then_ go on to explain why it's "effectively constant",
you're railing against a non-issue with an absurdly complicated argument.
~~~
KirinDave
Words may be relative, but that's why we set up systametized math notation to
appeal to when we need to start characterizing the precise nature of
algorithms and systems.
To argue that this is act of pedantry is to argue that any form of canoncial
notation to describe the essential nature of algorithms is itself pedantry.
It's to suggest bigO notation itself is pedantry and by extension so is it's
defense.
In the face of this, I'd say, "If you don't like it, don't use it. But many
people do find it useful and it's corrosive in the extreme to demand the right
to redefine it for what amounts to marketing purposes." Scala's got a bunch of
actors in it's community that do this; and it's frustrating when you're trying
to evaluate the ecosystem.
The asymptotic boundaries of algorithms ARE theoretical tools that can be
misleading. For example, how many people incorrectly suggest that quicksort is
asymptotically faster than merge sort? It's not.
But the response to this should not be to vaguely redefine the terms. The
response to this should be to quantify the implementation's docs with real
metrics.
~~~
kbenson
> In the face of this, I'd say, "If you don't like it, don't use it. But many
> people do find it useful and it's corrosive in the extreme to demand the
> right to redefine it for what amounts to marketing purposes."
But as I pointed out, in all the examples provided in the article as evidence
of this behavior, not only did they _not_ mention O(log32(n)), they often
(possibly always in the links presented) _did_ specifically call out running
time as logarithmic prior to mentioning what that meant _in practice_.
> But the response to this should not be to vaguely redefine the terms. The
> response to this should be to quantify the implementation's docs with real
> metrics.
This is not a case of vague wording being used, it's a case of exact wording
being used and additional context being provided.
Edit: I noticed some of the examples weren't as upfront about the time
complexity, I was mistakenly seeing what was presented for Lists as applying
to Vectors. In lieu of that, I agree that they could, and should, be more up-
front about the _theoretical_ time and the _practical_ time if they plan to
continue using "effectively constant" in documentation.
~~~
KirinDave
I've seen numerous examples of "essentially constant time" on slide decks,
presentations and talks. But I'd argue even if you did do this after a prior
disclaimer, it's still somewhat misleading. It's adopting language that sounds
very similar and creating greater confusion.
> This is not a case of vague wording being used, it's a case of exact wording
> being used and additional context being provided.
And yet the confusion persists. And I can point to enthusiastic jr. engineers
who don't fully grasp the difference, and that were somewhat surprised when I
corrected them (the equivalence of log32 and log2 should be enough but...)
Similar stories abound from multiple actors in the world of Scala. Another
great example is the (now infamous) "non-blocking backpressure." Same
principle, taking well-understood industry terms (some of which even have
precise definitions lifted from more rigorous disciplines) and wrangling them
into something almost unrecognizable.
------
kevinwang
Effectively constant seems like a reasonable thing to say if the real world
number of operations is upper bounded by six. I don't interpret that claim as
making any claim about the theoretical asymptotic complexity of an algorithm.
Of course, as the author notes near the end, this also means that any real
world algorithm running on a real world data type which is bounded in size can
also be considered "effectively constant", which does throw doubt onto the
effectiveness of the term.
I guess in the real world we should use graphs in units of time instead of
classes of functions to discuss performance based on input size, since that's
what we care about.
Also interesting to note is that"effectively constant", although extremely
hand-wavy and not rigorous, is used even by computer scientists to denote
extremely slow growing functions. A professor once used similar words to
describe the complexity of the inverse Ackerman function:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ackermann_function#Inverse](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ackermann_function#Inverse)
~~~
victor___
I don't think pulling out the number 6 separately from the constant factor
results in an apples-to-apples comparison with other operations with
logarithmic complexity.
The 32-way tree operations have asymptomic complexity 6 * C_1 * log(n) = C_2 *
log(n)
Operations on a balanced binary tree have asymptotic complexity C_3 * log(n) =
6 * C_4 * log(n).
The only difference between the two data structures is the actual values of
the constants.
I think the Scala people have a valid point that logarithmic complexity may be
as good (or nearly as good) as constant-time in practice. The precise way the
claim is formulated is wrong and abuses big-O analysis.
A more correct argument is to choose a practical upper bound on log(n). E.g.
maybe 64. Then multiply that by the constant factor (not playing any tricks
with splitting out 6 *). If that number is always good enough if practice,
then you don't need to worry about your operation being logarithmic.
~~~
rrobukef
I don't think they should use effectively constant. Because the difference
between O(1) and O(log(n)) may not be very big but the difference between O(n)
and O(n log(n)) is very measurable. Even for small n.
------
smitherfield
Even a statically-allocated C array doesn't "really" have constant-time lookup
with respect to size; the more elements it has the greater the rate of cache
misses and page faults on lookups becomes (I'm pretty sure this can be proven
true of all data structures). Moreover the possibility of cache misses and
page faults means that while lookups take a fixed number of CPU cycles _on
average,_ any single lookup might take between <1 and thousands of cycles. If
you truly need your data accesses to take a fixed number of CPU cycles, you
have to handwrite assembly and put everything in registers. And even _that_
doesn't account for instruction reordering and the possibility of interrupts
or context switches.
I would assume the reason the Scala website calls Vector log( _n_ ) element
lookup "effectively constant" is because in real-world use (as opposed to
hypothetical ideal Von Neumann machines), the slowdown of the lookup algorithm
with respect to _n_ is nil, in relation to the decrease in cache and
allocation efficiency with respect to _n._
If you're creating some sort of ultra-fine-grained real-time system where
everything needs to take a fixed number of clock cycles, Scala would be a
pretty terrible tool for the job. For that sort of thing you'd want MISRA C or
assembly running on bare metal, or a FPGA or ASIC.
~~~
arnioxux
There's an interesting argument based on physics on why memory access is
O(sqrt(N)):
[http://www.ilikebigbits.com/blog/2014/4/21/the-myth-of-
ram-p...](http://www.ilikebigbits.com/blog/2014/4/21/the-myth-of-ram-part-i)
Relevant quote:
> The amount of information that can fit within a sphere with radius r can be
> calculated using the Bekenstein bound, which says that the amount of
> information that can be contained by a sphere is directly proportional to
> the radius and mass: N ∝ r·m. So how massive can a sphere get? Well, what is
> the most dense thing in existence? A black hole! It turns out that the mass
> of a black hole is directly proportional to its radius: m ∝ r. This means
> that the amount of information that can fit inside a sphere of radius r is N
> ∝ r². And so we come to the conclusion that the amount of information
> contained in a sphere is bounded by the area of that sphere - not the
> volume!
> In short: if you try to squeeze too much L1 cache onto your CPU it will
> eventually collapse into a black hole, and that would make it awkward to get
> the results of the computation back to the user.
But honestly I find all of these arguments equally pedantic.
People often forget Big Oh is a tool just like any other tool. It's useful for
estimating number of X, whether X is cpu instructions, cache miss, disk read
or whatever. When it stops being a good estimate (whether it's because your
real world N is too small for growth rate to dominate, or stuff you're
counting are not unit-cost comparable, or you're not even counting the right
things in the first place), just stop using it and count cycles on a benchmark
instead.
~~~
deepsun
You're comparing radius (in Bekenstein bound) and event horizon (in black
hole).
Event horizon is a pretty different beast than radius. If we define "density"
of a black holes using event horizon instead of radius (black holes don't have
real radius), then supermassive black holes are actually pretty "light". A
black hole of the mass of our universe would have "density" of the universe,
which is mostly empty.
~~~
arnioxux
Not my article and I don't know any theoretical physics.
In case that point happens to be false, I think his other argument still
works:
\- "data centers ... are spread out on the two-dimensional surface of the
earth"
\- if we tightly pack these data centers on the surface it will form a circle
with area O(N) so distance to furthest data center is O(sqrt(N)). (sky scraper
height is negligible)
Anyway, it's more of an interesting thought experiment than of any practical
use. Nobody sane would estimate cost of generic "information retrieval" that
mixes cost of ram/disk/network.
------
pierrebai
This mainly shows that the author mistakes the prupose of Big-O notations.
It's a measure of asymptotic performance, so there need to be an asymptote to
reach. If the range of values you're measuring is small (and a non-constant
factor that varies between 1 and 6 is small) then it's teh fact that one uses
Big-O to characterize an algorithm that is wrong.
It's a classic mistake. There are many pitfall to performace measurements,
including: using Big-O when the range is small or ignoring cinstant factor
when the constant is big. Both of these has lead people down the wrong path,
for example usng a theoretically faster algorithm that is in reality slower
because in the typical use case the constant overweigh the complexity factor.
The counter-example to the author argument would be to say that a binary
decision is linear over the input range.
~~~
flgr
> and a non-constant factor that varies between 1 and 6 is small
Wouldn't the 6 in O(((n^1000)^n)^6) be a non-constant factor that makes a big
difference in asymptotic performance though?
~~~
mamon
This is not a constant factor, this is an exponent. Constant factors are
what's standing in front of whole term, like this: O(7*((n^1000)^n)^6), 7
being constant factor.
------
lorenvs
I think the author missed an opportunity to point out what I feel is the the
most convincing argument against labeling these operations as "Effectively
Constant". The only reason we drop constant factors out of Big-O expressions
is because we measure as N approaches infinity. Once you start reasoning about
the size of N being bounded, the rationale for dropping constant factors
vanishes.
The cost of maintaining a 32-element tree node might not be measurable as N
approaches infinity, but for N < 2 ^ 32 it is, especially in relation to the
cost of maintaining 2-element tree nodes. Once you consider constants, the
runtimes are likely comparable between a binary tree with depth 32 and a
32-ary tree with depth 6 (with a skew towards the 32-ary tree for locality of
access).
------
deepsun
TL;DR:
Scala doc claims that their algorithm is O(log32(N)), where N is not greater
than 2^31, so it's O(6)=O(1) -- "effectively constant".
Author claims that then all real-world algorithms are constant, for example
bubble sort is O(N^2), where N is not greater than 2^31, so it's O(2^62)=O(1)
-- also "effectively constant".
~~~
benlorenzetti
Well put! Taking author's basic proposition to its logical conclusion shows
that faulting Scala for this is wrong.
Scala has illuminated the author to a pedantic dissonance in academia: in this
case, that true asymptotic analyses should be using O(logn) instead of O(1)
for random memory access.
Hence why algorithms like Hoare's quicksort are so fast, they actually are
Theta(nlogn) in practice because _linear_ memory access looks like O(1) on
modern machines.
(but again pedantically it is probably still O(logn) from gate depth of
multiplexing/demultiplexing the architecture's pointer size.)
Edit: Remembering that O((logn)^2) = O(logn), I suppose the author is probably
correct.
------
Asdfbla
Seems like a pedantic article, but I liked his remark that the 'effectively
constant' argument can of course be extended to any algorithm where the input
size is bounded and therefore, shouldn't really be used to describe your
algorithmic complexities, even in real life implementations (except when you
maybe use the inverse Ackermann function or something).
------
cameldrv
This is a pet peeve of mine in interviews when asked what the big O of hash
table lookup is and I say "you're probably looking for O(1), but it's really
O(log n). The assumption is that you can hash a word sized quantity and access
the corresponding memory in constant time, but the whole point of Big O is
asymptotic complexity, and just taking the hash of N bits is going to take
O(n) time. Now I get called a pedant for this, but really log n time is for
most purposes close enough to constant time to be negligible for practical
purposes. Log n factors are unlikely to determine whether an algorithm is
feasible, as the constant factor is usually way more significant.
~~~
boethian
Be careful here, because you hash the element, granted that may take O(n)
where n is bits in the element, but n usually denotes the number of elements
in a list, which can obviously be much larger and is thus far more important.
EDIT: in part because the number of bits in each element doesn't "grow"; it's
usually fixed.
------
stcredzero
By now certain elements of a modern programming environment have become pretty
apparent. (Vectors and maps, for example) Could there be something gained by
supporting these directly in the architecture?
------
DSrcl
Labelling an operation -- number of steps of which upper-bounded by 6 --
"effectively constant" is different from considering any real world algorithm
with bounded input size.
Calling Scala's immutable vector ops "effectively constant" is not a
stretch/hack by any means, considering we also say the same for integer
addition and multiplication.
~~~
MaulingMonkey
> Calling Scala's immutable vector ops "effectively constant" is not a
> stretch/hack by any means, considering we also say the same for integer
> addition and multiplication.
This rationale ad absurdum means we can call an in-memory linear search
"effectively constant" because we have an upper-bound of 2^32 or 2^64,
depending on processor architecture.
Yes, log32 is very nice. Even log2 is pretty nice though, and we don't call
that "effectively constant", because we already have a much more precise and
well defined term for it - "logarithmic" \- which the docs also use:
[http://docs.scala-
lang.org/overviews/collections/performance...](http://docs.scala-
lang.org/overviews/collections/performance-characteristics.html)
You _might_ be able to tell me with a straight face that labeling log32
"effectively constant" and log2 "logarithmic" is "correct enough". But can you
tell me with that same straight face, that labeling it "Log32" (or even just
"Log") isn't just as correct, more informative, and less confusing?
------
flgr
This is why I've never liked stating that something has "run-time of
O(log(n))" since that's rarely true — the assumption for that is that all
machine instructions take pretty much the same time, which is not the case.
CPU instructions involving cache misses are multiple orders of magnitude more
expensive than others.
I think it makes much more sense to talk about concrete operations (or cache
misses) instead. Sounds like their implementation has O(log(n)) cache misses.
------
wohlergehen
Has anyone actually benchmarked the vector lookup for various vector sizes in
scala?
That would straightforwardly determine if the runtime is "effectively
constant" or "effectively logarithmic", e.g. cause it is really O(a+b*log(n))
with a >> b.
~~~
flgr
Sounds like the author did —
[http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/BenchmarkingScalaCollections.htm...](http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/BenchmarkingScalaCollections.html#vectors-
are-ok)
Notably Vector index access takes 4,260,000 ns for a vector with 1,048,576
elements instead of measured 0 ns for native arrays. is about +4 ns extra per
element and hints at the whole data set still fitting into L2 cache.
If the process ends up accessing more working memory than fits into L2 (32 or
64 MB or so) and lookups aren't nicely bundled together, the overhead will
approach about +80 ns per element access. Or +0.08 seconds per million element
accesses.
It does seem unlikely that every element access would end up causing a cache
miss since I'd expect lookups to happen close together, but this can be
significant for intense workloads such as OLAP.
~~~
andrewla
Based on the numbers for lookup, it looks worse than that -- it seems to be
linear (r2 = .9988).
df <- data.frame(
s=c(0,1,4,16,64,256,1024,4096, 16192, 65536,
262144, 1048576),
t=c(0, 1, 5, 17, 104, 440, 1780, 8940, 38000,
198000, 930000, 4260000))
> summary(lm(t ~ s + 0, data=df))
...
Coefficients:
Estimate Std. Error t value Pr(>|t|)
s 4.02825 0.04161 96.82 <2e-16 ***
Residual standard error: 45060 on 11 degrees of freedom
Multiple R-squared: 0.9988, Adjusted R-squared: 0.9987
F-statistic: 9374 on 1 and 11 DF, p-value: < 2.2e-16
~~~
cscheid
That's because the program is looking up every item. It's _right there in the
text_:
> Note that this time is measuring the time taken to look up every element in
> the collection, rather than just looking up a single element.
[http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/BenchmarkingScalaCollections.htm...](http://www.lihaoyi.com/post/BenchmarkingScalaCollections.html#lookup-
performance)
~~~
andrewla
Shame on me for not looking more closely!
So when you look at the per-operation cost (t/s in my model) then what emerges
is, indeed, logarithmic (r2 ~ .96 for lm(t/s ~ s + log(s)). Bounded, for sure,
but if you walk in with a vector-indexing-bound but array-size-independent
algorithm expecting that the performance for 1e3 elements will be
representative of the behavior for 1e6, you're in for a surprise.
------
clhodapp
log_32(x) is only a constant factor of 5 off of log_32(x). If we are going to
call log_32(collection_size) "effectively constant", we may as well call any
log-complexity operation "effectively constant". If you call the op
"logarithmic-complexity", the "effective-constant" property should be just as
clear to someone who knows what's up with time complexities and logarithms
plus you gain the benefit of being technically accurate. Actually calling
log_2 ops "logarithmic" and log_32 ops "effectively constant" crosses the
boundary into being actively misleading.
~~~
wtetzner
I think the point is more that the implementation is effectively constant
time, even if the algorithm isn't. In the Scala implementation, vectors have a
maximum size of 2^32. So we know that a lookup won't need to walk more than 6
levels deep, no matter what.
Hash tables are usually considered to have constant time lookup, but of course
in practice they have to deal with collisions. I don't think it's unreasonable
to say that Scala's vector lookups are "effectively" constant time, because
they are.
~~~
clhodapp
That's definitely a fair way to describe things (even if it is strictly less
precise than just saying "log_32") but if you're going to do that, you should
call all of the logarithmic-in-size operations "effectively constant". Having
a bounded max of e.g. 30 lookups isn't markedly different from having a
bounded max of 6. Basically... my claim is that it's misleading for the Scala
docs to draw the distinction where they've drawn it.
Edit: Ah! I messed up the first sentence of my original comment but it seems
to be too late to edit it! I meant to say "log_2(x) is only a constant factor
of 5 off of log_32(x)".
~~~
wtetzner
> Basically... my claim is that it's misleading for the Scala docs to draw the
> distinction where they've drawn it.
Yeah, I see where you're coming from.
I guess it would be constant time if they made sure lookups always took as
long as the worst case :)
------
marvinalone
Wow, you really showed that straw man what's what.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Appl Still Hasn’t Fixd Its MacBook Kyboad Problm - hprotagonist
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/03/27/strn-kyboard
======
vnchr
Actual article: [https://www.wsj.com/graphics/apple-still-hasnt-fixed-its-
mac...](https://www.wsj.com/graphics/apple-still-hasnt-fixed-its-macbook-
keyboard-problem/)
------
yingbo
I totally agree. I am still suffering the keyboard, and all I got from the
genius bar is: "blow it with compress air".
------
angrow
What current laptops have good keyboards?
~~~
xnyan
Alienware laptops have a luxurious key travel distance, unfortunately they are
also huge. Thinkpads, even the most basic have great keyboards (usually), see
also high-end HP. Xiaomi has some macbook pro clones that are very good as
well as some of their own designs.
If you want to try them out, I'd recommend a Microsoft store if you have one
around. Lots of high-end laptop keyboards are represented there.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Medicine works, why are smart people still drinking out of control? - rosandor
https://blog.dxrxmedical.com/rss/
======
nkkollaw
Link seems to be broken.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Introducing Fresco: a new image library for Android - vierja
https://code.facebook.com/posts/366199913563917/introducing-fresco-a-new-image-library-for-android/
======
seanwilson
I wrote a painting app with layer support a while ago for Android that had to
use similar tricks (the app is coincidentally called Fresco:
[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.seanw.fres...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.seanw.fresco.lite)).
Each image layer (like you would have in GIMP or Photoshop) takes a couple of
MB to store in Java and given the roughly 16MB Java app memory limit you
didn't have much memory left to play with after creating 5 layers. I found
that apps that used C and the NDK had no such limit; you could allocate huge
amounts of memory compared to Java without any issues.
To take advantage of this, I wrote code that would let me allocate C memory,
copy a Java bitmap into it then free the Java memory. To make all the app
features work without crashes due to Java hitting the memory limit, I would
shuffle bitmap memory between Java and C as needed, while having to implement
several algorithms in C that I would rather have done in Java. For example,
the undo/redo feature needed to store bitmaps of what changed when edits were
made so this was mostly kept in C. One tricky issue was I couldn't find a way
to get the Java APIs to render image data that was stored in memory used by C;
you had to copy the data back into Java first.
I found the above frustrating in that if you're writing an image manipulation
app, it means there is a massive incentive to avoid the native Java UI
libraries and write your app entirely in C as you don't have the same memory
limitations for some reason.
~~~
realrocker
"you could allocate huge amounts of memory compared to Java without any
issues". No sir. It still comes under the process memory account. It works in
practice because coincidentally other processes were not using that memory.
~~~
seanwilson
Well, I meant that if you hit the Java memory limit your app was guaranteed to
crash but C allowed you to use an order of magnitude more memory without
noticeable consequences when your app was in the foreground. Your app was
probably more likely to be closed when it went in the background but that
wasn't an issue.
------
hngiszmo
The mandatory link to Facebook's stance on patents that make their "open
source" a no-go for many:
[https://github.com/facebook/fresco/blob/master/PATENTS](https://github.com/facebook/fresco/blob/master/PATENTS)
~~~
rtpg
so what's the layman description of this? Don't sue us and we won't sue you?
That seems like a pretty good way of applying MAD to the patent space
~~~
Sanddancer
It goes a step beyond and says not to even think about challenging one of
their patents. So if facebook patents something stupid, and you call bullshit,
you can't use their software.
------
tyronen
I'm an engineer on the project. Would be happy to take questions.
~~~
realrocker
Hey. Quote,
"Our breakthrough came when we realized we didn't have to do that. If we
called lockPixels without a matching unlockPixels, we created an image that
lived safely off the Java heap and yet never slowed down the UI thread. A few
lines of C++ code, and we were home free."
That doesn't sound complete. It's off the Java heap, true but doesn't mean
it's either safe or won't slow down the UI or is even home free. Allocation in
ashmem will still count towards the PSS[1] of the app. The image data won't be
unpinned right until it throws an OutofMemory exception. And if you have
handled the exception, the UI thread will wait around for the unpin/unlock of
data. This would be ok if you could make an educated guess of how much ashmem
can be allocated to your app. You can't make that guess easily as it depends a
lot on OEM implementation of Gralloc/HWComposer and the GPU. But since you are
Facebook, :), you can probably test this on all device/gpu variants. And when
you do please publish the results. And while you are doing that, please test
this too:
[http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/MemoryFile...](http://developer.android.com/reference/android/os/MemoryFile.html)
[1][https://developer.android.com/tools/debugging/debugging-
memo...](https://developer.android.com/tools/debugging/debugging-
memory.html#ViewingAllocations)
Thoughts?
Edit: Incorrect link
~~~
georgemcbay
As someone who has written a lot of code (including driver level) in the
DirectX realm, that line (about not unlocking surfaces) gave me a minor
aneurysm though I admittedly do not know enough about the Android ashmem
internals to know if the reaction is actually warranted or not on the Android
platform.
~~~
realrocker
Well allocating on ashmen does reduce the UI lag since its just a memory pool
and espaces GC reprimand but it's definitely not safe. Such operations are
better handled at Gralloc/HWComposer Layer where you have a better handle on
what's going on. Someone's gotta unlock that surface!
------
vierja
Better:
[https://github.com/facebook/fresco](https://github.com/facebook/fresco)
[http://frescolib.org/](http://frescolib.org/)
~~~
TD-Linux
... and the good ol' Facebook PATENTS file.
------
tiler
I wonder if this work has any link to what Carmack and the Oculus Rift crew
are doing with Android?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Study doubts quantum computer speed - ColinWright
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25787226
======
claudius
One should note that the ‘quantum computer’ in question is the D-Wave, which
is generally assumed not to be a real/general quantum computer but rather a
sophisticated device to simulate a specific set of problems on a microscopic
level.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Investing Time vs. Spending Time - bradly
http://tynan.com/investingtime
======
taylan
I'm having hard time wrapping my head around the time-money analogy here. In
the case of money, by investing it or delaying spending, you can have more of
it in future. In the case of time this does not hold, because time is
essentially a shrinking resource. You can't have more time in future by
delaying spending or 'investing' it in the manner OP suggests.
Return on time, (ROT?), is always something other than time and thus measures
of it are highly subjective. In the end, what you are spending is your life
and although there might be preferable ways of doing it, I'd imagine that
being the achievers they are, HN members usually err on the side of investing
it. Actually PG's essay offers a nice exposition of spending time (having fun)
vs investing it vs fake work:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html)
~~~
webmaven
Seems to me you can spend time now to save more time later. That isn't the
only reason that time is 'invested', but neither are future financial returns
the only reason people invest money.
And that's leaving aside entirely the idea that time == money (ie. you can
often substitute one for the other, or invest one to later gain the other).
------
suyash
Good way to put your thoughts across. I like the analogy and comparison of
time with money. I feel time is sometimes more valuable of a resource than
money and need to be invested wisely. What most people do is they spend time
(also for money) in short term gains vs focussing and investing on long term
gains (same goes for money).
------
dvanduzer
At the end, his example for rebalancing our time portfolio: Despite the many
positive outcomes of practicing pickup artistry, he'll actually sometimes
recommend giving it up if it hasn't produced the long term returns you
expected!
------
aytekin
This applies to startups as well. You have a very limited man-hours. How you
spend it matters a lot. Do you improve the product a little bit every day?
Investing time understanding users or improving your tools makes a big
difference in the long term. When you understand your users you can work on
the right features. When you sharpen your tools you spend less time wasting
time with repeat tasks. For example, how long it takes to release a new
version of your product matters a lot. Automated testing for most common
problems makes you move faster.
In general, the best way to invest your time is to automate repetitive tasks.
------
JackMorgan
Interesting analogy, check out my post here talking also about time as an
investment as pertains to overtime at work. [http://deliberate-
software.com/501-developer/](http://deliberate-software.com/501-developer/)
------
pge
See also PG's essay on a similar theme:
[http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/selfindulgence.html)
------
tynan
Hey, thanks a lot for linking this-- very much appreciated.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
As Mobile Networks Speed Up, Data Gets Capped - timr
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/15/technology/as-mobile-networks-speed-up-data-gets-capped.html?_r=1&hp
======
americandesi333
Thats why I have Sprint. It does not have any data cap and Sprint service is
actually pretty good in the San Francisco bay area.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NeoHabitat – a relaunch of Lucasfilm's Habitat, the first MMORPG game - guiambros
https://frandallfarmer.github.io/neohabitat-doc/docs//
======
guiambros
You can access a C64 live emulator at
[http://v.ht/habitat](http://v.ht/habitat)
Also there was a nice roundtable with Randy Farmer at VCF West happening this
weekend - recording at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24023684](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24023684)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Aspect-oriented mixins in JavaScript - yangmillstheory
https://github.com/yangmillstheory/mixin.a.lot
======
drostie
Very cool. I'm very interested to see what you'll build with it.
With any cross-cutting abstraction like this, it's kind of like developing a
new potting soil: I feel like I need to know what flowers you're trying to
grow to understand why you made the choices you made.
~~~
yangmillstheory
Thanks. I was writing an application that had unrelated components that all
acted like view models.
I looked at existing mixin libraries, but found some that either injected
themselves into the prototype chain or patched Function.prototype to let
mixees customize behavior. I didn't like that, so I thought of this approach.
The rest has been a continuous process of simplification, but I never got back
to writing that old application :).
------
own3r
Nice idea! Here's an alternative which uses ES2016 decorators
[https://github.com/mgechev/aspect.js](https://github.com/mgechev/aspect.js)
~~~
yangmillstheory
Thanks for sharing! Have you studied aspect-oriented programming formally?
I used the term "aspect-oriented" because a co-worker mentioned it and it
seemed appropriate, but I don't have a deep understanding of that philosophy.
I'll take a look at your code, blog posts, and videos later when I get out of
work. :)
------
bricss
It's everything but AOP
~~~
yangmillstheory
yeah, i should probably change that tonight
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Adds 'Kodi' to Autocomplete Piracy Filter - portofcall
https://torrentfreak.com/google-adds-kodi-to-autocomplete-piracy-filter-180328/
======
AdmiralAsshat
>Google has banned the term “Kodi” from its autocomplete feature, meaning
those who look for information on the set-top box will have to type out the
full term in order to search, as reported by TorrentFreak.
>While Kodi is a legal set-top box for streaming, it supports a myriad of
third-party add-ons that provide access to pirated media.
Kodi is not a "set-top box". Kodi is software. A set-top box might be _pre-
loaded_ with Kodi, but it is not Kodi, anymore than a phone is an "Android".
As far as I'm aware, the Kodi team doesn't even sell or officially endorse any
pre-loaded hardware set-top box.
This sort of mangling is disappointing from a tech-focused news outlet like
The Verge. It also reinforces the implicit association between Kodi and
piracy, which is the very thing that caused Google to remove Kodi from search
results in the first place.
~~~
kalcode
> This sort of mangling is disappointing from a tech-focused news outlet like
> The Verge. It also reinforces the implicit association between Kodi and
> piracy, which is the very thing that caused Google to remove Kodi from
> search results in the first place.
This sort of mangling is exactly how exaggerated misrepresented news gets
spread. Google didn't remove Kodi from their search results. You can type Kodi
and it's the first thing that pops up.
You can type home theater software and get Kodi in the search results, or open
source media player and get Kodi.
All they did is remove Kodi from being autocompleted. It still even comes up
for autosuggestion.
~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Right, but... imo google can fuck right off. I’m really not sure who wants
corporate interests nudging them like this.
Google is allowed to curate thisr autocomplete to remove links to 6degree
piracy topics, and even promote a candidate by removing negative results like
they did for Clinton - and I’m allowed to consider them actually-evil for
doing so.
~~~
solarkraft
Yep. Previously it seemed like they valued their search's integrity over
everything else, but they must be so comfortable with their power now that
they're not really worried anymore. It's not easy to prove either, so hard to
regulate. I wish we could forbid it and it might be something the EU may try
in the next few years, but it'd likely involve an external audit of the
holiest systems - something they would likely fight against hard.
What individual users can do in the mean time is using independent, less
corporate services: DuckDuckGo comes to mind.
It is however hard to ignore that Google really has a monopoly on _good_
search (well, decliningly so for me). Maybe we should also start to use Bing
to fuel competition.
------
eco
I feel so bad for the Kodi project. They've done amazing work over the years
and their reputation is being destroyed so quickly by people taking their open
source work, adding a bunch of piracy addons, and selling a set top box.
I have no idea what they can do to combat this. I don't see how they can
distance themselves from this any more than they have.
~~~
starsinspace
Equally sad as the existence of the terrible Kodi piracy boxes is that the
legitimate set top box/"smart TV" industry is completely ignoring it. I'm not
aware of any TV manufacturer building Kodi into their product, instead they
invent their own junk, which is usually much worse.
Does anyone know why the consumer electronics industry is ignoring Kodi?
~~~
AdmiralAsshat
Because Plex actively courted the Roku's and the Amazon's of the world while
Kodi was content to just make great, free software.
To boot, Plex began as a fork of XBMC (Kodi's name at the time). Which, given
Kodi's GPLv2 license, probably puts Plex out of compliance.
~~~
slantyyz
>> Plex began as a fork of XBMC (Kodi's name at the time).
Ah, XBMC... I still have an original Xbox that I modded to specifically run
XBMC collecting dust in my spare room. It definitely has come a long way.
~~~
MayeulC
The original Xbox was way ahead of the other media centers I knew of at the
time (2004-2010,roughly): * CD/DVD player * upgradeable HDD * 1080i output
(though I mostly used RCA connectors, and I don't think you can decode 720p+
with it) * quite cheap compared to a fully fledged computer * trough XBMC,
integrated games library management, with native and emulated titles * and of
course, the plethora of add-ons and protocols Kodi supports to this day
And though it was big and heavy, it had an integrated PSU.
This was before raspberry pi was a thing, mind you. The alternatives were
expensive (~€200) hard disk enclosures that couldn't do a fourth of this. I
would have kept on using if it wasn't for its inability to cope with HD
formats, and wouldn't be surprised to learn that it helped to promote the
console quite a bit.
~~~
slantyyz
> And though it was big and heavy, it had an integrated PSU.
It was noisy as hell (from the fan) too.
------
m0ngr31
In a similar vein, Amazon refused to publish an Alexa skill I wrote to control
Kodi (basically a voice remote). They cited piracy as the only reason. When
I'd press them on why they allowed one for Plex since they are both just video
players, they would just refuse to acknowledge the question and deny me again.
It's their right to do so, but it's stupid and defies logic.
~~~
solarkraft
Should it be their right? They are becoming so prevalent that perhaps they
should be regulated like infrastructure ...
~~~
ouid
I remember when computers were programmable :(.
------
ISL
Google's mission statement: [https://www.google.com/about/our-
company/](https://www.google.com/about/our-company/)
_“Organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and
useful.”
Since the beginning, our goal has been to develop services that significantly
improve the lives of as many people as possible.
Not just for some. For everyone._
To decrement something would appear to be contrary to making it universally
accessible.
~~~
SlowRobotAhead
Are you just figuring out that google is actually evil?
------
Raphmedia
Quite ironic when you can use YouTube + Chromecast to watch entire episodes of
many shows and many full length movies.
You can't ban software makers for the illegal use of their software by users
when your own users and services are the same...
Why don't they remove "full episode" from YouTube's autocomplete? (We all know
the answer to that one.)
~~~
M4v3R
> You can't ban software makers for the illegal use of their software by users
> when your own users and services are the same..
The sad thing is that yes - they can, and yes - they do. And there's little we
can do to stop them from doing that, apart from raising concerns and stopping
using their service.
------
chme
In other news: "Google removes 'Chrome' from its search autocomplete in anti-
piracy effort"
~~~
parliament32
Been there, done that: [https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/google-demotes-
chrome-in...](https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/entry/google-demotes-chrome-in-
_n_1184734)
~~~
solarkraft
Now that's brilliant. Why do I often feel like one Google doesn't know what
the other is doing?
------
TomMckenny
How is it that software makers are culpable when their product us used to
commit a crime but not gun manufactures?
Is it that copyright violation is such a "heinous" crime that special rules
apply?
~~~
alexbeloi
Unlike victims of gun crimes, the victims of copyright violation have the
money and lobbying power to effect change.
~~~
protomyth
No, unlike gun owners and manufacturers, software developers have no effective
lobbying organization and get treated liked 2nd class citizens. No one fears
angering software developers before an election.
~~~
dragonwriter
> No, unlike gun owners and manufacturers, software developers have no
> effective lobbying organization
They just haven't been clever enough to organize their own _customers_ , or
some other mass front, politically the way the gun industry has.
~~~
protomyth
I think your reversing that, as the customers are out front. That's the
mistake that keeps getting made by the NRA's opponents. The NRA is only
effective because its people over industry. Industry-lead groups need a whole
lot more funding to be effective.
Any software developer that is looking for leadership from the software
industry is going to be very disappointed. Often, the industry doesn't really
have the best instance of developers in mind.
------
bubblethink
How ironic, given that Kodi is a GSoC project.
~~~
Semaphor
Google punished Chrome before. So I wouldn't call this ironic.
[https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/google-demotes-
chr...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/04/google-demotes-chrome-in-
_n_1184734.html)
------
givinguflac
What a terrible "journalist". Didn't even do the most basic research to
understand the topic they're discussing.
------
otakucode
That is frankly one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. I have used Kodi
since it was XBMC. And MAYBE back in the day when you had to break DMCA
section 1201 to install it on an original Xbox then you could have argued
there was something questionable about it. But now it's just a general media
player that looks good on a TV.
I am sure this is a total coincidence that the ability of Chrome to cast local
files was showed off literally yesterday, and they seek and destroy the
competitor that makes Chromecasting look like a cavemans solution the
following.
------
utopcell
I feel that such anti-piracy filtering is counter-intuitive because it
promotes awareness. I had no idea what 'kodi' was until today.
~~~
cheeze
The good old Streisand effect
~~~
utopcell
indeed.
------
blackflame7000
So does that mean they should remove all android devices that play Kodi? Oh,
that hurts Google bottom line.. oh nevermind then.. let's just villanize Kodi
developers.(Who have done a hell of a job I might add since the Xbox original
with a modchip). This is grandstanding for show. Google is without a doubt the
largest contributer to piracy via their indexing of, well, everything. Android
should be worried about why their sandbox security is so terrible it allowed
Facebook to gather sexting archives rivaling only that of Snapchat.
------
x0x
Unless Google removes Wikipeda too, it really doesn't matter what they remove.
Example;
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_(software)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodi_\(software\))
All links there =) Anytime official site changes, this pages updated.
Wikipedia is your Search Engine, when Google fails.
~~~
zbuttram
They only removed it from autocomplete/suggestions, not from indexing.
------
lopmotr
Somehow "sci" still suggests "sci hub". Isn't that even more direct piracy
than Kodi?
------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Google continues in its quest to be completely useless for actually finding
what you're looking for.
------
cimi_
Doing this _without any signal to users performing the search_ seems dishonest
to me.
~~~
bootlooped
How do you think they should signal users?
~~~
aluhut
> "Search results for "Kodi" have been removed because you might use it for
> illegal stuff"
~~~
bandrami
But results for "Kodi" haven't been removed. Autocompletion when you type
"kod" or "ko" has. I'm trying to think of a non-disruptive way to pop up "we
would have completed this term with 'kodi' but oh hey nevermind you went on to
type 'koala'" and I'm failing.
------
zerotolerance
At what point do filtering or targeted omissions become considered anti-
competitive practices? It is one thing for a government to issue and companies
to uphold gags because governments are not in competition.
------
chatman
Next, they will detain/arrest Kodi developers at airports.
------
bunnymancer
Alternative title: Bing expands their market, now your go-to for both porn and
piracy.
Edit: also note that it's just the autocomplete, not the actual search results
------
nvahalik
btw, searx.me is a really fantastic search engine
~~~
eco
Tried to search for "kodi" on it.
[https://i.imgur.com/Eew8wA7.png](https://i.imgur.com/Eew8wA7.png)
~~~
stagbeetle
I did too and I got "Kodi | Open Source Home Theater"
On [https://www.searx.me/](https://www.searx.me/)
------
cJ0th
The cynic in me thinks google wants you to watch illegal streams on youtube.
------
rolodato
Streisand effect, anyone? I had not heard of Kodi before this.
~~~
hxtk
For what it's worth, unfamiliarity might have something to do with the fact
Kodi has only existed under that name for a couple years.
