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A couple of reasons you shouldn't be moving your databases to the cloud anytime soon - vaksel http://sqlblog.com/blogs/denis_gobo/archive/2009/05/07/13862.aspx ====== Tichy Sounds like he is talking about a specific cloud, rather than clouds in general. ------ david927 10GB is just for SimpleDB. BigTable has no such limitations, right? ------ edw519 In Scope for V1 = Out of Scope for anytime soon Out of Scope for V1 = lololololololol	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Discovery Channel Buys Revision3 for $30 Million - protomyth http://allthingsd.com/20120503/discovery-channel-gets-a-web-video-arm-courtesy-of-revision-3/?mod=tweet ====== sp332 Here's a press release: [http://revision3.com/blog/2012/05/03/discovery- communication...](http://revision3.com/blog/2012/05/03/discovery- communications-to-acquire-top-digital-video-provider-revision3/) And here's why Discovery wants them: <http://revision3.com/about> 72% 18-34 year olds 99.6% audience recall for 1 or more sponsor 56% of Revision3 viewers have purchased a product or service from a show sponsor ------ GBond Kevin Rose has 3 of his company have major exits within months. There has been a lot of discussion about him in the past because he doesn't fit the mold of a HN "hacker". Regardless of his methods/role, the results are impressive. ------ k-mcgrady Congrats to Rev3. They've always produced some really good content and a lot of stuff I've watched as religiously as I would a TV programme. I think the price is interesting. Especially when you compare it to other exits, particularly Instagram. AFAIK Rev3 had a decent, proven business model and have been growing and expanding in different directions (distributing content from other content producers). We don't know exactly why Instagram was bought (defensive move, user/photo data) but when you compare the two the Instagram price seems ridiculous. (I personally think buying Instagram was a smart move by Facebook and I understand the price it just seems crazy when you compare the exit of a company with a proven business model to that of a company with no business model and no plan for one). ~~~ CoffeeDregs > AFAIK Rev3 had a decent, proven business model Definitely and that may have been a problem: the business model was certain and their valuation could be easily calculated. OTOH, Instagram's business model is uncertain and their valuation was calculated based on "comps" rather than on business model performance, leading to a much wider range of valuations. Add to that the fact Instagram became a leader in a hot market where Revision3 became an also-ran in a legacy market and their relative valuations make more sense. ------ brandnewlow Wild to think they might have a bigger exit than Digg. ~~~ debacle Why is that? ~~~ ojbyrne For starters, 1\. Diggnation was the flagship and highest rated show for much of rev3's life. 2\. All of the founders were full-time employees of Digg when they were working on Rev3. In fact, at least one of them has publicly stated that Rev3 would not exist if it hadn't been for the digg salaries. ~~~ debacle That's very interesting. I used to use Digg but moved away from it because of the signal/noise issue. Then after they changed the UI at some point a ton of people came over to reddit and I remember it was a big deal. ------ dusing Anyone know how much funding they have gotten. I'm happy for them, but it doesn't seem like a big win. The thought of TRS or some of their other shows showing up on cable makes me super happy ~~~ jsprinkles Do you really think Discovery would sacrifice ratings juggernauts like _American Chopper: Senior vs. Junior_ , _The Devils Ride_ , or _American Guns_ to air anything Revision3 makes? Yeah, unfortunately, me neither. Sadly, I'm part of the reason, since I enjoy _Deadliest Catch_. ~~~ trothamel Discovery owns a lot more than a single channel - they own 13. It's possible that they could use these programs on Science, or maybe for a late night block on The Hub (as an Adult Swim competitor), or somewhere else. (Or else not - it might be valuable to have Internet-only programs.) ------ sandieman Sometimes you get lucky (like instagram) but revision3 hustled to thrive where many failed in video. Kudos to Louderback and team!! ------ IanDrake Discovery Communications owns a couple strange properties. I was shocked when I _discovered_ they owned PetFinder.com. ~~~ protomyth They also own some fairly nasty patents, so they are quite an interesting company. example: <http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090317/1826164156.shtml> ------ jsprinkles $30 million for Revision3, $1 billion for Instagram. Is there really that much of a gap in value between these two companies? I know I followed Rev3 closely because I enjoyed old-school TechTV. I also know I'm not an Instagram user. Am I the minority, here? Just trying to understand what's at play here, and what it means for the future. ~~~ brandnewlow Honestly? No one gives a crap about content. It's not exactly worthless, but it's been pretty solidly commoditized. Which company do you think had more content? Revision3 or Instagram? My guess is Instagram had 100x more content than Rev3. The way a company like Revision3 gets a big valuation is by having massive distribution AND a big hit that goes mainstream, much like what Draw with Me did for OMGPOP. Revision3 never had a crossover hit that the average Joe watched. They stayed niche, and $30m is maybe as much as they could get for that audience and distribution footprint. Meanwhile Instagram had MASSIVE distribution, in the millions, AND was generating content at an epic clip. No one piece of Instagram content might be as "sticky" or engaging as a single piece of Revision3 content, but wouldn't you want to have all those photos instead of a bunch of shows watched by a small but fervent audience? ~~~ protomyth Given all the articles about people being pretty unhappy with not being able to watch Game of Thrones on HBO, I don't think content is commoditized. I also don't think a picture on Instagram is equivalent to an episode of GoT. ~~~ brandnewlow Game of Thrones is world-class Content with a capital "C". Revision3 had nothing so valuable or desired. That was my point. Their content never really escaped the commodity zone.