Prior to that, it was known as XBMC ("XBox Media Center"). Under that title
it's been around since 2003.
------
overcast
kodi with a space still provides relevant search results fyi.
~~~
praneshp
I think that's expected. Typing "Ko" will not suggest "Kodi" after this
announcement.
------
dang
Url changed from [https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17176894/google-
removes-k...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/29/17176894/google-removes-kodi-
search-autocomplete-anti-piracy), which points to this.
------
BuckRogers
Google's talking about piracy, everyone else is talking about privacy.
Google can do whatever they want to please their masters within the industry
on the piracy front. I moved to DuckDuckGo years ago. If I want to check
Google results I get them through the Startpage bang.
Google & Facebook belong in the same category of no-go, invasive privacy
offenders. Which is piracy in my book. Hopefully their next preventative
measure in that regard is to remove google.com.
------
Skunkleton
This is standard operating procedure for Google, and presumably all other
major search engines. They apply the same filtering to other "objectionable"
content and are the sole arbitrators of what fits this definition. How is this
news? Is there some other way to solve the very real problem that Google is
addressing?
~~~
greglindahl
You could always support other search engines -- but as the former CTO of
blekko, I'm not going to ever ship an autocomplete that by default returns
nasty stuff for [blacks are] or [why do blacks] or a large number of other
phrases which produce terrible, terrible autocomplete results.
~~~
Skunkleton
Yeah, that was my point. Why would google have autocomplete options that give
them a bad image? Why should anyone other than google decide what a good image
is?
~~~
greglindahl
Ah, I misunderstood your point. Yes, it's an editorial thing, and even as a
personal fan of unfiltered results, I can't bring myself to ship horrific
autocomplete suggestions.
Unfortunately the existence of an autocomplete filtering system does lead to
increased pressure to use it for more than just racism and porn.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What I Did When I Couldn't Find a Job [in the US] - kranner
http://chronicle.com/article/What-I-Did-When-I-Couldnt/66281/
For anyone curious about what Sikkim looks like...
http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=sikkim
======
patio11
_grumble grumble_ I would never have expected legions of twentysomethings who
want to work for noncommercial causes using expensive degrees which impart no
skills more advanced than a GED to have so much difficulty finding great jobs
right after college.
~~~
mechanical_fish
So, if (or, perhaps, when) all the people with liberal arts degrees go back to
Javaschool and emerge in a couple of years with M.S. degrees in CS, is your
company going to hire them all?
Or are you just jerking them around?
We've been down this road before. In the 1990s, everyone flocked to "CS"
school to get in on all the sweet, sweet jobs of the future. Was the aftermath
of that fun for anyone?
It is often read, on HN, that it isn't enough to just go through the motions
of getting a technical degree. You need other qualities to succeed. The person
with all the right qualities is rare. True enough. But does this mean that
only those rare people with the right qualities deserve to live outside of
poverty, or the imminent risk of poverty?
My father has a degree in political science. Fortunately, the economy wasn't
broken in the 1960s, so he was able to get a white-collar job, buy a house,
and have kids, like most other people with "basic" college degrees in the
1960s. Back then it was even expected that you could have a decent life with a
mere high school diploma, or that GED you mention.
That doesn't work so well anymore. Is that a good thing? Be careful what you
wish for. We are well on our way to building a society in which you can't have
a middle-class lifestyle as, say, an insurance underwriter or medical records
clerk without a college degree _in a technical or professional field_ , or
maybe an M.S. degree. I think that's a bad idea. Many people have more
education than they need, and an increasing number of people have more
education than they want (considering that they have to go into debt for it,
up front). Forcing unwilling people to struggle through advanced degrees tends
to produce a lot of stress and pain, water down the advanced degrees, dilute
the pool of degree holders, and waste absolutely _enormous_ amounts of time.
Oh, and it produces unnecessary barriers to entry. We could require all hotel
administrators to hold an advanced degree in hotel administration. How does
that sound to the AirBnB folks?
And all it does is buy time. In the end, jobs are as much about the demand for
labor as the quality of the supply. Ph.D.s can be unemployed too. Highly
trained semiconductor engineers can be unemployed. Automotive engineers are
probably not doing so well right now.
Shadenfreude has an evil reputation for a reason. Please try to resist the
temptation.
~~~
yummyfajitas
_Fortunately, the economy wasn't broken in the 1960s, so he was able to get a
white-collar job, buy a house, and have kids,[...] That doesn't work so well
anymore. [...] We are well on our way to building a society in which you can't
have a middle-class lifestyle as, say, an insurance underwriter or medical
records clerk..._
This statement just reflects a lack of understanding of what "middle class"
meant in 1960. The standard of living of the American poor today is quite
high, in many regards higher than the standard of living of the middle class
in 1960.
[http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understandi...](http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2004/01/understanding-
poverty-in-america)
Fun fact: in 1960, a coffee maker cost $29.95 and the average household income
was just under $5000. In 2010, the coffee maker costs $12.95 and the average
salary is about $50,000.
[http://www.dadsvintageads.com/viewitem.php/dadsvintageads/pd...](http://www.dadsvintageads.com/viewitem.php/dadsvintageads/pd959405/Vintage_Ad_1960_Toastmaster_Toaster_Coffee_Maker_Fry_Pan)
~~~
hga
According to the BLS, the $29.95 that coffee maker cost in 1960 would be $221
in 2010 dollars.
I know your $5,000 vs. $50,000 figures are very rough, but $5,000 in 1960
would be $36,855 in 2010 dollars (and after taxes is not trivial, e.g. the
personal exemptions that sheltered average families from the full and _very_
high tax rates in the '50s were largely nullified by inflation over the next
couple of decades before Reagan started a variety of corrections).
~~~
mhb
He's saying that the quality of life improvement provided by a coffee maker in
1960 consumed 0.6% of the typical 1960 middle class salary vs. 0.03% of a
typical 2010 middle class salary. A 20x reduction in cost for the same quality
of life improvement for the middle class, in this example.
What additional insight do your numbers provide?
~~~
hga
I think it's easier to understand how much cheaper the coffee maker is today,
both in terms of absolute price and what people can afford, if you translate
it into today's dollars. "It would cost $221" is a lot more visceral than 0.6%
of a putative generic annual salary.
One thing I added was "doing the math"; yummyfajitas didn't go that far (which
is no reflection on his posting) ... plus I think it's useful to point out
just how significant inflation has been over the years.
~~~
mhb
The value of the percentage metric is that it allows you to compare a certain
benefit in terms of the work it took to obtain it at different times. Given
2000 hours/year of work, it would have taken 12 hours of work to buy a coffee
maker in 1960 vs. 0.6 hours of work in 2010.
To me, this makes the comparison exceedingly easy to understand.
~~~
hga
Yes, that metric is also good, although not as visceral as the one I used.
It's also timeless whereas someone reading my comment 20, 50, whatever years
from now wouldn't be helped as much.
------
sushi
I think finding a job is never difficult considering one is ready to sacrifice
the luxuries one has gotten accustomed to. Almost every American graduate can
find a job in India. I know the outsourcing companies won't even ask you a
question and hire you readily. It's just about making adjustments for the time
being which I'm afraid many American graduates might have to make in the down
economy.
I have been to Sikkim and it's one of the most beautiful places I have seen.
I'd gladly move to Sikkim if only there was better and stable internet
connection there. Correct me if I am wrong.
By the way, people can not buy land in Sikkim (only the people from the state
can, not even the rest of Indians) so one will have to get do with a rented
place which should be quite cheap even for an Indian like me.
~~~
spudlyo
There are lots of places in India that are difficult for Westerners to live
in. The lack of running water, toilet paper, and unreliable electricity was
very challenging for my friend who spent 6 months in Hyderabad. He also picked
up a very bad stomach flu that knocked him on his ass for a month.
------
all
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and this certainly is extreme.
Unfortunately, his path is not easily replicated, and he recognises this. I
have heard of others who move to India to take the job that they would have in
the US because that is where their company moved it. But finding a job in a
downturn is often a matter of being resourceful and thinking outside the box,
not of wholesale relocation. I would be surprised if 1% of those who read this
article are able to put in practice what this guy did.
------
rflrob
It seems to me that the calculations of how he's saving money relative to
staying at home is offset a fair bit by the cost of airfare. All the same, I
don't think that means one shouldn't do things like this---the experience
(both professional and personal) is difficult to measure, but pretty valuable.
------
kranner
For anyone curious about what Sikkim looks like...
<http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=sikkim>
------
kogir
The thing I don't understand is how few people in the US are willing to move
to a different state, nevermind another country. There's plenty of work for
those willing to seek it and be flexible.
~~~
zephyrfalcon
Moving often has a hefty cost, and not just financially.
~~~
loganfrederick
So does being unemployed. Sometimes you have to make the tough decisions.
------
amohr
There's been a lot of hating on us poor liberal arts graduates that didn't
have the foresight to know that our education was going to invariably lead to
crushing, static unemployment, so I figure I'd throw in my $.02
I've been building and tinkering with computers since I was 11 and it has
always been sort of a foregone conclusion that I would go into CS or compe.
But when I started college, for a number of reasons, I decided I wanted to
study physics. But a few years in, I realized I wasn't really getting the
full-bodied education that I was hoping for. I noticed this in myself as well
as my peers in comparable science/engineering programs. It turns out, many of
the programs that leave you with marketable skills necessarily sacrifice
breadth of understanding.
This isn't to say all cs grads know nothing of the world, but it was a
noticeable problem. There is, of course, virtue in training people to think
only about a single field and think about it deeply and constantly. But I
didn't want to be one of those people, so I switched to Political Science.
Political Science, at my school, was an interdisciplinary program - it allowed
students to design their own concentrations within the framework of the
program. Because of this, I was able to take advanced level courses in
philosophy, music theory, english, astrophysics, economics, and computer
science. No I'm not an expert on any of these, but I have the groundwork to
understand any of them that I wish to personally pursue further. And many of
them, I have.
Of course, after five years of college, I finally realized that I'm most
passionate about writing, advertising, and technology, but I'm stuck competing
against people with more specifically tailored credentials. This is obviously
a problem, and I'm not going to claim I haven't spent nights wishing I had
just stuck with something that would land me a job and a life of comfort. But
comfort is as dangerous as it is pleasant and a lack of it often spurs the
greatest innovation. That last part, however, I'm still working on.
But what about my CS friends? Some of them are legitimately well-rounded and
interesting people... and some sold their souls at 100 hr/wk at nyc firms
making 100k but they'll never see the world with the appreciative eyes of the
destitute - they'll always want more because that's all they've ever been
taught to value. Many will live lives hopelessly seeking satisfaction through
abundance.
Save your pity for those guys, thank you.
PS: I don't really think all these guys are doomed because they took high-
stress, high-paying jobs, I just wanted to represent the other side of the
coin. Don't assume all LAS grads are forever useless... also, if you have the
means, hire one. (specifically, me)
------
tomjen3
What was really funny was that he moved back home, then when he couldn't find
a job there, he moved to India.
If you have a political science degree, why not move to Washington?
------
ebun
So the author moved to India after being unable to find a job, but at some
point, I assume they plan to return.
What do you think about his job prospects when he returns (regardless of the
work; just taking into account that he opted to spend a year or 2 abroad like
this)?
~~~
Dilpil
It's a pretty interesting story to put on a resume or cover letter- I'd
imagine he will at least be able to get some interviews.
~~~
ebun
I don't doubt it, I'm just curious as to why you, or any other HNers, would
find it interesting. What skills do you think would be applicable or
transferable?
__full disclosure: I'm in a somewhat similar situation right now __
~~~
kolektiv
Well, I know that if I were interviewing this chap (and I am interviewing
people quite a bit) I would be at least impressed by his having shown some
initiative. I would also say that someone who is willing and able to go and
live fairly happily in a quite different cultural and lingual context than
they may be used to, has shown themselves to be adaptable, inquisitive, and
keen to learn.
Even in a poor economy, demonstrating those qualities still stands out. Almost
certainly the most common reason for failing when interviewing with me is the
"I haven't had a chance to..." story. Often this is in the context of
software. "I haven't had a chance to try this language or that language" What
they mean is that previous jobs haven't used it. They could easily have learnt
about it in their own time - it just wasn't a priority for them. Which is fair
enough - but you will lose out against those who turn "would like to do" in to
"done".
------
maximumwage
Comments on every story like this follow the same predictable pattern. On Digg
and Reddit, it's basically: "Haha, dumb liberal arts major! Of course you
can't find work in the USA! You deserve what you get because we live in a just
and fair world and everyone is responsible for everything that happens to them
in life and the consequences of all their decisions!" Some of the comments
here are similar, but other comments point out the fallacies in that line of
thought. As someone who was a high school valedictorian who wanted to get a CS
or business degree, but ended up with a Bachelor of General Studies in
English, I've given lots of thought to why students get liberal arts degrees.
Most students are unprepared for college-level classes, especially in
mathematics. Despite having a perfect GPA in high school, I failed calculus -
not because of partying (I didn't drink) but because I was totally unprepared
for college-level math after bad high-school math classes. Mental illness is
also a major reason why lots of people can't handle the rigors of an
engineering or even business degree. According to NIMH, 26% of Americans age
18 or older suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder [1]. Also, 40 percent of
students have felt too depressed to function at sometime during their college
career [2]. Throughout college, I had: never had a girlfriend or even kissed a
girl, worried all the time about the end of the world and other potential
threats, had never learned how to masturbate, and was concerned over whether
God loved or hated me. Now THAT's mental illness! When they have a heavy
cognitive load from mental illness, students are less able to deal with
challenging classes. Finally, after going through the stress of being being
unprepared for college classes and suffering from mental illness, many
students end up with humanities degrees because they figure "at least it's a
degree in something" and that any degree is better than no degree, because
that's the message being broadcast from tons of outlets - guidance counselors,
college advertising, college advisors, etc.
[1] [http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-
coun...](http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/the-numbers-count-mental-
disorders-in-america/index.shtml)
[2] [http://www.jedfoundation.com/press-room/news-
archive/Student...](http://www.jedfoundation.com/press-room/news-
archive/Students-with-mental-troubles-on-rise)
~~~
oconnore
That's not a mental illness. That's some sort of an existential crisis. I
recommend you stop worrying about problems you can't solve, and start living.
It's the only way you will find out what God thinks of you, or whether girls
like you, or whether the earth will end.
And everyone is unprepared for college (as they were for high-school, or
elementary, or kindergarten, and especially for their first job). The
difference is in how they approach it. Personally, I locked myself in the
library until I could do Calculus problems blindfolded, and then went to the
bar to celebrate with my friends. Your results may vary. Note that feeling
persecuted and defeated after you flunk a Calculus test is not a viable
solution.
Sorry for being harsh.
~~~
maximumwage
I had a lot of other symptoms and was diagnosed with anxiety by a real doctor
(not by internet commenters). Plus I had very high scores on inventories that
are used to measure anxiety and depression. Also, SPECT and fMRI studies show
that people with depression and anxiety have very different brains than people
who are mentally healthy, indicating that some people have a baseline level of
resilience that's higher than others. And tough love doesn't work. It's just
another way to beat up on people who already feel beaten down. I still agree
with most of your points, though.
------
known
A comprehensive guide to <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simple_living>
~~~
billswift
For _real_ simple living [http://www.amazon.com/Possum-living-without-almost-
money/pro...](http://www.amazon.com/Possum-living-without-almost-
money/product-
reviews/0553136259/ref=sr_1_4_cm_cr_acr_txt?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&qid=1280103672&sr=8-4)
------
elblanco
I wonder how many weeks he had to save up that $10/wk in order to afford the
upcoming round trip back home?
------
acgourley
I guess he doesn't have student loans.
------
jab
I don't really get the "couldn't find a job" part. I moved to a new city 4
months ago on a whim, and I had several companies bidding on me. I'm good, but
I doubt I'm that good.
~~~
jemfinch
I doubt you're a polisci major.
------
roschdal
This is a very inspirational story!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: The Plainsight Collection – Play Games at Work Disguised as Ads - gtrevorjay
https://github.com/plainsightcollection/plainsightcollection.github.io
======
gtrevorjay
We just debuted this as an art piece at Brisbane's "Game On" event:
[https://www.facebook.com/GO423](https://www.facebook.com/GO423) as a
commentary on advertising and the resulting laxity with which almost all sites
serving third-party ads approach their Content Security Policy.
Disclaimer: The visual artist is my wife (
[http://montrose.is/sketching/about.html](http://montrose.is/sketching/about.html)
) and the project has no attachment whatsoever to my dayjob.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Even Poor Countries Can Excel in Education | Co.Design - ttunguz
http://www.fastcodesign.com/1662376/infographic-of-the-day-even-poor-countries-can-excel-in-education
======
yummyfajitas
Next question - does excelling in education make them less poor?
Everyone assumes this to be true, but I've seen very little hard evidence that
this is the case.
------
tomjen3
While there would seem to be some lower bound under which it would not be
possible for a country to have any education at all, it would seem there is
some upper bound beyond which it can afford a bureaucracy - and as such, poor
countries actually have an advantage which makes up for the lower budgets.
~~~
cliffkuang
Great point---Though there's also a way in which education gets tougher as
your economy evolves. Educating kids to love computer science and engineering
is obvs a lot harder than getting kids in school to learn basic literacy.
The productivity jumps that result from the latter are huge--but wondering if
it's larger than the former? Might be there there's no increasing returns to
scale as costs rise--even if the end benefits are vast.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Social Design of P90X - lordmax
http://skibinsky.com/social-design-of-p90x/
======
DonGateley
Really clever promo add for FitMob! Hard sell something known to be
successful, then criticize it just a bit and substitute something "better" at
the end.
About FitMob, I might signup after I find out what's in my area but not _to_
find out what's in my area. But then you know there probably isn't anything in
my area. Yet. :-)
~~~
lordmax
lol Don, considering Tony himself reposted my essay next day
([https://www.facebook.com/BeachBodyTony](https://www.facebook.com/BeachBodyTony))
I don't think he considered it any sort of promo for another company.
------
felixgallo
I did a mini-startup of this type (crowdsourced gamification of p90x-style
workouts, delivered via ipad) and presented it to Beachbody. They had no idea
what to do with it, and in hindsight that makes sense; their business model is
to sell products into the MLM model, not to support fitness with technology.
~~~
lordmax
Beachbody is certainly in "don't fix what is not broken" mode, but as i
mentioned check out FitStar - they not asking anybody permission.
The only way to innovate in digital health is doing and promote it on your
own, incumbents are not going to buy things that "cannibalize" their 1b/year
businesses.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hacker News Tokyo Japan Meetup #7, Friday 26th of August - sparto
http://www.makeleaps.com/blog/en/2011/08/english-hacker-news-tokyo-japan-meetup-7-friday-26th-of-august/
======
0xfaded
Registered. I'll be coming up from Osaka, but I'm feeling a little poor at the
moment. If anyone happens to have a floor on loan I would I would be most
appreciative :); my email is [email protected]. Looking forward to meeting up
with the Japan crowd for the first time.
~~~
Bjoern
You've got mail.
------
patio11
See you all there.
------
jedschmidt
Nice, it's been a while.
(Anyone looking to celebrate Ramendan[1] pre-game, let me know.)
[1] <http://ramendan.com>
------
tumult
Bummer, going to miss this by just a couple of days. I'm in Singapore right
now.
------
stayjin
Damn, I can't go. I have very few leave days left for this year at my day job.
------
jbm
Want to go,but I'll be out of town. Next time guys!
------
Sym3tri
Will be my first one, but see you there.
------
donw
Looking forward to it.
------
Bjoern
See you all later :)
------
bluedanieru
Cutting it a little close with sending out the location aren't you? Or did I
miss it somehow?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mossberg: the iPhone 7 had better be spectacular - davidiach
http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/23/11286052/walt-mossberg-apple-iphone-7-preview-predictions
======
PaulHoule
Smartphones are depressing. It used to be tomshardware, anandtech and such had
interesting articles. Now it is "there Is a new iPhone", I guess somebody must
want a small flagship phone". Intel is not competing on performance, but the
will o wiap of power which can be wiped out byna stupid web ad that spina up
your CPU. They have phone envy but the result is today's computer isn't better
than a 4 yr old computer so of course sales are in the toilet.
Now those review sites have quiet computer porn and don't tell you that you
can buy the same skus they talk about and then wind out switch's the fans,
hard drives and other things ten times or so before your custom build is
quieter than a 737 takeoff.
They are always hiring new smartphone reviews because it is a soul destroying
job for anyone who has a passion for software, electronics, business, etc.
They oughta hire a fashion reporter.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Digital Representations of Light/Sound Fields for Immersive Media [pdf] - opticalflow
https://jpeg.org/downloads/jpegpleno/wg1n72033_20160603_report_jahg_light_sound_fields.pdf
======
dharma1
That was a very in depth report, thanks for posting. The data rates will be
challenging.
Here's a good panel discussion with Lytro and OTOY who are doing great stuff
in this space. [http://www.nabshow.com/video/will-future-vr-
and-3d-capture-l...](http://www.nabshow.com/video/will-future-vr-
and-3d-capture-light-field)
~~~
opticalflow
There were actually a lot of discussions about this sort of thing that lead up
to the BIFS specification in Mpeg4 (Part 11). But BIFS obviously never
anticipated virtual reality and the like, let alone light field or holography.
------
opticalflow
At least someone is thinking about putting a standard around all of this -- at
least it's JPEG and not MPEG-LA. I found it very interesting how broadly they
specified the goals here.
------
ryandamm
Good review of current practices, though I personally reserve the use of the
term 'light field' to representations that are explicitly encoding light rays,
not geometry. But that's a pretty minor quibble, it's a really good, dense
report.
------
Aelinsaar
"To capture physical environments human beings have sensors like eyes and
ears."
Oh lord, I can just imagine the process that led to that opening observation!
Still, it's not a bad thing to think about this, but... it felt a bit like
that '10,000 Year WIPP Marker' thing. "This is not a place of honor." "Humans
have eyes and ears."
~~~
opticalflow
If you've ever been an executive member of a standards body like ISO, ITU or
SMPTE, you'll understand where this sort of perspective comes from...
~~~
Aelinsaar
"A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly
strangled."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scientists warn we may be creating a 'digital dark age' - curtis
https://www.pri.org/stories/2018-01-01/scientists-warn-we-may-be-creating-digital-dark-age
======
HarryHirsch
A similar phenomenon happened in Late Antiquity - the cultural upheaval during
and after the Crisis of the Third Century caused most literature from
Classical Antiquity to be lost. The actual causes are an area of controversy
and active research.
Wikipedia has a surprisingly comprehensive article:
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCcherverluste_in_der_Sp%...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%BCcherverluste_in_der_Sp%C3%A4tantike)
It's German, but as a classicist you are expected to read English, German,
French and Italian anyway.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Trump's Immigration Agenda - kull
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/23/us/politics/trump-immigration.html
======
xtreme
I don't see the benefit of not enforcing immigration laws on illegal
immigrants or offering lottery based diversity visas.
Most people agree that skilled immigrants are good for the economy, so make
that process more streamlined and based on merit. If there is a need for low
skilled seasonal workers, reduce the cost of getting those visas. But allowing
unfettered illegal immigration and creating a large number of second class
citizens seems unreasonable.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Five Tips For the Effective Use of PNG Images - luccastera
http://blog.httpwatch.com/2008/05/29/five-tips-for-the-effective-use-of-png-images/
======
jexe
Is pngcrush still in vogue, or is there something better these days? That tool
was a huge help over the years.
<http://pmt.sourceforge.net/pngcrush/>
~~~
rtf
pngout does slightly more aggressive compression.
------
superchink
Good tips; but definitely common sense-type stuff. I was expecting a cross-
browser PNG transparency article, since that's kind of the real difficulty
with PNGs.
~~~
scorxn
Gotta use a div instead of an img, plus some proprietary ie6 CSS. Doesn't
validate as posted (needs a touch of browser detection), but you get the gist.
div#logo {
background: url(logo.png);
width: 300px;
height: 100px;
}
* html div#logo {
background: none;
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src='http://domain.tld/logo.png',sizingMethod='scale');
}
------
truebosko
Great tips, the first one is the one that I didn't know about and wow, now I
understand why that happened in IE the few times I saw it!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The woman who swapped home for a hut near Chechnya (BBC) - solstice
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30796537
======
Geekette
The story reads so bizarrely: A man who loses interest in his wife orders her
to move countries to his ancestral home as opposed to just divorcing her? Then
she obeys and leaves her children to forges a new life elsewhere, makes no
effort to see them again, even after finding out they're no longer with her
husband?
The whole premise is so questionable, I wonder if the underlying story is a
crime being covered up.
------
jacquesm
The husband sounds like quite a piece of shit.
~~~
Fuxy
To be fair they both sound like quite a piece of work. There are very few
women who would willingly leave their children behind just because their
husband told them to not to mention leave them in foster care just because you
now have a life.
Part of being a parent is sacrificing everything in order to raise your
children regardless how old they are.
It's a tough life she choose so in a way that's probably best for the children
but still not fair to them.
~~~
Jem
That was my initial reaction. I certainly could not imagine a situation in
which I would voluntarily abandon my children to their father so that I could
go and live in another country. But I then began to wonder if there's more at
play here - physical and emotional abuse, for example, can make even the most
devoted of mothers do things that they ordinarily might not do.
I am trying to remember that we only have the parts of the story a) the mother
and b) the Beeb want us to actually read.
~~~
shiven
From my extensive expertise in _ahem_ armchair amateur psychoanalysis ... I
suspect a _major_ mental disorder/abuse component to the story.
Their kids ending up in foster care may be better for the kids than being
raised in a DSM certifiable parenting environment. At least in foster care the
expectations of _care_ are darn low, so less chance of being left with a sense
of betrayal into adulthood.
------
davidw
Those mountains must be a beautiful, and fascinatingly wild place.
I think Georgia is a place I'd happily visit; it looks like an interesting
crossroads between east and west, with a lot of pretty country. I wonder how
safe it is, though.
~~~
jdudek
It is very safe. People are extremely friendly—for example, I was invited by
strangers for a dinner a few times. The police is not corrupt. According to my
guidebook, wild dogs and rabies are the biggest concern.
Be prepared to see a lot of poverty, though. Especially if you’ve never been
to a formerly soviet country.
I’m from Poland and I have visited Georgia in 2011.
------
je42
Am I reading this right ? The children were abandoned by both parents ?
~~~
SyneRyder
Not quite (but close):
"Two of her children, aged nine and 12, who initially remained with her
husband, are now in foster care. With a different partner, she also had and
older child, a daughter who lives with her father."
~~~
facepalm
So two children were abandoned. Sad story.
~~~
je42
Very.
------
Pyret
She was born in the West, yet she had no free will to flip her husband off and
go live elsewhere in her town/Germany? What an odd story.
~~~
facepalm
She was not born in the West, the story mentions that she grew up in East
Germany (part of the Soviet Union).
------
ExpiredLink
> * was a housewife in Germany - but then her husband told her to pack her
> bags and leave the country. *
n.b. housewife in Germany != German housewife;
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
You’re being secretly tracked with facial recognition, even in church - uptown
http://fusion.net/story/154199/facial-recognition-no-rules/
======
cafard
Yes, obnoxious. But 30 churches? A couple of years ago, I cam up with an
estimate of 30 churches (and two synagogues and two Buddhist temples) along
16th St, NW, in the roughly six miles between the White House and the Maryland
line. It's a bit rash to say "even in church" if there are 30 churches in the
whole of the US doing this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NYTimes Opinion: Let’s Ban Porn - mandazi
https://mobile.nytimes.com/2018/02/10/opinion/sunday/lets-ban-porn.html
======
meri_dian
Porn is an outlet for many people who have trouble finding as much sex as they
want. Or can't get.
If we deprive these people of porn, we are essentially depriving people who
are underprivileged (unable to get as much sex as they want, regardless of the
reason).
The privileged few who are attractive enough to have frequent sex will be able
to do so while the underprivileged will be deprived of a sexual outlet.
Sexual frustration can be terrible, and depriving people of porn could lead to
a building of tremendous tension in society.
If we're being realistic, this would probably drive up demand for prostitutes,
which is an industry that thrives on human trafficking and enslavement. So
getting rid of porn would increase human trafficking and enslavement of
people.
So many lines of argument that lead to the conclusion that porn is a net good
for society....
------
WheelsAtLarge
Banning anything without changing society's view of the subject never works.
The grand example is Prohibition. A very influential group of people were able
to ban the manufacturing of liquor by adding the 18th amendment to the
constitution, something that's extremely hard. Yet instead of stopping the use
of it, it brought it underground and a whole criminal industry was born since
there was a big section of society that didn't agree with the ban.
If there's to be any change in the production of porn, minds need to be
changed first. This can be done primarily with education and the help of the
porn industry to police itself. Banning does nothing, it just makes people
feel like they have accomplished something but ultimately it makes the problem
worse since it festers in the dark corners of society. There are no simple
answers to problems where people have a natural interest.
------
mandazi
Interesting article I found especially after this was posted recently:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16324159](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16324159)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How does your company handle downtime internally? - vasusen
Downtime is inevitable. I'd like to know more about strategies/tools/processes that you use when your company's website/api goes down. Do you have an email alert system or physical red blaring lights? Does each department know what they are supposed to do or do people run around helter skelter?<p>Do you follow any unique and creative solutions that work for your company?
======
bbissoon
We all literally sleep in the "Office" but because the servers aren't on our
premises, it's never been anything more than a server reset.
The system is set up to send us an email if the servers get buggy and we
consult a configuration document we created when we configured the server as a
checklist.
We then try to recreate the issue on our own to see if we can fix the problem
and prevent it in the future.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Extrovert programmer without programmer friends, where do I find energy? - antonapa
Hi HN,
I'm a really extrovert person, now doing remote CS studies. My classes are going fine (translated to US grades they're all A or B).<p>However, I constantly feel stressed and depleted, since I meet so few people in person in my day life.<p>The classes are not particularly hard, my deadlines are not that bad, and every time I have a short break when I'm able to meet a lot of people, I'm myself again.<p>I've got some programmer buddies on Skype, but they're not enough. Right now I just want to drop out to be in a place with actual humans.<p>How do other extrovert programmers deal with the isolated life that is remote work/study?
======
hardwaresofton
A lot of people I know spend time in cafes when doing school work (maybe even
doing classes) and when working on projects during the weekend. While being in
the midst of people might not make you any less lonely/isolated (it's easy to
be lonely/isolated even in the midst of a big group of people), but you should
be able to get some more of that human interaction, and if you run into a
person that looks to be coding too, you can strike up a conversation.
Also, what about meetups in your area? That's a great way to meet people with
expertise AND meet friends who code/are doing stuff
There are also always the kind of rougher typical suggestions: joining sports
leagues or doing some physical group activity (ex. yoga).
You could also take a side-job at a bar/cafe or something.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Tamgucalc: A spreadsheet in character mode with Lisp formulas - clauderoux
https://github.com/naver/tamgu/wiki/tamgucalc-(en)
======
joseph8th
Cool project for sure, but it does provoke the obligatory Emacs org-mode as a
spreadsheet plug. [1]
I use it often, mostly for my D&D character sheet, but occasionally for work.
Works the same in terminal or GUI, with elisp formula evaluation (including
Emacs calc functions), column types, table relationships, and, with org-babel,
access to other languages and their libraries (for plotting, etc.) Can even
read from DB into an org table and then manipulate data and write back.
[1] [https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-
intro...](https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-spreadsheet-intro.html)
~~~
clauderoux
Of course, you are right. However, tamgucalc launches instantly in your
terminal, which is not always the case for emacs, which is sometimes a bit to
slow.
~~~
joseph8th
Not so. Emacsen run server-client. Instantaneous.
------
smabie
At first glance, it seems like Lisp is inappropriate for spreadsheets: the
syntax is simply too verbose and heavy. But cool project, I've always wanted
to make a terminal spreadsheet app. Maybe with some custom APL-like language.
Now that would be cool!
~~~
artsyca
I may disagree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death,
your right to say it.
\--
Ok all drama aside I can't help feeling like LISP is the best language you
could have in this context because it's verbose, unambiguous, highly
encapsulated and old school not to mention hardcore.
Anyone using a spreadsheet in emacs would be well versed in this sort of
paradigm and I personally love lisp because it's how we cut our teeth in
functional programming in university.
Not to mention it's perfectly suited to list processing..
~~~
clauderoux
I fully agree with you. When you see how cumbersome Excel formulas can be when
you want to mix different operators together, with their "(",";" and so on and
so forth. I wonder how you can say that Lisp is too verbose for this task.
------
ComputerGuru
Seems interesting. I was curious about how mouse support was retrofitted into
the app but discovered that the commit messages are unfortunately absolutely
useless for seeing recent changes. They’re all “update xxx.cpp” or just “bug”
[sic].
~~~
clauderoux
please accept my apologies, I should be more verbose in my comments. The whole
implementation is in tamgusys.cxx. See inmouse and outmouse for more details.
Basically, inmouse activates the mouse catching events, which are sent through
getchar. Once, the mouse has been activated, you can use some primitives
mouedown1 our mouseup, which takes as input the string returned by getchar and
returns the x,y coordinates
~~~
ComputerGuru
No worries, thanks for taking the time to explain! I find commit messages help
“future me” more than anyone else, I never regret the time it takes to flesh
them out (and tend to regret when I don’t).
~~~
clauderoux
Actually, I have another private GitHub, where I do most of my experiments and
which is bit more informative. When my code executes, I then push it on the
official one, hence the lack of comments.
~~~
clauderoux
By the way, I have updated tamgusys.h to integrate mouse support in Windows
consoles...
------
e12e
Interesting. On a somewhat related note, I wonder how much work it would be to
port scheme in a grid to racket, or somehow get it working on modern
distros/os' (it's been abandoned for a while, and uses a ui toolkit that's
been abandoned too):
[http://siag.nu/siag/](http://siag.nu/siag/)
~~~
inetsee
The ftp link on the front page for the sources is unresponsive (at least on
Firefox). The sources can be found at
[http://siag.nu/pub/siag/](http://siag.nu/pub/siag/)
~~~
e12e
Right, for the adventurous - I did manage to build it at one time or another -
possibly on Debian 4 or 5 or so.
Part of the problem is libXawM (Athena widgets):
[http://siag.nu/pub/siag/binaries/linux/siag-
ldd](http://siag.nu/pub/siag/binaries/linux/siag-ldd)
I'm not sure if libXawM is a variant of libXaw or an extension... But
apparently libXaw lives at:
[https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libxaw](https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/xorg/lib/libxaw)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How FarmVille Scales to Harvest 75 Million Players a Month - z8000
http://highscalability.com/blog/2010/2/8/how-farmville-scales-to-harvest-75-million-players-a-month.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+HighScalability+%28High+Scalability%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
======
ehsanul
They use _cache components_ to scale their writes, since they have so many
writes. I assume this means that instead of hitting disk for every write, data
in the cache is updated instead, and asynchronously saved to disk. Really,
this pattern should be generalized, in some sort of memcached extension/fork
or something.
~~~
aristus
MySQL has this in the form of the startup option innodb_txn_commit. It
performs all writes to memory and flushes them to disk in 1-second batches.
It's a good way to scale up to 000's of writes per second per machine.
~~~
ehsanul
Nice, but when you're scaling to such a large size, you probably want to go
NoSQL, unless you use MySQL as a key-value store (which I've heard of some
people do).
Another thing: Many applications, can get away with updating to disk much less
often, say every 30 seconds or even longer if appropriate. When a machine
fails then, you lose 30 seconds worth of updates stored in that machine's RAM,
which may be fine. For some applications, you could probably stand losing even
a few minutes of updates on a failure, while gaining huge decreases in loads
on disk.
~~~
z8000
Yes, you could buffer writes. Tokyo Cabinet does this for instance as does
Redis. There was an article on the mysql performance blog about Tokyo and how
fsync()ing at 1Hz didn't adversely affect performance; there are other issues
with TC but that's not my point.
I suppose a system where data _could_ be lost if buffered in RAM for up to 30s
could replicate to other hosts in the cluster with the (perhaps naïve)
intuition that the probability of > 1 hosts going down within the same 30s
interval is low -- "someone's got the data somewhere!". Of course, if they are
on the same source of power... :)
One could use a consistent hashing scheme as employed in Riak and others for
read operations in such a setup and thus be a bit more fault-tolerant (hand
waving a bit).
This is without any hard-earned experience with this other than reading...
Thoughts?
~~~
ehsanul
I have no hard-earned experience with this myself. I've just been thinking
about it myself a lot because I have a potentially write-intensive application
in the works, and I'm anticipating aperformance issues with writes (but I
should probably find out if it actually is an issue). My goal is to squeezing
as much performance as I can from as few machines - I'm poor.
To explain my use case.. I'm basically storing a graph in MongoDB, which is a
document/object based database. Reads would consist of enumerating a node's
edges. Writes would be adding nodes/edges and updating edge weights. It would
perform best on reads if I just had one contiguous object for each node,
holding information about all nodes connected to it, as well as edge weights.
But since some nodes may have too many connected nodes, they are divided in
the database by the page they would show up on in the application, as ranked
by edge weight. So an object with id 'node1page1' holds information about the
top 10 ranked connecting nodes.
Now, if that made any sense, the problem: Edge weights change according to
votes from users. So when a weight changes, ranks change, and I've structured
things in such a way that the computation of ranks is basically pushed to the
write rather than the read. So when someone checks 'node1page2' and votes a
node on page 2 up, the corresponding edge weight changes and may require that
node's information to be shifted to 'node1page1', while the lowest edge on
'node1page1' is to be shifted to 'node1page2'.
So what's happened here is that while I've made reads fast by requiring just a
lookup, writes become complicated. And here's where the buffering of writes
comes in. Perhaps I'm overthinking all this, but like I said, I'm poor.
Replication in-memory would definitely be useful, especially for a larger
cluster with some spare capacity. You'd probably have good power redundancy
when running a large cluster, so single machine failures would be much more
common than a total cluster failure I'd think (no hard data here, but seems
reasonable enough). So I don't think it's all that naive to believe that
generally more than one host would not go down within 30s.
Even if the whole cluster does go down, you should only be doing this with
low-value data. In my application's case, losing 30 seconds of votes is no big
deal at all, I'd be much more concerned with getting the machine(s) back up.
~~~
z8000
I'm in the same low-cost-seeking mode as you, self-funding a teeny "startup"
for iPhone services (along with 1000s of other developers) including
multiplayer gaming (along with 10s of others developers).
While I can get good dedicated server deals they are still too expensive to
me. So I'm diving in deep to learn how to create a almost pure scale-out
solution based on a larger (than dedicated) number of VPS instances. Something
like
inexpensive+commodity+more ≥ expensive+powerful+fewer
I really want to be able to have a script that watches load and dynamically
adds more capacity. I'm not a fan of calling this "cloud" based but the ideas
are pretty similar.
Good luck with your project! BTW, have you looked at Neo4j (which is a graph
database that seems to get high marks)?
~~~
ehsanul
Good luck to you too! You've got an interesting approach to scaling, hope it
works out (cheaply).
Yes, I've looked at Neo4j, and I would've tried that if it weren't for this
(from their home page):
_Neo4j is released under a dual free software/commercial license model (which
basically means that it’s “open source” but if you’re interested in using it
in commercially, then you must buy a commercial license)._
Thus MongoDB. I just heard of Riak the other day, and might check that out too
since it has the concept of links built in. I'm also still early enough in the
work that I can afford to switch still.
------
z8000
I wish there was more data offered!
Request-response, XHR, long-polling, "COMET" (blarg, I hate that moniker) when
talking to the backend?
~~~
pavlov
Isn't FarmVille a Flash game? If so, it presumably uses Flash XML sockets
instead of Comet-style browser hacks.
~~~
amitt
We use AMF protocol as XML is slow to parse on the client
~~~
z8000
Thanks for sharing that. What are you using on the backend to handle all of
those AMF connections? I'm not intimate with AMF but it seems there are at
least 10 server implementations that support AMF.
------
richcollins
He said that they're using LAMP. I'd like to hear more about how they deal
with schema updates and how they model their data in general.
~~~
teej
As far as I know they... don't. MySQL is used more as a persistent store for
bits, not as a relational database.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you organize your files - locococo
Seems like a Silly Question, but how do you organize your files.
I struggle to find a way to keep my reference documentation organized such as ebooks relevant for programming or other related tasks.<p>thanks for reading
======
kusmi
I made an automatic document tagger and categorizer. It collects any docs or
HTML pages saved to Dropbox, dropped into a Telegram channel, saved with
zotero, Slack, Mattermost, private webdav, etc, cleans the docs, pulls the
text, performs topic modeling, along with a bunch of other NLP stuff, then
renames all docs into something meaningful, sorts docs into a custom directory
structure where folder names match the topics discovered, tags docs with
relevant keywords, and visually maps the documents as an interactive graph.
Full text search for each doc via solr. HTML docs are converted to clean text
PDFs after ads are removed. This 'knowledge base' is contained in a single
ECMS, external accounts for data input are configured from a single yaml file.
There's also a web scraper that takes crawl templates as json files and
uploads data into the CMS as files to be parsed with the rest of the docs. The
idea is to be able to save whatever you are reading right now with one click
whether you are on your mobile or desktop, or if you are collaborating in a
group, and have a single repository where all the organizing is done actively
24/7 with ML.
Currently reconstructing the entire thing to production spec, as an AWS AMI,
perhaps later polished into a personal knowledge base saas where the cleaned
and sorted content is public accessible with REST/cmis api.
This project has single handedly eaten almost a third of my life.
~~~
echion
This sounds really interesting -- can you share anything else, or pieces of
the pipeline...especially topic modeling?
~~~
kusmi
I use LDA algorithm for topic modeling. It has been the standard go-to for a
while now within NLP community. There are implementations of it in many
languages. The tricky part is cleaning the text, domain specific stopword
lists, and in general controlling how text is processed depending on the
context to make useful topic assignments when the text corpus represents more
than a single field of knowledge. There are also some interesting ways of
combining recent advances in RNNs on top of the more old school LDA topic
modeling. I think this will be where most substantial advances will be coming
from.
------
phireal
Home directory is served over NFS (at work). Layout is as follows:
phireal@pc ~$ ls -1
Box/ - work nextcloud
Cloud/ - personal nextcloud
Code/ - source code I'm working on
Data@ - data sources (I'm a scientist)
Desktop/ - ...
Documents/ - anything I've written (presentations, papers, reports)
Local@ - symlink to my internal spinning hard drive and SSD
Maildir/ - mutt Mail directory
Models/ - I do hydrodynamic modelling, so this is where all that lives
Remote/ - sshfs mounts, mostly
Scratch/ - space for stuff I don't need to keep
Software/ - installed software (models, utilities etc.)
At home, my main storage looks like:
phireal@server store$ ls -1
archive - archived backups of old machines
audiobooks - audio books
bin - scripts, binaries, programs I've written/used
books - eBooks
docs - docs (personal, mostly)
films - films
kids - kids films
misc - mostly old images I keep but for no particular reason
music - music
pictures - photos, organised YYYY/MM-$month/YYYY-MM-DD
radio - podcasts and BBC radio episodes
src - source code for things I use
tmp - stuff that can be deleted and probably should
tv_shows - TV episodes, organised show/series #
urbackup - UrBackup storage directory
web - backups of websites
work - stuff related to work (software, data, outputs etc.)
------
amingilani
My home folder is it.
.
├── Desktop
├── Downloads
├── Google Drive // My defacto Documents folder
│ ├── legal
│ ├── library // ebooks and anything else I read
│ ├── ...
├── Downloads
├── Sandbox // all my repositories or software projects go here
├── Porn // useful when I was a teen, now just contains a text file with lyrics to "Never Gonna Give You Up"
I backup my home folder via Time Machine. I haven't used Windows in years but
when I did, I used to do something similar. Always kept a separate partition
for games, and software because those could be reinstalled easily, personal
data was always kept in my User folder.
------
jolmg
My home directory:
- bin :: quick place to put simple scripts and have available everywhere
- build :: download projects for inspection and building, not for actively
working on them
- work-for :: where to put all projects; all project folders are available to
me in zsh like ~proj-1/ so getting to them is quick despite depth.
- me :: private projects for my use only
- proj-1
- all :: open source
- proj-2
- client :: for clients
- client-1
- proj-3
- org :: org mode files
- diary :: notes relating to the day
- 2017-06-21.org :: navigated with binding `C-c d` defaulting to today
- work-for :: notes for project with directory structure reflecting that of
~/work-for
- client
- client-1
- proj-3.org
- know :: things to learn from: txt's, books, papers, and other interesting
documents
- mail :: maildirs for each account
- addr-1
- downloads :: random downloads from the internet
- media :: entertainment
- music
- vids
- pics
- wallpaper
- t :: for random ad-hoc tests requiring directories/files; e.g. trying things
with git
- repo :: where to put bare git repositories for private projects (i.e. ~work-for/me/)
- .password-store :: (for `pass` password manager)
- type-1 :: ssh, web, mail (for smtp and imap), etc.
- host-1 :: news.ycombinator.com, etc.
- account-1 :: jol, jolmg, etc.
Not all folders are available on all machines, like ~/repo is on a private
server, but they follow the same structure.
------
ashark
\- ebooks: I don't love Calibre, but it's the only game in town.
\- music: Musicbrainz Picard to get the metadata right. I've been favoring
RPis running mpd as a front-end to my music lately.
\- movies/TV: MediaElch + Kodi
I don't have a good solution for managing pictures and personal videos that
doesn't involve handing all of it to some awful, spying "cloud" service.
Frankly most of this stuff is sitting in Dropbox (last few years worth) or,
for older files, in a bunch of scattered
"files/old_desktop_hd_3_backup/desktop/photos"-type directories waiting for my
wife and I to go through them and do something with them. Which is
increasingly less likely to happen—sometimes I think the natural limitations
of physical media were a kind of blessing, since one was liberated from the
_possibility_ of recording and retaining so much. Without some kind of
automatic facial recognition and tagging—and saving of the results in some
future-proof way, ideally in the photos/videos themselves—this project is
likely doomed.
My primary unresolved problem is finding some sort of way to preserve
integrity and provide multi-site backup that doesn't waste a ton of my
time+money on set-up and maintenance. When private networks finally land in
IPFS I might look at that, though I think I'll have to add a lot of tooling on
top to make things automatic and allow additions/modifications without
constant manual intervention, especially to collections (adding one thing at a
time, all separately, comes with its own problems, like having to enumerate
_all_ of those hashes when you want something to access a category of things,
like, say, all your pictures). Probably I'll have to add an out-of-band
indexing system of some sort, likely over HTTP for simplicity/accessibility.
For now I'm just embedding a hash (CRC32 for length reasons and because I
mostly need to protect against bit-rot, not deliberate tampering) at the end
of filenames, which is, shockingly, still the best cross-platform way to
assert a content's identity, and synchronizing backups with rsync—ZFS is great
and all but doesn't preserve useful hash info if a copy of a file is on a non-
ZFS filesystem, plus I need basically zero of its features aside from
periodically checking file integrity.
------
mcaruso
One thing I do that I've found to be pretty helpful is to prefix
files/directories with a number or date, for sorting. Some things are
naturally ordered by date, for example events. So I might have a directory
"my-company/archive", where each item is named "20170621_some-event".
Other things are better sorted by category or topic. For tools or programming
languages I'm researching I might have a directory with items "01_some-
language", "02_setup", "10_type-system", "20_ecosystem", etc.
~~~
rphillips
I do something very similar. I save files into a watched folder with Hazel
(Google Drive, Dropbox and my Downloads folder). Hazel has a rule to rename
the file with the YYYYMMDD_Filename.ext, and then depending on the extension
filters it to a different folder, or with a PDF runs an OCR on it and stores
it in Devonthink Pro.
------
lkurusa
Roughly this scheme:
~/dev for any personal project work
~/$COMPANY for any professional work I do for $COMPANY
~/teaching for teaching stuff
~/research for academic research (it's a big mess unfortunately)
~/icl for school related projects (where "icl" is Imperial College London)
For my PDFs I use Mendeley to organize them and have them available everywhere
along with my annotations.
I store my books in iBooks and on Google Drive in a scheme roughly like:
/books/$topic/$subtopic
Usually organizing your files is usually just commitment, move files off
~/Downloads as soon as you can :-)
------
bballer
I try not to over think it, just:
~/$MAJOR_TOPIC
|
|--- ./$MORE_SPECIFIC
|
|--- ./$MORE_SPECIFIC
|
|--- ./general-file.type
|
| ./general-file.type
|
|--- ./$MORE_SPECIFIC
|
|--- ./general-file.type
etc
As you find yourself collecting more general files under a directory that can
be logically grouped, create a new directory and move them to it.
Also keep all your directories in the same naming convention (idk maybe I'm
just OCD)
~~~
cr0sh
That's pretty much how I did it on my NAS. My top level is basically
"fiction", "non-fiction", "music", "pictures", "software" \- then it just goes
from there.
But it has problems. For instance, I like to collect information about
robotics and artificial intelligence. In many cases I have papers with titles
like "Using Computer Vision to Control a Robot Arm via a CNN". Do I put it
under "robotics/sensors/vision" or "ai-ml/anns/cnn" or "robotics/motion-
control/platform/arm"...or...? It can technically fit into any and all of
those categories!
That's a problem with hierarchical category structures; when something can fit
into multiple categories, you can either duplicate the information (not good -
unless your system has some way of using pointer refs or such to prevent data
duplication - which most file systems don't), cross-link the information (put
it in a canonical spot and symlink to it), or just say "f-it" and stick it
someplace, and hope you can find it later (which sometimes you can't).
What I wish I had, instead, was a simple means to search my filesystem in a
very quick fashion. Ideally, it would be something like the old Google Search
Appliance, which could spider and index my filesystem, read each file (and any
metadata stored in the file, such as in the case of videos and images) and
build up an index that can be quickly and easily searched. It would also keep
this index up-to-date as files are added, removed, or changed.
Unfortunately, I've yet to find a low-cost (ideally free) open-source solution
to this problem, that was also easy to set up and maintain. I've found more
than a few solutions (or partials) which given enough admin and configuration
(plus maintenance and/or glue code) could potentially become the system I
want, but none of them were "turnkey" \- install, simple setup (nothing more
complex than a NAS or WiFi Router, for instance), and "let it go". They were
all very "enterprise-y" and required more than a bit of effort to install and
maintain. It isn't that I couldn't do that, I just don't have the time to
dedicate to such a task. But it might be something I just have to bite the
bullet for.
Maybe what I need to do is research the latest offering of FreeNAS - maybe
they've (since the last time I used it) implemented a decent search engine
module (or some third party plugin has been created) to handle this issue?
~~~
eagerToLearn
If you're running Windows, you can use Everything [1] to instantly find files
on your computer just by knowing their name.
1\.
[https://www.voidtools.com/downloads/](https://www.voidtools.com/downloads/)
------
Animats
documents/projects/projectname/whateverlayoutthetoolsdemand
with each project under Git. Layouts for Go, Rust, ROS, and KiCAD are forced
by the tools. Python isn't as picky.
Web sites are
sitename/
info - login data for site, domains, etc.
site - what gets pushed to the server
work - other stuff not pushed to server
with each site under version control.
------
two2two
One external raid (mirrored) that holds information only necessary for when
I'm working at my desk. Within that drive I have an archive folder with past
files that are rarely/ever needed. The folder structure is labeled broadly
such as "documents" "media" and more specific folders within. For the file
level I usually put a date at the beginning of the name going from largest to
smallest (2017-6-21_filename). For sensitive documents; I put in encrypted DMG
files using the same organization structure.
As for all "working" documents, they're local to my machine under a documents
or project folder. The documents folder is synced to all my devices and looks
the same everywhere with a similar organization structure as my external
drive. My projects folder is only local to my machine, which is a portable,
and contains all the documents needed for that project.
TL;DR Shallow folder structure with dates at the beginning of files
essentially.
------
sriku
If you're particularly asking about reference material that you take notes
about and would like to search and retrieve and produce reports on, Zotero
might work for you. I have many years of research notes on it - it's a hyper-
bookmarking tool that can keep snapshots of web pages, keep PDFs and other
"attachments" within saved articles, lets you tag and organize them along with
search capabilities.
Outside of that scope, my files reside randomly somewhere in the ~/Documents
folder (I use a mac) and I rely on spotlight to find the item I need. It's not
super great but is workable often enough.
It's not a silly question!
edit: I've been trying to find a multi-disk solution and haven't had much
success with an easy enough to use tool. I use git-annex for this and it helps
to some extent. I've also tried Camlistore, which is promising, but has a long
way to go.
------
xymaxim
Another option is to have a look at a tag-based filesystem instead of
hierarchical ones to organize everything semantically. I'm using Tagsistant
(there're other options) for a couple of months now and I'm _almost_ happy.
More satisfied with the idea itself and the potentiality.
------
richardknop
I mostly work with Golang so usually all work related stuff will be in my
GOPATH in ~/code/go/src/github.com/company-name/.
Non Golang code will go to ~/code, sometimes ~/code/company-name but I also
have couple of ad hoc codebases spread around in different places on my
filesystem.
So it is a bit disorganized. However last few years I have rarely ever needed
to cd outside of ~/code/go.
Some legacy codebases I worked on (and still need to contribute to from time
to time) can be in most random places as it took some effort and time to
configure local environment of some of these beasts to be working properly
(and they depend on stuff like Apache vhosts) so I am too afraid to move those
to ~/code as I might break my local environment.
------
ktopaz
I have my files pseudo-organized, meaning I kind of try to keep them where
they should be logically, but since this varies a lot - they're not really
organized. The thing is - I use "everything" a free instant file search tool
from voidtools. It is blazingly fast, just start typing and it finds files
while you type. It uses the ntfs file system (windows only, sorry everyone
else) existing index to perform instant searches, it is hands down the
ultimate most fast file search tool I have ever encountered - files literally
are found while you type their names, without waiting for even a milli second.
So, no organization (the ocd part of me hates this) but i always find my files
in an instant, no matter where i left them.
------
majewsky
My file layout is quite uninteresting. The most noteworthy thing is that I
have an additional toplevel directory /x/ where I keep all the stuff that
would otherwise be in $HOME, but which I don't want to put in $HOME because it
doesn't need to be backed up.
\- /x/src contains all Git repos that are pushed somewhere. Structure is the
same as wanted by Go (i.e., GOPATH=/x/). I have a helper script and
accompanying shell function `cg` (cd to git repo) where I give a Git repo URL
and it puts me in the repo directory below /x/src, possibly cloning the repo
from that URL if I don't have it locally yet.
$ pwd
/home/username
$ cg gh:foo/bar # understands Git URL aliases, too
$ pwd
/x/src/github.com/foo/bar
As I said, that's not in the backup, _but_ my helper script maintains an index
of checked-out repos in my home directory, so that I can quickly restore all
checkouts if I ever have to reinstall.
\- /x/bin is $GOBIN, i.e. where `go install` puts things, and thus also in my
PATH. Similar role to /usr/local/bin, but user-writable.
\- /x/steam has my Steam library.
\- /x/build is a location where CMake can put build artifacts when it does an
out-of-source build. It mimics the structure of the filesystem, but with
/x/build prefixed. For example, if I have a source tree that uses CMake
checked out at /home/username/foo/bar, then the build directory will be at
/x/build/home/username/foo/bar. I have a `cd` hook that sets $B to the build
directory for $PWD, and $S to the source directory for $PWD whenever I change
directories, so I can flip between source and build directory with `cd $B` and
`cd $S`.
\- /x/scratch contains random junk that programs expect to be in my $HOME, but
which I don't want to backup. For example, many programs use ~/.cache, but I
don't want to backup that, so ~/.cache is a symlink to the directory
/x/scratch/.cache here.
------
_mjk
I use `mess` [1]. Short descrption: New stuff that is not filed away instantly
goes into a folder "current" linked to the youngest folder in a tree
(mess_root > year > week). If needed at a later time: file it accordingly,
otherwise old folders are purged if disk space is low. Taking it a step
further: synching everything across work and personal machines using
`syncthing`.
[1] [http://chneukirchen.org/blog/archive/2006/01/keeping-your-
ho...](http://chneukirchen.org/blog/archive/2006/01/keeping-your-home-clean-
with-mess.html)
------
romdev
Downloads
└─Filename preserved, ordered by date or grouped in arbitrary functional
folders
Drivers
├─Video
├─Sound
└─MB
Music
└─Primary Artist
└─YYYY.AlbumName (Keeps albums in date order)
└─AlbumName Track# Title.mp3 (truncates sensibly on a car stereo)
Pictures
└─YYYY-MM-DD.Event Description (DD is optional)
Projects
├─scripts - reusable across clients
│ └─language
│ └─purpose
└─clientname
├─source code
└─documents
Utils (single-executable files that don't require an install)
I use Beyond Compare as my primary file manager at home and work. Folder
comparison is the easiest way to know if a file copy fully completed. Multi-
threaded move/copy is nice too.
------
oelmekki
Beside the usual `Images`, `Videos`, `code` directory, the single most
important directory on my system is `~/flash` (as in : flash memory). This is
where my browser downloads files and where I create "daily" files, which I
quickly remove.
This is a directory that can be emptied at any moment without the fear of
losing anything important, and which help me keeping the rest of my fs clean.
Basically `/tmp` for user.
~~~
mijoharas
Why not just use `/tmp`?
~~~
oelmekki
Because it's already a mess, and because I don't want to take the risk of
deleting sockets when I want a purge.
------
xmpir
Most of my files stay in the download folder. If I think I will need them at a
later stage against I upload them to my Google Drive. Google is quite good at
searching stuff - for me that also works for personal files. I have probably
100 e-books that are on my reading list and will never get read by me...
------
codemac
recoll has worked great for a document index.
[https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/](https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/recoll/)
I also recommend calibre for e-books, but I never got to the "document store"
stage that I think some people have.
------
mayneack
symlinks for ~/Downloads and ~/Documents into ~/Dropbox is my only interesting
upgrade. Across the varying different devices I have different things
selectively synced. Large media files are the only things that don't live in
dropbox in some way or another. It's pretty convenient for mobile access
(everything accessible from web/mobile). I've done some worrying about
sensitive documents and such, but most of it is also present in my email, so I
think I lost that battle already. It also means there's very little downside
to wiping my HD entirely if I want to try a different OS (which I used to do
frequently, but ended up settling on vanilla ubuntu).
------
raintrees
-clients - For client specific work
-Project1
-devel - For development/research
-Language/technology
-specific research case
And I built my own bookmarking tool for references/citations.
------
joshstrange
Calibre may be a little rough looking but it's very powerful and it's what I
use.
Edit: Also you might want to make a small title edit s/files/ebooks unless you
are inquiring about other types of files as well.
------
house9-2
~/Dropbox/dev-media/books
~/Dropbox/dev-media/slides
~/Dropbox/dev-media/video
When reading for pleasure I typically read paper, try to limit the screen time
if possible.
------
rajadigopula
If its for e-books only, you can try adobe digital editions or calibre. You
can tag and create collections with search functionality on most formats.
------
gagabity
Dump everything on desktop or downloads folder then use Void Tools Everything
to find what I need.
------
cristaloleg
~/work - everything related to job
~/github - just cloned repos
~/fork - everything forked
~/pdf - all science papers
------
eternalnovice
Organizing my files has been an obsession of mine for many years, so I've
evolved what I think is a very effective system that combines the advantages
of hierarchical organization and tagging. I use 3-character tags as part of
every file's name. A prefix of tags provides a label that conveys the file's
place in the hierarchy of all my files. To illustrate, here's the name of a
text file that archives text-based communications I've had regarding a
software project called 'Do, Too':
\- pjt>sfw>doToo>cmm
'pjt' is my tag for projects
'sfw' is my tag for software and computer science
'doToo' is the name of this software project
'cmm' is my tag for interpersonal communications
Projects (tagged with 'pjt') is one of my five broad categories of files, with
the others being Personal ('prs'), Recreation ('rcn'), Study ('sdg'), and Work
('wrk'). All files fall into one of these categories, and thus all file names
begin with one the five tags mentioned. After that tag, I use the '>' symbol
to indicate the following tag(s) is/are subcategories.
Any tags other than those for the main categories might follow, as 'sfw' did
in the example above. This same tag 'sfw' is also used for files in the
Personal category, for files related to software that I use personally--for
example:
\- prs>sfw>nameMangler@nts
Here, NameMangler is the name of the Mac application I use to batch-modify
file names when I'm applying tags to new files. '@nts' is my tag for files
containing notes. I also have many files whose names begin with 'sdg>sfw' and
these are computer science or programming-related materials that I'm studying
or I studied previously and wanted to archive.
A weakness of hierarchical organization is that it makes it difficult to
handle files that could be reasonably placed in two or more positions in the
hierarchy. I handle this scenario through the use of tag suffixes. These are
just '|'-delimited lists of tags that do not appear in the prefix identifier,
but that are still necessary to convey the content of the file adequately. So
for example, say I have a PDF of George Orwell's essay "Politics and the
English Language":
\- sdg>lng>politicsAndTheEnglishLanguage_orwell9=wrt|wrk|tfl|georgeOrwell
The suffix of tags begins with '=' to separate it from the rest of the file
name. A couple of other features are shown in this file name. I use '_' to
separate the prefix tags from the original name of the file ('orwell9' in this
case) if it came from an outside source. I'm an English teacher and use this
essay in class, and that's why the tags 'wrk' for Work and 'tfl' for 'Teaching
English as a Foreign Language' appear. 'wrt' is my tag for 'writing', since
Orwell's essay is also about writing. The tag 'georgeOrwell' is not strictly
necessary since searching for "George Orwell" will pick up the name in the
text content of the PDF, but I still like to add a tag to signal that the file
is related to a person or subject that I'm particularly interested in. Adding
a camel-cased tag like this also has the advantage that I can specifically
search for the tag while excluding files that happen to contain the words
'George' and 'Orwell' without being particularly about or by him.
That last file name example also illustrates what I find to be a big advantage
of this system: it reduces some of the mental overhead of classifying the
file. I could have called the file
'wrk>tfl>politicsAndTheEnglishLanguage=sdg|wrt|lng|georgeOrwell', but instead
of having to think about whether it should go in the "English teaching work-
related stuff" slot or the "stuff about language that I can learn about" slot,
I can just choose one more or less arbitrarily, and then add the tags that
would have made up the tag prefix that I didn't choose as a suffix.
There's actually a lot more to the system, but those are the basics. Hope you
find it helpful in some way.
------
graycat
From a recent backup, there are
417,361 files
in my main collection of files for my startup, computing, applied math, etc.
All those files are well enough organized.
Here's how I do it and how I do related work more generally (I've used the
techniques for years, and they are all well tested).
(1) Principle 1: For the relevant file names, information, indices, pointers,
abstracts, keywords, etc., to the greatest extent possible, stay with the old
8 bit ASCII character set in simple text files easy to read by both humans and
simple software.
(2) Principle 2: Generally use the hierarchy of the hierarchical file system,
e.g., Microsoft's Windows HPFS (high performance file system), as the basis (
_framework_ ) for a _taxonomic hierarchy_ of the topics, subjects, etc. of the
contents of the files.
(3) To the greatest extent possible, I do all reading and writing of the files
using just my favorite programmable text editor KEdit, a PC version of the
editor XEDIT written by an IBM guy in Paris for the IBM VM/CMS system. The
macro language is Rexx from Mike Cowlishaw from IBM in England. Rexx is an
especially well designed language for string manipulation as needed in
scripting and editing.
(4) For more, at times make crucial use of Open Object Rexx, especially its
function to generate a list of directory names, with standard details on each
directory, of all the names in one directory subtree.
(5) For each directory x, have in that directory a file x.DOC that has
whatever notes are appropriate for good descriptions of the files, e.g.,
abstracts and keywords of the content, the source of the file, e.g., a URL,
etc. Here the file type of an x.DOC file is just simple ASCII text and is not
a Microsoft Word document.
There are some obvious, minor exceptions, that is, directories with no file
named x.DOC from me. E.g., directories created just for the files used by a
Web page when downloading a Web page are exceptions and have no x.DOC file.
(6) Use Open Object Rexx for scripts for more on the contents of the file
system. E.g., I have a script that for a current directory x displays a list
of the (immediate) subdirectories of x and the size of all the files in the
subtree rooted at that subdirectory. So, for all the space used by the subtree
rooted at x, I get a list of where that space is used by the immediate
subdirectories of x.
(7) For file copying, I use Rexx scripts that call the Windows commands COPY
or XCOPY, called with carefully selected options. E.g., I do full and
incremental backups of my work using scripts based on XCOPY.
For backup or restore of the files on a bootable partition, I use the Windows
program NTBACKUP which can backup a bootable partition while it is running.
(8) When looking at or manipulating the files in a directory, I make heavy use
of the DIR (directory) command of KEdit. The resulting list is terrific, and
common operations on such files can be done with commands to KEdit (e.g., sort
the list), select lines from the list (say, all files x.HTM), delete lines
from the list, copy lines from the list to another file, use short macros
written in Kexx (the KEdit version of Rexx), often from just a single
keystroke to KEdit, to do other common tasks, e.g., run Adobe's Acrobat on an
x.PDF file, have Firefox display an x.HTM file.
More generally, with one keystroke, have Firefox display a Web page where the
URL is the current line in KEdit, etc.
I wrote my own e-mail client software. Then given the date header line of an
e-mail message, one keystroke displays the e-mail message (or warns that the
date line is not unique, but it always has been).
So, I get to use e-mail message date lines as 'links' in other files. So, if
some file T1 has some notes about some subject and some e-mail message is
relevant, then, sure, in file T1 just have the date line as a link.
This little system worked great until I converted to Microsoft's Outlook 2003.
If I could find the format of the files Outlook writes, I'd implement the
feature again.
(9) For writing software, I type only into KEdit.
Once I tried Microsoft's Visual Studio and for a first project, before I'd
typed anything particular to the project, I got 50 MB or so of files nearly
none of which I understood. That meant that whenever anything went wrong, for
a solution I'd have to do mud wrestling with at least 50 MB of files I didn't
understand; moreover, understanding the files would likely have been a long
side project. No thanks.
E.g., my startup needs some software, and I designed and wrote that software.
Since I wrote the software in Microsoft's Visual Basic .NET, the software is
in just simple ASCII files with file type VB.
There are 24,000 programming language statements.
So, there are about 76,000 lines of comments for documentation which is
IMPORTANT.
So, all the typing was done into KEdit, and there are several KEdit macros
that help with the typing.
In particular, for documentation of the software I'm using -- VB.NET, ASP.NET,
ADO.NET, SQL Server, IIS, etc. -- I have 5000+ Web pages of documentation,
from Microsoft's MSDN, my own notes, and elsewhere.
So, at some point in the code where some documentation is needed for clarity
for the code, I have links to my documentation collection, each link with the
title of the documentation. Then one keystroke in KEdit will display the link,
typically have Firefox open the file of the MSDN HTML documentation.
Works great.
The documentation is in four directories, one for each of VB, ASP, SQL, and
Windows. Each directory has a file that describes each of the files of
documentation in that directory. Each description has the title of the
documentation, the URL of the source (if from the Internet which is the usual
case), the tree name of the documentation in my file system, an abstract of
the documentation, relevant keywords, and sometimes some notes of mine. KEdit
keyword searches on this file (one for each of the four directories) are quite
effective.
(10) Environment Variables
I use Windows environment variables and the Windows system clipboard to make a
lot of common tasks easier.
E.g., the collection of my files of documentation of Visual Basic is in my
directory
H:\data05\projects\software\vb\
Okay, on the command line of a console window, I can type
G VB
and then have that directory current.
Here 'G' abbreviates 'go to'!
So, to command G, argument 'VB' acts like a short nickname for directory
H:\data05\projects\software\vb\
Actually that means that I have -- established when the system boots -- a
Windows environment variable MARK.VB with value
H:\data05\projects\software\vb\
I have about 40 such MARK.x environment variables.
So, sure, I could use the usual Windows tree walking commands to _navigate_ to
directory
H:\data05\projects\software\vb\
but typing
G VB
is a lot faster. So, such nicknames are justified for frequently used
directories fairly deep in the directory tree.
Environment variables
MARK.TO
MARK.FROM
are used by some other programs, especially my scripts that call COPY and
XCOPY.
So, to copy from directory A to directory B, I navigate to directory A and
type
MARK FROM
which sets environment variable
MARK.FROM
to the directory tree name of directory A. Similarly for directory B.
Then my script
COPYFT1.RXS
takes as argument the file name and does the copy.
My script
COPYFT2.RXS
takes two arguments, the file name of the source and the file name to be used
for the copy.
I have about 200 KEdit macros and about 200 Rexx scripts. They are crucial
tools for me.
(11) FACTS
About 12 years ago I started a file FACTS.DAT. The file now has 74,317 lines,
is
2,268,607
bytes long, and has 4,017 _facts_.
Each such _fact_ is just a short note, sure, on average
2,268,607 / 4,017 = 565
bytes long and
74,317 / 4,017 = 18.5
lines long.
And that is about
12 * 365 / 4,017 = 1.09
that is, an average of right at one new fact a day.
Each new fact has its time and date, a list of keywords, and is entered at the
end of the file.
The file is easily used via KEdit and a few simple macros.
I have a little Rexx script to run KEdit on the file FACTS.DAT. If KEdit is
already running on that file, then the script notices that and just brings to
the top of the Z-order that existing instance of KEdit editing the file --
this way I get single threaded access to the file.
So, such facts include phone numbers, mailing addresses, e-mail addresses,
user IDs, passwords, details for multi-factor authentication, TODO list items,
and other little facts about whatever I want help remembering.
No, I don't need special software to help me manage user IDs and passwords.
Well, there is a problem with the taxonomic hierarchy: For some files, it
might be ambiguous which directory they should be in. Yes, some hierarchical
file systems permitted to be listed in more than one directory, but AFAIK the
Microsoft HPFS file system does not.
So, when it appears that there is some ambiguity in what directory a new file
should go, I use the x.DOC files for those directories to enter relevant
notes.
Also my file FACTS.DAT may have such notes.
Well, (1)-(11) is how I do it!
------
guilhas
Zim wiki
------
frik
For ebooks I created folders for main-categories and some sub-categories
(inspired by Amazon.com or some other ebook shop structure).
For photos folders per device/year/month.
For Office documents pre-pending date using the ISO date format (2017-06-21 or
170621) works great. (for sharing with others over various channels like
mail/chat/fileserver/cloud/etc)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CSS Click Events - pbotelho
http://tympanus.net/codrops/2012/12/17/css-click-events/
======
bluetidepro
> _"This blog post is about showing the possibilities of CSS and some clever
> hacks. It’s clearly not for “real life” use cases. Please, consider the
> whole article as a playground for experimenting, not as a tutorial to handle
> click events on your website or application."_
I just want to make sure people see that part of the post. Great post, but as
the disclaimer says, there are many reasons you should not do this for a
client website, your application, etc.
Other than that, this has some really neat concepts in it. I have always been
a big fan of the work done by Codrops! :)
------
Svip
You don't have to hide the checkbox like that; display: none; is fine. Also
looks better code-wise.
And apparently performance wise: [http://www.zeldman.com/2012/03/01/replacing-
the-9999px-hack-...](http://www.zeldman.com/2012/03/01/replacing-the-9999px-
hack-new-image-replacement/)
~~~
denzeldenzel
display:none will be problematic for mobile Safari since the label click won't
trigger the checkbox to be checked. The 100% text-indent snippet from that
article on zeldman.com does not seem to work when applied to a checkbox... it
remains visible.
~~~
talmand
Another way is to put the checkbox within the label and absolute position it
to the outside of the label's box. With the label having a relative position
and hidden overflow you shouldn't see the checkbox. But this may not be
suitable based on the design and other factors. Plus I haven't browser checked
it since I would normally do such things with Javascript.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NSA XKeyscore Tool ‘Could Crack VPNs And Expose The Anonymous' - filipmaertens
http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/news/nsa-xkeyscore-vpn-cracking-123499
======
junto
I had also noticed this and commented on it in another HN discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6145932](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6145932)
"Show me all the VPN startups in country X, and give me
the data so I can decrypt and discover users."
Can someone explain this bit to me please? I read this as:
1) The NSA have a list of companies (grouped by country),
which analysts can 'target' for further inspection.
2) The NSA can 'decrypt' that encrypted data.
3) The NSA can 'discover' users.
2) and 3) are weird and scary. This suggests that VPN traffic is not secure at
all. It also suggests that they can target specific users exiting at that VPN
provider. There is nothing stated about restrictions on particular VPN
protocols, suggesting that all are decryptable. Hence, OpenVPN could be also
as vulnerable as PPTP and L2TP/IPSEC.
To me this suggests that VPN's provide no privacy value against NSA spying.
How have other people interpreted this slide?
@thepackrat comments suggested that:
"By VPN startups, they mean initiation of a VPN session.
Specifically, this means they can grab the credentials
at the beginning of a PPTP VPN session, and then decrypt
it. PPTP has been known to be vulnerable to this sort of
attack for some time."
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6148869](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6148869))
It still isn't clear which types on VPN are vulnerable and which are safe.
Based on the fact that the slides didn't specify VPN protocols that we all
know are vulnerable (i.e. PPTP), one has to assume that they all possibly are.
Here is another possibility:
- The NSA might just have 'catch all' filters where
VPN's exit.
- Using the data from this you could match up traffic
which leak the user's identity.
- Hence, I use a VPN that exits in London. I have
specific browser signatures that can help to isolate
my traffic.
- I visit Facebook using that VPN. That action has now
leaked my identity. I now start searching for how to
make a pressure cooker bomb. Bam, you're on the
'potential terrorist' list and identified via your
matched traffic.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Plaid Launches in the UK - jessedhillon
https://blog.plaid.com/plaid-in-the-uk/
======
lapusta
Open Banking is a big buzzword at the moment. It is good to distinguish
different aspects of it:
1) Regulation. What you heard as "PSD2" \- is essentially a directive by
European Commission and EBA demanding banks to open up access to accounts data
and payment initiation. Neither it defines by what means this access should be
provided, nor when it should be available - each European country Central Bank
can decide on its own.
2) Technical Specification. Examples are OpenBanking UK specification or The
Berlin Group - would be groups of banks or local regulators trying to define
common standards. Think of interface definition that describes both APIs as
well as journeys/workflows.
3) Compliance. In the EU some of the banks (mostly large ones) are now
required to be PSD2 compliant, which means they would need to expose their
APIs through the standards described above. In the US, where there is no such
requirement - the only way to access the bank account is to emulate a browser.
4) Third-Party Providers or Aggregators (Plaid, Teller, Tink, SaltEdge,
Bud...) - would essentially provide access to the accounts of multiple banks
via APIs. If you look at Plaid in the US - their codebase is probably 50%+
screenscraping/user emulation scripts in order to retrieve your accounts from
e.g. Bank of America. For the EU fin-techs its a bit better, but still depends
per country (remember Berlin Group vs UK OpenBanking?).
~~~
Nursie
> would be groups of banks or local regulators trying to define common
> standards
Why 'would be' just out of interest?
AFAICT Open Banking is an organisation that has been given a mandate by the UK
government, through the competition and marketing authority, and is funded by
the nine largest retail banks. In the UK it _is_ the defacto standard, and
compliance of the CMA 9 is mandatory.
While there is so far no consistent standard across the EU, at least within
the UK this one is set and pretty much non-negotiable.
(Disclaimer - I have consulted with Open Banking and continue to do so, but of
course I do not speak on their behalf)
\-- edit --
I'm particularly interested in this -
> Third-Party Providers or Aggregators (Plaid, Teller, Tink, SaltEdge, Bud...)
> - would essentially provide access to the accounts of multiple banks via
> APIs.