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Beauty Shots of Retro Machines - sohkamyung http://podstawczynski.com/retro/beauty_shots.html ====== contingencies Please, if anyone takes old hardware images, do put them on Wikipedia Commons, where there is a shortage. Recently I donated a bunch of old systems and peripherals to a museum in Australia. Before doing so, I photographed them and uploaded the images to Commons and was shocked to find how few existed! [https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:List...](https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:ListFiles/Pratyeka&ilshowall=1) (scroll down a page or so) ------ PostOnce Extremely relevant book, [https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Retro-Evolution- Personal-Comp...](https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Retro-Evolution-Personal- Computer/dp/078214330X/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1487624982&sr=8-2&keywords=Gordon+Laing&linkCode=sl1&tag=glnow-20&linkId=e1c4e9c4ac187adbc2671b5b693b876d) (the refcode is from the authors site, [https://www.cameralabs.com/digitalretro/](https://www.cameralabs.com/digitalretro/) ) The interior of the book is much more beautiful than the cover, and sadly Amazon's look inside function is mostly the contents and index. It's high quality photos of ~100 various computers from the Altair 8800 through iirc recent Apple stuff, from all angles, with text explaining that machine's importance & innovations. A great coffee table book. Even covers some Japanese-only stuff. I also recall a really extensive and beautiful set of photo albums on flickr which I am currently trying to find the link for, it's in my logs somewhere. Will post that here when I find it tonight. Meanwhile, I found this while googling for it, and while it has some great stuff, it's not as uniformly amazing as the other stream I'm looking for: [https://www.flickr.com/groups/vintagecomputers/pool/](https://www.flickr.com/groups/vintagecomputers/pool/) ~~~ sohkamyung I have that book. It's lovely. I bought it for the photos and to support Gordon Liang, who writes some good camera reviews on CameraLabs. ------ CamTin Could use more ashtrays for authenticity :) ------ zeckalpha The //c and the MacBook side by side was an interesting 20-year comparison in design languages. ------ larsbrinkhoff Can someone send this man a proper Atari ST mouse?!? I asked him about it, and apparently he doesn't have one. ------ djellybeans Makes me feel odd seeing the MacBook A1181, just having retired mine early this year. It kept on running with Snow Leopard, but the OS started losing compatibility with some popular build tools. ------ danbolt Somewhat unrelated, but I'd love to be able to get something like a T-Series ThinkPad but with beige plastic. Something about it feels so nostalgic and comfortable. ------ fit2rule Needs more Oric-1/Atmos! ;) ------ HeyLaughingBoy Nice, but not a single CoCo or TRS-80 Model I in the bunch. Tsk! ~~~ cr0sh I think the main reason for this is the photographer seems to be from Europe, where the Radio Shack/Tandy computers were not as common. Also notice there wasn't any Dragon 64 machines, either (which I believe were mainly a UK thing). ~~~ _eLRIC Had a Dragon32 in France so not only UK. But... So many Amigas and no ST! ------ frik Nice photos. Most with authentic accessories. Including the the last photo out of a flat window of an eastern bloc soviet style concrete fab building (probably common in 1980s era Poland) Little nit-picking: The Duke Nukem 3D running on an 300 MHz is a bit out of era, given it was almost 2 years old game when the hardware got release. Quake 2, Hexen 2, Unreal 1, Half Life 1 or Age of Empires 1 would be games of that era (end of 1997/early 1998). (mind that MHz race was in full speed back in late 1990s, a two year old PC was considered "stone age", a two year old game looked "like from stone age")	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Yocto: Tools for building a custom embedded Linux distribution - based2 https://www.yoctoproject.org/ ====== lowercased [https://www.yoctoproject.org](https://www.yoctoproject.org) "The Yocto Project (YP) is an open source collaboration project that helps developers create custom Linux-based systems regardless of the hardware architecture." ~~~ Jemm Press releases should really have a description of the project or at least a link ~~~ umvi Most people in the industry know about the two big players - yocto and buildroot. It's for when you need a custom minimal Linux distro for your gadget (IoT, router, modem, SoC, etc.) ------ swiley I personally haven’t been impressed with yocto: It’s about as intuitive as gentoo and reliable as buildroot. Maybe I was using it wrong though. I think it’s a good idea. ~~~ ernst_klim >I personally haven’t been impressed with yocto That's a very mild way to express my feeling about it. Maybe I'm asking too much, but Yocto/openembedded is the worst piece of software I've ever dealt with. The build system is a huge pile of opaque and fragile scripts. It's so fragile, that if you don't put a space before a list of options, it would be concatenated with other options without a space, leading to incorrect options. Because there are no lists, lists are just strings of space-separated words. Who needs proper data types? There are no modularity either, everything is configured through strange variables with names like CONFIG_image_graphics_mesa_package=... God knows how this naming works. Of course