As AFAICT this would be explicitly disallowed unless all the users of said
APIs are themselves accredited. You can't just get accredited for PSD2/OB API
use, then expose that information to non-accredited entities. If this is what
Plaid are doing then I wouldn't expect their accreditation to last all that
long.
~~~
lapusta
> Why 'would be' just out of interest?
The scenario is typically the following. After the EU Commission approves the
directive, each country has to transform it into the national law and define
the authority/approach/timelines. In the case of the UK, it's indeed the way
you've described.
> As AFAICT this would be explicitly disallowed unless all the users of said
> APIs are themselves accredited.
In UK Plaid would have to follow the OpenBanking regulation indeed and provide
access according to the consent of the account owner. In the US they are just
storing your password and using it according to their privacy policy.
~~~
Nursie
I'm not sure they would be allowed to provide access to another party _at all_
, if the other party wasn't accredited, regardless of consent.
I'm sure they've looked into this with their lawyers, but acting as an escape
route for banking data to non-approved entities is not likely to be smiled
upon.
~~~
cormac_q
They are allowed to provide access but with a few stipulations:
Firstly, the consumer _must_ be aware that they are sharing their data via
Plaid (i.e. Plaid can't hide behind the scenes).
Secondly, there are certain exceptions for needing to be regulated by the FCA
- particularly if you don't show any data back to the user.
In practice, it makes sense to be regulated by the FCA regardless because
asking to share bank information/transactions with Plaid can turn users off
and you're limited with what you can do with that data without being
regulated/authorised.
Source: Fintech founder in the UK/Ireland.
~~~
Nursie
I find that surprising, given the lengths OB go to to ensure that only
registered, accredited entities can participate in using their APIs. I'm not
saying you're wrong, just that I find it surprising.
(Source, I consult with OB and have a hand in their PKI, I don't speak for
them and I'm not part of or informed well about anything to do with the
regulatory environment)
------
sschueller
Use at own risk* [1]
[1]
[https://github.com/plaid/link/issues/68](https://github.com/plaid/link/issues/68)
~~~
fortytw2
There's legitimately no alternative, "secure" way to access someone's banking
data other than by asking for a username/password and then 'impersonating'
them / asking for 2FA codes etc etc. As a commenter on the issue says, there
is no oauth-esque mechanism implemented by banks.
I think plaid is the lesser evil when compared to rolling all of that on your
own for N different banking institutions.
~~~
ChrisSD
Have you read about
[https://www.openbanking.org.uk/](https://www.openbanking.org.uk/)
The nine largest banks and building societies are required to participate.
Many others do so voluntarily.
~~~
weberc2
What percentage of the world's banks are covered? Or perhaps what percentage
of the world's population banks in those covered institutions? Or perhaps what
percentage of the total banked wealth (terminology?) is held in covered
institutions?
~~~
ChrisSD
On an article titled "Plaid Launches in the UK" I would assume the most
relevant territory is "the UK".
But if instead the question is "what's the alternative" the answer is
"government intervention" as shown by the UK.
~~~
weberc2
It depends on the audience. Many businesses don't want to restrict themselves
exclusively to the subset of UK banks that follow that initiative. And
government intervention is hardly a pragmatic solution (how many companies can
afford to lobby every government in which they'd like to do business?).
------
dmix
I don't have anything to say about the product/launch but that homepage is one
of the better designs for a marketing website I've design in a while.
The typography on the docs page is excellent:
[https://plaid.com/docs/quickstart/](https://plaid.com/docs/quickstart/)
~~~
Silhouette
It looks OK if you have your browser set to the default 16px font size. If
not, that page might not look good at all, because unfortunately it uses a
fixed line-height but keeps the browser-configured font-size.
------
leoc
In the UK, 'Plaid', capitalised and in writing, usually refers to
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaid_Cymru](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plaid_Cymru)
. It's not pronounced the same as 'plaid' though.
~~~
ChrisSD
Yes this link was not what I initially expected. My first thought was that
Plaid Cymru was expanding to the whole of the UK, not just Wales.
~~~
sgt101
Interesting to understand what you imagined the objectives of such an
expansion would be?
~~~
twic
The Irish Nationalist Party once got an MP elected in Liverpool:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._P._O%27Connor](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._P._O%27Connor)
In that case, the objective was to argue for home rule for Ireland. And to
look out for the large Irish community in Liverpool.
------
fauigerzigerk
Doesn't Open Banking
([https://www.openbanking.org.uk](https://www.openbanking.org.uk)) make this
sort of middleman unnecessary in the UK?
~~~
celticninja
Open Banking means you can access your own banks API, however if you have a
lot of customers and you need to access lots of different APIs from different
banks then you use an intermediary 3rd party, e.g TrueLayer and you use their
API to access the open banking API of the customers bank.
~~~
fauigerzigerk
I don't think that's entirely correct. Open Banking means that all
participating banks allow access via the same API, which is documented here:
[https://openbanking.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DZ/pages/16320...](https://openbanking.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/DZ/pages/16320694/Open+Data+API+Specifications)
The biggest UK banks have a legal obligation to participate and many smaller
ones are participating as well.
I can see why a third party API gateway would still be useful internationally
though.
------
chrisseaton
Plaid is how most people refer to Plaid Cymru, a Welsh nationalist political
party, in the UK.
~~~
subhero
And to me as a continental european, Plaid always triggers
[https://youtu.be/LU8seZlfhw4](https://youtu.be/LU8seZlfhw4)
;)
------
jeandenis
Would love to hear from HNers in Europe (and elsewhere) which countries Plaid
should go to next!
And also what the biggest pain points are to building fintechs in other
markets.
~~~
Nursie
Presuming you are from Plaid - can you tell me what your position is on what I
think I'm seeing - OpenBanking APIs opened up to non-accredited organisations
using yourselves as a gateway - and whether that's in keeping with your
accreditation?
I.E. The APIs available in the UK are designed to open data up to competition,
but only within the limits of those orgs that are FCA accredited for PSD2
Roles of various sorts. Are you allowed to let others piggyback on those?
------
dan1234
Looks interesting but there doesn’t seem to be al list of supported banks?
Pretty happy with Truelayer ([https://truelayer.com](https://truelayer.com))
but more competition is always better.
------
segah
Am I missing something or have Yodlee and Intuit account aggregation have
provided this service now for more than a decade?
------
rahimnathwani
Plaid has registered as an AISP ('Account Information Service Provider'),
which means that they can register for and use the Open Banking APIs provided
by UK banks.
These APIs use an authorisation flow similar to what you see when you 'Login
with Google' or 'Login with Facebook'. At some point in that flow, you are
redirected to your bank's web site to allow access, and to select the
account(s) for which you are allowing access. At this point, you are on your
bank's web site, you can check the URL to make sure you're not being phished.
On the face of it, it seems like any company that's building on top of bank
transaction data should just register as an AISP themselves, as the
integration with Open Banking APIs doesn't look that complicated. But Plaid is
one of a number of third parties that insert themselves in between.
In general these services suggest some combination of (i) easier integration,
i.e. less development and maintenance, (ii) additional intelligence on top of
the raw data, e.g. categorisation of transactions, (iii) no need for
maintenance.
There's one obvious con: the AISP's logo has to be shown in the authorisation
flow. So, even if your users know you, they might not be willing to share
their information with 'Plaid' or whichever third party AISP you've chosen.
I don't know how real the development/maintenance/integration issues are. I
could imagine that registering with 30+ banks and testing your code against
all of them might be a hassle. But if their API backends all behave in the
same way, then maybe you just need configuration parameters for the endpoint
and token(s). If their backends have slightly different behaviour, though,
then perhaps you need to branch your code based on the bank.
One thing that's encouraging about Plaid entering this space: their free tier
appears to support up to 100 bank accounts for free. This should be enough for
anyone who wants to set up their own self-hosted Mint equivalent. And, if all
the accounts are in the UK, then you're giving Plaid just read-only access to
your accounts, which is much less of an issue than providing your login
credentials to them or another party.
In case you're curious to see which other companies have registered as AISPs
or PSPs (payment service providers), the full list of third party providers is
available here: [https://www.openbanking.org.uk/provider-categories/third-
par...](https://www.openbanking.org.uk/provider-categories/third-party-
providers/)
------
fyfy18
Anyone know how this compares to Teller
([https://teller.io/](https://teller.io/))?
~~~
Nursie
Teller is a system which relies on screen scraping and taking your passwords
(AFAICT, though the comment below says they use the mobile APIs, it's much the
same regardless).
In the UK this is no longer necessary and FCA accredited organisations (Or
qualified organisations from across the EU) can gain access to Bank APIS which
allow much easier, programmatic access with much more granular access and far
fewer security implications.
IIRC teller have also been subject to blocking and possible lawsuits from
various banks for their scraping activities and are not well liked in the
industry.
(--edit-- I am rate limited here so cannot respond below, just to say that if
OB APIs are not performant, that'll likely be down to the participating banks.
I would expect them to improve over time.
I'm not trying to say teller is illegal - I doubt very much that it would have
survived this long if it were illegal - simply that the security model is not
so great and the banks don't like it and continue to try to block it. 'Stevie'
would probably do well to get himself accredited before the banks find a way
to keep him out permanently.)
~~~
lol768
Stevie does address some of the legal side in a comment here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14606475](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14606475)
>In the UK this is no longer necessary and FCA accredited organisations (Or
qualified organisations from across the EU) can gain access to Bank APIs which
allow much easier, programmatic access with much more granular access and far
fewer security implications.
I don't have a horse in this race, but in my experience the Open Banking APIs
are:
* Not performant
* Poor at handling and reporting errors
* Limited in their functionality
------
SifJar
Is there a list of supported UK banks anywhere?
~~~
gertrunde
They are leveraging the Open Banking API, which the nine biggest banks are
legally required to support.
The Open Banking website lists 34 banks that currently support it.
------
unfunco
Da iawn! bendigedig!
------
dx7tnt
You should launch in Wales: Plaid Cymru!
------
bad_name_throw
Same name as a nationalism party in Britain - not going to be popular with a
lot of people...
~~~
sgt101
Plaid Cymru are unlikely to stir negative associations with anyone in Britain.
They are no menace to democracy!
~~~
bad_name_throw
Nationalism doesn't have a great track record...
~~~
sgt101
I think that Welsh independence would probably not be optimal, but I am pretty
confident that it wouldn't be malign.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Career Cold Start Algorithm - zdw
http://boz.com/articles/career-cold-start.html
======
ghotli
Here's my programmer cold start algorithm for those interested:
1\. Go to indeed.com
2\. Type in 'software engineer' or 'data scientist' or something like that.
3\. Don't put in a city.
4\. Put the money slider all the way to the top.
5\. Open a few pages of job postings in tabs.
6\. Write down every word you don't know.
7\. Repeat the process by searching for each one of those words you don't know
and then write down additional words you don't know.
Now you have a list of what technologies are valuable in the zeitgeist and
your mission is to determine why each technology exists and what it's use case
is. You'll then be armed with a larger and more modern toolbox full of tools
to reach for when the time comes to solve that kind of problem.
Rinse, repeat every few years.
Hope that helps someone. :)
~~~
hliyan
A very effective, but somewhat utilitarian (dare I say, mercenary) approach.
It will get you the job, but I don't know how well it will help you keep it
(sometimes you might even end up with a mixed bag of buzzwords and hype). I
would prefer that candidates try to deeply understand the problems facing the
industry and try to develop the skills that solve them.
~~~
eldavido
I know this was half in jest but it speaks to a larger point, that of the
"implementation ghetto".
I'm going to get a lot of pushback for saying this, but there are basically
three roles in any company: (a) people who do the work, (b) people who make
sure the work gets done, and (c) people who decide what work to do.
If you follow the strategy outlined above, you will never rise beyond a pure
implementer of someone else's vision.
Empirically, understanding more about the business domain and industry seem to
be important if you want to do (b) or (c). If anyone has more tips, I'd love
to hear them.
EDIT: When I say "above", I'm talking about in the comment two levels up, not
the article.
~~~
aidenn0
You missed the step of "understand why each technology exists."
If you understand why a technology exists you are gaining an understanding of
problems, and after repeating a few times over a decade you may see patterns
in problems that are being solved.
It's easy to mock "AbstractSingletonProxyFactoryBean" but whoever created it
was not being wholly onanistic, and if you can't understand why it was
created, you are going to be in trouble if you ever create your own framework.
------
wccrawford
I don't think I agree with this.
We had a programmer that tried from the start to impress us. They were
constantly suggesting new tools, or changes to the system, or trying to
abstract some code.
What they _weren 't_ doing was what we asked them to do. They'd put a token
effort into that, do it wrong, and then call it done.
On the other hand, all my best newbie programmers came in, buried themselves
in their tickets until they understood them, fixed them, and went on to the
next ticket. There was very little attempt to change the system in their
_first year_.
I'm much happier with people who focus on doing their job instead of focusing
on trying to impress people.
~~~
arcticfox
The article is about how to make a positive impact as soon as possible,
impressing people is only a side effect of that.
It sounds like you're looking for ticket monkeys; the article is about how to
become more than that for the people that aspire to that.
The fact that you call your new hires "newbies" and don't expect them to make
suggestions for a year is a huge red flag for me. Either you didn't understand
that the article is targeted towards experienced professionals switching jobs
(first sentence), or you think that a professional will take an entire _year_
to understand your org and be more productive than work on tickets.
Most devs that I know worth their salt are comfortable switching jobs every 2
years or so (whether they choose to or not). The contrast between that and not
even being expected to think for a year is massive.
~~~
mercutio2
It sometimes seems like we software developers travel in really distinct
worlds.
People who have an established pattern of changing jobs every 2 years won’t
even get an interview in my org, and they definitely need at least a year
before they understand the problem space well enough for their offers of major
architecture changes to be welcome.
The idea is that coming in and working on the problems you’re assigned is good
because you can more deeply understand the problem space AND make things
better.
I expect this, better and faster and with more humility and wisdom, from
senior engineers. That doesn’t make anyone a ticket monkey in my book, it
makes them effective at their very highly paid job.
As an aside, I highly recommend the article’s strategy for appearing (and
hopefully actually being) wise and humble, _as long as you’re getting your
assigned, bare minimum work done_.
Anyway, it sounds like maybe we mutually wouldn’t want to work with one
another, which is why it seems like we live in different worlds to me.
~~~
JackFr
> they definitely need at least a year before they understand the problem
> space well enough for their offers of major architecture changes to be
> welcome.
I think there's a role for humility on both sides. In my current role, I was
an experienced hire. After a month on the job my manager and his manager
pulled me aside and said "What are we doing wrong?"
The interesting thing was that when I told them that I thought their module
system was seemed backwards, the response was "Yeah, we know. It's a quirk of
history that it ended up that way, and we've got a plan to fix it. Anything
else?"
They very much valued a fresh set of eyes to ensure that they weren't missing
something they had become house-blind to. At the same time, as a set of fresh
eyes your attitude should be one of questioning, "Why are we doing it that
way?" rather than "We're doing it wrong" or "This way is better".
~~~
kolpa
Remember Chesterton's Fence.
Here's the trick: Every weird architecture exists for a reason, good or bad.
If it looks wrong to a newbie, maybe the newbie misunderstands it, or maybe
the business can't afford to build something better (and it's good enough as
is), or maybe it really is wrong but the people who built it like it, so what
good will come of you you trying to change it? Your newbie ideas only help if
the veterans _want_ new ideas _and also_ your newbie ideas are better than
their veteran ideas. That's possible but rare.
------
hliyan
I have a different algorithm, which I have successfully used twice: assume the
duties of someone one level lower than your designation for at least a month.
If you're a tech lead, drop into the shoes of an engineer; if you're a
director/VP, drop into the shoes of an architect (provided you're in the
technical track). Get down to the weeds. You will not only build a better
mental picture of goings-on from first hand experience, the team will more
readily accept you as one of their own.
~~~
degenerate
I wish this is how all managers thought. Most love to stay on their level, and
know nothing of what is actually going on a step below them. They take pride
in pushing information up or down the chain without an inkling of how anything
actually runs/works.
~~~
hliyan
I forgot to mention how I learned to do this: apparently when Walter Chrysler
Jr. joined Chrysler, his father did not put him straight away in an executive
position like the other car company founders did. Instead, his first job was
to clean out the basement of the Chrysler building. From there, he had to work
his way up. It is said Chrysler Jr. became a proper manager as a result. I
heard this story while I was a teenager and never forgot it...
~~~
throwaway080383
I'm sure the promotion committee had a tough time making that call...
------
stareatgoats
Great advice, but be aware that there are circumstances where it might not
work too well:
\- disorganized workplaces run by a paranoid manager (all too common): The
tactic would probably be conceived as taking too much own initiative, and
'stealing' 30 minutes from an arbitrary number of employees would not go down
well (even if it was in your free time). You could try and get managerial
sign-off, but don't count on it. If you really need that job in the first
place (it's going to be a rough ride) better do over a beer or similar. It is
why 'after work' was invented in the first place after all.
\- as a very junior or entry-level employee it would seem like overkill in
most teams, and probably not work to your advantage. In that case, and if
you're ambitious and want to move quickly, try to get the same information but
in a less overt way.
~~~
malloci
This is an incredibly jaded view. Both cases should be encouraging to anyone
in a management position. Spending time to understand the lay of the land
shows that the new hire is motivated to learn the system they are working on
through the other experts on the team. It shows they care, which is a huge win
for any project. If a manager truly took issue with this they shouldn’t be
managing. It’s also a clear sign to find something else quickly!
~~~
stareatgoats
jaded : Bored or lacking enthusiasm, typically after having had too much of
something. [0] - hm?
Lacking in enthusiasm, perhaps. There is something to be said for people who
venture into every new setting with an optimistic mindset, and not caring if
they should tiptoe round, so agree inasmuch.
On the other hand (based on 40 years+ of professional experience), workplaces
are in reality on a spectrum regarding these things (not binary good or bad),
and peoples seniority as well as their need to take any job in the lower end
are on a spectrum as well (some need to take what is provided because of
location or other factors). In certain intersections of these factors I'd
still say be careful to follow the advice in the linked article very
literally.
In the appropriate cases I'd say it was excellent advice though, perhaps that
wasn't clear enough.
[0]
[https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/jaded](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/jaded)
~~~
xkjkls
That's a pretty bad definition of jaded:
"made dull, apathetic, or cynical by experience or by having or seeing too
much of something" [1]
I would say that someone who feels that it's commonplace for managers to
refuse to allow new employees to schedule _30 minutes_ with other members of
their team while on-boarding would fit the definition of being overly cynical.
[1] [https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/jaded](https://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/jaded)
~~~
stareatgoats
Not to be nitpicking, but I said 'there are circumstances' which is not the
same as 'it's commonplace' (it's actually implying edge cases).
That said, thanks for a better definition of 'jaded' even if not applicable!
:-)
------
dsacco
Could we maybe adjust the title to say something like, “A Career Cold Start
Algorithm _For Managers_ ”?
It’s somewhat applicable to individual contributors, but it’s intended more
for managers, which I didn’t realize until halfway through it. Might just add
some clarity for folks opening it up without any context.
~~~
mercutio2
You’re not alone in thinking this was advice for managers, many people have
said this. But the word manager doesn’t appear in the piece a single time, and
I think it’s great advice for individual contributors, so I hope no one
editorializes the title this way!
It’s not like only managers can propose slight shifts (desired by the existing
team, explicitly in this construction) in process. Unless you’ve got a real
jerk of a manager or aren’t doing your base line job well yet, such
suggestions, if broached carefully, ought to be welcome.
~~~
aidenn0
The world "leader" is used though. While there are certainly non-manager
leaders, most members on any given team are not leaders.
"...the natural instinct to push for early impact leads many incoming leaders
into challenging relationships..."
------
bertil
Boz has mainly changed position within Facebook where a lot of things go
right: people know what they are going and why; they get challenged over it
often enough to be able to explain themselves succinctly; power is held by
people who make things happen and can explain what is necessary.
I have applied the same method to several companies, and that didn’t lead to a
lot of goodwill in highly dysfunctional places. The crux of the issue is that
in many places, people can’t offer a consistent and exhaustive view of their
work in 25 minutes. Being about to do that well enough that no other meeting
is necessary it’s actually quite typical of Facebook where the pressure for
people’s time and meeting rooms is so high that most meetings are 30-minute
long; most people are smart and curious enough to be able to structure their
entire role and its context, and fit that in a cogent 25 minutes, including
questions. Elsewhere, you might get into trouble for trying to make sense of a
lot of frustration, under-optimal decisions and misunderstandings.
~~~
eldavido
You're right and I'd like to add, from firsthand accounts of friends who
workthere, facebook seems like an incredibly well-managed company. They have
good process, measure what matters, focus on impact, and seem to keep their
employees happy.
Most places aren't at their level of alignment or clarity; it's a huge jumble
of poorly-prioritized tasks and dysfunction.
~~~
bertil
I can directly confirm, and it comes down two three simple things:
\- a constance focus on _finding solutions_ : if you don’t know something,
that’s not your problem, you managers pivots that into why it wasn’t taught in
Bootcamp, why it wasn’t checked; you are never stuck or blamed: it’s always
about establishing a long list of things to do, many personal improvements,
and having the most important on top; “How can we fix this?” is the default
response and it works really well;
\- no hesitation to _replace managers_ : I did work with people who were not…
great at sharing their vision, and their responsibilities changed, often and
fast; there is a quarterly detailed review leveraging a very detailed poll of
all employees — outcomes are shared, decisions are public and debated at every
level; authority is never something you own, and nowhere else have I seen so
many senior people go back to the trenches because they though that would be
best; little surprise though: their ability to take and act on criticism meant
they generally get promoted very fast again;
\- no hesitation in _promoting unconventional people_ for management role and
allowing them to be themselves, because that role is not about being the best,
but the most able to give a team a direction. No where more than there have I
reacted “Your manager did _WHAT_?! No, that’s awesome, and brutally honest
but… Wow.” Sharing graphic details of pregnancy (to ask for specific team
support around length of meetings), alternative hobby (like, really — to
explain an issue with one use-case). No shame, just constructive direction.
------
mjevans
The only thing at all that's wrong about this is the title...
'Onboarding jumpstart' seems like a better title, maybe 'newhire jumpstart' as
an alternate.
This is really good advice that can probably actually be generalized, though
it doesn't really tell you how to do the actual hard things (like how to take
care of that meeting stuff).
(I'll make a different post about my own meetings rant)
~~~
masklinn
Yes this seems to be interesting advice about integrating into any non-trivial
project, whether at a new job, at an existing job (e.g. changing team or
starting on a client project) or starting to contribute to OSS stuff
------
pbalau
This was also posted internally and somebody else had a better way imho: after
every weekly sync, he would take the bullet point list of things everybody in
the team worked on/will work on and see if he can explain to an outsider what
every item means. If yes, then check that out. Take all the remaining items,
grouped by person and have 1:1 with said person to explain you the things you
don't understand. Then you can set up a goal, like after 6 months I want to be
able to strike out 70% of the items etc.
------
adbachman
I’ve been 100% remote for two years with a trip to the office every 5 months
or so and this is roughly the same strategy I use to stay connected during
those visits.
“What are you working on? What’s next? What do we need most?" 1-on-1, less
than 30 minutes, we're a pretty loosely structured org so it’s all self-
initiated. Works well, I’m more comfortable with my colleagues and they’re
more comfortable with me, we know roughly what each other are working on, and
bandwidth is so much higher in person than on video or text chat.
------
dagw
Starting a new job on Monday. Definitely going to be trying this.
------
mmikeff
Excellent advice.
This advice applies to managers hiring new positions as well, make your new
hires do this!
The position in my career where I had the most success started with my manager
on my first day pretty much setting this exact exercise as my objective for
the first week. He gave me a list of 3 people to talk to and told me to find
out who the other people were for myself.
------
jobu
This is really interesting, my self-onboarding process is completely
different, but seems to serve the same purpose.
1) Look at the bug backlog and pick one that's obvious and reproducible
2) Set up the environment(s) and start to debug (It's surprising how painful
this step can be in some organizations, but for any team it will showcase a
number of pain points for the developers and testers.)
3) Skim the related code history and make a list of people to talk to from the
commits.
4) Informal meetings with those people to ask questions about the product,
codebase, and what they see as major problems or bottlenecks.
Step three from the article ("ask who else you should talk to") is something I
hadn't thought of before:
_The third question will give you a valuable map of influence in the
organization. The more often names show up and the context in which they show
up tends to provide a very different map of the organization than the one in
the org chart._
In large organizations there are often a number of lynchpin-type people (often
in non-senior roles) scattered across teams that everyone respects and goes to
for information and advice. Finding these people early saves a lot of time and
frustration.
------
tudorw
It also taps into a bias that we are more likely to help people in the future
if we've helped them already, so asking for help from the start as long as
it's appropriate and respectful is win win :)
------
mathattack
Great advice from a very effective guy at Facebook. I do notice that he falls
for the Harvard/Goldman conceit in his about screen. They just have to let you
know in the first two minutes....
------
freyfogle
Related, here's a good post on strategies for quickly becoming familiar with a
new code base: [http://devblog.nestoria.com/post/96541221378/7-strategies-
to...](http://devblog.nestoria.com/post/96541221378/7-strategies-to-quickly-
become-productive-in-an)
------
Mikho
In every situation in a new environment, the best way is to just listen more
and talk less -- pretty fast you'd get the social dynamic without pretending
to be someone you are not or trying to wrongly impress people. And --
important -- keeping to yourself your weak spots during the timeframe when
people form their opinion about you.
Soon you will see what the main struggles are in the company, who opinion
leader is, and what the product development dynamic is. Only then, when you
figured out the playing field and all mines you may start talking more if you
really have something to say.
------
foobiekr
Quite a few comments here are saying this is for managers. I don't agree.
This is a perfectly sensible guide for engineers in the second half of their
career.
When you are young and fresh, it is the company's job to make use of you and
make you productive. Effectively, the first thing they should do is intro you,
give you a few learning projects, and help course correct to get you
productive. Managers invest time in this so that the manager effectiveness
amplification occurs.
When you get old, senior and soulless, once you start getting hired as a lead,
this algorithm is basically exactly what you should be doing in your first 30
days. At that point you're almost always being hired to fix something that's
broken and it's your job to make yourself productive for the company instead
of the other way around and then help make other people productive (or, more
often, make other people less unproductive). Putting aside the very rare
exception where you are your own brand name and can get vanity projects and
total control, the only real exceptions are when you start a fresh company or
project and have total control, but those opportunities are comparatively
rare. Most senior engineers hired into a new org who are in a leadership
position will find these steps quite sensible.
------
mjevans
(The meetings sub-rant)
The big issue I tend to have with normal corporate meetings is that everyone
seems to be a complete cargo cult amateur at it; even when they try.
I think I'd much prefer a "remote first" style of meeting, where everything is
designed as an asynchronous, clear deadlines for contribution, process. The
actual meetings should be broken up in to focus-groups tackling a specific
task, such as brain-storming the definition of a problem, or that problem's
solution.
~~~
gordon_freeman
you need another meeting to break up the tasks among focus-groups. This feels
like recursive ;)
~~~
AstralStorm
No you don't. Allow people to take on the tasks by themselves, (agile style)
distribute unwanted ones at random at a deadline.
~~~
Cthulhu_
But how do you determine what tasks to do and what the scope thereof is? When
they're done? That's what most our meetings are about, :p
~~~
mjevans
Ultimately there does have to be someone (or some small group) where 'the buck
stops'. That's who assigns the other tasks, or at least spawns them and sets
default ownership + deadline. (So that the tagged individual can either
produce a good alternative, or at least why they're not a good fit.)
------
inopinatus
I have applied this approach throughout my career. The recommendation with the
greatest long-term utility has turned out to be the last one (the network
building) since this provides an organizational map - and knowing where
leverage can be applied is powerful knowledge indeed. However the prior two
steps suggested are useful for building both rapport and context.
------
sytelus
These are the questions we call it the enumeration types. This means the
answer to these questions requires scanning large number of options, sort them
effectively and return top few choices. Ask someone what are your most
favorite 10 movies and you will know how hard it is to answer these
effectively and accurately.
Another thing is that much of the organizational memory these days is
available electronically. When I join new team, I go through recent documents,
slides, meeting notes, emails in internal discussions etc in first two days
that is available to everyone in the team. I also learn building source code,
looking at architecture/design docs, their evolution over time, release plans
etc. After doing all these for first few days, it makes sense to ask
_specific_ questions as opposed to _let me Google it for you_ questions and
you would look prepared and worth spending time to talk details beyond giving
elementary pointers.
------
misthop
I am in the process of interviewing for Engineering Manager/VP/CTO type roles.
This will require a new skill set of me beyond the tech lead work that I have
been doing. This article neatly sums up a good answer to my internal question
of how do I start?
Thank you for it
------
elthor89
Interesting post. I will start at a new job soon. I am going to try this piece
of advice.
------
erikb
For me this kind of micro optimization never worked but in the most advanced
skill areas I have (e.g. vim hotkeys).
For everything people related for me the very simple approach worked best: \-
find a topic where you can see the other person getting a profit for their
problems/career as well \- start discussing that topic with them \- if you hit
it off, stay in contact \- if you don't hit it off, try to reduce contact as
much as possible
And then work hard and try not to be a dick, but be a dick to people who want
to exploit you. If someone worthy gets a bad impression because you self-
defence he will come around when he sees you in action more.
------
drelihan
Most of the comments seem to read a lot more into this that what the author of
the article was proposing. The algorithm is sound. Talk to one person, get
some knowledge/opinions and a list of other people to talk to. Repeat until no
one is suggesting anyone new. The goal of the algorithm is to get a base
sample of the project or organization so you can figure out where to start
contributing and/or learning more. I have seen ( similar approach ) work in
both individual contributor, manager, _and investor_ role.
What the interviewer does with that information is another story ( likely
multiple other stories ).
------
more-entropy
From my point of ignorance, the best thing is just start working. Seriously!
Get a task and start solving it by your own. Even a simple task in a big
project gives you a bigger picture that tons of useless meetings.
------
juanmirocks
Excellent approach! Moreover, this approach helps you quickly build a
relationship with each individual person in the team and immediately gain
their respect. Everybody likes to be consulted as an expert.
------
djhaskin987
_The third question will give you a valuable map of influence in the
organization. The more often names show up and the context in which they show
up tends to provide a very different map of the organization than the one in
the org chart._
This hits me hard. I always go into a company and ask to see its org chart so
I can get a feel for where I'm at in the company. I have been frustrated
before because some companies don't have org charts or they are inaccurate. I
will be using this trick in the future.
------
joslin01
A career cold start algorithm from a guy who has changed companies twice in
his career (Facebook for the last 12 years and Microsoft for 1.5 years before
that). Ok.
~~~
enjoylife
I would agree if the person was only working on the exact same project each
time. However I would also find that hard to believe. I bet if we replaced
career with team, we could then all agree its relevant.
~~~
joslin01
I would agree that's relevant, it's true. Cold starting a career sounded like
"I never coded before, let me try to jump in" or at the very least, "I never
coded in X company before, let me try to jump in." His advice isn't bad, but
for him personally, it's all been sheltered at Facebook, a well managed
company, for more than a decade. Not exactly daring jumps into strange, new
lands.
------
untangle
I advise new team members to begin their tenure by improving one or two key
existing processes. Ideally, make life easier for a couple teammates. Right an
age-old wrong within the system.
This provides an efficient way to learn the team, garner respect, and create a
platform to do bigger things down the line.
I have seen far more accomplishment using this formula than the blunderbuss
"we have to make changes now" approach.
------
allenu
This is interesting advice, but the real world is messy and 30 minutes to boil
down everything you should know is not going to happen with most people. (And
3 _minutes_ to talk about the biggest challenges to the team?) Have you ever
tried to meet with people to discuss anything?
------
pulsarpietro
Absolutely amazing advice! If you get to the point where you think that asking
as a good idea .. oh gosh.
------
borncrusader
This is such valuable advice. I've tried cold starts in the past only to not
really progress as much as I had hoped to. I'm looking at another cold start
in the near future and I hope to use this.
------
darkstar_16
This is really great advice. As someone who has recently joined a new team, I
can put this to use immediately. Although the advice might differ a bit from
an engineer's point of view.
------
apabepa
Its good advice but I wouldn't spill my guts to someone taking notes. I would
try a more casual approach, talk with people over a coffee or similar
------
aj_nikhil
In India people don't explain much to team mates because their importance will
decrease. It's not so easy here, Politics is over the head.
------
known
Depends on the company's culture and its formal KT rules
------
asyncanup
this is so great. absolutely amazing advice
------
lilfatbitch
This article is what would happen if Ulillillia suddenly joined tech
------
jenkstom
This is weird... I just received a BOZ Cold Brew Coffee Maker, which I ordered
from Amazon. I had to read this several times to make sure it wasn't some sort
of pun.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Login with Matrix - redsolver
https://loginwithmatrix.tiktalk.space/
======
mike-cardwell
Not sure about this claim:
"More secure than E-Mail or SMS, because the codes are end-to-end-encrypted
(Not in this demo, but supported by Matrix)"
Assuming encryption is turned on for a room, it's opportunistic unless both
sides have verified each other out of band.
Maybe as a second factor, or as a user identifier (instead of email), it would
be useful. But I wouldn't use it as the sole token for logging in.
~~~
redsolver
With almost every online service, you can easily reset your password through
E-Mail. So if someone gains access to your E-Mail account, the person can take
over your other accounts. If you use your Matrix ID (without a password like
in the demo) instead of E-Mail, it's the same count of factors (because you
can't even guess the password if using "Login with Matrix" because there is
none) and the only difference remains in the communication protocol (E-Mail
and Matrix). And because Matrix uses E2E, it's _more secure_ than a plain
E-Mail, even if not verified. Also, afaik Matrix requires you to verify a new
session (with a logged-in device or recovery key) to gain access to encrypted
messages, which makes it a lot harder to fully take over your Matrix account
with E2E messages than your E-Mail account, even if someone guessed your
password for either one. It's of course a good idea to add additional factors
(Hardware Keys, OTP App) to the whole process for improved security, but this
is true for both E-Mail and Matrix and that's why I think that "Login with
Matrix" is more secure than an E-Mail/Password Login.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Antialiasing: To Splat or Not - mnem
http://www.reedbeta.com/blog/2014/11/15/antialiasing-to-splat-or-not/
======
eridius
For some reason I find the test image that was used to be quite fascinating on
its own. Were I given that image in isolation and told "write a program to
generate this" I wouldn't have any idea where to start. After consulting the
source code I now realize how it was created, and if anything that makes it
even neater, that such a simple approach generates such an interesting-looking
image.
~~~
tacos
Yeah; that's the most interesting part of the article. Everything else is
pretty much a dude screwing around with getpixel/setpixel without
understanding basic signal processing. Looks like he made the classic
log/linear error too.
~~~
vardump
> Everything else is pretty much a dude screwing around with getpixel/setpixel
That's not very constructive. Can you point where he did that? For reference,
source code is here:
[https://gist.github.com/Reedbeta/893b63390160e33ddb3c](https://gist.github.com/Reedbeta/893b63390160e33ddb3c).
> without understanding basic signal processing.
I got the impression he approached it from visual pleasantness point of view.
Which is more than perfectly valid when generating images _for people to look
at_. In that business, if it's fast to compute and looks visually good to
human eyes, it is _perfectly acceptable_ to do a slightly "wrong" thing from
signal processing point of view. At least until we have infinite computing
resources.
I didn't read the source code, but judging by the article and images, he did
appear to understand signal processing and sampling theorem. He appeared to
look for a better sampler for a scan-line (think Pixar Renderman) or ray-
tracer renderer (think POV-Ray).
My take is to have per pixel adaptive sample count as a function of standard
deviation in certain sample radius larger than a pixel. Oversimplified, the
higher the deviation, the more samples should be taken until the contribution
is below some adjustable threshold. For example in a real ray-tracer you
probably want to consider other variables as well, such as computational cost
per sample. Ultimately the problem in visual renderers is how to get the best
visual quality for computing resources available.
> Looks like he made the classic log/linear error too.
I can't see any telltale sign of doing linear processing for log space data in
the images themselves. They all look correct. Retina / high-dpi display? Make
sure your web browser is not resampling the images linearly in log space! Or
worse, your monitor or graphics adapter, in case you're using a non-native
resolution.
~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
In general, things are not "wrong" for reasons of ideology, they are "wrong"
because they are "suboptimal" or "don't work."
------
Ono-Sendai
This is quite an interesting question. If you splat, you're effectively
sharing some information between neighboring pixels, which is efficient.
However you do introduce some variance at each pixel since you're not
perfectly importance sampling the filter function. So it's a trade-off.
------
robert_tweed
Server is straining. Here's the Coral Cache mirror:
[http://www.reedbeta.com.nyud.net/blog/2014/11/15/antialiasin...](http://www.reedbeta.com.nyud.net/blog/2014/11/15/antialiasing-
to-splat-or-not/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Regular Expression Matching Can Be Simple And Fast [2007] - mparramon
http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html
======
bognition
Its not clear how allowing the state machine to be in all states at the same
time consitutes "guess[ing] correctly", but the article is nonetheless quite
informative
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Clipboard | Home - chrismealy
http://www.clipboard.com/
======
mweibel
As far as I can see is this more or less what Memonic, a swiss startup,
already does: <http://www.memonic.com/>
~~~
gwf
I think there are some pretty significant differences. First, our clips look
pretty much the source. For example, [http://www.clipboard.com/clip/LR-
Jx3fkJQ-6ZlM58bvBM9I7BMs2oy...](http://www.clipboard.com/clip/LR-
Jx3fkJQ-6ZlM58bvBM9I7BMs2oykTMBXe) is a clip I took of the TR article.