nothing is documented, and the discoverability is extremely low: everything is done through hundreds of opaque shell scripts, python scripts, half-baked python scripts for their build system. The overall design of the build system is abysmally bad and fragile, and it's harder to get a notion how the things work than to just build everything with your own scripts. Oh, and when something is wrong, build system just returns python stacktrace. Is it that hard to use proper abstractions, data types, docstrings, introspection mechanisms so that everything would become transparent, obvious and sane? ~~~ usr1106 > Of course nothing is documented, and This is plain wrong. There is a whole bunch of manuals [https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/](https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/) And there are several books [https://www.yoctoproject.org/learn/books/](https://www.yoctoproject.org/learn/books/) Without understanding the philosophy behind the whole system and the recipe language just trying to "discover" something seems indeed mission impossible to me. Yes, the learning curve is steep. The recipe language is not always the least surprise if you don't understand it. On the other side, there is a lot of magic support in the system. If you know what you are doing writing recipes for new packages does not require much code. ~~~ ernst_klim > There is a whole bunch of manuals Ah, yeah, the manual. I forgot another abysmally bad part of Yocto: the manual. Yocto documentation is the single worst documentation I've ever dealt with. It's a huge giant wall of text which tells you... nothing concrete whatsoever. Wanna know how to change an image fs or image format? Go figure with the manual, just look at these entries: [https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/3.0/ref-manual/ref- manual....](https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/3.0/ref-manual/ref- manual.html#ref-images) [https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/3.0/ref-manual/ref- manual....](https://www.yoctoproject.org/docs/3.0/ref-manual/ref- manual.html#var-IMAGE_FSTYPES) So concise, but even more useless. Which filesystems could I use? How to know that? Ah, don't bother. The whole manual is a huge wall of text telling you what classes, tasks, recipes and dozens of other overengineered concepts are, but nothing about how to use them beyond the basic examples. Wanna build an fs for the device with a local storage and external ssd, good luck to figure out how: decoupling where machine starts and image ends, and which part should you modify. > Without understanding the philosophy behind the whole system and the recipe > language just trying to "discover" something seems indeed mission impossible > to me. Yeah, it's hard to introspect something which have dozens of concepts, yet no other form of introspection but file reading. And I'm fine with file reading, but with yocto half of important stuff is concealed within the build system, leaving just strange config variables and gluing scripts on the surface, making it incomprehensible for a sane person. ~~~ usr1106 > Which filesystems could I use? How to know that? A simple git grep IMAGE_FSTYPES brings you up a long list. File meta/classes/image_types.bbclass seems particular promising. And there it is [https://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/poky/tree/meta/cl...](https://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/poky/tree/meta/classes/image_types.bbclass?h=zeus#n260) I'm very far from claiming that Yocto is easy to understand. But you get much more than you pay for. What alternatives do you suggest with a similar functionality? Do you think the Linux kernel documentation is better? The systemd source code easy to grasp? Still, they are widely used. I tend to say the price you pay for those is that you need to employ an expert and the expert needs to spend quite some time on it. If you buy a product you are entitled to request something from your vendor. Good luck if you are a small company. I even tried when working for a 50,000 people corporation in the past and we got very little after many years of paying huge fees. In open source it's take it or leave it. Preferably take it and contribute to make it better. ------ m0zg I wish they'd generate toolchains I didn't have to install in order for them to work, like Buildroot already does. With Buildroot I can just tar/gz the toolchain and libs and integrate them into a build system. This lets me support cross-build in a relatively pain-free way. Buildroot toolchains do not care where they are located on the filesystem, so e.g. Bazel can download and unpack them without any issues and they work fine. In contrast, Yocto generates toolchains that have to be _installed_ and in which the installer has to _rewrite the locations of dynamic libs_ during installation. This makes Yocto toolchains effectively hostile to build automation. ~~~ nrclark If you find yourself wrestling with this in the future, you might try experimenting with Yocto's SDK generation capabilities. Most image recipes have a 'populate_sdk' task that will generate a self-extracting shell script that includes a full cross-compilation toolchain and a set of libraries for the target. You can also add custom components to the SDK very easily. Our CI system generates the SDK along with every build of our Yocto image. Another CI job grabs the SDK and uses it for some out-of-tree compilation work. It's very straightforward to automate that way. ~~~ m0zg Yes, and that shell script can't be simply unpacked. It has to run, and when it does, it rewrites paths to libs that the toolchain needs to pull in so that they point to the correct installed locations. In contrast, Buildroot toolchains require that only relative paths match, and do not require that absolute paths are embedded into the binaries and *.so's. ~~~ nrclark You're right, of course - I wouldn't say that Yocto's SDK generator is perfect. But it does work fine, and you can install the SDK anywhere you want. From a CI system's point of view, what's the logical difference between [tar xf toolchain.tar.gz] and [./install_sdk.sh -yd .]