Second, we maintain a lot of the functionality of the original clip. Here's a
stock chart: <http://www.clipboard.com/clip/LR4afhOoCYqJ-LDy>. Here's a live
map: [http://www.clipboard.com/clip/LR-
KylLO_bqPkN0m5S3BjhOSpVleZm...](http://www.clipboard.com/clip/LR-
KylLO_bqPkN0m5S3BjhOSpVleZmN-925e). And here's a rickroll:
[http://www.clipboard.com/clip/LR-KYfVlg-
DQOMxuDUnVPFaxHPlpRt...](http://www.clipboard.com/clip/LR-KYfVlg-
DQOMxuDUnVPFaxHPlpRtXqZLye).
Third, we allow a lot of ways to get your clips out of clipboard.com and into
other places, most notably our embeds, as shown at
<http://blog.clipboard.com/>.
Fourth, p2p sharing between users is really lightweight powerful. Just make an
@mention.
We optimized for fidelity, functionality, portability, and sharing. It's an
admittedly crowded space, but I am pretty sure that our approach is actually
quite distinctive.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I hate Lisp - divia
http://funcall.blogspot.com/2009/03/i-hate-lisp.html
======
SwellJoe
_This_ is exactly what I've been complaining about lately. Hacker News seems
to have been mobbed with people who have zero sense of humor and no ability to
recognize satire. Hackers like to laugh. They like to laugh at _themselves_
most of all.
I've noticed this trend for the past couple of months...comments and articles
that are clearly intended humorously being voted down as trolls, or responded
to as trolls, or both. I know we're supposed to be politely nudging these new
users onto the path of righteousness and into becoming productive members of
the HN community...but how does one teach someone to have a sense humor? I
really don't want to be one of those Eternal September types, but hackers like
to laugh.
~~~
menloparkbum
_Hacker News seems to have been mobbed with people who have zero sense of
humor and no ability to recognize satire._
In my tenure as a hacker I've found that the subset of hackers who don't get
satire and seem to have no sense of humor is at least as large as the subset
that does. For every cool, funny hacker guy you meet, there's at least one
weird, humorless semi-autistic guy waiting to make the next teambuilding
outing more awkward.
~~~
dkarl
Hey, I just told Jenny she would look way hotter if we were playing Lazer Tag
in tight Star Trek uniforms instead of our street clothes. That's a
compliment, right? I thought I was _supposed_ to make our new team member feel
welcome.
~~~
eru
You talk to females?
------
sharkbrainguy
I'm pretty sure the title is tongue in cheek, and would be more accurately
rendered as "I hated lisp when I first had to learn it", considering e.g. the
name of the blog, and posts like these with considerable lispy content.
<http://funcall.blogspot.com/2009/01/day-4-part-1.html>
I hate explaining a joke as much as anyone but it seems that it's gone over
some heads.
~~~
cchooper
Interestingly, almost everyone posting to the Reddit thread got that it was a
joke
([http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/81s36/i_hate_li...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/81s36/i_hate_lisp/))
but most people posting to HN took it seriously.
~~~
jonnytran
Maybe for more people on HN, Lisp is part of their identity, so they get
defensive.
~~~
jrockway
I haven't noticed this. Most people here seem to be PHP "programmers", which I
find hilarious. There is also a large Ruby contingent (whenever someone links
their open source project, it's always Ruby.)
~~~
jimbokun
Why the quotes around "programmers"? I think Facebook is mostly PHP (or at
least was initially?) and I am definitely not going to claim no one working at
Facebook is a programmer.
I understand that PHP is an atrocious language (although I haven't tried it
myself). But if someone uses it to create a product that people want and
satisfies a need, more power to them, right?
~~~
jrockway
I'm just saying that the demographic here is more people that think they can
get rich off some PHP app than hard-core Lisp hackers. I am not saying that
there are no PHP programmers, merely that the PHP-lovers here don't do much
programming.
I am being unfair to PHP, though... Java sucks too.
------
swombat
_Why would someone lookup a value in a property list when you could write a
simple routine in Macro-11 that would find the value in a table?_
Why indeed! I'm glad Lisp is finally dead so that we can all go back to
writing assembler code optimised for the cycle allocations of a specific cpu.
If only we could get back all the time wasted writing all that silly code with
all those silly parentheses!
~~~
swombat
Note to people writing a lengthy, angry reply: this article, and this comment,
are both satire.
Check the other posts on the blog. It's a lisp blog.
~~~
donw
I thought 'funcall.blogspot.org' might have given it away... ;p
------
Hexstream
I know it's a joke article, but I still find it pointless and without
substance. What can anyone learn from it?
~~~
bmj
Must everything be a lesson?
~~~
silentbicycle
Not necessarily, but favoring intellectually rewarding stuff is a good way to
keep the front page from getting saturated with e.g. lolcats.
~~~
bmj
I think, as pointed out in another comment, that this post isn't just lolcat-
esque--it does paint a picture of programming in the 1980s, something many of
us haven't experienced.
~~~
silentbicycle
I agree - I've heard of people considering Lisp (with its _garbage collection_
) incredibly indulgent and inefficient decades ago, but that's sufficiently
before my time that it was an interesting read.
I just think that, in general, "voted up because it's funny, even though it's
also dumb" is a terrible precedent.
------
mpk
The main point he seems to be making is that LISP is terribly inefficient from
an early 80s point of view because there's an abstraction layer between LISP
code and the CPU.
These days of course that's a moot point, as almost all day-to-day code is
implemented in a language that has such a layer. Ruby has a VM with multiple
implementations, Java has JVMs, C# has the Microsoft dotNet runtime and Mono,
etc.
I can't really tell whether or not this post is supposed to be funny but I'm
guessing that the only reason this made the front page is because of the
polarizing title.
------
snorkel
I don't hate Lisp but I do agree that in those days limited stack depth was a
problem. I don't know if this is an accurate assessment of Lisp but I think of
pure Lisp as language where all of the data is stored entirely in the call
stack. In other words it's just functions and arguments piled up in a stack.
Is that right?
~~~
dfox
Actually, no.
For some reason many people have impression that lisp is "functional language"
and so on, but that is not true, and certainly was not true for first
practical implementations (practical = really running on some hardware).
One could discuss various approaches of implementing LISP, but in the end
implementation either do not use stack at all (which is especially useful when
you want Scheme-like semantics) or use stack in way that is not too different
from C or assembly programs (and when it is different it in most cases means
using less stack space).
Other thing is that particularly common implementation strategy (at least in
various simple and educational implementations) of heap allocation and garbage
collection was ignoring the problem and simple allocating heap structures by
incrementing some pointer and never reclaiming used memory. Which in the end
looks somehow like "using ridiculous amounts of stack space".
------
jjames
Sounds like a construction worker enrolling in an architecture class. It would
be baffling. The author doesn't seem to acknowledge the value of processes
abstracted from laying bricks. My guess is that he hasn't faced many ad-hoc
buildings.
~~~
nomoresecrets
Sounds like a HN geek enrolling in an irony class. It would be baffling. Try
reading the article slower :-)
~~~
jjames
Eh, it's a troll. I sensed sarcasm but honestly, it's rendered as a troll. The
title itself is present tense. There is no hint other than extra-article
content that the author means anything other than what he's saying.
Didn't expect to see this type of thing on HN.
------
TweedHeads
What, nobody wants to piss on PG's beloved language?
Well, I DO hate Lisp and I'll tell you why. Syntactically speaking is the
ugliest of all. I don't deny its inner beauty but those parenthesis are a
stopper for me.
Look, nowadays we have powerful IDEs that help programmers do their job. How
about an editor that subtly hides the parenthesis so they are out of the way
when you don't need them?
Maybe then I would consider it, meantime no, I don't want to be cool.
~~~
KirinDave
So things like paredit mode (<http://mumble.net/~campbell/emacs/paredit.el>)
for Emacs don't count because... why exactly?
Honestly I find most people who "hate parenthesis" don't actually hate
parenthesis. They hate the idea of having to delimit the _start_ of a
statement as well as the _finish_. And unless your editor is helping out it
can sometimes be a pain (let's admit it, it can be). But like every computer
language, Lisp makes a tradeoff here and says that the features they can
enable with such an incredibly regular syntax outweigh the pain of needing an
editor mode.
~~~
TweedHeads
Hey, I DO hate parenthesis as much as I hate brackets, angled, square and
curlies. They are visual speedbumps, at least for me. Therefor I hate all C
based and java languages, also html and xml. Again, visually speaking.
Good to know there are editors out there that deal with the issue, I didn't
know they existed.
~~~
jimbokun
I think that leaves Haskell and Python?
The Python indentation thing was an inspired choice and usually works very
well, but sometimes fails in a way that would be solved neatly if everything
was delimited with parentheses. But it is a pragmatic compromise much in the
spirit of the rest of Python (or "Pythonic" as they say). There is a lot of
use of delimiters in data collection literals and list comprehensions, though,
which are commonly used parts of the language.
Haskell, to me, demonstrates the problem of getting rid of almost all
delimiters. I have a hard time scanning Haskell code and discerning the
structure or figuring out what is being applied to what, etc.
I like Clojure's approach: mix up the delimiters to provide cues for mentally
parsing the code at a glance. If you see [], it is usually a place where
variables are defined and destructuring can happen. () is function or macro
application or a special form. {} is mapped data. Along with consistent
indentation, I find it quite readable.
I credit you, though, for declaring your hate of all delimiters equally :). I
find the people who abhor parentheses while never noticing all the {};<> in
their preferred language a bit maddening.
------
bianco
Never mind, I hate Haskell. And since I'm too lazy to learn it, I'll hate it
maybe forever...
------
jcapote
die hard ASM fan hates higher level languages, news at 11.
is it me or is HN getting worse by the day?
~~~
swombat
It's you. This is satire.
~~~
jcapote
I realize that now, heh. One of those mornings I guess.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: A Pseudo-Random Number Generator Predictor in Java - ponsuke
https://github.com/yutarochan/PRNGPredict
======
lun4r
So from the first two 'randomly' generated integers it is possible to derive a
value that can be used to as a seed value to 'sync' two PRNGs? that can't be
good. :S
~~~
seandougall
The docs do say:
> Instances of java.util.Random are not cryptographically secure. Consider
> instead using SecureRandom to get a cryptographically secure pseudo-random
> number generator for use by security-sensitive applications.
So hopefully this isn't too much of a surprise to anyone writing crypto code
in Java.
------
pmoriarty
Dilbert's take on this:
[http://i.imgur.com/lr5ko7L.gif](http://i.imgur.com/lr5ko7L.gif)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon Web Services (AWS) SDK for Java - andrevoget
http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2010/03/22/announcing-the-aws-sdk-for-java/
======
mark_l_watson
I think this is an old link. That said, one of the best things about AWS is
their great online documentation. A few years ago a customer wanted a web
service quickly deployed to AWS, and even having never used it before,
everything that I needed was well documented and worked as advertised so it
only took a couple of hours.
~~~
timf
> I think this is an old link.
It's new, here's the announcement in the SDK forum (dated yesterday):
[http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/ann.jspa?annI...](http://developer.amazonwebservices.com/connect/ann.jspa?annID=623)
------
va_coder
Anybody tried this with Groovy? It seems Gaelyk with Google Appengine would be
easier to deploy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: AMP for Shopify finally done right - ShopSheriff
http://apps.shopify.com/shop-sheriff
======
ShopSheriff
This is likely welcome news to some people who struggle with mobile page-speed
and Shopify (a platform not exactly known for its speed).
It's now possible to have highly customizable AMP e-commerce pages by simply
installing a Shopify plugin. And this one really beefs everything up where the
others fell short.
We've done a ton of work to make the AMPs as customizable as possible -
letting you use iframes, youtube embeds, images, and even keeping a lot of the
same styling that it automatically reads from your page.
The app converts products into AMP with proper JSON-LD structured data, and we
have integrated with 3 third-party reviews apps so that you can easily put
product reviews on your AMP pages (even better SEO).
If you have a Shopify store, we think it is a must-have. Sure, we're biased,
but we also own a shop and the SEO benefit has been startling.
[https://shopsheriff.com/amp](https://shopsheriff.com/amp)
I'm happy to answer any questions. We're currently offering this as a free
service (and free in the future to anyone who installs it now).
What do you guys think about AMP for e-commerce? Do you guys have any
suggestions for features that are a must-have when it comes to AMP and
Shopify?
Cheers guys
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nebula Graph: A Linearly Scalable, Distributed Graph Database Written in C++ - jamie-vesoft
https://nebula-graph.io/
======
jandrewrogers
It looks like a competent and thoughtful implementation but, as best I can
determine and not to take anything away from it, using an old design. The
performance and scalability is throttled by the use of secondary indexing
structures. You would have to use some pretty expensive hardware for the
performance cliffs to not be immediately evident.
I don’t do a lot of work on graph databases these days, but I’ve seen state-
of-the-art implementations do 10x this many inserts/sec/server on EC2 VMs
where the local data model size was 100x the available RAM. And in principle
these architectures could easily scale-out. Indexing structure and storage
engine design figure prominently, both usually need to be built for the
purpose.
~~~
continuations
What are the differences between Nebula's old design and the new architectures
of graph DB?
Any open source graph DB that uses a new architecture?
------
moab
Does the OP have links to any benchmarks? Specifically, what kind of ingestion
rates can one expect with a modest number of machines? Does it support a
single-machine (shared-memory parallel) environment? What kind of algorithms
are supported?
It would be good to add some information about the features/capabilities on
the homepage. Right now the blurbs make vague statements like "high
throughput", which could be 1000 edge updates/sec or 10M.
~~~
jamie-vesoft
Thanks so much for your suggestion regarding the website!I am thinking about
the same thing as well. Will keep improving the site along the way. Really
appreciate it.
As to the data for throughput, there are some PoC projects going on and
according to data from production, for inserting, one of our clients has
inserted 300b records to 6 servers within 20 hours, that is 690k
inserts/sec/server.
We want the benchmark data to be verified by decent clients in their
production environment. And will reveal more data in the future.
Thanks again!
~~~
harikb
Just curious, didn’t you have to do some basic benchmarking using your own
data to get these clients to signup in the first place? Or is this part of a
larger engagement/partnership that these clients trust you enough to embark on
this?
------
gigatexal
I can't consider this until the folks at Jepsen have run it through its paces
or if it's matured and been battle tested first. A database is so important to
anything these days it has to have a seal of approval from the likes of Jepsen
for me to trust my data to it which is why I bias towards existing solutions
before jumping on a new db.
~~~
jamie-vesoft
Good point. Software systems mature with on-going testing. Nebula Graph has
implemented Jepsen tests for quite some time already. See [https://nebula-
graph.io/en/posts/detect-data-consistency-iss...](https://nebula-
graph.io/en/posts/detect-data-consistency-issues-in-raft-implementing-with-
jepsen/)
~~~
gigatexal
That is really good then! I’ll check it out now
------
FridgeSeal
Oooh this looks interesting.
A comparison with the likes of DGraph and Neo4J would be really useful!
------
VHRanger
What graph algorithms are implemented beyond querying?
Also, how does a node locally store where it's neighbours are stored in the
cluster?
~~~
boxfire
I found these in the docs which are verbose and helpful:
[https://github.com/vesoft-
inc/nebula/blob/master/docs/manual...](https://github.com/vesoft-
inc/nebula/blob/master/docs/manual-EN/1.overview/3.design-and-
architecture/1.design-and-architecture.md)
[https://github.com/vesoft-
inc/nebula/blob/master/docs/manual...](https://github.com/vesoft-
inc/nebula/blob/master/docs/manual-EN/1.overview/3.design-and-
architecture/2.storage-design.md)
~~~
jamie-vesoft
Thanks for sharing! Yes you are right, the architecture articles are trying to
help users understand how Nebula Graph stores and processes data.
------
justicezyx
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22051271](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22051271)
(3 months ago)
Someone mentioned benchmark, it was mentioned the authors are working on that.
Have not checked the current state.
~~~
jamie-vesoft
Great digging! Thanks so much for paying attention to the benchmark report
data. We apologize that you have to wait for so long!
Yes we have been working on the benchmark data for quite some time because we
have been working with our clients to verify our capability. For example, one
of our clients has inserted 300b records to 6 servers within 20 hours, then we
are confident to say that Nebula Graph can manage 690k inserts/sec/server.
We will keep working and provide a trustworthy benchmark report for you as
soon as we can.
Thanks again!
------
vardump
Would love to see a distributed hypergraph database. Do such things exist in a
practical form yet?
------
kvbe
what are the main use cases for these type of graph databases?
~~~
jamie-vesoft
Graph databases are efficient in exploring multi-hop relationships which are
common in many business scenarios. So basically if your application needs to
query n-hop relationships all the time, then graph database is a better
choice. Some main use cases include real-time recommendation
(product/content/shop), risk management like fraud detection in the financial
services industry, knowledge graph and machine learning, etc.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Carriers Sweat As Texting Cools Off - bproper
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304778304576373860513481364.html?mod=WSJ_Tech_LEFTTopNews
======
ChuckMcM
There was some commentary here about whether or not Apple's messaging system
was a threat to texting or not. This suggests that the SMS market may be
losing steam.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Trollala – Fight patent trolls by banding together confidentially - ideaphore
http://trollala.com
======
rdtsc
This is great. Would like to see more of these kinds of efforts.
Just watched The Patent Scam video by Austin Meyer (developer of X-Plane
flight sim who was sued by patent trolls).
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9UMMq2dz4)
That kind of stuff makes my blood boil.
~~~
ideaphore
Thanks. It makes our blood boil too.
------
RyJones
Are you working with Newegg on this? Lee Cheng could be a powerful ally
[https://twitter.com/leechcheng](https://twitter.com/leechcheng)
~~~
ideaphore
Good idea. We'll reach out.
------
iakh
What's to stop the troll from submitting their own letter and joining and/or
influencing the defense group?
~~~
ideaphore
Trolls might very well try this. We will carefully screen people who sign up
to make sure this doesn't happen. We have several ways in mind to do this,
happy to discuss if you're interested. If trolls stoop to fraud or bribery to
infiltrate the group, there's not much we can do - this is true of regular
joint defense groups too. If they do infiltrate, they can make things
difficult, but they can't completely destroy the utility of it. Our tools
would still make small businesses more powerful than they were alone.
~~~
premium-concern
Plus, it would look very poorly in court if trolls would be caught doing this.
So maybe instead of not letting them join, show them that they "joined", but
don't show them any relevant information?
------
orthoganol
Just wondering, is this a weekend 'throw up a template' project or a serious
effort from someone in the industry? I would have some hesitation submitting
without a sense for who is behind it.
~~~
ideaphore
Appreciate the concern. This is a collaboration between ideaphore (the co-
invention platform and service) and hard-ip.net (patent agent firm). Both
companies were founded by people who are passionate about innovation and
putting an end to predatory patent trolling. We're committed to making this
work if people really want it. We'll do our best to protect your personal
information.
------
rubidium
Good idea. But definitely need
\- A FAQ. Trust is a big deal here. Why trust you?
\- HTTPS
\- An overview of options for your target customer. The reason someone will
need your service is because they've just received a letter claiming patent
infringement. A basic tutorial on "what you can do when you get a patent
infringement letter" would be pretty useful.
~~~
ideaphore
FAQ added, SSL added, resources and guides coming later today. Thanks again
for your input.
------
osipov
How's this any better than
[https://trollingeffects.org/](https://trollingeffects.org/)
~~~
ideaphore
On trolling effects, uploaded demand letters are displayed publicly. Small
business owners (targets) are worried that the trolls will retaliate if they
find out the target is looking to fight back. We will not post your demand
letters, but will instead confidentially match you with others who have
received similar letters. Also, we will provide a private collaboration
environment where all participants sign an NDA and fundraising tools.
~~~
oh_sigh
In what manner could trolls retaliate if they find out the target wants to
fight the case? Couldn't the trolls just pretend like they got a lawsuit on
this site, and then be matched with the confidential other parties?
~~~
ideaphore
When trolls send demand letters, they make it sound like it's in your best
interests to settle for a license fee quickly before they start suing people.
Don't ask too many questions, just fork over some cash. And it might well be
in your best interests, you won't know until you know what others who received
the letter are doing. But if you tell a troll that you are thinking of
fighting their patent, they tend to become irate, raise the settlement figure,
threaten to sue, or file suit. We think that this is why there have not been
many submissions on trollingeffects. We will do our best to screen members to
make sure that they are from bona fide companies that received a letter. I
gave a bit more detail on this in a question above.
~~~
oh_sigh
If you're going to fight, why does it matter what their settlement figure is?
~~~
ideaphore
It's good to leave that option open, where possible. We would not want anyone
to abandon it. For instance, if an IPR fails to invalidate a patent, the fight
becomes much harder. And not all demand letters are unfair assertions of
patent rights, some are legitimate. It's important to find out what other
similarly situated businesses plan to do, but that doesn't mean you won't end
up settling.
------
mnx
I don't want to pick nits too much, but no https?
~~~
ideaphore
On it. Will switch over.
------
josaka
Joint defense groups are great for saving money on these things.
Having been in several, I've noticed a few areas to navigate carefully. It's
worth making sure that everyone is comfortable with the strategy. Assuming the
group tries to kill the patent, the acts of the group may limit what the
individuals can do later in their defense, e.g., a weak group effort could
prevent an individual from later asserting certain invalidity grounds. See
e.g., part e of
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/315](https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/35/315).
On the other hand, often some group members don't want to pay their share for
a gold-plated attack, e.g., those on a tighter budget or with less exposure.
I wouldn't let that deter me, though, from seeking a joint defense group. This
seems like a great idea.
~~~
ideaphore
That's sage advice right there. Would love to chat more, if you have the time.
You know where to find us.
------
pascalxus
This looks like a great product. Perhaps there's a lot of potential for add-on
services, that might reduce the hefty 2million$ cost of litigation.
~~~
ideaphore
Indeed. In fact, filing an inter-partes review, something our partner Hard-IP
is very good at, is significantly cheaper than litigation in federal court.
Also, with a large enough joint defense group, we may be able to negotiate
arbitration or mediation (we would recommend baseball style mediation).
------
cloudjacker
Nice, should make one of these for bittorrent swarms too!
If you haven't didn't seed, or didn't seed the whole file, it would be easy to
tear apart the case. One federal court circuit created "contributory copyright
infringement", which is not a creature of the legislation at all, but even
that is on weak legs, assuming you ever got to court.
~~~
ideaphore
That's an interesting idea. But it doesn't quite translate because each
individual copyright infringement case has its own facts, you either did it or
not. With patent infringement, the validity of the patent affects every
potential plaintiff the same way. But it's something to consider in the
future. Thanks.
------
gnu8
Is this idea patented? It might be a trap.
~~~
ideaphore
Admiral Ackbar? Is that you?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is it time for schools to try to boost kids' emotional intelligence? - robg
http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2009/04/05/the_other_kind_of_smart/?page=full
======
tokenadult
"In recent years, the results have started to come in, and they suggest that
emotional knowledge can indeed be learned in the classroom. Emory University
psychologist Stephen Nowicki has found that interventions can teach kids to
read faces better. Mark Greenberg of Penn State has found that emotional
learning classes can make kids better at controlling themselves when upset.
Researchers looking at a curriculum called the Resolving Conflict Creatively
Program found that such classes also made children less likely to falsely
misread intent - in particular less likely to assume hostility in ambiguous
social situations."
I Googled for some scholarly citations before posting this extract of the
submitted article. It's interesting to hear that there are possibly some
interventions in this area with a research base. The term "emotional
intelligence" is almost certainly overbroad in designating a variety of
modular abilities not closely related one to another, but some of those
abilities appear to be subject to training effects, and most have plenty of
real-world usefulness, so this will be an interesting area of research.
To answer the question posed by the article title, I would like to see schools
do much better at teaching reading and math, supposedly their current job,
before investing too much time in trying to teach emotional intelligence,
which I think is more a family's job.
~~~
stcredzero
Why are some parts of the country considered more "laid back" than others or
considered to have more "nice people?" I suspect that environmental factors
are very important in terms of teaching people emotional and social coping
skills. The Lord of the Flies environment we've created in many schools, where
the only adults that kids can model after are in the same unpopular,
beleaguered position as umpires at a baseball game, and the only other
available models are kids who have just been there a couple of years longer.
It's not that schools teaching emotional intelligence is a great idea. It's
more that the status quo at most schools is just plain bad.
------
taishi
I'm fairly certain this is the worst idea I have ever read. The "programming"
done by public schools is bad enough already, trying to get kids to think the
same. Now they want them to feel the same.
------
gruseom
That would require teachers who possess emotional intelligence themselves.
------
xenophanes
> Is it time for schools to try to boost kids' emotional intelligence?
Please no. They will only do harm.
------
lsc
heh. Emotional intelligence: something liberal arts people made up so they
don't feel quite so bad about being kindof dumb.
------
hth
Yes! Just my 2c!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Using WhatsApp for low-tech distance learning - samizdis
https://phys.org/news/2020-08-whatsapp-low-tech-distance.html
======
tekkiweb
yeah, that's a really good initiative. Thanks for sharing buddy!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Metachat, a news feed for unread Slack messages - drenerbas
http://metachat.io
======
drenerbas
Co-founder of MetaChat here. We’re NLP nerds who have been playing with the
Slack API for a while. Lots of people complain about notification overload
(e.g. Wednesday's article in The Verge[0]), so we’ve been trying to tackle
that with search and summarization.
Feedback welcome! For instance I think the search works quite well for my
Slack teams, but maybe you use unusual words that trip up our code and make
the results less useful.
[0] [http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11417726/slack-app-walt-
mo...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/4/13/11417726/slack-app-walt-mossberg-
stewart-butterfield-interview)
------
Savageman
Hi. Wanted to test it, needed to create an account and left. If I need to
connect my Slack teams after, you will get my name and email anyway, why
should I register to your app in addition to already having an account on
Slack? (since you build the service for Slack)
~~~
drenerbas
Thanks for giving us a go, that's really useful feedback. We need you to
create an account because there's nothing linking your slack groups. Their API
is all about individual groups, and we don't get your email when you
authenticate, just your slack handle. There are rumours slack will address
this but until then we need your help to tie them all together.
~~~
Savageman
Hum. You're right, but I still think you could skip the account creation. Just
create the account on the fly when we connect with the first team. Then each
added team is linked to the account.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Would you consider this as a valid path to learn web development? - nicoschuele
Last week, I wrote what I believe is a very valid path to teach yourself web development, starting with no prior knowledge. It can be found on my blog here: http://bit.ly/1246qMU<p>Do you think I missed something? What would you consider a newbie web developer should learn as well?<p>I plan on writing a follow-up with your inputs.
======
tyng
I just started down the path to learn web development a week ago (after
procrastinating it for years). My only prior programming experience was some
BASIC and Pascal lessons I took in primary school and a bit of self-taught
HTML.
I find codecademy.com to be a fun and well structured way to learn Python. To
me it may well replace the "Python for Kids" book recommended in your blog
post since codecademy is free and provides instant feedback on exercises (best
way to keep the motivation high!). After completing the codecademy course I'll
definitely get myself a proper book to learn the language in more depth.
One thing I'm struggling with is to find mini-projects that I can build and
practice with as I learn more codes. As a beginner I may come up with a mini-
project idea without realising how big the project can get to or the level of
skill is required. If you could suggest a few project ideas with incremental
difficulty as well as novel ways for a beginner to _think_ about programming
would be really helpful.
To me the most valuable part of your blog post was mapping out the Python >
SQL > HTML/CSS > framework learning path. This was another question I had in
mind ("what's next after Python?") because as a beginner I really had no big
picture view of what skills I need to acquire. So thanks heaps for writing up
the post and I look forward to reading your follow-up!
~~~
nicoschuele
Writing some example projects. Duly noted!
~~~
tyng
You the man!
------
nekopa
I liked the post (especially as I am a self trained programmer), but I think
it's a little simplistic, and a few areas are missing and the order could use
a little tweaking. Here are my suggestions:
1: HTML and CSS. I think this should be the first step. Simple static web
pages. Even if you write good code in python, how can you get it to show in a
web browser. Also a simple static page can be viewed from your hard drive in a
browser. But that is no good so it leads into the next point...
2: Webserver/stack. Now this could be as easy as installing something like
XAMPP or equivalents, or even installing apache, PHP, mysql etc. but here the
learner can start to see the problems even with moving their simple static
HTML pages to an actual server environment. And now they can start to make
their boring static pageeager interesting by looking into the next step...
3: Python/Databases. As you say, start programming, but I would link it with
databases. Again, a lot of ins and outs, and these can all be made easier
by...
4: Frameworks. Now jump into Django and maybe bootstrap too. By now they will
appreciate what the framework offers, and maybe have enough of a foundation to
be able to make smart decisions about each.
Just my input, and I think it's great you're putting together this idea.
~~~
nicoschuele
Thank you for your valuable input. Actually, I have thought a lot about the
order in which a total newbie should learn and my reasoning is this:
most of the people asking me how they should learn web development are asking
because they have an idea they'd like to complete. I think that anybody can
learn how to put an HTML page together and style it (at least, in a basic
way). It's not much harder than creating a complex Word document.
By introducing programming first, I wanted the newbie to be exposed as fast as
possible to 'real' programming (loops, branching statements, etc) because I
think not everybody has what it takes to do it (or understand it) properly.
The difficulty, in my opinion, is to get these concepts, together with basic
algorithms and OOP. If one can go through that, HTML, CSS and JavaScript won't
seem difficult at all and results will come quickly.
I also wrote this path with time in mind. Considering an adult with a day job
and other duties/activities. The idea and the reasoning is to be proficient
quick enough (not in two weeks but not in 3 years either). Therefore, I left
PHP out of the way. One can learn it at a later stage if needed. Same with
ASP.NET or Rails or whatever web technology available.
I also broke programming and databases in two sections. For an experienced
programmer, learning two languages at the same time can be easy (then again...
not always) but for a beginner, this can make a difference between 'I'm making
progresses' and 'there's too much to learn, I give up'.
Early in writing, I actually chose the same path you are proposing but I
tweaked it, peeling the difficulty layer by layer.
------
GnwbZHiU
"Writing HTML is NOT programming"
\- I'm in two minds about this.
"In the strict sense, a programming language is a way to issue instructions to
a computer".
\- That's not true. Strictly speaking, you are talking only about imperative
programming languages. There are other programming languages which are
declarative, you just declare the goals you want but not the instructions on
how to achieve the goals. Strictly speaking again, HTML & CSS are declarative
languages, that's why I can't decide whether it's true that writing HTML is
not programming.
"First of all, you will need to learn what programming means. This will be
done along learning your first language: Python."
\- But you are talking about learning web development, JavaScript is THE
language of the web (at least for now). So why Python? why not JavaScript?
~~~
nicoschuele
For the discussion on HTML being a programming language or not, I know there's
a war going on about it. My take is that except presentation, you can't
achieve anything with HTML. Especially not logic. But writing HTML is coding.
Not programming. See the difference?
About Python, I'm talking about becoming a web developer, not a web designer.
JavaScript is a front end language (and if you look in my recommended path, I
also say one must learn it and I provide sources to material in order to do
that). But first, I believe somebody needs to learn 'programming'. When it
comes to web development, a lot is done server-side (like for example,
database input/output operations) so Python is a very valid choice :-)
------
JohnSmith2013
I would say learning git/github should be the first step.
~~~
nicoschuele
Excellent idea! I didn't add any kind of source control learning material
(although that if you learn Django and deployment, you will encounter git).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: TurboPFor – Bringing Fastest Integer Compression Incl. SIMD to Java - powturbo
https://github.com/powturbo/TurboPFor
======
powturbo
\- Direct Access w/o decompression
\- Fastest Variable Byte implementation
\- Novel Variable Simple faster than simple16, better than simple8-b
\- Scalar Bit Packing decoding as fast as SIMD-Packing
\- Bit Packing incl. Direct Access/Update w/ zero decompression
\- Fastest and most efficient SIMD Bit Packing
\- Fastest SIMD-Elias Fano implementation
\- Novel TurboPFor (PFor/PForDelta) with direct access or bulk decoding. More
efficient than ANY other "integer compression" scheme.
\- Java Critical Native Interface. Access TurboPFor incl. SIMD from Java as
fast as calling from C.
\-----------------------------------------------------------
* Inverted Index + Intersections
\- Novel Intersections w/ skip intervals, decompress the min. #blocks
\- 2000! queries /sec on GOV2 (25 MB docid) on a SINGLE core
\- Parallel Query Processing on Multicores. 7000! queries/sec, quad core CPU
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why China Silenced a Clickbait Queen in Its Battle for Information Control - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/world/asia/china-bloggers-internet.html
======
threatofrain
> But late last month, Ma Ling, a blogger who commanded an audience of more
> than 16 million people, went conspicuously silent.
> In the battle for control of the Chinese internet, the authorities had
> designated Ms. Ma a threat to social stability, pointing to an article she
> published about a young man with cancer whose talent and virtue were not
> enough to overcome problems like corruption and inequality.
~~~
throwaway8864e
> Soon, however, internet users pointed to factual errors and said the piece
> had been invented.
> Ms. Ma had to apologize.
------
woodandsteel
I feel sorry for the Chinese people. Xi Jinping wants to suppress all
discourse doesn't praise him and the government's policies. That might have
worked in ancient China, but it simply doesn't work in the modern industrial
era. Society is too complicated and so you need free discourse to find out
what is going on and discuss policy alternatives. Xi's policies may work for a
while, but in the long term they are going to make things more and more
dysfunctional.
~~~
naniwaduni
Ancient China _does_ have a pretty interesting interpretation of its
occasional revolutions...
~~~
woodandsteel
Quite true. Confucianism was a remarkably successful political philosophy, and
it even included a positive place for revolutions. The problem with
Confucianism today is that it was designed for an earlier technological era.
------
zachguo
Is there any discussion on HN about how to handle these kinds of for-profit
fake news factories?
Edit: I found one here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774129](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16774129)
~~~
tgragnato
Please don't do this: criticism and false information are different things.
> But the government did not relent. People’s Daily, the flagship newspaper of
> the Communist Party, accused Ms. Ma of manipulating public opinion. Her
> social accounts were deleted on Feb. 21.
The overlapping of the concepts of misinformation and false news are already
quite worrying without censorship being confused with "policing the internet".
~~~
chillacy
Can you elaborate? This seems like a fake news operation: you make up a story
and people share it because it resonates with some truism they believe in.
> The article was widely circulated online and prompted debate about China’s
> wealth gap, surging medical costs and the value of education — common
> complaints of China’s middle class. Soon, however, internet users pointed to
> factual errors and said the piece had been invented.
I remember awhile ago someone got criticized for doing the same thing, getting
people riled up over some fake immigrant violence or something.
~~~
tgragnato
see answer to the OP
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook Questions Goes Where Quora Can't - malouie
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebook_questions_goes_where_quora_cant.php?sms_ss=hackernews&at_xt=4d8c09a3f9c3c177%2C0
======
pinko
The fact that you're getting advice from people you know rather than strangers
and spammers seems like a huge advantage, but I don't think they've nailed the
right QA model yet. This seems more awkward and harder to search than
something like Yelp.
What we really need is something more like Yelp or Quora with answers custom-
weighted by FB network distance.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Review my app: Wappr - bearwithclaws
http://wappr.com
======
bearwithclaws
Wappr is my lil weekend side project (and also my first app!) that provides a
votable list of app requests powered by Twitter.
It's a simple app with the purpose of providing
entrepreneurs/hackers/developers ideas & inspirations on what app to create,
based on feedback from the public.
I would love to hear your feedback.
~~~
antileet
Oh my, I noticed that this app automatically posted something to my twitter
account when I voted up an idea to test it. I am sure this is going to greatly
piss off many people because you're promoting something random on their feed
without telling them. You're venturing into facebook territory where you're
posting something on people's public stream, and _especially_ without even
telling them that this is happening.
This is a massive betrayal of trust, and, in my opinion is something you
should disable immediately, or atleast give people the option to post if they
choose _after_ voting it up.
~~~
bearwithclaws
The settings could be changed thru the top link. Would you suggest that I turn
it off by default?
~~~
rdrimmie
It should absolutely be off by default. The way these things spread is one
tweet that is your message, then the next tweet that says "sorry I didn't mean
to post that". Just make a button or a checkbox that says "Tweet this" and
lots of people will do it. The behaviour should be opt-in, just like email
subscriptions.
------
mscantland
Your app should have a "how much would you pay?" field. The answer is probably
zero for most of these.
~~~
benatkin
It's also probably zero for wappr itself.
~~~
adnam
Meaning? Gmail is also free.
------
sahueso
I'm very impressed that that's your first app. I started programming my first
serious web site recently, before this I just made small sites to learn how to
use CSS,PHP, Javascript and MySql, however I doubt that whatever I make will
come looking as good as that. What did you use? From what or where did you
learn? Another thing, could you please recommend me a book that covers
everything in general about making a site? From programming it to handling
issues like balancing the load between servers, etc. Thanks a lot.
~~~
bearwithclaws
For CSS, I learned most from 'CSS Mastery'; For Ruby on Rails, I'd recommend
'Simply Rails 2'.
I don't think there's any book that covers everything. Server/hosting wise, I
leave everything to Heroku.
~~~
techiferous
"Server/hosting wise, I leave everything to Heroku."
Heroku is great in that it commoditizes the hosting. It's nice for a first
side project but if you're planning on doing multiple side projects I would
recommend Linode.com (or some other VPS). For just $20/month you can host as
many apps as you want (which is a lot if your side projects don't get much
traffic). For Heroku, it's $36 per month per app, isn't it? I have a side
project on their free version but it seems that if it gets two web requests at
the same time it's too much traffic and an error page is displayed for the
user.
Using a VPS like Linode.com is a lot more work but it's actually a plus
because you get to increase your skills while having fun. :)
------
dangrossman
I like the idea. I actively look for "I wish there was a [website, app,
plugin, extension...]" threads in forums sometimes just to get some
inspiration.
In Chrome 4.0, there seems to be white "vote now" text running down the left
side of the page, barely visible against the gray background, after I maximize
the page. It might be a bug that only shows up upon resizing the browser?
~~~
bearwithclaws
Thanks.
Ok, got it fixed (text-indent problem). You must have a really big screen.
~~~
dangrossman
Just a 22" at 1680x1050, they're pretty common now.
<http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php>
~~~
thenduks
It's just that people with resolutions like that usually don't maximize their
browsers (wasting 600+ pixels with nothing but white).
~~~
dangrossman
Do you have anything to back that up?
I have 1.4 billion data points that say plenty of people maximize the window
at least sometimes :)
~~~
thenduks
Are your datapoints from Google Analytics? If so keep in mind that they are
reporting 'screen resolution' not the dimensions of the browser window...
I'm sure you're right though, most users (especially Windows users) maximize
their windows... What I meant was most people _here_.
------
epall
I'm seriously depressed by the number of requests for social networking
aggregators (Twitter+FB+Wave+Buzz or whatever).
~~~
badave
I'm seriously depressed by the number of social networking sites.
~~~
chuhnk
I have to agree with your and epall's comment. Social Networking is over
saturated and we need to move onto the next step, which is doing something
more useful with our "connections" and identities on the net.
~~~
gloob
_we need to move onto the next step, which is doing something more useful with
our "connections" and identities on the net._
I'd disagree, but I know I'm in a small minority. I've never entirely
understood the desire that people apparently have to bring their real-world
identity onto the Net; I've always felt that going in the opposite direction
(trivially changeable pseudonymous identities or just straight-up anonymity)
would be more interesting[1]. Ignoring the oft-cited benefits for political
dissidents, etc., I sometimes feel like we're losing the whole "on the
Internet, no-one knows your a dog" thing, which I find a little saddening.
[1] Though "interesting" (my word) and "useful" (your word) are somewhat
different criteria, I guess.
~~~
chuhnk
"changeable pseudonymous identities" have their place on the internet, in chat
rooms, on blogs, throw away accounts on reddit, etc. But imagine how much
"spam" is accumulated by allowing something like this to occur. Our identities
right now are facebook profiles and twitter accounts, connections being
friends or those we follow or are followers of. What do we do with them? Post
ramblings of what is happening in our daily lives, tweeting about the
something that people may interesting. Millions of us using all this
technology for something that amounts to nothing but keeping ourselves amused.
Think of what we could actually do. I am not righteous by any means or a do
gooder, but with all the connections we form, the groups, the followers, the
friends, the masses that flock to whats cool, couldn't it all be geared
towards helping people?
------
tom_ilsinszki
A single sentence should be enough to describe what Wappr does. It probably
could fit next to you logo too.
~~~
gridspy
A bakery for half baked ideas
Idea nursery
Inspire developers
Make your dreams real
~~~
tom_ilsinszki
My simple guess for that 1 sentence: 'Wish for a Twitter app.'
------
DeusExMachina
Great app!
Some time ago I was thinking about creating something similar. I am one of
those developers that finds figuring out what people want extremely difficult.
But I did not think about it in terms of twitter, so it appears you
implemented it better than I would have done.
A possible way to expand it could be the possibility to tell people when
something already exists or if you are developing it. It could become a good
promotion channel.
------
nathanh
This is a great concept, but it might be more useful if it aggregated problems
people have instead of apps people wish for. From a technical perspective it
would be harder to pull off, but we all know that end users rarely know what
they're looking for.
------
rendezvouscp
It’s a nice little app. Its purpose was fairly obvious to me once I read two
tweets and the design is nice.
Do things automatically get voted up on Wappr if someone retweets a tweet on
Twitter?
It’d be cool if you could subscribe to a particular want or desire; for
example, I’d want to subscribe to anything related to personal finance because
that’s the business I’m in. You could probably even monetize it by offering
more advanced features like that.
------
techiferous
Some design feedback:
* "What is Wappr?" -- the font size and style should be the same for the whole phrase.
* The slidedown should be much smaller. Wrap it in a differently colored box with rounded corners (perhaps a background darker than the page background).
* Add another color besides the light blue.
* Increase the contrast on your Wappr logo (either black letters or darker blue background).
* You have too many font sizes. I would pick three font sizes and stick with them (and make sure the font sizes aren't too close to each other).
* The "sign in with twitter" animation when you click "vote this" is really cool.
* Make the previous/next/page links more prominent (or change them into image links).
* The twitter icon at the bottom of the page needs to breathe (it touches the fat footer).
* I really like the light, simple, zen-like feel of the design.
* Your fat footer spans the whole width of the screen. If your header did the same it wouldn't feel like the page is completely squished into the middle of the screen with unused space on the edges.
* I like the subtlety of the divider separating the list from the header.
------
iaskwhy
I'm a faviconist claiming that every site needs a favicon.
Very nice and simple idea, I've been working with some similar stuff and
believe there's a bunch of work to do with what people say. Given that it's
free what people say on Twitter, etc, I'd say thinkers should start finding
interesting stuff there, even on the most simple 140 characters.
Also, since it's your first app: good work!
------
stuntgoat
Don't stop at ideas for webapps. What about ideas for creating jobs or
reducing environmental problems? I guess you could crank out other sites that
used collective decision making fairly quickly, now that you have the
template. Build a network of these sites and sell it to someone.
If you had groups for people to join it might make sorting easier; we still
have to sort through people with ideas that cannot type URLs in a browser:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1119184>
Also, allow me to unvote. I accidentally clicked on voting for some top app to
see how test how voting worked.
Please don't have me default post to Twitter when I vote for an idea after
logging in with Twitter; that is sort of annoying.
Consider how search engines are going to index the ideas from your users.
Create a URL object for each post and have the relevant content there. ( such
as other users' comments about how to improve the app idea )
How do I submit ideas from the Wappr site?
~~~
bearwithclaws
Awesome idea.
The default post to Twitter settings has already changed.
You could submit your ideas by starting your tweet with the any one of the
following phrases:
“I wish there was an app ...” “I need an app to ...” “I want an app that ...”
------
adrianwaj
This is also a great app to find new users for any particular site that
already fulfils a request. Thus, there could be a field where people can write
the name of an applicable pre-existing app with a note, with that also being
tweeted out to the requesting user. Then, bunch all the notes and source
tweets that apply to the same pre-existing app together.
Ideally, you could also group similar requests together for developers to
approach jointly to raise funds using a note they place below, that also sends
a tweet out once inserted, or, these people can be informed of a suitable app
once launched.
So, you'd be building a directory (eg <http://twittown.com/>) of existing and
proposed apps, tied to the tweets you've recovered, each with user responses
as submitted on the site.
------
lisper
I love it! I think you may be seriously underestimating the potential of what
you've done here.
~~~
lucifer
It is a good idea & there is definitely a potential migration path to a market
place for software development. It won't be trivial but having an automated
classifier to unify similar/duplicate wishes would be very nice.
------
nandemo
This is interesting and hope HNers will use it. Frankly I'm puzzled by
attempts to do startups that are basically targeted at other geeks.
However, there's potential for a lot of "abuse". The top suggestion now is:
_I wish there was an app where you could report a car whose alarm has been
going on for hours, and car thieves will read it and steal the car_
I hope you don't try to ban that sort of thing, though.
~~~
waterlesscloud
While the requested app isn't something you'd actually make, it's a useful
request in that it's a real problem, and people voting it up indicates they
want a solution to that problem.
The essential trait in a startup founder is the ability to find workable
solutions to problems people want solved. This is the public doing their part,
now founders have to do theirs.
------
dconti
I think it's great. Having organization (so you can minimize dupes and easily
sort through items) would be a great next project and would keep the utility
high. Per the other post, i think you could do a little bit to make it an
interesting source of leads for anyone who tries to solve one of the posted
problems.
Nice work!
------
vais
Please add the ability to search.
------
unignorant
Interesting! Perhaps I missed it, but I feel that you need some way to break
down the suggestions into categories.
Also, of course I don't know your long term intentions, but something like
this would seem difficult to monetize.
~~~
bearwithclaws
Thanks for the suggestions. I'm thinking of categorizing the suggestions using
hashtag (e.g #iphone, #web, #android).
There's no long term intention or any intention to monetize from this. I just
started on programming and wanted something to code for (instead of just
banging on the books).
------
resdirector
Awesome. Should get more and more useful as we approach the singularity
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity> :)
------
stralep
It's a nice site!
My JavaScript was turned off... When I clicked "what is wappr" nothing
happened. Could it be a nonJavaScript friendlier (just a little :)
Nice work!
EDIT: JavaScript in my browser...
------
thenduks
So how do the people wanting something (poster and voters) find out about it
when it gets made (or told about it if it already exists)? Am I missing a
feature?
------
lawn
The site looks good but I'd like it a lot more if it was unobtrusive (works
without javascript). Not a biggie but still.
~~~
smanek
In my experience the cost (in terms of engineering time, if nothing else) of
supporting degradable javascript is rarely worth it for a consumer facing
startup.
The extra "N" hours it takes to support something that a fraction of a percent
of your users will need (which is only a handful of people for a small
startup) could be better used on adding new features, marketing, adding
polish, etc.
~~~
nostrademons
For an app like this, the cost is pretty negligible. First you build the site
so that it's functional (but not necessarily all that polished) in straight
HTML with no JavaScript. Then you add the JavaScript to make it even easier to
use. It falls out naturally of your incremental development process (you do
develop incrementally, right?)
I've done a lot of the works-without-Javascript polishing for google.com, and
it's very far from being our most expensive feature. It's mostly just a matter
of remembering that you have HTML + CSS under all that JavaScript, and that
the HTML does what you intend.
~~~
prodigal_erik
This. Maybe you can get away with useless HTML for a solidly non-technical
audience, but I for one judge it more harshly than broken images and typos.
It's not even hard, just a basic display of diligence and competence.
------
fname
More importantly, is anyone working on an app they see suggested here already?
------
necrecious
Have you heard of appswell? It is a voting system for iPhone app development.
------
vinhboy
clicking "what is wappr" should toggle slideup slidedown, not just slideDown.
~~~
bearwithclaws
Had it fixed. Thanks.
------
maxklein
Do you do this with the twitter API?
~~~
bearwithclaws
Yes. I use this fantastic Twitter gem by John Nunemaker:
<http://twitter.rubyforge.org/>
------
abraham
I still don't know what it does...
~~~
lucifer
Don't you wish there was an app that reviewed "review my app" submissions and
posted what it did on HN?
------
diN0bot
how do i post an idea? would be nice to have an input box on the website.
------
ddemchuk
Oh man I was loving the css work on the site until I hovered over What is
Wappr?...please please tone down that blue drop shadow when you hover, it
looks like a bad mistake because of the amount of blur.
Otherwise, great design!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Don't wait for motivation to find you; go find it today. - shin_lao
http://www.schwarzenegger.com/fitness/post/motivation
======
codex
It is easy to dismiss Arnold because techie types tend to disdain bodybuilding
and acting as trivial endeavors. But, upon closer inspection, I find Arnold to
have very impressive character and is well worth listening to.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Open Source Show and Tell - justinelof
http://opensourceshowandtell.github.io
======
justinelof
Would love comments about how to add to or improve the event.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Docker protects a programming paradigm that we should get rid of (2018) - lkrubner
http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/docker-protects-a-programming-paradigm-that-we-should-get-rid-of
======
orf
[https://www.google.com/search?q=ModuleNotFoundError%3A+No+mo...](https://www.google.com/search?q=ModuleNotFoundError%3A+No+module+named+%E2%80%98MySQLdb%E2%80%99)
In all seriousness he has half a point, but for the wrong reasons. Docker
doesn't let you take your "old" languages and put them "in the cloud" over
more superior approaches - it's a shipping container. That's it. It's a known
quantity that lets you slot your 10,000,000 LOC Java monolith alongside your
25 line Python microservice and orchestrate them with the same tools.
That's the advantage. The side effect is, sure, you can take your old, shitty
code and run it "in the cloud", and it's nothing "we should get rid of".
To put it another way: "Shipping containers protects a transportation method
that we should get rid of". Sure, drones could fly every item individually to
you from the factory, but while you're fiddling around with that Maersk is
shipping 20% of the worlds GDP every year by dealing with what it knows best:
how to move containers, not caring about what's in them.
~~~
crdoconnor
There are many arguments I can think of for using docker but "standard" is a
pretty poor one. Directories, bash scripts and package managers are also
arguably "standard" and sufficient to install most software. We should care
primarily about alleviating deployment pain - not about argumentum ad
popularum.
"Shipping container standardisation" is not a metaphor for what docker is,
it's _marketing_. Docker, of course wants to be a "standard" product. _Every_
product wants to be that.
In my experience, it's been more like a buggy kludge to deal with applications
that have isolation issues with their dependencies and unnecessary overhead
for applications that don't. All with a sprinkling of marketing hype.
------
cassianoleal
So, someone who doesn't understands his tools blames the tools for the fact
that somehow they need to keep using a language they don't like (and don't
understand either, it seems).
Nothing of what he complains about is Docker's fault or even Python the
language's fault.
Funnily enough, I have spend the better part of Friday trying to wrap my head
around Go modules and getting a project to a state that I could run any go
command in. Have I blamed Go, the language? Nope. The tooling? A little bit
but mostly my own ignorance of how it works.
It would do the author good to do some soul searching and perhaps understand
that not all problems are nails, where the best tool to deal with is a hammer.
~~~
PaulHoule
I think the average Python practitioner does not know how to reliably build a
Python environment. Like most languages, Python has footguns. Packages
installed in a user's home directory are often visible in virtualenv or conda
environment and defeat isolation. If your charsets are configured wrong, a
single print() statement will crash your Python if Unicode characters are in
play.
Python is being fixed at its foundations and tools like poetry will approach
parity with Maven.
~~~
cassianoleal
Python tooling is in a very sorry state in general. The language has
drawbacks. What I wrote was not meant in defense of Python at all, but rather
a criticism of what the author said about Docker and the fact that he expects
it to fix his Python (or Ruby or Perl) woes.
He goes on to suggest that somehow these languages put the programmer closer
to the OS than C, which completely ludicrous since most reference
implementations of them are written in C - making the language effectively one
layer above it.
I get the argument about concurrency but that's pretty much the only thing he
has to offer there. Everything else is just someone who doesn't understand the
tools blaming the tools themselves and wishing he was using something else.
The fact that he thinks "Docker is supposed to protect us" from dependency
management issues is ludicrous.
------
cies
The author compares docker-based deploys to deploying straight on top of the
OS. And looks at it from a "application programming" perspective.
I argue docker-based deploys should not be looked at from a "application
programming" perspective, but from a "dev ops" perspective. It is docker vs
puppet/ansible. Not docker vs akka.
To me docker is a big step fwd from provisioning OSes with puppet/ansible and
deploying apps on top. I have a deployable unit that is accepted in many envs
(k8s, aws ecs, roll-your-own), I keep more of the app-specfic code in the
app's source code repo (instead of having some of it in puppet/ansible
scripts), and we can use the same system locally (on our laptops) for
development. And finally the configuration-by-env-vars convention creates a
lot of clarity.
~~~
chessturk
> Not docker vs akka.
I'm not familiar with akka, but I do see BEAM (the Erlang VM utilized by
Elixir as well) as an alternative to docker swarm/kubernetes.
It requires stack homogeny of BEAM languages, but you can run distributed,
concurrent, parallelized code with live debugging tools and "hot code
reloading". I feel like the author's point is that docker and friends enable
tools not meant for distributed/concurrent/parallel to be deployed in such a
way. I could be mistaken and would be curious what you think of that argument.
I'm inclined to agree with the point in as much as docker can permit forcing a
square peg into a round hole. On the other hand, being able to develop on *nix
and deploy to weird editions of windows 10 had made me deeply appreciate
docker.
~~~
cies
> I feel like the author's point is that docker and friends enable tools not
> meant for distributed/concurrent/parallel to be deployed in such a way. I
> could be mistaken and would be curious what you think of that argument.
That's exactly the point I think the author fails on. Docker is not a tool to
make your app distr/conc/parallel: and thus I point out that docker is merely
a way to ship code. Not as a binary. Not with load of ansible/puppet scripts.
But as a container (container spec + config as env vars).
~~~
chessturk
I see what you're saying now, there's nothing about Docker or containerizing
that promotes using the wrong tool for the job.
It just happens to be employed by other frameworks that make it easier to make
that mistake.
------
randallsquared
> _consider two different companies. One spends the next 5 years committing to
> those languages and eco-systems that have been built for the era. The other
> spends the next 5 years using Docker so they can keep using script languages
> from the 1990s. Now it is the year 2023, and a crisis happens at both
> companies. Which of those two companies do you think will be more ready to
> adapt to the crisis?_
Presumably the one that doesn't have to rewrite everything that they just
wrote from scratch to avoid Docker.
~~~
nkurz
> Presumably the one that doesn't have to rewrite everything that they just
> wrote from scratch to avoid Docker.
I think that's too simplistic. Larry is right that a company who manages to
survive 5 non-productive years rewriting everything in a "better" ecosystem
will likely be in a better situation than the company trundling along with
ever increasing technical debt.
The problem is that the conservative company without the major rewrite is more
likely to make it through (at the least the first few of) those 5 years. So
Larry's not wrong --- he just might be making some unwarranted assumptions.
~~~
tomnipotent
> rewriting everything in a "better" ecosystem will likely be in a better
> situation than the company trundling along with ever increasing technical
> debt
So you believe that code with no-to-minimal history running successfully will
be better than dated-but-proven code that has been running for over a decade?
~~~
nkurz
There are good and bad ways to do such a rewrite. If the 5-years are spent
completely isolated from the world, then no. But if the system has been used
in live production for a couple years before the 5-years is up, then yes. I
think "technical debt" is a really large hindrance, believe that even long
lived systems are still full of hidden bugs, and would probably bet on the
newcomer with a clean codebase if they can get far enough along to have a
working system.
~~~
TikiTDO
That really depends on quite a few other factors: how big is the team? What
development methodology do they use? Does the leadership understand how to
manage and direct a rewrite? Are there people that understand the full scale
and scope of the system? Does the system interact with legacy components that
can't be modified? Are there political factors in play? These are just a few
of the questions that can change the outcome of any given rewrite.
You mentioned hidden bugs, but what about hidden "features" that may be a
critical part of existing business processes for core parts of the company?
Developers really like to believe they are at the center of the wheel due to
the complex work they do, but a lot of the time they are not the ones that
actually create the cash-flow.
I've been part of rewrites that have succeeded tremendously, but I've also
been privy to utter failures that have cost millions, and led to entire teams
getting sacked.
------
tomohawk
His point about fat binaries is a good one.
After using languages with lots of dangling parts such as Java and Ruby,
moving to Go was amazing on the deploy end.
With the dangling parts languages, you have a VM of some sort, and packages.
All that stuff needs to be managed when you're building the app, _and_ when
you deploy the app, _and_ when you maintain the app.
With a fat binary you only have to manage that once, and deployment becomes
super simple. We actually put off using containers for quite a while because
what's the point of putting a single binary into a container? There are
reasons, but its much less compelling than if you have all of those dangling
parts to manage.
~~~
cutler
Other than the JRE/JDK what other dangling parts does Java depend on? I mean
installing the same JRE/JDK at both ends is hardly onerous.
~~~
half-kh-hacker
If you don't shade libraries, I imagine managing a classpath can become quite
difficult.
~~~
lmz
Does Go or other 'fat binary' languages have a better story for this? I know
this is an issue for Java when dependency A wants X v1.0 and dependency B
wants X v2.1 (incompatible), but not sure how using Go makes this any easier.
~~~
hu3
go modules allows v1.0 and v2.1 of a lib to coexist in a project because their
import paths differ.
------
zmmmmm
I've been slowly developing the opinion that the emergence of Docker is in
some ways a phenomenon of extreme JVM-envy. In between cracking jokes about
"Write once, test everywhere" in Java the critics decided "yes actually all
our languages suck at cross platform by the way so we are going to hack
together a giant kluge so that we can just keep coding however we like and
carry on". So while Java had deprecated environment variables because "Hey,
you know one day someone might make a system without environment variables"
they were re-inventing the JVM as the Linux kernel so that `/dev/stdin` will
always exist and they can stop worrying that another OS will ever exist.
However I think this viewpoint misses some of the fundamental features of
Docker that are nothing to do with platform independence and more about
isolation, configuration management and orchestration. I would use docker and
docker compose even if it could only run Java which is already cross platform.
Because I love how it lets me map volumes, ports, orchestrate startup and
shutdown with compose etc etc.
~~~
EdwardDiego
We're a 95% JVM shop and we've moved nearly all our apps to Docker now. For
ease of devops, really.
------
gigatexal
Blaming docker for being able to package up an app so simply that even an app
not suited for the cloud can be dockerized but not take advantage of the cloud
is like saying you dislike Hydrogen because it’s just too flammable. Be less
flammable hydrogen!
~~~
nova22033
It's like giving up water because hydrogen is flammable.
------
lifeisstillgood
>>> ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘MySQLdb’
On Py2 I think it's C compiled and that's always awkward - usually I forget to
add python dev headers. Unless I use proper systems with "ports". start from
the beginning or don't use py2 unless you really have a good reason.
On Py3 there is no mysqldb - they have not made the leap. so it sounds like
the author got trapped in the 2to3 chasm. it happens to us all.
Problem is not docker- problem is not python. Problem is devops is hard and
your personal eco system is only comfortable because you know where all the
sharp bits are.
~~~
darkarmani
conda install mysql?
------
etaioinshrdlu
On a related note, some people seem to think anything that doesn't run in AWS
Lambda or similar is out of date, legacy, not cloud native.
I think such absolute thinking is misguided and is low on fundamentals.
Same thing with people arguing over what is or is not a 'systems' programming
language.
In the case of this article however, I think the author just dislikes python
and docker.
------
kodachi
> Python programmers tend to spin up new processes, rather than using
> something they consider ambiguous, such as threads.
Great generalization with no mention of asyncio?
> Myself and a friend just spent an hour trying to get a short Python script
> running on an EC2 instance. We got stuck dealing with this error:
> ModuleNotFoundError
Outdated dependencies, dealing with your distro's package manager, and
specially understanding your package manager is vital, isn't it? But I guess
it's easy to dismiss an ecosystem without fully understanding the problem.
> the dependency management in the Python community is so badly broken
You can choose to use pip as the package manager for system libraries.
python -m ensure pip # you won't use your distro's pip version pip install
--user <your-package>
For apps, a virtualenv is sufficient?
I see no mention about C extensions, which is one pain point for packages. If
the package doesn't have a pre compiled version[1], you might see a big red
blob of text directly from the compiler when trying to link dependencies .
This kinda sucks for a newbie but I guess a quick google search will tell you
to do apt install python3-dev or something if you're using some debian based
system like the author seems to be using.
[1] This pycon talk is a nice summary of the state of wheels and C extensions.
~~~
visarga
was there a link to the talk?
~~~
kodachi
Yes! I forgot: "Elana Hashman - The Black Magic of Python Wheels" in
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02aAZ8u3wEQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02aAZ8u3wEQ).
The gist is that new binary wheels are being added, and it's a community
effort.
------
jpittis
> What is Docker for? You can take your old Python and Ruby and Perl apps and
> wrap them up in Docker, and thus those old apps can make the transition to
> the modern world of cloud computing.
There's no reference to isolation with namespaces and cgroups.
> There are older, mature options, such as Java and C# and Erlang, and there
> are many newer options, such as Go or Elixir or Clojure.
The JVM, BEAM, or Go process still needs to run on a machine and interact with
an OS. They still need to be scheduled across thousands of machines that are
constantly breaking. They still ought to be isolated from each-other when
running on the same machine. There is nothing magical about these platforms
that solves these problems.
~~~
inferiorhuman
_There is nothing magical about these platforms that solves these problems._
Sure, and you can solve those problems without docker or dockerfile hell.
~~~
jpittis
Good point. The article didn’t point out that Docker does have a valuable use
case that as you say, can be solved in other ways.
------
skybrian
Docker format is a way of creating portable executable images, written in a
wide variety of languages and based on a variety of operating systems, that
run on a wide variety of servers.
There are more stripped-down ways to achieve that if you're willing to solve a
less general problem. Something like gvisor [1] gets pretty far. In the limit,
I'd guess the difference between an executable and a containerized app goes
away?
[1]
[https://gvisor.dev/docs/architecture_guide/](https://gvisor.dev/docs/architecture_guide/)
------
ch_123
I would have to disagree with the idea that Python is the main place where
this is a problem. What about a system which needs to run multiple
applications which require multiple JVM versions, for example? Or different
versions of the .NET framework? My experience is that JVM developers use
Docker just as much as any other ecosystem.
The idea that Kubernetes is somehow a symptom of bad dependency management
seems to miss the point of Kubernetes - to allow multiple systems to be
modeled as a pool of computing resources. One could image a Kubernetes that
runs ‘fat binaries’ instead of containers and still be useful. In fact, that
may be possible to implement within Kubernetes with a simple extension given
how flexible it is.
> Developers who write Scala are in love with Akka, which appears to be very
> good.
Nitpick: Akka is very far from universally loved in the Scala community. Most
Scala devs I know would rather use Kafka for cross-system message/event
processing, and something lightweight like Monix for parallelism and
concurrency within a process (you can also simulate Actor-like behavior with
Monix if you want)
EDIT: there’s some kind of addendum at the end about base images where it
looks like they are A) pulling straight from Dockerhub (a huge no-no from a
security viewpoint) and B) not using tags right. Irrespective of how much you
like or dislike a certain tool, not taking the time to learn the best way to
use it is going to cost you more time in the end.
------
imtringued
Therr are three ways of deploying a program. Either you install it globally,
you ship it in a folder which includes it's dependencies or you ship it inside
an archive format (everything is in a single file).
Docker three things at once. It's a container image format, a way to build
images that follow this format and a way to run those images as containers.
Therefore docker images are just giant fat binaries.
What the author seems to miss is the fact that a lot of languages need not
only an archive that contains all dependencies but also an environment to run
those archives like a JVM or a python interpreter, maybe even both at once.
And this is the part were docker comes in. You split your Dockerfile into two
stages. First you run the build stage which includes all development tools
needed to build your software and generate your language specific archive,
then copy it over to the next stage which only installs the bare minimum to
run the software.
There is one fatal flaw here. If fat binaries don't install their JVMs or
python interpreters then docker containers don't install their container
runtime. So you will again need to up one layer and use an automated tool to
install docker or kubernetes.
Oh I forgot to mention the solution to the JVM+python problem in the same
Docker container. Well it's pretty easy. In the build stage you just tell pip
to install the dependencies into the libs folder of your application instead
of the global folder then you just create a bash script that sets the
PYTHONPATH to your libs folder and passes cli args to the python script. That
way you don't need pip in the final stage of the dockerfile.
------
xrd
I'm glad the author left the part about never having dependency issues with
Java projects to the very end (to be fair, saying it is nothing like python
issues might be true, I don't use python). I would have stopped reading if
that had been at the beginning. My highest ranked stack overflow question
(with 100k views) has to do with dependency management on Android. It's a
problem everywhere.
I do think this article has some interesting points.
~~~
ubersoldat2k7
There are dependency problems in ALL languages. I think the point of the
article is that with Java/Go/Rust/Node you can create a single file and deploy
it on 100s of VMs without having to worry about dependencies during
deployment. The same has been done for years with WARs and EARs.
But, he misses the main point of Docker (or LXS for that matter) which is to
scale/downscale & maintain a massive amount of VMs.
I worked at the time where we had 16 or 64 servers (not VMs), running several
instance of Weblogic/Jboss. Each deployment took hours and we didn't have any
elasticity on the number of servers/instances (each server could run X
instances of Jboss) to scale up/down. If we hit the max, management bought
another server and that's it. Oh, and every deployment meant downtime, because
we couldn't do the crazy stuff Docker allows.
------
overgard
The thing is, fat binaries don't really solve the problem; Java and Go have
just as many problems with this as python does because you're still depending
on the OS. Your java app might still depend on a service running on the OS, or
a system level configuration (hosts files, etc), or a JNI interface to a C
library.
To me, Docker is a tradeoff: you're trading disk space and a little bit of
efficiency for removing a TON of variables. Given that I have zero interest in
debugging servers, that's a great win for me. YMMV. But if you have to
potentially deal with thousands of servers, it seems like an obvious choice
(excluding otherwise using something like a VM).
The JVM may have promised "write once run anywhere", but that's never really
been particularly true. You've only ever really gotten that with an actual VM,
and those are much heavier than Docker is
~~~
inferiorhuman
_Given that I have zero interest in debugging servers_
You're going to have to debug _something_ , even with Docker. I still have
nightmares about the Docker 12 rollout.
_The JVM may have promised "write once run anywhere", but that's never really
been particularly true. You've only ever really gotten that with an actual VM,
and those are much heavier than Docker is _
Which is to say that you don't get "write once run anywhere" with Docker
either. In x86 land you'll still have differences (some more serious than
others) between Docker on Linux, Mac (that still runs under a Linux VM, with
all the networking hell that entails, right?), and Windows.
------
stefco_
Robust concurrency options for python exist that are not Docker-based (e.g.
Celery). Even basic "fork" calls are cheap on UNIX (and wrapped with the
multiprocessing package for cross-platform use). Package managers like Conda
make multi-platform deployment with dependency binaries easier on Python.
Frankly Python is still catching up to many improvements that have happened in
the 2000s. That said, if you want to avoid using Docker as a packaging kludge
for Python, it's possible to do so in many cases.
------
peterwwillis
I think there's a few misconceptions here, but I also think I kind of agree
with the general point.
First, yes, Docker is a hack to make a fat binary. But that's not the only
reason people use it. People use it because it's easier than packaging _and_
running their app "the right way". Running 10 fat binaries all listening on
the same TCP port and IP won't work. Even if your 10 binaries all co-exist on
the filesystem just fine, you still need to run them in a way that won't
conflict. You can do that without Docker, but Docker makes your life easier,
so people use it.
Second, concurrency frameworks don't make your life easier, they make it
harder. It's a language-specific abstraction that you have to design your app
for. You _should_ be able to just call fork() and join(), or listen() and
accept(), and have some OS-level, generic component handle the concurrency for
your app. This is not a failing of the language, but a failing of the OS.
And if you're going to rag on the industry, target the lack of standards.
"Integration" is the opposite of standardization. The fact that I have to re-
write 10 layers of glue to make some shitty web app run on AWS versus Azure is
frankly one of the stupidest things I've seen in my career, but it makes sense
when you realize all this tech was written by small departments in companies
who don't give a shit about standards. Why spend time on interoperability for
a product that only _needs_ to work with one thing, right now?
You should be able to just call one function call in any app, and your runtime
should communicate with a language-agnostic ABI for anything needed to route
communications between a service broker and the code being executed, including
changing the location the computation is happening on. And executing _any_
application should allow you to include some isolation guarantees, because
_any_ application can have interoperability problems with other components
running on the system. Containerisation is, I believe, the only thing besides
Jails that has attempted to do this.
And if we're serious about microservices, why do specific clusters need to
live behind a dozen levels of security groups, load balancers, VPCs, etc that
all have to be custom crafted before we can even run an app in a specific
region? That's a shit load of state surrounding a supposedly stateless
service.
I think k8s is in some ways a response to all this, but it's still a poorly
designed hack that enslaves itself to traditional OS models. What we _really
need_ are distributed operating systems. But just like we will never retrofit
our highways with electric tracks for self-driving electric cars, we will
never begin to upgrade the OS to be more standard, automated, and distributed.
Instead we'll just push more shit into the app layer. Browsers now implement
their own TCP/IP stack, and nearly all modern apps support encryption without
ever allowing the OS to handle it. We're just too damn lazy to tackle anything
but short term goals.
~~~
viraptor
> And if we're serious about microservices, why do specific clusters need to
> live behind a dozen levels of security groups, load balancers, VPCs, etc
> that all have to be custom crafted before we can even run an app
That's the difference between IaaS and PaaS. If you don't want to deal with
custom infra, go with heroku or platform.sh rather than AWS.
~~~
viraptor
I'm really curious about the downvotes. We've got PaaS options which get rid
of all that extra management for you. The configuration of networking and the
details of load balancing will always exist at some level. Which layer you
choose to interact with is your completely your choice at this point.
(Although the more details you want to control, the more you have to do
yourself) Many PaaS solutions are great for microservices and give you that
nice "from the repo to live production" workflow.
What do people actually disagree with here?
~~~
peterwwillis
Oh, it's that many businesses (and all Enterprises) just can't often use PaaS.
You need to deal with regulations, customers who want you to retain tight
control of data, private links back to corporate networks, SSO, IAM, support
and availability contracts, NDAs, code quality gates, security scanning,
policy auditing, dedicated performance guarantees, microservice ecosystems,
network access control for partners, overall cost. And as far as "lock-in"
goes, you can't get much more locked-in. Enterprise won't even use hosted
CI/CD [unless it's for an open source product/service]. You have to fit a very
specific niche to be Enterprise-compatible.
~~~
viraptor
I don't buy it. If you're an enterprise which needs a PaaS but policies
prevent an external one, then you build an internal one. HP did it. Oracle did
it. I'm sure others do it too. This still doesn't prevent millions of non-
enterprise companies from using it.
If you don't want to create something from scratch you can even use ready
solutions like Flynn.
~~~
peterwwillis
Well first of all, I'm not the enterprise :) They are fiiiiiiiine with
building from scratch. They love building rocket ships when they really just
needed a wheelbarrow. It's kind of a problem.
My point is more like, a lot of the time we don't need a PaaS, we just need to
do less "integrating", if cloud providers all implemented the equivalent of
Terraform providers. But going further, that we shouldn't need to use K8s if
the operating system came with similar functionality and exposed it as an ABI.
All these things would let you "build from scratch" distributed parallelized
network services, with a lot less layers of technology, in a more standard
way. Rather than building a spaceship just to run errands, we could be
cruising around on city rental bikes, or golf carts, or something. This
comparison might have gone off the rails.
------
tetron
Pinning the blame on python is misplaced. The real problem is that C
dependency management is pure hell, and that makes building native modules for
scripting languages (like, say, database drivers) horrible. Dockerfiles are
great for providing the right environment for building all your sloppy C
stuff.
------
traverseda
I haven't seen much docker used with python? I thought it was mostly a
nodejs/java thing...
I am mostly a python dev though. I may have just ignored the docker option
when presented with a python project, but used it for those other languages.
~~~
darpa_escapee
Wait until you need to deploy to a platform that doesn’t have a precompiled
version of a dependency uploaded to PIP. Docker shines in that regard.
~~~
traverseda
I thought that's what wheels were solving?
------
hailhash
Author is trolling, not taking the bait. There are no useful arguments made in
support of the title.
------
adfm
Sigh. The author neglects to mention Zappa or Chalice, which kind of blows
down the historyonic soapbox.
------
shusson
Can someone post a TLDR?
~~~
ChrisSD
The author dislikes both Python and Docker. But mostly Python.
For the reasons why, see the article (you can safely skip the first two
paragraphs). The biggest gripes are concurrency and package management.
------
blunte
This is an exceptionally well written essay on technical debt and scope creep.
But most of all, I found the definition of “conservative” so apropos to
politics (accidentally, surely) that I both laughed and cried.
~~~
rudiv
I think you have the direction of that mixed up. The definition of
conservative in this article _is_ the political definition of conservatism.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bang & Olufsen design team avoids meetings/process and "sculpts" products little by little - hariskh
http://mobile2.wsj.com/device/html_article.php?id=1&CALL_URL=http://online.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB121372804603481659.html
======
derefr
It seems like the process behind Wikipedia made physical: (almost) all of the
edits are contributed by people who haven't been "immersed" in the creation
process, so the perspective is constantly fresh.
------
wmeredith
Where did my comment go? I posted it hours ago and it was even getting points.
Who eated it?
~~~
allenbrunson
look over here:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=232012
this submission is a dupe. your comment was on the first one.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to monetize a technical blog without bloating it - robschia
======
kiloreux
Besides the obvious choices (advertisement), you could look for sponsors to
sponsor your posts (if you have enough visitors).
------
GFischer
Usually, technical blogs are vehicles to sell a product or service, or promote
the author.
I'd prominently add how to contact the author for consulting opportunities.
That's certainly going to give you orders of magnitude more business than any
ad.
Or is it a more generic site?
------
fuqted
Affiliate and eproducts. A lot of bloggers are against monetizing right off
the bat, but if you can drive an audience to your blog then you should be able
to drive them to click buy every once in a while.
------
meir_yanovich
I think the best thing is to offer information products as i call them .
ebooks , tutorials , source code , video lessons , related apps.
this is what your Target Audience are probably looking for .
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Luther's Theses and the Role of the Printing Press [audio] - brudgers
https://www.newberry.org/95-theses-you-wont-believe-what-32-is
======
RmDen
Make sure to check out Dan Carlin's Prophets of Doom
[http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-
history-48-prophet...](http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-
history-48-prophets-of-doom/) after you are done with this one.....
------
dredmorbius
This is from the Newberry Library, in Chicago, a premier private research
library.
Show Notes
1:58 – Luther’s original goals for the 95 Theses.
4:10 – Today, the 95 Theses look a lot like the sixteenth-century version of a
listicle. Was this a common form for presenting theological arguments in those
days?
7:07 – A reading of thesis #32.
9:16 – At what point did Luther realize just how revolutionary the 95 Theses
were?
11:37 – Print spreads Luther’s ideas much farther than he ever imagined
possible.
13:38 – Rome’s response to the 95 Theses.
15:37 – Luther harnesses the power of print to win public opinion and make
theological debates accessible to a larger audience.
19:12 – The synergy between the medium (print) and the message (direct access
to the Bible).
23:18 – Luther’s regrets after empowering people to read the Bible and giving
them a model for sharing their ideas with the world.
------
baldfat
I absolutely love Luther but today's evangelical church would mostly hate him.
My favorite thing was the book covers of his books and pamphlets. One had the
Pope blowing a trumpet with his flatulence with his bare butt cheeks.
~~~
danjc
They'd hate him because of his eccentricities or because they've long since
departed from sola scriptura?