? ------ nrclark Thanks to the Yocto team for a great release. I'm excited to start playing with the new hash-equivalency support, which is the biggest addition in this release IMO. Keep up the good work! Yocto is an amazing project, and I'm a heavy-user in my day job. ------ karmicthreat I was really hoping for big usability/learning curve improvements with 3.0. I've tried using it and other engineers I know have tried. It just ends up being a complete cluster. ------ usr1106 Yocto steep learning curve is a fact. [https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD4M5FoHz- TxMfBFrDKfI...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD4M5FoHz- TxMfBFrDKfIS_GLY25Qsfyj) is an attempt to help. Disclaimer: I have not watched them yet. ------ Const-me When I needed an embedded Linux, I wrote a 3-pages long shell script to customize vendor-supplied Debian image. Most of these 3 pages are sudo apt-get purge commands (I don't need much except kernel). Pretty sure I would have spent at least 10x more time building my own image from scratch. ------ louthy Got excited then, because I thought it was a follow up to the Yocto 808 [1] [1] [http://www.e-licktronic.com/en/content/25-yocto- tr808-clone-...](http://www.e-licktronic.com/en/content/25-yocto-tr808-clone- tr-808) ------ qiqitori I sometimes use Yocto at work to rebuild certain recipes in an embedded Linux distribution, but I'm really confused about what "Yocto" and what "Poky" mean. If anyone knows and has time to dispel my confusion, that would be awesome. (I'm trying to answer a bunch of my own questions in here -- please let me know if I got anything wrong.) "BitBake" is easy -- that's the command you run to rebuild "BitBake recipes" (a recipe is something like a Makefile, except that it's more "meta" \-- it defines what to run in order to build software packages, i.e. how to find and build a source directory that may have Makefiles/CMakeLists/whathaveyou in it -- so I think it's a bit like e.g. an RPM spec file). So you run stuff like 'bitbake -c clean packagename' or 'bitbake -C compile packagename'. (BTW, I often want to do things in a single command -- is that possible? Reloading the whole cache every time gets old after a while.) Fine okay, "Yocto" is presumably the name of the entire project. But what's Poky? > Poky is a reference distribution of the Yocto Project®. It contains the > OpenEmbedded Build System (BitBake and OpenEmbedded Core) as well as a set > of metadata to get you started building your own distro. Hrm, what's OpenEmbedded Core? > OpenEmbedded-Core is a layer containing the core metadata for current > versions of OpenEmbedded. It is distro-less (can build a functional image > with DISTRO = "nodistro") and contains only emulated machine support. Hrm, okay. (BTW, for the people who don't know -- "metadata" most likely refers to a collection of "BitBake" recipes (i.e. a directory containing loosely related BitBake recipes), so the "core metadata" would likely be the recipe for at least the Linux kernel.) (BTW2, in BitBake, you customize recipes using "layers". The first layer contains recipes that build things in a generic way, and then you add other "layers" that contain "bbapend" files that override variables or commands in the lower-layer recipes to build something the way you need it.) Okay, so is the "OpenEmbedded Build System" still part of the Yocto project? From Wikipedia: "BitBake is co-maintained by the Yocto Project and the OpenEmbedded project." Okay, that explains that a bit. But why are they separate in the first place? Why does "Poky" have such a weird name, and what kind of recipes does it bring to the table? Looking at the repository ([http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/poky/tree/meta](http://git.yoctoproject.org/cgit/cgit.cgi/poky/tree/meta)), that's quite a lot of useful packages. One other question that just popped up in my mind: are there any Desktop Linux distros that use this as their build system? ~~~ wdfx > Why does "Poky" have such a weird name "Poky" in English means "small". The idea being that the distro is engineered to build small OS images for small embedded devices. ~~~ kadoban Though that definition is correct (had to look it up) the more common one seems to be "annoyingly slow". at least that's the only one I actually knew or ever heard. ~~~ shakna It might be a slightly older phrasing, but to match your anecdote: I've never heard of poky meaning slow. More: > It's located in a pokey little village in the middle of damn near nowhere. ~~~ zcrackerz You've never heard of a slow-poke? Similar usage, you can be pokey or you can be a slow-poke, both mean slow. The "small" definition is new to me. Seems like difference between British/American English. ~~~ shakna > You've never heard of a slow-poke? Sure, but that doesn't mean "slow slow". The poke part of that that means something similar to "yoke". A slowpoke is something that's slow and dragging you down with it. ------ based2 src: [https://linuxfr.org/news/yocto-zeus](https://linuxfr.org/news/yocto- zeus)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How to find an “entry level” job? - startDestroyer I will graduate engineering very soon and I'm starting to look for an entry level job.<p>The problem is, every job with titles like "Graduate, Junior, etc.." end up with 3 to 5 years of experience in the requirements.<p>Am I doing something wrong? ====== pitt1980 [http://www.amazon.com/2-Hour-Job-Search-Technology- Faster/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/2-Hour-Job-Search-Technology- Faster/dp/1607741709/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=&qid=) I think this is a really useful, easy to read, book good luck ~~~ startDestroyer Thanks, will do. ------ ohjeez Search for "entry level" rather than "graduate." ~~~ startDestroyer I still need to do an extensive search but this dons't sound like a key word that is used much. ~~~ techthroway443 It's used a lot more for the kind of job you're looking for than the keywords you were using. The point is you want to use keywords that are okay with having zero experience and that are used in job postings. Entry level fits both of those. ------ bwackwat "You have 4 years of experience with a B.S. degree." Sounds perfect to me. ~~~ startDestroyer So school years count as experience ? ~~~ bwackwat Perhaps not "work" or "industry" experience, yet _certainly_ a kind of experience.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