~~~
Mediterraneo10
> or because they've long since departed from sola scriptura?
Lutheranism isn't a sola scriptura faith. While Luther did often argue against
Rome on biblical grounds, Lutheranism has always accepted a vague concept of
"tradition" alongside Scripture just like Anglicanism or Orthodoxy.
~~~
danjc
I'm not deeply familiar with Lutheranism but this [1] seems to contradict what
you're suggesting. Also, sola scriptura doesn't negate creeds & confessions,
etc but rather affirms the supreme authority of scripture.
This is in contrast to Roman Catholicism which affirms tradition as of higher
authority.
[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_scriptura#Characteristi...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sola_scriptura#Characteristics_in_Lutheranism)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chomsky on Google's contribution to 'fake news' - sideshowb
Excerpt from video for those who, like myself, prefer to read:<p>Google talk interviewer: “How do you think Google can and should handle the fake news problem? We have a big hammer. We’re looking for nails.”<p>Chomsky: "Well, by not contributing to it."<p>"See, advertising’s a very interesting phenomenon. Any of you who’ve taken an economics course know that... the marvels of the market that we’re supposed to admire and worship are because the market is based on informed consumers making rational choices... Turn on your television set. Do you see efforts by corporations to create... informed consumers making rational choices? Is that what you see when you see an ad for cars? If we had a market system... when General Motors is advertising a car, what you would see is a list of the characteristics of the car, along with a report by Consumer Reports saying what’s wrong with it and so on... But you don’t see that.<p>"Huge amounts of capital are expended every year to try to undermine markets... by creating uninformed consumers making irrational choices; and driving them to consumerism...<p>"That’s what ought to be taught in economics courses: massive efforts by the business community to undermine markets."<p>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2C-zWrhFqpM<p>The Canary reported this though ironically with so many ads you can hardly see the article https://www.thecanary.co/2017/07/04/noam-chomsky-flips-the-debate-about-fake-news-on-its-head-in-a-room-full-of-google-staff-video/
======
sparkling
What a bunch of nonsense on so many levels.
What does advertising have to do with fake news? What does advertisement
having to do with a "informed consumer"? Yes, GM does not run ads listing all
the technical specs of their cars, because that is not what consumers are
interested in. For most people, buying a car has largely something you do with
personal taste, gut feeling and overall appeal. Technical specs of cars in a
given price range are more or less all the same across all brands, so the only
way to differentiate is to appeal to the consumers gut feelings.
~~~
owebmaster
> What does advertising have to do with fake news?
You need surface to display ads. Fake news is this surface and Google/Facebook
take a big cut of their revenue from it.
~~~
sideshowb
This is an interesting secondary phenomenon you point out, that could be
helped (not entirely fixed) by disabling google ads on known fake news sites.
Still, the primary issue is that the ads themselves are biased and google
makes its living from them. Until Google diversifies more from ad revenue it
will always have conflicted motives when it comes to removing bias.
------
babyrainbow
>by creating uninformed consumers making irrational choices; and driving them
to consumerism...
I am not sure. Isn't this a well known and intended effect of the Ads and PR
stunts?
~~~
sideshowb
Yes of course. What are you not sure about?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Support Hurricane Florence Relief Efforts Google Will Match Up to $1M - Rapzid
https://www.google.org/crisis/florence-relief
======
Rapzid
As a PSA on this, if you scroll down like I did not you will see the money
goes to the American Red Cross.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Memory Management – Changes for the programmer over the years - ingve
https://uridiumauthor.blogspot.com/2018/06/memory-management.html
======
AstralStorm
The other way where managed memory is a problem is when it fails to deliver
the performance of the usual memory allocator, forces "stop the world" events
similar to mentioned defragmentation... And you're back to square one with the
added complexity of having to work around the memory allocator in place. Java
and its GC implementations come to mind.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: If you can have only one pain in your life solved, what would that be? - nicksalt
======
danieka
Lack of willpower/inability to build good habits.
------
nicksalt
Although physical pain is an acceptable answer, im interested in all types of
pain points
------
cimmanom
Having to work for a living. Though I suppose you want realistic requests?
------
one87
2 hour daily commute >_>
------
bgdkbtv
Back pain :(
~~~
hector_ka
I would look into Electronic Muscle Simulators. Just search Amazon. There are
dozens of units.
~~~
bgdkbtv
Looks like those things that are advertised on marketing channels to get abs
while sitting on a couch:
[https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/143-0074589-0085364?...](https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss/143-0074589-0085364?url=search-
alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Electronic+Muscle+Simulators)
How are they helpful?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The First 15 Years of PyPy – A Personal Retrospective - gok
https://morepypy.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-first-15-years-of-pypy.html
======
chrisaycock
It's interesting to read the OP's response to _partial evaluation_ (employed
by Truffle) and why he switched to _meta-tracing_ in RPython. Basically, the
inlining/specialization decisions in PE-based JITs were harder to control than
just letting the VM observe loop iterations.
Here's a paper regarding a pair of language implementors' experience using
both techniques:
[http://stefan-marr.de/papers/oopsla-marr-ducasse-meta-
tracin...](http://stefan-marr.de/papers/oopsla-marr-ducasse-meta-tracing-vs-
partial-evaluation/)
By changing the abstract syntax tree during execution, type-generic nodes in
the AST can be replaced with type-specialized nodes. This carries more
overhead than tracing through the interpreter. It also requires more explicit
work from the user to achieve optimized results.
The authors of the above study conclude that the resulting performance was
similar, but that meta-tracing was an easier technique to use than PE. This
agrees with the OP's assessment.
------
SwellJoe
Not entirely related, but it's wild to see projects that I remember the
announcement of (I was working in a Python shop at the time) turning 15+ years
old. I'm not sure I'm even past thinking of PyPy as kinda newfangled (that's
just the bucket it got dumped into in my head: cool new Python compiler/VM
thing). Probably time to re-categorize it in my brain as something more like
"time-tested" or something.
------
bratao
I migrated some internal tools from Lua to Python because of the incredible
ecosystem. However, I miss everyday the speed of Lua thanks to LuaJIT. But I
already ported almost all critical code to Cython. It is on my todo list to
undo this port and test with Pypy.
I feel that PyPy need to receive much more love and attention than it actually
gets. I already donated, and put all my hopes on PyPy. The Windows is also
very renegaded, where the multiprocessing module is unusable. I hope to get
some time soon to help this incredible project and finish lib_pypy/_winapi.py.
~~~
dec0dedab0de
_It is on my todo list to undo this port_
That has always been my reason for not giving a Cython a real chance. I'm
afraid I would go through the trouble porting everything, then have a use case
where I need to just run pure python.
I've considered having a compat layer where you import dummy versions of all
the classes and decorators if cython isn't present. Has anyone ever tried
that?
~~~
uryga
I don't know about your question, but Cython recently added [1] the option to
use native Python type annotations (Python 3.6, PEP 484) instead of its
previous C-like dialect. That could lead to a situation where a sensibly type-
annotated Cython file can still be a valid Python file – that would help with
portability.
[1]
[https://github.com/cython/cython/issues/1672#issuecomment-33...](https://github.com/cython/cython/issues/1672#issuecomment-330821277)
~~~
acemarke
Cython also supports writing type annotations in a separate .pxd file. It's a
bit awkward because you're effectively duplicating all function + variable
declarations, but it _is_ a valid way to keep the original Python source
intact.
(On a side note, using this feature led to a particularly memorable debugging
session that set a personal record in terms of time spent vs amount of code
changed to fix the issue:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11115110](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11115110)
).
------
chris_mc
It's so fascinating to read these sorts of retrospectives to give myself a
grounding to realize it takes time and lots of missteps to make great
software. Thanks to the author, if he passes through here.
------
yazr
Slightly off topic.
What is the accepted/common runtime for production python code ?
Is it cpython, ironpython ? Is the plain python interpreter fast enough ?
(I am referring to cases where python is not just a thin wrapper around C
libs)
------
dualscyther
For some reason, Firefox reader view removes all section headings and some
random paragraphs. Made for a confusing read until I went back and reread it.
------
pletnes
How do people use pypy? Do you target it from the start of a project, or port
existing projects to it?
------
UncleEntity
Bunch of dead links to bitbucket...
But now I have another rabbit hole to deep dive down in the form of meta-
tracing JITs.
------
ufo
Has Carl always had the "-Tereick" in his name or did he get married recently?
~~~
sp332
[http://cfbolz.de/contact.html](http://cfbolz.de/contact.html) just mentions
that he changed it last year but doesn't give a reason.
------
sanxiyn
Yes, meta-tracing really works!
On the other hand, I think it is somewhat deterimental to the success of the
idea of meta-tracing that really the only working production grade
implementation of the idea is RPython. RPython is very idiosyncratic, to say
the least. I think a good implementation of meta-tracing on boring technology
(say, C++) would greatly help popularize the idea.
------
make3
I'm just sad compatibility with data science tools (and scientific computing)
isn't there afaik, numpy, pandas, scipy, tensorflow, scikit-learn, pytorch to
name a few
~~~
namedlambda
Reread it then, PyPy has implemented emulation layer for the CPython which
allows numpy, etc to be used.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Those Build-a-Business-in-48-Hours Conferences are a Lie - pyrmont
http://inqk.net/weblog/2011/857
======
sarbogast
The real lie in those events is the promise to create a team in 48 hours. And
I say this from my own experience. Kodesk won the grand prize of the jury of
the Startup Weekend Brussels in last January and a week after the event, it
was clear to me that I could just not create a business with people I had met
a week before. Co-founding a company requires trust, complicity and
complementarity. And if you don't have that, your "team" can blow up a good
concept with a good visibility.
------
damncabbage
48 hour hack challenges? Group gatherings? Learn-from-each-other meetups
sponsored by a grant or some friendly companies? Great.
I agree, this sort of stuff is just a cash-in.
(Or providing more grist for the local VC/Angel mill.)
~~~
gerad
I help run <http://nodeknockout.com/>, a 48-hour hackathon. It's free and we
run it as a service for the community. One or two of the best apps of the
contest usually become legitimate businesses.
Not all of that happens in 48hours, there's a lot of strategizing that happens
before the competition, and a ton of work that happens afterward. BUT, you can
create a hell of an MVP in 48 hours if you know what you need to do.
~~~
damncabbage
Oh, definitely! I'm a huge fan of the Node.js Knockout.
(My point is that you're not charging people $100 for the privilege.)
------
aculver
If you put the right team together in the right environment, you can launch
something valuable (MVP, prototype) in a weekend.
My main experience with this was a corporate hackathon where a bunch of
developers just decided they wanted to build a new product that was different
than the one we worked on everyday. That was 7 developers for 24 hours and I'd
say we launched a pretty cool product.
(<http://www.metrodenverapartments.com/> , and about 9 other domains. Looks
like the images have broken since.) Also, I was able to demo the product I'm
currently working on to potential customers after less than 20 hours of
development. At that point the demo was enough that people were willing to
commit to paying for it.
It's experiences like this (and seeing others doing the same thing) that make
me think these events have value. Here's a quote from
<http://startnorfolk.com/> (an event my employer and other local businesses
are putting on.) Emphasis is mine.
"an intense 48 hour event which focuses on building a web or mobile
application _which could form the basis of_ a credible business"
Where is the snake oil in that? My experience is that you really can do
something awesome in one weekend if you get together with the right people. It
could also form the basis of a credible business. The registration fee is well
justified, as it covers food and drinks throughout the weekend. The $10,000
prize is paid for by sponsors.
------
rtoy
I think the author is being unfair. On the Launch48 link provided, I don't see
any copy promising riches to developers.
I attended a StartupWeekend before and didn't feel that anyone thought it was
a get rich quick scheme or anything close to it. I personally learned a lot
from the weekend, and while the odds are not high, startups have gotten
funding through it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Governor Snyder signs a law to ban Tesla direct sales in Michigan - infinitebattery
http://www.wxyz.com/news/state/governor-snyder-signs-a-law-to-ban-tesla-direct-sales
======
MCRed
I believe that this law is in direct violation of the commerce clause[1]. The
commerce clause was designed to prevent tarrifs from being placed on products
from one state being sold in another state. They wanted to prevent inter-state
trade wars. Being forced to go thru a dealer network that (theoretically) adds
no value while extracting a cut of sales is a form of a tarrif (or at least, I
think it is arguably one).
Therefore, I think it might be time for Tesla to take this up as a federal
matter.
I believe Tesla's constitutional rights are being violated in the states that
do not allow them to operate their own stores.[2]
[1] "Congress shall have the power to regulate commerce ... among the several
states ..." At the time the constitution was written, the definition of
regulate was something like "to keep free of obstruction, to allow to occur
without hinderance".
[2] This is completely separate from regulations that require car stores to
operate safely, e.g.: if the state required that service departments have
barriers around pits to keep people from falling in, that would be fine, and
Tesla could comply when they open a service department. But forcing a business
model on people is quite different from protecting public safety.
~~~
abtinf
Michigan is not discriminating against Tesla. They are not saying "only Tesla
may not sell direct to consumer." Instead, they are saying "No auto
manufacturer, regardless of their state, may sell direct to consumer." Thus,
no commerce clause violation.
~~~
gknoy
What would stop Musk from making a company whose sole purpose was to be a
Tesla dealership? It would buy cars from Tesla, sell to consumers, and sell
Service Arrangements with Tesla, etc.
~~~
adamfeldman
Usually the dealer laws prohibit manufacturer-owned dealerships
~~~
poizan42
What about a common owner then?
------
piyush_soni
In the country I come from, corruption is rampant, and it makes governments
create anti-public, pro-corporations laws and regulations. But there it's
still called "corruption". Here, in US, it is called "Lobbying", and is
official.
~~~
MCRed
I call it corruption as well. Any time the government violates its own laws,
or violates human rights, that's corrupt.
I think americans believe their government is less corrupt in part because
corruption is not identified as such.
Illegal domestic spying is corrupt, and a crime... yet no charges have been
filed (for instance). This matter here, is possibly in an area where the law
isn't as settled, so corruption is an opinion, rather than a fact, but an
opinion I would agree with.
------
sbenario
Another example of regulation being used to protect older, more established
businesses from newer entrants that would supplant them.
Sigh.
~~~
ende
Reglation, corruption, lobbying... Its all the same thing.
------
duaneb
How are these people justifying these changes to their constituents? It's
pretty hard to justify mucking with the free markets except to protected
vested interests. Most of the time, these vested interests have very little to
do with the voters.
~~~
dkrich
No justification is required because it's pretty much baked into the mentality
of the Midwest. The auto industry is what drives the Michigan economy (at
least its most populous areas). Therefore most constituents not only don't
mind, but likely fervently support such laws. The same could be said for the
United Auto Workers. Pretty much the opposite of the free market, yet most
people in Michigan support it because either they or somebody they know relies
on the benefits created by the union.
Further, few people in Michigan can afford a new Ford, let alone a $60,000
electric car. If Tesla wants to lobby for free market economics, Michigan is
probably the very last state they should be trying to convince.
~~~
andykellr
Your generalizations about Michigan are misinformed.
There are many people in Michigan that think that companies that sell things
should be able to sell them to people that want to buy them. There are also
many people that can afford a Tesla.
~~~
dkrich
_Your generalizations about Michigan are misinformed._
Not really. I lived in Michigan for several years.
------
Falkon1313
Can craftsmen and other non-auto manufacturers sell directly in Michigan, or
are they also forced to hire distributors and retailers? What crime is that
law supposed to prevent?
------
yock
Snyder gets a lot of money from Ford, GM, et. al.
_The United Auto Workers gave the DGA about $1 million, according to MCFN.
The union was the largest donor from Michigan, followed by the Service
Employees International Union, the Michigan Regional Council of Carpenters,
Ford Motor Company and Caidan Management._ [http://www.mlive.com/lansing-
news/index.ssf/2014/10/michigan...](http://www.mlive.com/lansing-
news/index.ssf/2014/10/michigan_governors_race_2014_w.html)
------
rabbyte
Couldn't somebody open a dealership that offers Tesla vehicles where dealers
are replaced with touch screens that walk you through all the available
options, scheduling test drives, and settling on payment? Staff would be there
to make sure questions are answered, machines are operating properly, and
verifying paperwork. I know nothing about this industry so I could be totally
off base but that seems like a decent way to jab back at an aging system.
~~~
jinushaun
That's how Tesla stores currently work. But those stores are illegal too.
------
mark-r
Does this really surprise anybody? Remember which state Detroit is in?
~~~
numo16
This also blocks GM/Ford/Chrysler from selling directly to the consumer. This
isn't specifically Tesla focused, but is favoring the auto dealer network
which wants to remain relevant and get their cut.
~~~
mark-r
GM/Ford/Chrysler have a symbiotic relationship with their dealers - they both
need each other to survive. Neither wants to see a new upstart that might
someday eat their lunch.
Presumably if the makers had a do-over, they might try direct to the consumer
themselves, but the present conditions make that impossible.
~~~
Igglyboo
Uh no they don't. The dealers need the manufacturers to survive, the
manufacturers could easily open their own dealerships and sell their cars
cheaper while running the old dealers out of business.
The dealerships do not benefit the manufacturer.
------
mandeepj
What is his problem? I think they are all trying every-possible-trick-under-
their-belly to slow down the storm called TESLA. The day TESLA becomes
mainstream the mafia of car dealers, oil rigs will go down the drain. NO MORE
OIL.
~~~
_acme
You do understand that electricity is still needed to charge these cars,
right, and that a lot of that energy comes from oil (or worse, coal).
~~~
MCRed
When I was a kid, I saw the movie Logans Run (1970s). They made it to
washington DC and found a car. They didn't know what it was, but they shined a
light on it, and it started to activate and so they conclduded "maybe this
thing is powered by the sun"... and it was.
Well, it's been 40 years since that movie was made. Alas, a solar powered car
may still be many years off... but the elegance of it is certainly extremely
appealing.
One problem: I love the Tesla's expansive sunroof. Would want solar collectors
that are at least semi-transparent to light.
~~~
mikeash
There just isn't enough surface area. A Model S has a roof area of around
9m^2. The sun provides about 1000W/m^2 on a clear day at high noon when
directly overhead, so with 100% efficient solar cells on a perfect day, you'd
get around 9kW of electricity. A Model S goes about 4 miles per kWh when it's
doing well, so in this ideal situation you'd top out at around 36MPH. In the
real world, the sun isn't directly overhead, and real solar cells have more
like 20% efficiency, so cut that number down by a factor of ten or more.
The best way to build a solar-powered car would be to have a battery-powered
car that gets recharged from solar energy. Basically, a Model S and a home
solar generating system.
~~~
ctdonath
I recently ballparked the cost of a home solar charger for my Leaf EV. Came
out around half the price of the car ... not cheap, but feasible for someone
serious about it.
I do have a propane-powered electrical generator for emergency/backup home
power. Some day I'll try charging the Leaf with it.
~~~
mikeash
Have you ever worked out your approximate cost per kWh for the generator? I
imagine it's painful compared to what you get from the power company, but I'd
be curious to know just how painful.
~~~
ctdonath
About $1.23/kWh.
Ad verbiage for the allegedly 3250 running watts generator states "engine run
time of 10 hours at 50% on a common 20Lb (gas grill type) cylinder". So that's
under $2 for 1.625kWh, which is roughly the power draw for recharging the
Nissan Leaf in question, which takes 20 hours - costing upwards of $40. More
to your point, that's about $1.23/kWh. Not cheap, but a 10x markup is
appropriate and acceptable for emergency needs.
~~~
mikeash
Thanks. That sounds pretty reasonable for a generator, considering.
------
padobson
Anybody want to start a Tesla dealership in Dearborn?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fallacies of Distributed Computing Explained (2006) [pdf] - lisa_henderson
http://www.rgoarchitects.com/Files/fallacies.pdf
======
krat0sprakhar
For more context, I'd recommend this resource -
[http://www.hpcs.cs.tsukuba.ac.jp/~tatebe/lecture/h23/dsys/ds...](http://www.hpcs.cs.tsukuba.ac.jp/~tatebe/lecture/h23/dsys/dsd-
tutorial.html)
------
kordless
Just a note this has ZERO to do with _decentralized_ computing, which is
probably a more popular topic nowadays.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Where are we on the actual math of solar power? - randomnumber314
I've seen several articles and threads lately that make claims of solar energy matching or surpassing that of more traditional (coal, gas) energy.<p>What's the "simple verdict" on it--is there simple math?
======
CyberFonic
As an approximation solar flux is about 1kW / m^2. Last time I looked the
efficiency of panels was about 20% so we can generate about 200W / m^2 for at
most 6 hours a day. The USA power usage / day is 4^15 W.hr.
As 1km^2 = 1,000,000 m^2. So taking the power usage, we divide by solar flux,
by number of hours of high solar input, by 200 W / m^2, by area conversion,
and get approx 3,000,000 km^2. Since the USA is 10,000,000 km^2, we would need
to cover 1/3 of the country with solar panels to generate enough electricity,
mostly down south where the sun shines the most. Alaska would be spared.
Since we use power 24 hours a day and can only expect to generate at peak rate
for 6 hours, we need to store the power in batteries. Not to mention that not
every day is sunny. It sometimes rains, panels get covered in dust and need
cleaning, stuff breaks down, etc.
A Tesla PowerWall stores approx 120KWhr / m^3. So 4^15 / 120^3 = 33^9 m^3 just
for the batteries, not including cabling, racking, etc. To get an idea of how
this compares, Trump Tower in Chicago is approx 80,000 m^3. So we'd need
400,000 of them to house the batteries and this only for one day's worth of
power.
Of course, none of the foregoing considers the power required to make the
solar panels, the mounting hardware, the batteries, the housing and new power-
lines. The math just gets more complicated. But if you were to consider every
step from beach sand to working solar panels you will find that the lifetime
energy produced by solar panels is less than that which was used to produce
them in the first place. I read an article to this effect once, but can't find
it. Google is your friend if you are interested to research further.
~~~
verite
The USA power usage is actually closer to 4x10^15 W-hr per year, not per day.
Source:
[http://www.eia.gov/state/seds/sep_sum/html/pdf/sum_btu_1.pdf](http://www.eia.gov/state/seds/sep_sum/html/pdf/sum_btu_1.pdf)
; 1 btu is 10^3 joules so 10^5 tbtu = 10^19 j ~= 4x10^15 W*hr. So your land
coverage requirement is off by a factor of a few hundred.
For battery space, the same factor of a few hundred still applies. Also I'm
not sure where you looked up the volume of the Trump tower but wikipedia
claims a floor area of 240,000 m^2 and I doubt people can walk in an area a
foot tall. With a more realistic ceiling height of 3m, you'd be off by another
factor of 10 there.
\--> Closer to 1/1000 of land area for coverage and 100 trump towers for
storage.
Your claim on it taking more energy to make a solar panel than it produces is
likely untrue, but I don't have enough scientific background to quantitatively
refute it.
([http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy99osti/24619.pdf](http://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy99osti/24619.pdf)
claims a breakeven period of 2-4 years)
~~~
vectorwhat
From your document it seems that the researchers ignored the most energy
intensive part of the process!
From your document:
"Purifying and crystallizing the silicon are the most energy-consumptive parts
of the solar-cell manufacturing process."
"To calculate payback, Dutch researcher Erik Alsema reviewed previous energy
analyses and did not “charge” for the energy that originally went into
crystalizing microelectronics scrap."
The way I understand it, the calculations don't charge the most expensive part
of the process by arguing that, being scrap of the semi-conductor business,
its already been paid.
------
vectorwhat
I'd like to see the math myself. I have the suspicion that there's funny math
involved, like when the nuclear industry forgets the cost of warehousing
nuclear waste for 100 000 years.
My most pressing question is how the capital costs are factored in. China
built a huge PV capacity and arguably that made the price of panels collapse.
Also, the semiconductor industry had been indirectly subsidizing the PV
industry by upgrading their old fabs.
I also really don't understand how PV can be cheaper than Concentrated Solar
Power < literally just a bunch of mirrors aimed at a normal thermal plant.
Lot's of funny numbers, lots of questions, few open source gitted models
available to play with.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ways Streaming Services Are Getting Worse - nkurz
http://www.cracked.com/blog/12-ways-streaming-services-are-getting-worse/
======
jetrink
It is shocking to me how few old movies are available on Netflix. Here is a
complete list of English language movies from the 1960s on Netflix right now:
* Color Me Barbara
* My Name is Barbara
* Barbara Streisand: A Happening in Central Park
It does not seem that unusual to me to want to watch a movie starring Audrey
Hepburn, Clint Eastwood or Elizabeth Taylor. The presence of even a dozen of
the better movies from that decade would increase the value of Netflix to me
and, I suspect, many others. What is going on?
~~~
dragonwriter
> What is going on?
The copyright owners of movies with know stars from the 1960s have their own
platforms and aren't licensing the movies to Netflix.
Hence, why Netflix has for years been making a huge original-contenr push;
once it proved out streaming as a business model with other people's content,
getting (or keeping) such content became more difficult.
------
andy_ppp
I keep thinking why on earth the Hollywood system doesn’t realise the shear
tonnes of cash there is out there for the following; DRM free downloads of HD
movies for $2, 4K for $3-4. No-one would bother pirating and I’d probably
spend a fortune over the next few years to legally have copies of this stuff.
My bet is that most people would pay and do it legally because it’s far
simpler this way.
~~~
Mindwipe
Because this market doesn't exist to any statistically measurable amount.
Just because you want it to doesn't mean it does.
~~~
andy_ppp
Well until it's tried I guess we'll never know... worth noting the DVD market
is still pretty big. No reason it wouldn't be several times bigger with a
simple online version.
Pirates going to pirate so it will literally make no difference providing
people with a legal alternative that is easy and simple to use.
~~~
Mindwipe
> Well until it's tried I guess we'll never know...
It has been. The BBC tried selling Doctor Who via Bittorrent for example, with
signficant publicity.
The DVD market is big because it's cheap and no other reason.
People already have an abundant legal alternatives that are widely available
and simple to use.
~~~
andy_ppp
It’s currently £20 to buy an arbitrary superhero movie on Amazon Prime in 4K.
I mean, it’s up to you if you want to believe selling Dr Who or selling all
movies ever are the same thing...
------
BonesJustice
And let’s not forget one of my “favorites”: ads before the content. Sure, for
now it’s mostly just promos for their other shows, and it’s generally
skippable, but that’s how it starts. They ease you into it, like boiling a
frog.
HBO and AMC, I’m looking at you. You have, like, two or three shows worth
watching at any given time of the year. I don’t need to be reminded about them
_every damn time_ I watch an episode.
And, FYI, when I’m binging some dark-ass drama series, nothing kills the
feeling of immersion like a loud-ass promo for some upbeat sitcom between
episodes.
------
leetbulb
Glad I've never dealt with any of that. Plex is great and my family loves it.
~~~
hsk0823
That's great, where did your content for your Plex server originally come
from?
~~~
Skunkleton
The most likely place HE got the content for his Plex server Is fRom legAlly
archived dvds. ThE process for this is not so BAd, You should try it.
------
Cypher
back to torrenting we go...
~~~
TeMPOraL
Totally. The situation is absolutely ridiculous.
It was all fun when Netflix, Hulu & HBO were the only names in town. Now that
they're constantly removing good movies, and adding cookie-cutter "original
content", I'm actually considering cancelling my subscriptions. Trying to keep
up without subscribing to everyone starts to feel more like buying individual
movies, and half of the things I want to watch is geo-locked anyway.
Meanwhile, random shady free streaming services are becoming more usable,
especially for caching up with shows older than 5 years. All it takes is
updating uBlock and killing an occasional cryptominer.
I'm strongly convinced torrenting will experience a resurgence of interest
now.
------
onemoresoop
Oh no, Filmstruck[0] shut down??
I guess we're going to find those old harddrives and swap them around.
[0] [https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/filmstruck-shutdown-
wa...](https://variety.com/2018/digital/news/filmstruck-shutdown-warnermedia-
turner-1202998364/)
------
Roboprog
Online TV was so cool back around 2010. Balkanization:-(
------
foxfired
That 16TB hard drive announced a few days ago is gonna fix that for me. I hear
there is a 100TB in the works too.
To old really relentless extremely nice technology!
------
Reedx
> There Are Way Too Many Platforms
What's the goldilocks number of platforms?
~~~
TeMPOraL
I'd say two, maybe three. Beyond that, one wishes for a meta-platform
integrating this all together.
(The same applies to IMs and groupchats. Personally, I can't reliably follow
more than 3-4 channels, e-mail included.)
~~~
BonesJustice
Also, all the legacy content creators are clinging to their old production
models and airing shows one episode at a time. Just sign up for one month a
year, binge, and cancel. Or do it twice a year.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best way to spent money to become better programmer? - dptd
I know the title sucks but I have no idea how to say it better in just a few words - sorry for that.<p>Here is my situation - my current employer is giving every single employee around $1k per year for "self development". It can be almost anything related to IT or self development in general (for example learning foreign language). Some people buy hardware, online courses, licenses for IDEs or for example they simply go to conferences.<p>Two years ago I bought HTC Vive using this budget because I wanted to play around with VR technology and learn something new. One year ago I bought few Unreal Engine 4 courses (as a followup to the HTC Vive purchase) and few lisp books.<p>I wonder what would be your ideas for using this budget for self development. I want to be as good software engineer as I can so if you have any suggestions or experiences I would be more than grateful for sharing them with me.<p>Probably most of the people will start by saying "well... it depends what interests you" so here is a quick summary.<p>I used to code in C++ (03 and 11) for living for almost 5 years. Currently I am a project leader so I do not work with code anymore. I do it during my free time, mostly in Common Lisp or other Lisp dialects (Scheme when going through SICP or ELisp when trying to contribute to Emacs). I am fascinated by Lisp and I am really interested in this language. Still a newbie though.<p>I though about spending some money on learning functional programming and lambda calculus. Already bought few books about this topic. I also thought a bit about buying some commercial Lisp implementation but for now Emacs and SLIME works perfectly for me and I am not limited by this setup at all.<p>As a software engineer maybe you are able to think about your best purchase or self investment so far?<p>Thanks a lot!
======
dptd
It seems that my post was pretty much ignored - unfortunately. I also asked
the same question on r/learnprogramming. There are two recommendations: Safari
Books and Pluralsight subscriptions. I used to have Safari subscriptions for
few years so maybe I will give Pluralsight a try. However I am not sure yet.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twitterpocalypse - zombie apocalypse survivability rating - cgallello
http://twitterpocalypse.com/
======
cgallello
Made this out of boredom. Also, the domain name wasn't taken. Just enter your
twitter handle to see how well you stack up!
------
dkersten
"500'd! Server messed up."
~~~
cgallello
Really? Works fine for me...what's your Twitter name?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why does Google adsense have an invalid https certificate? (looks SCARY in Firefox 3) - petervandijck
http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/2008/06/27/4218/google-has-an-invalid-https-security-certificate
======
notauser
The new unsigned SSL warnings are a massive overreaction - so much so that I
think Mozilla must have a deal with some certificate root companies to match
their Google deal.
For a great deal of what goes on over the internet unsigned SSL is just fine.
You don't care who you are dealing with, you just care that no one else can
listen in (and sometimes that it is the same guy as last time). You only need
authentication for banking, shopping and a few other corner cases.
~~~
jamess
The problem with "not caring who you're dealing with", is that it raises the
possibility that who you're actually dealing with is a man in the middle, who
is snooping on your traffic. If you get warned that a certificate is self-
signed or signed by an untrusted authority, then you either have to check the
key fingerprint or take a chance. Not that I'm happy with firefox taking this
choice away from you, mind.
------
coglethorpe
Try it with www.google.com instead of just google.com.
~~~
spydez
Exactly.
For some reason, Google has SSL certs for www.google.com, and tries to use
that cert for google.com connections too.
~~~
jamess
They used to have a far more expansive certificate, with a subject alt. name
good for *.google.com, and I think google.com as well, so they could use it on
subdomains like adsense.google.com. It was a really handy server for testing
TLS implementations with big complex certificates. It was also sort of
illegal, having both a common name and subject alt. names. However, the
certificate expired and they got a new one early this year, and now it's some
bog standard thwate issued cert, good only for one year (Hello! You have
billions, you can afford to get a certificate issued for more than a year at a
time guys!)
Anyway, you should really only be warned in the event of domain name mismatch.
This isn't a fatal error. I guess firefox has gone overboard on the treating
users like idiots front.
------
thwarted
These resized-by-the-browser images are getting really annoying, I've noticed
an uptick in it the six months or so. That image is completely unreadable with
the explicit height and width in the layout, and it's not overly big that
including it all without resizing would matter. Additionally, you have to
click /again/ to see the actual content.
| {
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‘Superbugs’ found breeding in sewage plants - bra-ket
http://news.rice.edu/2013/12/16/superbugs-found-breeding-in-sewage-plants/
======
FreeKill
Whenever I read a story like this (there have been dozens lately), I simply
don't have the background to determine how big of a problem this is going to
be. Are these bugs antibiotic resistant just to current antibiotics? Is the
only reason we have nothing that currently kills them is because it's not
profitable for research into fighting them? Basically, what I'd love to know
is are we on the cusp of a new Black Plague type of scenario with antibiotic
resistant bugs or is it simply a problem that we haven't been working on?
I read somewhere a while back that no one has really been focusing on new
forms of antibiotics because the old ones worked, and it's not profitable for
pharmaceuticals to research it, as it's the type of drug a person takes for a
limited time only (aka non-chronic) so the profit potential is much lower than
say AIDS medication. Not sure how much truth there is to that however...
~~~
timr
_" what I'd love to know is are we on the cusp of a new Black Plague type of
scenario with antibiotic resistant bugs or is it simply a problem that we
haven't been working on?"_
The answer to the first question is: quite possibly, but with something like
tuberculosis instead of the plague. Less immediately scary, but more harmful:
resistant forms of more common bacteria will create serious risks when
undergoing any sort of surgical procedure. We could get back to the days when
your biggest risk of surgery was dying from infection afterward.
The answer to you second question is: no, we haven't really been working on
it. But the big problem is that we can't just invent new classes of
antibiotics overnight. If one of these strains takes off, things will get a
lot worse before they get better.
~~~
jpcosta
Could UV light be used at waste plants and hospitals to help prevent this kind
of bacteria from spreading?
~~~
timr
Yes, UV light would be more effective than chlorination at killing most of
this stuff. But, you know...good luck convincing people to add expensive UV
systems to their sewage effluent.
~~~
maxerickson
Apparently there is anyway movement to UV, as it is safer than
handling/dealing with chlorine (at least, this is what someone tells me about
the industry in the US).
~~~
timr
UV is certainly easier to deploy than chlorine gas (a UV leak won't poison
everyone in the room via gas inhalation), but it's still dangerous at the
scales used to sterilize large quantities of water.
The bigger problem than either is that AFAIK, few places bother to sterilize
their effluent. I'm not even sure if San Francisco bothers to do that,
actually...
------
barrkel
One would hope that antibiotic resistant bacteria would be outcompeted in
sewage by other bacteria with more mundane selection pressures.
Alternatively, the sewage actually has residual antibiotics in it. A cursory
Google indicates this may be the case. They ought to be removed from the
sewage by treatment.
~~~
HoochTHX
There's more than just antibiotics in wastewater, google for studies relating
to the feminization of fish due to the residual levels of anti depressants in
wastewater. The processes used determine what gets removed from the water.
Most facilities use aerobic breeding zones, forcing extremely high volumes of
air into the water to allow from friendly microbes that actually end up doing
most of the real work digesting the waste. Microbes don't eat everything, so
expecting them to eat the all of the unwanted products in the sewage is not
going to happen. To get everything, you would need first research to identify
bugs that eat the particular thing your wanted disposed of, and then a new
zone at treatment plants for that process. Its real easy to say yeah they
should remove this, but when you get into the details to understand why its
not happening you begin to see this is a massive undertaking.
~~~
aestra
Um, it isn't anti-depressants that are feminizing fish. That doesn't even make
sense. It is synthetic estrogens, ie pee from women taking birth control
pills. Also a few other things, bisphenol A, and certain types of natural and
synthetic steroids that are byproducts of agricultural run-off and cattle
farming.
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100729122332.ht...](http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100729122332.htm)
~~~
HoochTHX
Thank your for the correction, I always make at least one mistake before I've
had coffee.
------
xerophtye
So... not only can some bacteria develop this immunity, they can transfer it
to other bacteria? (kinda like a torrent isn't it?) That's so cool (albeit
very dangerous for us).
Though if you look at it this way: Bacteria have been researching on vaccines
against anti-biotics in their built-in genetic labs. And when a group of them
finally had a break through, they started distributing it pretty fast!
Looks like they're doing a better job of research and knowledge dissemination
than us... Still think it's ok for journals to hinder sharing of knowledge by
taxing it and thus increasing the cost of research??
~~~
velis_vel
> Still think it's ok for journals to hinder sharing of knowledge by taxing it
> and thus increasing the cost of research??
What the hell does that have to do with anything?
------
jimworm
Beta-lactamases are now pretty much everywhere, but the difference with NDM-1
is that it's not inhibited by the standard defence against beta-lactamases,
clavulanic acid.
With these plasmid being traded around out in the wild, the fear is that we
might soon see all beta-lactams become useless, like penicillin is now.
~~~
midas007
Interseting. Btw... should triclosan and similar be regulated / limited?
------
alexeisadeski3
Well that's it.
No more playing in the sewage for me.
~~~
tehwalrus
or drinking the water that's released from the sewage plant after treatment,
or eating the food grown with the solid waste as fertiliser.
~~~
dredmorbius
That last is actually something of a real concern.
Farmers use manure (non-composted, hence, unsterilized) for fertilizer, but
new regulations in the US require many months (I think as many as nine)
between manure application and harvesting for food crops. For most crops this
is sufficiently long that it makes manure untenable as a fertilizer.
There _are_ alternatives, exclusive of chemical fertilizers, including compost
(which is sterilized by the heat). However these have higher costs, which is
what it all comes down to.