MapLatency.com – check latency to your website from any country - forcer http://www.maplatency.com/ ====== lucb1e Cool, it works quite well. Get the feeling it's being hammered though, with 500ms GETs in the UK for a Dutch site (would expect 40ms) and 24000ms pageloads (onready; simulated browser; costs quite a few resources). It randomly works well though, giving accurate results I mean. Overall they seem representative. What I found very interesting is the dns test. My personal blog loads in just over a second in south america (hosted at home in the Netherlands), makes sense. DNS however is as fast in south America as here! I guess someone visited the site and it got cached. Other places, e.g. India, gave normal results (i.e. what you'd expect, limited by the speed of light), no recent visitors there I guess. ------ rajington Really cool, might need to average more samples though. I used it to view changes from the server move for one of the largest games in the world: [http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/help- support/q8sJL...](http://boards.na.leagueoflegends.com/en/c/help- support/q8sJLh1M-na-server-roadmap-update-upcoming-na-server-move) ------ binjoi This is a great tool, thanks for sharing. Reminds me to keep things straight and fast. ------ wpyz Looks good. It would be useful if you used the pushState API so that the URL changes and I could pass pre-set links to sites around. ------ PauloManrique Great tool! It shows the difference a service like Cloudflare can do for you! ------ unusximmortalis two thumbs up!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
France's TV5Monde 'hit by Islamic State Hackers' - DangerousPie http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-32229152 ====== DangerousPie Struggling to find a better source for this, but German news reports say that not only their website but also their actual TV channels have been down for hours now: [https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.zeit.de%2Fdigital%2F2015-04%2Fcyberangriff- is-sender&edit-text=)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: How to get started with Linux kernel developing/debugging? - jesusofsuburbia Hello HN,<p>I'm a developer and Linux user for quite some time. I run Arch Linux and already experienced with different kernels, also with building some special Kernels from AUR and applying some patches, etc.<p>Now I have a minor issue with my touchpad, I know it's caused by a change between 4.9 and 4.11, not sure what exactly, and I would love to figure this out on my own and eventually submit a patch. This is knowledge/a skill I was eager to gain for quite some time now.<p>So, Dear HNers, what would you recommend to an experienced programmer to get started with debugging and developing the Linux kernel? I'm looking for everything that you made good experiences with, be it articles, tutorials, videos or even books.<p>Thanks to everyone! ====== rijoja Not a kernel developer, yet! I'd say that you ought to start out with using qemu/kvm to spin up a virtual machine. The qemu documentation itself contains some info on how to hook up a gdb debugger to the os. Since it's a real hardware problem probably you'll need to set up some usb forwarding to the qemu program, but that should be doable I think. Again not a kernel hacker but good luck to you!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
What to Expect at Google I/O 2015:Google Cloud, Google Now for Apple Watch SWAG - stevep2007 http://www.networkworld.com/article/2925083/opensource-subnet/what-to-expect-at-google-i-o-2015-google-cloud-google-now-for-apple-watch-and-swag.html?nsdr=true ====== stevep2007 Google will celebrate independent software developers that build software with its products and services with two days of tech talks from the company's top technologists at the upcoming Google I/O conference. It's the one conference where developers get better seats at the keynote talks than the press. Google will surprise, delight, and throw a couple of haymakers at its competition.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
If you want to understand Silicon Valley, watch Silicon Valley - trequartista https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Silicon-Valley ====== snowwrestler Amazing anecdote from a 2016 New Yorker article on the show: > During one visit to Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, about six > writers sat in a conference room with Astro Teller, the head of GoogleX, who > wore a midi ring and kept his long hair in a ponytail. “Most of our research > meetings are fun, but this one was uncomfortable,” Kemper told me.... > “He claimed he hadn’t seen the show, and then he referred many times to > specific things that had happened on the show,” Kemper said. “His message > was, ‘We don’t do stupid things here. We do things that actually are going > to change the world, whether you choose to make fun of that or not.’ ” > (Teller could not be reached for comment.) > Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a > dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He > wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him > fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said. > “It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while > it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use > this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.” [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how- silicon-v...](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon- valley-nails-silicon-valley) ~~~ holywoly Any shows of the same style on Hollywood? Do the show producers feel something similar to some in their own industry or their surreality is just reality for them? Are they brave enough to mock powerful people they may wish to work with later? Would be fun to watch one on Hollywood and they should have very intimate details to bare. ~~~ vincentmarle > Would be fun to watch one on Hollywood and they should have very intimate > details to bare. Try Californication or Entourage ~~~ ImprovedSilence Heck yeah, Entourage was good. Way good. ------ ibudiallo A few months ago I wrote a certain story here and to my surprise I received a call from Dan Lyons, one of the writers of the show. We had long discussions about silicon valley and his new book coming out (I'm featured in it). A few weeks ago he was in LA and we had another long discussion about the show. Silicon Valley is the show most startup founders will refuse to watch. My startup was featured on TechCrunch Disrupt, we were on stage talking about how we will change the world with our product. Then things didn't particularly go as planed. I discovered the show and started watching it shortly after. It was painful to see that they portrayed our exact journey as it happened. Only the show poked fun of the mistakes we were making. I watched it not only as a comedy, but also as a documentary that would predict our fate. It was eye-opening! My favorite part (and most humiliating) was when we pitched our startup to a non-silicon valley investor and she simply replied: "OK, cut the crap. Which website are you scraping?" All my co-founders were offended by the show. I must admit, its painful to watch someone else make fun of the things you put your heart to. But from time to time, someone has to make fun of you or you start to take yourself too seriously. If you are trying to make it in silicon valley, please watch the show. At best, it will help you make your startup more grounded. ~~~ nkoren Man, you need to get better co-founders! I agree that Silicon Valley often hits _painfully_ close to home, but that's precisely what makes it so fantastic. My own startup has been mostly outside of America, but we get enough brushes with Silicon Valley culture -- or, worse, wannabe Silicon Valley culture -- to make the show really resonate. Even closer to home, for me personally, is the Australian comedy "Utopia" (or "Dreamland", depending on the market). It's about a municipal urban development corporation, which is basically my startup's customer group. One episode features a sendup of what my own startup does (online collaborative infrastructure planning and stakeholder engagement) -- or, more to the point, what some of our would-be customers want it to do. You can tell that the writers know what they're talking about. Damn near killed me to watch it. Highly, highly recommended! ~~~ mcbain Utopia is a documentary, not a comedy. I know people that can’t watch it because it is like being in their office. ------ swampthinker My favorite Silicon Valley anecdote: "During the review process once the footage [of Techcrunch Disrupt] was woven in, another editor criticized the crowd shots for not featuring any women and blamed Berg for the oversight. '...Those were real shots of the real place, and we didn't frame women out.The world we're depicting is f---ed up.' said Berg" [https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/hbos- si...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.businessinsider.com/hbos-silicon- valley-had-diversity-problems-at-techcrunch-disrupt-2016-3) Sorry for the amp link, the main page was broken. ~~~ DoreenMichele Surprisingly even-handed piece: _There 's been debate about whether "Silicon Valley" the show should have more diversity than Silicon Valley the place, but Berg argues that a show made for entertainment not meant to be a "social-action wing" or be a force of change - the show is just satirizing the reality that the tech industry itself needs to take care of._ ~~~ BurningFrog One thing that mildly annoys me about the show is how white the cast is. At least in my Silicon Valley career, the "cast" around me has been vastly less so. ~~~ derangedHorse I have no idea where you're working at but if you've ever looked at Google's public diversity report (one of the largest companies in the valley), you'd see that your Silicon Valley career does not reflect what the majority of people in this very large company experience. [https://diversity.google/annual-report/](https://diversity.google/annual- report/) ~~~ BurningFrog By this report Google is 56.6% white. My experience is that white male Americans are roughly 25% of the Silicon Valley workforce, but if you bundle in white immigrants and women you might reach 40-50%. As I remember the TV show, the main characters are 80% white, and the Indian guy is the whitest one I've seen. Small sample, I know, and I'm not offended. Just a little bored... ~~~ smt88 > _the Indian guy is the whitest one I 've seen_ What do you mean by that? Can you explain? ~~~ choot > What do you mean by that? Can you explain? Maybe he means culturally ~~~ smt88 So a guy who was born and raised in Pakistan and has a Pakistani accent is culturally white? What exactly does that mean? Does it mean that he’s educated and wealthy? ~~~ choot I think he means, that guy is more culturally white than the Indians who he finds in the SV. ------ ng12 I always describe Silicon Valley (the show) as being solidly in the Uncanny Valley ([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_valley)). It's humorous and absurd, but at the same time so close to reality it's unsettling. ~~~ johan_larson "Silicon Valley" is like Silicon Valley, but it goes to 0x11. ~~~ raverbashing Or to 0x0B? ~~~ rusk 3? ~~~ esmi 0x11 = 17 That’s like 6 above 11! About right in my opinion. ~~~ walshemj Our Hexadecimal codes go to Q - bonus points if any one gets the Traveller SF RPG in joke. Traveller is where of course Elite ripped off the initial space combat system from. ------ slivym It's quite amazing how good a job Silicon Valley does considering how badly wrong it could go (I'm looking at you Big Bang Theory). I'm sure there are quite a few industries that could have similar comedies about them from people who really know what the industry is like. W1A is another great example. ~~~ blocked_again Pardon my ignorance but what did big bang theory got wrong? ~~~ 24gttghh Pardon the terminology, but I consider that show to be Nerd-Blackface. I'm not sure how else to describe it. I find how the show deals with anything technical to be an affront to intelligence in general. ~~~ smsm42 I think you set your expectations way to high if you expect a general-appeal TV show to get what theoretical physicists to right. That said, a couple of moments were pretty good - e.g. when the guys were thinking about something with "eye of the tiger" playing on the background. Nice lampshading of the fact that it's impossible to show intellectual work on TV. They had some pretty good moments early on. They should've stopped there. ~~~ rthomas6 Yes! That scene was hilarious. I also like the scene when they're super excited that they hooked a lamp up to a port on the open internet and someone turned it on. Then someone asks, why spend the time to do this? And they respond, because we can. It reminded me of me and my friends in college, and the response we would get for some of the things we did. ------ jpm_sd This is a pretty great article on the same subject from the New Yorker in 2016. [https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how- silicon-v...](https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/how-silicon- valley-nails-silicon-valley) My favorite part: >>> During one visit to Google’s headquarters, in Mountain View, about six writers sat in a conference room with Astro Teller, the head of GoogleX, who wore a midi ring and kept his long hair in a ponytail. “Most of our research meetings are fun, but this one was uncomfortable,” Kemper told me. GoogleX is the company’s “moonshot factory,” devoted to projects, such as self-driving cars, that are difficult to build but might have monumental impact. Hooli, a multibillion-dollar company on “Silicon Valley,” bears a singular resemblance to Google. (The Google founder Larry Page, in Fortune: “We’d like to have a bigger impact on the world by doing more things.” Hooli’s C.E.O., in season two: “I don’t want to live in a world where someone makes the world a better place better than we do.”) The previous season, Hooli had launched HooliXYZ, its own “moonshot factory,” whose experiments were slapstick absurdities: monkeys who use bionic arms to masturbate; powerful cannons for launching potatoes across a room. “He claimed he hadn’t seen the show, and then he referred many times to specific things that had happened on the show,” Kemper said. “His message was, ‘We don’t do stupid things here. We do things that actually are going to change the world, whether you choose to make fun of that or not.’ ” (Teller could not be reached for comment.) Teller ended the meeting by standing up in a huff, but his attempt at a dramatic exit was marred by the fact that he was wearing Rollerblades. He wobbled to the door in silence. “Then there was this awkward moment of him fumbling with his I.D. badge, trying to get the door to open,” Kemper said. “It felt like it lasted an hour. We were all trying not to laugh. Even while it was happening, I knew we were all thinking the same thing: Can we use this?” In the end, the joke was deemed “too hacky to use on the show.” ------ danans Love the show partly for how deeply researched its identity and culturally driven jokes are. Here are a few: Erlich passing Dinesh off as Latino to get a deal on a graffiti logo design: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSzmVFF58Mo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSzmVFF58Mo) Dinesh recounting to a puzzled Gilfolye about how he was a "cool" kid back in Pakistan, and why: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKz0M6SmQ8c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKz0M6SmQ8c) The latter one, in particular, implies that the writers had a deeper than average understanding of the different youth cultures of the US and South Asian cultures at a particular time in history. ~~~ screye They ring true. Some moments don't even have to exaggerated to be funny. That is exactly how being "cool" works in parts of India, and just the fact is enough to make a person from the west crack up. Dinesh is one of the few nerdy Indian stereotypes that I do not mind. All the others seem like caricatures and generalizations of South Asians. Dinesh on the other hand, could be sitting right across my table, coding.... If The Big Short is considered a great "documentary" for the 2008 crisis, then SV does even better for the Valley. ~~~ danans > That is exactly how being "cool" works in parts of India, and just the fact > is enough to make a person from the west crack up. Indeed. In the context of the show, and American culture, it was Dinesh's perspective that stood out as seeming odd or unique. But I wonder if the post-1950s American/Hollywood understanding of "cool" \- the glorification of rebel/outcaste that Gilfoyle's personality represents - is itself really the anomaly on the global scale. I'd imagine many/most parts of the world don't develop a romantic cultural trope