------
snake_plissken
I have this notion of sewage plant workers: they NEVER get sick while working
over multi-year/decade periods at the plant. It's all anecdotal, because it
was from a quote in an article, and you don't know if the guy was telling the
truth, but it stuck with me for some reason. Who makes a claim like that and
then connects it to working at a sewage treatment plant? I think originally I
read about it in a NY Times article about the sewage treatment plant workers'
union a few years back but I currently can't find it.
------
muhuk
I was surprised to find this in wikipedia [1]:
A strain of bacteria, or any microorganism that causes illness or has a superficial resemblance to an insect or bug
I think it's quite confusing to call bacteria, bug. But I'm not a native
speaker. Is this common usage?
1: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bug)
------
dm2
When fusion power comes online (20 years hopefully?) could we simply boil all
of this sewage?
Is the idea of near unlimited electricity a pipe-dream or do we have a chance
of it becoming a reality in the near future?
Isn't there a possibility that the bacterial will eventually evolve into
something that is resistant to UV radiation treatment?
~~~
arethuza
I don't think there is any indication that fusion power plants would produce
electricity that is much cheaper than current methods - fuel (uranium) costs
are a relatively small part of the cost of operating a fission plant (16%-28%)
and fusion plants look like they will be very complex engineering systems so
the capex costs are still going to be pretty high (look at ITER and that won't
even try to generate electricity).
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plan...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economics_of_nuclear_power_plants#Uranium_costs)
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITER)
I guess you could expose your sewage directly to the neutron flux of a fusion
reactor.... :-)
------
Havoc
Couldn't this be fixed with some high powered UV lights? (Though I recall some
interaction between sunlight & drinking water)
And wouldn't flouride/chlorine kill it?
------
elorant
Assuming that you live in a city and you’re a tad paranoid about all these
stuff. What practical advice could be given? What could we do in an individual
level?
------
rikacomet
one thing to note is, that a superbug's ability to resist multiple drugs, also
can mean that due to its complex structure, its similar to a well written
computer virus like Flame.
Meaning, on contact with human body, or other living animals, how it would
react is still a matter about which very less is known, and very less is
written.
On the bright side, compare it to the recent comet, which was touted to be the
"Comet of the Year/Decade" for its expected brightness, if it survived the
sun. Well it didn't, and we have a dud! So, compare that to human body, and
superbug interaction. What will happen... is yet to be known .
------
Nux
We should send some of this stuff to Mars.
~~~
infruset
then all those antibiotics on Mars will be useless. Victory!
------
asn0
Surely the NSA will protect us from these too.
~~~
alan_cx
Not unless these superbugs are online.
BTW, as your karma should show you, HN has no sense of humor.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What we're up to at CivicSponsor...come work with us - wallacrw
http://www.youtube.com/user/CivicSponsor
======
adrian1010
What a phenomenal video! I'm a designer in SF, interested in social marketing
and am looking for work. Contact me if you have any openings.
------
rmouat
Pretty ridiculous, but great stuff. So the corporate matching is your twist on
the whole crowdfunding idea...intriguing, good luck!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dead pigs in Shanghai water supply don't ring alarm bells for Chinese officials - 42tree
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Global-News/2013/0311/Dead-pigs-in-Shanghai-water-supply-don-t-ring-alarm-bells-for-Chinese-officials
======
wxl
The article only mentions 2,813, not 5,000.
~~~
42tree
[http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/number-dead-pigs-
float...](http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/number-dead-pigs-floating-
shanghai-river-rises-6-000-article-1.1286389)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Trying To Fill In The Gaps On Google Street View, Starting With Zimbabwe - neom
https://www.npr.org/2019/09/22/760572640/hes-trying-to-fill-in-the-gaps-on-google-street-view-starting-with-zimbabwe
======
stereo
If you'd like to do this and aren't comfortable giving your work away without
getting anything in return, you can try right now:
[https://mapillary.com](https://mapillary.com) which gives you free access to
everything you've uploaded. All images can be used to contribute to
OpenStreetMap.
[https://openstreetcam.org](https://openstreetcam.org) where all images are
under CC-By-SA so can be used by everyone.
In my experience, the OpenStreetCam app is a bit buggy. Mapillary is good.
------
Nemo_bis
> Mushkegowuk Council, in northern Ontario, paid him to document the network
> of ice roads
It's immoral, and I hope also illegal, to use public money to donate exclusive
use of a work to a private entity, let alone a for-profit.
Whoever is responsible for this should be told about OpenStreetMap and then
sued into oblivion if they don't make up by following the open data policy
[https://open.canada.ca/en/open-data-
principles](https://open.canada.ca/en/open-data-principles) .
~~~
hrktb
You are right, but I’d see a tipping point where the money is better used by
bringing better maps to services people actually use, effectively improving
their life.
It would be no different from straight paying Google so they map the streets
for instance.
It could be argued its a pragmatic choice to have the most impact on people’s
life.
~~~
marble-drink
Google can, and does, use open data in their products.
~~~
Nemo_bis
Indeed. Google Maps is also known to copy OSM without attribution (which is
illegal, but not yet proven so clearly that I would be on a lawsuit).
So spending money to add roads to Google Maps is just stupid, because if you
add them to OSM it's much faster and Google Maps will get them anyway.
~~~
rmc
> _Google Maps is also known to copy OSM without attribution (which is
> illegal, but not yet proven so clearly that I would be on a lawsuit)._
Not only would attribution be required, but OSM does (for some use cases) have
a share-alike clause. It could result in Google having to release their Google
Maps data for OSM to use. So I'd be _really_ surprised if they did that, and
I'd assume they'd be strict about making sure it's not imported.
If you have evidence, I'm sure the OSM community would be _very_ interested in
hearing it.
------
magicalist
They don't cover this in the article, it's just linked from it, but while it
is free labor for Google, all the imagery taken by the camera is owned by the
photographer and only what is uploaded to the street view app is licensed to
Google. They could also upload it to OpenStreetMap and Mapillary.
[https://www.google.com/intl/None/streetview/loan/terms/](https://www.google.com/intl/None/streetview/loan/terms/)
(see Minimum Imagery and Ownership and Use of Images)
~~~
Nemo_bis
Yes, and they should.
But let's quote the actual terms of use
([https://policies.google.com/terms?hl=en#toc-
content](https://policies.google.com/terms?hl=en#toc-content) ):
\----
When you upload, submit, store, send or receive content to or through our
Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use,
host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those
resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your
content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly
perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in
this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and
improving our Services, and to develop new ones.
\----
Considering the "limited purpose" is as vast as the services Google offers (is
there anything Google doesn't do?), and that there's infinite sublicensing
potential, this is not a narrow license. It's good that it's not exclusive _in
theory_ , but in practice Google is the only one able to use all of that
content.
~~~
magicalist
> _It 's good that it's not exclusive in theory_
What does that even mean? It's a non exclusive license. "In practice" you
_still_ own the pictures and can do whatever you want with them.
------
exabrial
I understand his desire, but Alphabet group has billions. He should not be
doing this for free.
~~~
ghego1
My exact thought. And shame on Alphabet for not providing any compensation to
someone so dedicated to their platform, even if willing to work for free.
------
mackrevinack
all of his images are now the property of google. if for some reason he or
anyone else wants to use these images at some point in the future for some
sort of project he would have to pay google a fee. that idea seems so bizarre
to me especially when there are a few different services that will do the same
thing but instead the images would be available to everyone.
how does someone plan out such a huge project like he did without looking
around to see what the alternatives are? maybe mapillary need to up their
marketing a notch
~~~
rolltiide
Hopeless to monetize and nobody will use the other services leading to just
doing it on the service with less egalitarian rights
And thats okay.
------
marble-drink
Amazing that someone would choose to work for a huge American corporation for
no fee instead of providing the data to anyone who wants it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is Bitbucket down, too? - vbv
======
nahcub
[http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/bitbucket.org](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/bitbucket.org)
Looks like its down for everyone, at least according to that web service!
------
vbv
Github is back and Bitbucket went down.
[http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/bitbucket.org](http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com/bitbucket.org)
What's going on today?
------
fosk
GitHub is not down anymore:
[https://status.github.com/](https://status.github.com/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google 'down,' let's do an experiment - mkr-hn
A lot of people are unable to get to Google services right now. Including me. I'm curious to see if there's some commonality.<p>What is your<p>ISP:<p>Location:<p>Try to stick to this format so people who like to do data processing can easily make use of this thread.
======
ynniv
Very high (and increasing) hourly packet loss on some of the backbones. They
are probably fully down and the percentage is increasing as the rolling hourly
window includes more of the outage.
NTT <-> Verizon (9.09% @ 10:20)
SBC <-> Level3 (8.33% @ 10:20)
ATT <-> Verizon (4.00% @ 10:20)
[
[http://internetpulse.net/Main.aspx?Metric=PL](http://internetpulse.net/Main.aspx?Metric=PL)
]
EDIT: Smile! You're on CNN! [http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/10/tech/web/google-
down/](http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/10/tech/web/google-down/)
~~~
mkr-hn
A traceroute earlier showed no network issues. I should have done a pathping
to have something to compare with.
~~~
joshlegs
I saw a G+ blog on it briefly as i got a search result to work. Here's the
link. good luck reading it.
[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CDoQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stateofsearch.com%2Fgoogle-
down-
cleaning%2F&ei=uGvdUa6GCJHC9gSlqoGgDg&usg=AFQjCNGZyjNk7rOGMGbJQx5GoDjvGYLg-w&bvm=bv.48705608,d.eWU&cad=rja)
~~~
v2interactive
Back up for me. Comcast support was a JOKE.
~~~
joshlegs
Yeah it's back up for me now too. CNN had an article on it, funnily enough.
They are headquartered in Atlanta though so they probably all got hit with the
outage. Seems the southeast and comcast users were hit hardest
------
tristan1301
K, so this may be important. There are power outages around Charleston, SC,
the location of a large Google data center. That could be the source of the
downtime for Southeastern users.
------
tristan1301
ISP: Comporium Communications Location: Rock Hill, SC
It's starting to look like East Coast USA. I'm talking to a few people outside
of EST that are still able to access every service.
------
reboog711
ISP: AT&T Location: Meriden, CT
The main Google home page comes up for me; as does Google Voice and Google
Docs. And my Google Apps email accounts are working.
------
mvcg66b3r
ISP: Comcast Location: Covington TN Does it have anything to do with the
weather?
------
thesmileyone
Google.co.uk homepage was not working earlier: ISP: TalkTalk
Location: SW United Kingdom
------
zalebz
ISP: ETC - Ellijay Telephone Company Location: Ellijay, GA
------
nilamapatel
ISP: Wake Forest University Location: Winston-Salem, NC
------
tica
Heartland Internet Paducah, Ky.
pings to other major sites timing out
------
justhw
Wow, nearly everyone who responded is in the East.
------
brobotjox
It's back up for me. Kennesaw, GA -- Comcast.
------
jane70
ISP:Comcast Xfinity Location: Strawberry Plains,TN
------
vehware
ISP: charter Location: Roswell
Google seems to be working fine here
------
jeffyt
ISP: Comcast (ComCrap!) Location: Huntsville, AL
------
squarerfish
ISP: Earthlink Business Location: Charlotte, NC
------
importantbrian
ISP: Comcast Business Location: Mt. Juliet, TN
------
ashes0000
ISP: Comcast Business Location Ganiesville, GA
------
caseyryan
ISP: Comcast + CBeyond Location: Acworth, GA
------
brobotjox
ISP: Comcast Business Location: Kennesaw, GA
------
kjacksonmusic
ISP: COMCAST LOCATION: FORT MYERS, FL (SWFL)
------
coreymayo
ISP: Comcast Business
Location: Alpharetta, GA
t-mobile is up in the same area
------
The_Shrike
ISP: CenturyLink Location: Tallahassee, FL
------
ascot69
ISP: Comcast Location: Fort Oglethorpe, GA
------
ggibson400
ISP: Comcast Location: San Francisco, CA
------
onwchristian
ISP: Time Warner Location: Memphis, TN
------
crowespeak
ISP: Comporium Location: Rock Hill, SC
------
Tallahasseean
ISP: Comcast Location: Tallahassee, FL
------
spoon
ISP:Windstream Location:Charlotte, NC
------
geoffreydgraham
ISP: TW Telecom Location: Atlanta, GA
------
jeremya
ISP: Comcast Location: Winchester, VA
------
luraybell
ISP: Comcast Location Harrisonburg VA
------
sarcomabuster
ISP: Comcast Location: Nashville, TN
------
druid628
ISP: Comcast Location: Nashville, TN
------
Littleme
ISP: Comcast Location: Nashville, TN
------
bluemustache
ISP: Comcast Location: Nashville, TN
------
Jenny17
ISP: Comcast Location: Jackson, MS
------
tykell
ISP: Comcast Location: Nashville, TN
------
iamvery
ISP: Comcast Location: North Alabama
------
kmanlives
ISP: Comcast
Location: Roswell, GA
Edit: Up for me now at 10:47 Eastern
------
diosadentro
ISP: Comcast Location: Brentwood, TN
------
JoshMock
ISP: Comcast Location: Nashville, TN
------
pgmcgee
ISP: Sprint 3G Location: Atlanta, GA
------
cweathe2
ISP: Comcast Location: Knoxville, TN
------
kmanlives
just talked to a friend in NYC - no issues there, so doesn't appear to be
entire East Coast
------
vpmpaul
ISP:twTelecom Location:Columbia, SC
------
funkybass
ISP: Comcast Business Class
Location: Tallahassee, FL
------
joshlegs
ISP: Comcast Location: Staunton, VA
------
wedgetalon
ISP: Comcast
Location: Oak Ridge (near Knoxville), TN
------
sldkgn
ISP: Comcast Location: Fairview, TN
------
twootten
ISP: Comcast Location: Norcross, GA
------
lewayotte
ISP: ComSouth Location: Cochran, GA
------
dcope
ISP: DirecPath
Location: Atlanta, GA
Edit: it seems to be working now.
------
chad_c
ISP: Comcast Location: Augusta, GA
------
chipramsey
ISP: Comcast Location: Atlanta, GA
------
bradydoll
ISP: Comcast Location: Atlanta, GA
------
jhaile
ISP: Comcast Location: Atlanta, GA
------
kelner
ISP: Comcast Location: Atlanta, GA
------
robertdcd
ISP: Comcast Location: Atlanta, GA
------
blahblah2
ISP: EPB Location: Chattanooga, TN
------
Innotek
ISP: Comcast Location: Atlanta, GA
------
sb2nov
ISP: Comcast Location: Atlanta, GA
------
andysolomon
ISP: Comcast Location: Atlanta GA
------
tristan1301
Back up for me in Rock Hill, SC
------
benjamincburns
ISP: Comcast Business
Location: Charleston, SC
~~~
benjamincburns
I switched the office over to the T1 that normally carries our VoIP traffic
and it's been smooth sailing ever since. This is a Razorline connection.
traceroute www.google.com shows hops over level3 to 173.194.77.106. Over the
Comcast link I was resolving www.google.com to 74.125.229.208 - which appears
to be accessible now over the Razorline. Haven't attempted to access via
Comcast, so it could just be that it's back up.
------
mrbuttons454
ISP: Comcast Business
Location: Nashville, TN
------
gtCameron
ISP: ATT Business Fiber
Location: Atlanta, GA
------
taylorjones
ISP: Comcast Business
Location: Atlanta, GA
------
Percussivescruf
Comcast Jacksonville, FL
------
st1ckers
ISP: Comcast Norcross, GA
------
sarcomabuster
Comcast Middle Tennessee
------
arturkim
ISP: Comcast
Location: Atlanta, GA
EDIT: It's back now!
------
luigi
ISP: Comcast Xfinity
Location: Atlanta, GA
------
jcutrell
Comcast - Chattanooga TN
------
ChieflySouthern
ISP: Windstream
Location: Little Rock, AR
------
soccerdave
ISP: EPB Fiber
Location: Chattanooga, TN
------
Jenny17
Back up in Jackson, MS
------
omni
ISP: Time Warner
Location: New York, NY
------
abizot
ISP: Comcast
Location: Murfreesboro, TN
------
cholmon
ISP: TW Telecom
Location: Columbia, SC
------
uwk
ISP: Comcast
Location: Greeneville, TN
------
mkr-hn
ISP: Comcast
Location: Winder, Georgia
------
uga1986
ISP: Comcast
Location: Tuscaloosa, AL
------
kappaknight
ISP: DirectPath
Location: Atlanta, GA
------
NowhereMan
ISP: Comcast
Location: Huntsville, AL
------
NaterGator
ISP: GruCom
Location: Gainesville, FL
------
narrowingorbits
ISP: Comcast
Location: Huntsville, AL
------
67726e
ISP: Comcast
Location: Charleston, SC
------
bdeloach
ISP: Comcast
Location: Alpharetta, GA
------
sappapp
ISP: Comacast
Location: Buckhead, GA
Just came back up
------
daigoba66
ISP: ATT Fiber
Location: Atlanta, GA
------
rozboris
ISP: Comcast
Location: Brunswick, GA
------
brandong
ISP: Comcast
Location: North Alabama
------
Sewdusty
ISP: Comcast
Location: Portland, TN
------
MDSdeMonroe
ISP: Comcast
Location: Monroe, LA
------
thutson
ISP: Comcast
Location: Atlanta, GA
------
bhcarpenter
ISP: Comcast
Location: Atlanta, GA
------
ariesk
ISP: Comcast
Location: Memphis, TN
------
jruckman
ISP: Comcast
Location: Atlanta, GA
------
Scottopherson
ISP: Comcast
Location: Atlanta, GA
------
melonakos
ISP: Comcast
Location: Atlanta, GA
------
jessejmc
ISP: Comcast
Location: Acworth, GA
------
tekotili
ISP: Comcast
Location: Decatur, GA
------
azsromej
ISP: Comcast
Location: Atlanta, GA
------
felsesser
comcast: Lawrenceville, GA 30044
75.75.75.75 75.75.76.76
------
kavita718
ISP: TDS
Location: Knoxville, TN
------
baffledfoam3
ISP: TDS
Location: Nashville, TN
------
cillosis
ISP: VC3
Location: Columbia, SC
------
defective
ISP: Unknown
Location: South TX
------
meredithblumoff
isp: comcast location: atlanta, ga
------
felsesser
ISP: Comcast
------
LOLvis
ISP: WOW!
Location: Dothan, AL
------
cokello
TW Telecom
Memphis, TN
------
v2interactive
Comcast
Atlanta, GA
------
antoinel
atlanta, ga comcast
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Source small php page that shows the public source code of a Web page - Goldenromeo
http://umbcnow.com/
======
Goldenromeo
Hi guys, I did this little self contained script in a little over a week to
enhance my php knowledge.
Some problems I've found are: redirects and non 200 status codes.
I plan on redoing the whole thing in JavaScript or any other client side
technology and add color coding.
------
krapp
PHP already has a filter (FILTER_VALIDATE_URL) for validating urls using
filter_var[0], however, it doesn't work on international URLs. You can also
break up a url with parse_url()[1]
You might also want to look into PHP's curl wrapper which is a lot more
powerful[2].
[0][https://secure.php.net/manual/en/function.filter-
var.php](https://secure.php.net/manual/en/function.filter-var.php)
[1][https://secure.php.net/manual/en/function.parse-
url.php](https://secure.php.net/manual/en/function.parse-url.php)
[2][https://secure.php.net/manual/en/book.curl.php](https://secure.php.net/manual/en/book.curl.php)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A smartphone case that is harder than steel and as easy to shape as plastic - curtis
http://news.yale.edu/2014/09/04/yale-professor-makes-case-supercool-metals
======
TheSpiceIsLife
At the end of the video Jan Schroers says "and I think also as a consumer it's
attractive because it's a very green process".
Mining, refining, and processing metals in to metallic glass is 'green', for
some very liberal definition of the term 'green'.
While he's saying this an image appears in the video that says "Yale Office of
Public Affairs & Communication". Yep.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Millennials' new retirement number? $1.8M (or more) - JSeymourATL
http://college.usatoday.com/2016/03/30/millennials-new-retirement-number-1-8-million-or-more/
======
WalterSear
>The youngest of the Boomers, those born in 1964, would need $1.3 million
earmarked for retirement. A Gen Xer born in 1975 would need about $1.6
million. The figure for a Millennial: $1.8 million.
FFS. This is such non-news, the article even defuses itself.
Save for retirement? OMG! Inflation! Woah!
------
angersock
Retirement?
That's when you start working for Uber or Starbucks, right?
:(
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: I'm bored at work and life, what should I do? - bigJavaLava
I'm a little at a lost and could use some advice. I realize that I'm very fortunate and this is probably a problem of privilege, so I hate to lament the situation.<p>Truth be told, I'm really bored in my career and trajectory in life.<p>I'm in my early 20s, full-time software Dev, making decent pay, living on my own, with finances that are all stable (students loans, car, etc).<p>However, I'm just bored out of my mind at work. The work is uninspiring and projects have no direction. In my weekly journal session, I'm noticing that work is the lowest part of my week; which sucks cause it's 40 hours of boredom. The though of doing this for even another year makes me frustrated.<p>Outside of work, I spend time hacking side projects with the hope of turning something into a profitable business (so I can work for myself).<p>I also do sports during the week and try to go out regularly. Those are usually my bursts of short lived excitement.<p>I know I am extremely goal oriented and need something to look to for accomplishment. I feel like I need one of three things to happen:<p>1. Find work that has more value creation (I would probably love teaching if it paid more)
2. Work on solutions that solve actual real-world problems with a visible impact.
3. Start my own business and be more dedicated to growing it to how I see fit.<p>Anyone have any suggestions? Should I just accept things how they are?
======
mooreds
Look for a new job (possibly in a new city). That is the lowest risk way to
change your world. If you interview, you may find that your current jobs has
benefits you were blind to.
Another alternative that I pursued was taking a sabbatical. If you have the
means, take a few months and travel. If you want to do some work, here are two
organizations that can help with that:
[https://wwoof.net/](https://wwoof.net/) (farming work)
[https://www.bunac.org](https://www.bunac.org) (short term work visas)
------
IanDrake
Just an option: learn to like your job.
You can try to turn the mundane into micro challenges. Can you build a script
to automate those TPS reports?
Whatever your task, how can you make it more interesting? Take the final
product from an 8 to a 10.
Go watch a dude perfect video on YouTube, those guys are the masters of taking
trivial things and making them interesting. Basically, do the IT version of
that.
------
rman666
You’re probably a really smart person. There are many problems in the world
that need solutions:
Figure out the solution to boredom and share it with h others in your
situation.
Or
Share your dev talents with non-technical entrepreneurs who are desperate to
find a dev to work with.
Or
Figure out what really makes you excited and happy and do that.
------
bradleyjg
Have kids. You won't have time to be bored.
~~~
kopiblanca
I approved this message.Now, i only had 25-30min for to do my own web
development,which i meant,i do it on daily commuter,MRT XD
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Comodo not really getting the concept of HTTPS - andygambles
http://servertastic.tumblr.com/post/49923726926/comodo-not-really-getting-the-concept-of-https
======
davidddavidson
Related: [http://www.troyhunt.com/2013/05/why-i-am-worlds-greatest-
lov...](http://www.troyhunt.com/2013/05/why-i-am-worlds-greatest-lover-
and.html) (hn discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5661806>)
Looks like Troy picked up the Comodo story and demonstrates a MiTM attack
here: [http://www.troyhunt.com/2013/05/heres-why-you-cant-trust-
ssl...](http://www.troyhunt.com/2013/05/heres-why-you-cant-trust-ssl-logos-
on.html)
------
andygambles
So while loading the seal over standard http is not a security issue in itself
there is the problem of mixed content when loaded over https.
This could leave the site open to a MiTM style attack since security fatigue
means the user just loads insecure content. The http request could then
potentially be redirected to load an alternative content.
~~~
kdecherf
Note: Firefox 23 (currently active in Nightly) will block insecure content by
default
~~~
andygambles
images are classed as passive content by Firefox 23 so by default they will
load just the padlock will not show. More info:
[https://blog.servertastic.com/firefox-23-to-block-mixed-
cont...](https://blog.servertastic.com/firefox-23-to-block-mixed-content/)
~~~
kdecherf
Hm, good to know
------
firloop
Even though the embed code has HTTP for the image url, it's still possible to
load the images over SSL.
[https://www.positivessl.com/images-
new/PossitiveSSL_tl_trans...](https://www.positivessl.com/images-
new/PossitiveSSL_tl_trans.gif)
~~~
andygambles
Which makes it even more stupid that they haven't put this as the source code.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Finish your CS degree - MojoJolo
http://blog.jpbalb.in/post/51376691724/why-pursue-my-ms-cs-degree
======
txet
Not Found The URL you requested could not be found
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Yunus fired from Grameen Bank - amirmc
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-12619580
======
gawker
A desperate attempt to get him out definitely. Cannot believe their trying to
pin a man who's done more for the country than the government ever will as a
villain. I guess I better believe now?
------
BvS
Interestingly the government doesn't own 25% of the bank as this and several
other articles claim. In fact 95% of the shares is owned by their customers :
[http://www.grameen-
info.org/index.php?option=com_content&...](http://www.grameen-
info.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=26&Itemid=175)
The government might have special voting right though.
------
praptak
It looks like they did it purely out of spite, which makes it even more
stupid.
------
sucuri2
What is funny is that their site is hacked as well:
[http://blog.sucuri.net/2011/03/grameen-bank-web-site-
hacked-...](http://blog.sucuri.net/2011/03/grameen-bank-web-site-hacked-
infected-with-spam.html)
------
nwp
I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Yunus in Dhaka and touring a village bank
back in 2008. His personal office was simple and sparse (and not air
conditioned) and he was very kind and down to earth considering his
accomplishments. It is sad to think that a (probably) corrupt government could
oust him from his own creation where he has done some much for so many.
------
candre717
Politics as usual.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why are we so bad at predicting startup success? - codegeek
http://andrewchen.co/2013/04/08/why-are-we-so-bad-at-making-startup-predictions/
======
lttlrck
bad or unlucky?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Age bias against startup founders is rampant by age 36 - laurex
https://qz.com/work/1514739/startup-leaders-say-age-bias-is-rampant-against-founders-as-young-as-36/
======
oldmancoyote
Being 72, I'd never even consider looking for work in tech in spite of being
very good at programing. While I have no experience in the current tech market
to base my opinion on, I am sufficiently intimidated by the perception of
agism that my potential contributions will be lost. Trying to change a tech
company's age profile will be harder than just becoming receptive to
applicants if applicants do not apply.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Functionless Programming - zackmorris
http://zackarymorris.tumblr.com/post/17229036220/functionless-programming
======
akkartik
I'm very reminded of this paper on LtU: <http://lambda-the-
ultimate.org/node/4444>
We're also discussing it desultorily at <http://arclanguage.org/item?id=15696>
(Here's what I think of the API problem:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3550270>)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A 48 Hour Hack, A 100+ year Flood, and a Nenshi noun - lucasyyc
http://lucasyyc.wordpress.com/2013/06/26/calgary-floods-of-2013-the-48-hour-hack-that-was-inspired-by-it/
======
MonkoftheFunk
Cool, I am in calgary and ya I wanted to know the same thing, I was wishing
gps data was saved with all the photos posted so that I could plot it as well,
great that you filled that! Then perhaps it could be shared with
[http://google.org/crisismap/2013-alberta-
floods](http://google.org/crisismap/2013-alberta-floods)
~~~
lucasyyc
Yeah.. I want to get it working better and try and make some good use of it...
i really like the idea.
were you in the evac'd areas.
PS: upload some of your pics!
~~~
MonkoftheFunk
Luckily not, I was on the edge of 2 evac / power out areas, glued to twitter
and Facebook for updates and pictures. PS: I will, I have some before / after
pics
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fixed – The easiest way to fix a parking ticket - lbr
http://www.getfixed.me
======
jrs235
"Up to 50% of tickets are dismissed when challenged."
There is probably a high number (half according to them) of tickets that get
dismissed because of selection bias. Tickets [that have been] challenged are
probably challenged because they have a good chance of being dismissed due to
reasonable issue. Challenging more [random] tickets will probably cause this
number to fall.
------
darklajid
I'm confused. Why? Are we talking "I didn't do anything wrong" tickets, stuff
that is unfair but hard to fight?
Or is this about "I park wherever I want and try to avoid the consequences"?
So far it seems that most of the customers are of the latter variety. While I
understand the motivation to act like an asshole, this service empowers ..
assholes?
We're regularly discussing if free apps (downward spiral) or free content
(adblockers) are okay. But free parking is fine, right?
~~~
john_b
You've identified two classes of customer for this app but speculated, without
evidence, that most of them fall into only one of those classes.
Ironically my objection to this service is essentially the opposite of yours.
I see this app as imposing a middleman's fee on something that, in a perfect
world, citizens would be able to perform themselves with the same probability
of success. Contesting an illegitimate parking or speeding ticket is a fairly
straightforward matter, but in my (personal) experience, unless you bring a
lawyer to the courtroom your arguments will simply be ignored. In my area, the
courts do not even keep records, so you can't use the judge's blatant
dismissal of your concerns* as grounds for a mistrial on appeal.
Maybe I'm not understanding how the service works, but I see this service as
simply a specialized and cheaper lawyer replacement. Maybe that's progress
since you can actually save some money if you win, but you're still paying a
more powerful entity in order to get respect in a court of law.
*I've literally been told by a judge, "stop speaking now, your turn is over" seconds after showing that the officer didn't use a LIDAR gun correctly per the manual, and upon cross examination didn't even know the type of device he was using (Me: "Were you using a radar or a laser based device on <date> at <time>?" Officer: "I was using the device the department issued me." Right afterwards: "Me: If you don't know what kind of device you were using, how can you know the effective range of the device?" Officer: "I believe it was effective and accurate when I used it."). The judge repeatedly referred to it as a "LASAR" device...
~~~
ilbe
I'm with you because I had the same experience with a judge while lawyerless.
I showed him a manufacturer tech spec on my car to make the point that based
on its 0-60 acceleration, it was physically impossible that I was going 67 mph
by the time I reached the intersection where I was clocked from where I
started accelerating. His response upon seeing the specs was, "What are you,
trying to sell me on a car?! This officer (witness) has been with the
department 15 years. Guilty."
~~~
rahimnathwani
If that judge had been on HN he would have been cited for 1 count of 'appeal
to authority'.
------
rayiner
Driving is bullshit. Just everything about it: expensive, inconvenient, and a
backdoor to reduced rights (search * seizure, etc) and run-ins with the legal
system.
Think about it: if you're a typical middle class person, when is the only time
you ever have a run in with the law? I lived three years without driving in
Chicago. I don't think I ever even talked to a cop in that time, and if I did
it must've been pleasant and forgettable (I think beat cops with patrols of
nice neighborhoods tend to be chill). I move to PA/DE and have to commute to
work, and boom: in the space of a few months I've got three parking tickets,
and stress to update my {registration, insurance, license plate} to avoid
further run ins with the law.
I can't wait to move back to somewhere I can commute by train and leave this
bullshit behind me.
------
Zikes
I can't find anything on their site that lists what cities are supported, but
I'm pretty sure it's Bay Area only.
I totally understand that, it'd just be nice to see it in a FAQ or something.
~~~
biturd
If you contest a ticket and the officer does not show up you win a default
judgement. Perhaps they are playing on the fact that unless they are on duty
on the scheduled date, they are probably not showing up at court.
~~~
jrs235
Many jurisdictions will pay officers to appear and many don't factor appearing
into their budgets/schedules, so the officers are paid at overtime rates (time
and a half). Many officer's don't mind having to appear... they make bank and
many pensions are based on the three years of highest revenue (this is a
method officers abuse in Wisconsin... they will work as much OT as they can
for three years especially near retirement, since the legislature hasn't
bothered fixing/forcing pensions to be based on 40 hours / week.)
------
teddyh
The title and page seem to imply that parking tickets _inherently_ are
something which need fixing. As if their very existence was a blight upon the
world.
If you agree, might I suggest you go into politics or perhaps traffic
planning?
~~~
dnautics
most people agree that tickets are something which need fixing[0], but you
make 'going into politics' sound so easy. Maybe we all think that local
politics are institutions rife with internal corruption and are essentially a
club of elites? Why not try to push change on them a different way?
[0][http://laist.com/2014/02/26/local_heroes_are_taking_la_to_co...](http://laist.com/2014/02/26/local_heroes_are_taking_la_to_court.php)
~~~
teddyh
When I said “go into politics”, I did not _necessarily_ mean to become a
politician. I meant to make political change – to go after the problem on the
political level, however that may be. There are _many_ kinds of “politicians”,
just as war is merely a continuation of politics by other means.
------
CalRobert
How about a refund for my taxes that supported an asphalt wasteland while I
spent years living in a suburban hellhole? Parking tickets are issued because
you don't have a right to unlimited free automobile storage. Hell, why can't I
park a hot tub in front of my house in the same spot? Would be a lot more fun.
~~~
eli
Taxes don't really work that way, but I generally agree with you. Vote at the
ballot box.
------
jjallen
Won't cities adapt to fight this the more tickets are challenged? They'll say
something like: "Oh, this same attorney is fighting hundreds of tickets? We're
going to require more evidence to reverse these tickets".
They'll put up walls and/or make something about this service illegal.
And yes agree that many people will abuse this and fight every ticket
regardless of the validity which will cause cities to push back like I
mentioned above.
Seems like a tenuous business model.
~~~
Zigurd
Businesses that make lots of deliveries already use services that dispute
tickets. This is just aggregating retail customers for those services.
------
smackfu
>No fee to contest: We charge 25% of the fine if you win. You have nothing to
lose.
Except that you are assuming they are better at contesting tickets than you.
~~~
OscarCunningham
Most people don't know anything in particular about contesting a parking fine.
But it's literally these people's job. Also, note the incentives are the right
way round: they get paid only if they win.
~~~
smackfu
They're pretty much just taking the data you enter in the app, printing it on
the SF MTA protest form, giving it a quick read, and mailing it in.
------
lukashed
For German residents there's [http://geblitzt.com](http://geblitzt.com) \-
though it doesn't have an app. And it's not just for parking tickets but also
for speeding tickets and such.
------
smackfu
[http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/tech/mobile/fixed-app-
parking-...](http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/tech/mobile/fixed-app-parking-
tickets/)
"If the motorist thinks they have a case, the app will prompt them to capture
any additional photographic evidence with their phone and then digitally sign
a letter. Fixed has contracted with a team of legal researchers fluent in
local traffic laws who will review each case before printing out the letter
and submitting it via snail mail to the city."
Here's the form, now you don't need the app:
[http://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/2013%20AR%20PR...](http://www.sfmta.com/sites/default/files/pdfs/2013%20AR%20PROTEST%20FORM.pdf)
The legal researchers job is probably just to sanity check that people aren't
submitting complete junk, like penis photos.
------
tn13
Excellent Idea.
\- Pros :
* This might lead to more people challenging their parking tickets. * Those who give tickets will be forced to think twice before giving a ticket. * Since enforcement people need to complete a fixed quota of revenue through parking tickets they will have to issue more tickets per day than before purely because more of them will get contested. This will mean people will have to take extra precautions while parking their car because probability of ticket has gone up.
\- Cons:
* If too many people start contesting then the authorities(court) may simply take a hard stand and the ratio of cancelled tickets/challenged tickets may go down. This may hurt many genuine "I did not do anything wrong" people.
------
27182818284
A broken meter is a valid reason in other cities?
Huh. Every parking meter around here specifically says if it is broken you
can't use it. People are ticketed accordingly if they park there.
~~~
adnrw
Really? Seems a bit unnecessary to take the spot completely out of action
because the meter is broken.
Here (Melbourne), if a meter is faulty but the council doesn't know, you can
SMS your numberplate and the meter ID to their faults number. The automated
response tells you that the time limits still apply and gives you the number
to call if you still get a ticket.
If the council knows the meter is faulty and they haven't fixed it, they
generally put a locked bag over it so no one can use it with instructions that
the time limits still apply.
~~~
jrs235
"Seems a bit unnecessary to take the spot completely out of action because the
meter is broken."
Yes it seems a bit stupid but governments often don't operate with efficiency
or common sense as a primary goal or concern.
------
jamesk_au
For those interested in reading about this, there were some good comments in
the previous HN thread:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7066079](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7066079)
------
dnautics
emanating from LA is a court challenge that may decide that parking penalties
are excessive. This would be a statewide ruling (it's in the state courts
IIRC). If, say, parking tickets were curbed at "treble damages", wouldn't this
hurt this business' model?
[http://laist.com/2014/02/26/local_heroes_are_taking_la_to_co...](http://laist.com/2014/02/26/local_heroes_are_taking_la_to_court.php)
------
robbiet480
Can I get an invite? [email protected]. Need to invite my roommates, who both have
a few tickets they need to get fixed.
------
joshred
If this gets popular, the courts will just change how they handle challenges.
~~~
MichaelApproved
In what way can they change the process?
~~~
ars
They can charge to fight a ticket.
Boston does that:
[http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011...](http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/03/07/controversial_ticket_appeal_fees_to_have_sjc_hearing/)
In Boston parking tickets are not about doing something wrong, or trying to
curb behavior. They are basically a backdoor tax on the residents.
~~~
Karunamon
Seems unconstitutional/illegal to me.
While a layperson might not be able to fight it, a company who's business
model is based on it might definitely be in a better position.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
BBC: Slack 'bans users' who have visited US sanctioned countries - jwildeboer
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-46642760
======
troydavis
This is a dupe of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18730314](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18730314)
Original discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18724107](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18724107)
------
tim333
The bans seem a little over the top compared with what is legally required. I
went to Iran in 1993 - I wonder if I'm on the list!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microsoft reportedly in talks to acquire GitHub - eknkc
https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2018/06/01/microsoft-reportedly-in-talks-to-acquire-git-hub/
======
bradknowles
OMG.
They killed Skype. Now they're gonna kill Github?
------
mbfg
it will never happen ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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