around the underdog, or the person who doesn't fit in with the mainstream. But I'd be interested to learn otherwise. ------ corysama I love the running joke that the main characters work on fake technobabble, but the background companies (particularly the TechCrunch episode) are babbling about stuff that sounds fake but is real tech. “Making the world a better place through Paxos distributed consensus!” ~~~ saagarjha I mean, it would be kind of odd if the show's writers came up with something novel and instead of rushing to patent it decided to make a TV show out of it. Meanwhile, it's OK for the other companies to work on things that already exist–it adds to their run-of-the-mill-ness. ~~~ elliekelly That hasn't stopped people from trying to make PiedPiper a viable startup though: [https://www.wsj.com/articles/actual-silicon-valley- startup-g...](https://www.wsj.com/articles/actual-silicon-valley-startup-gets- inspiration-from-hbos-silicon-valley-startup-1542391937) ~~~ geggam My experience in Silicon Valley has me uncomfortably laughing at the show. This startup is laughing at themselves and the valley. It's so absurd that a VC actually funded this it makes me wonder if they aren't laughing too. ------ garmaine I find it hits a bit close to home, so much so as to ruin the comedy sometimes... it’d be funny if it weren’t so true, which is depressing. Still watch it, and love it though. And super impressed that a Hollywood production finally understood Northern California. That never happens (see: The Social Network, Hackers, every Steve Jobs movie, etc.) ~~~ cknoxrun I would highly suggest checking out Halt and Catch Fire. It's a period piece, but I think it captures the spirit of Northern California. The first 2 seasons are in Texas before they jump ship to San Francisco. ~~~ devmunchies ditto. Its starts off with a young ex-IBM executive trying to build the first IBM compatible machine and everything that goes with launching the new product. Later seasons go into things like server farms, early gaming, and social networking. really underrated show. ~~~ ticmasta I really like the historical/tech story lines but the soap-opera interpersonal relationships wrecked it for me. The whole "broken imperfection" thing often goes to far and really detracts from the story. ~~~ marshray You might like this documentary on the origins of National Semiconductor: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCbRZGDV- ws](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DCbRZGDV-ws) ------ smsm42 I love the show, but there's a lot of things that Silicon Valley is that it does not cover. It's not the fault of the show - it probably would be much worse if it did. But some aspects of SV - like how much it is integrated into the big politics and yet how much they try to downplay it and make it look like their behemoth companies are just young and agile rebels playing this new Internet thing, as if it were the early 90s... Or how monocultural and group- thinky many places are, and how office politics often becomes more important than tech (but don't tell this to anyone, we're not like those old industries!) SV series kinda touches on this, but only lightly, mostly concentrating on things around tech. It probably makes for a much better show. ~~~ humanrebar > ...how office politics often becomes more important than tech... Basically all the Hooli scenes are about that. Also just about the entire careers of Big Head, Jack Barker, and Denpok the "spiritual advisor". ~~~ smsm42 In Hooli there's one big player - Benson - who is erratic and egomaniacal, and everybody else does what he says. He is a personification of a jerk (I mean, look at his signature!) and serves as a kind of super-villain that is the source of all evil. But usually there's no super-villain, there's just "culture" and everybody is playing by the set of rules that nobody in particular invented. ------ Apocryphon It’s pretty crazy how the real SV has been obligingly giving the real show new material since it first debuted, with ever-increasing excess, quixotic ventures in search of markets, worsening scandals, and externalities everywhere! ~~~ ip26 There were also several moments the real show gave the real SV new material. ------ nathan_f77 > Somebody gets an idea almost right, but not quite, and their business fails; > then someone else does it just a little bit better and they are viewed as a > genius for the rest of their life. I'm still thinking about this comment about Fieldbook shutting down [1], and the "What Happened at Fieldbook" [2] article: > In contrast, our closest competitor, Airtable, seems to be getting more > traction. Was really sad to read that. [1] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18461395](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18461395) [2] [https://medium.com/the-fieldbook-blog/what-happened-at- field...](https://medium.com/the-fieldbook-blog/what-happened-at- fieldbook-d70bf25b3968) ~~~ Aeolun I was thinking about the same thing. Probably because of recent news about Airtable. ~~~ avinium Read the same article yesterday, which got me thinking. I'm not familiar with Fieldbook, but I do wonder if they weren't as savvy as Airtable when it came to sales & finance strategy. Products alone rarely make a business. It's a perfectly viable strategy to keep forging ahead at a loss while you slowly gain market share. You obviously need to show revenue growth (sales savvy) to keep the funding coming through (finance savvy). I'm definitely guilty of getting all caught up in product and neglecting the business side of things. ~~~ Aeolun I feel like technically Fieldbook had pretty much everything that they needed to compete with Airtable. Airtable probably does a better job of attracting customers with their extensive collection of premade content though. But I cannot get over the ‘candy’ look in airtable. ------ jancsika > It’s more fun to root for the underdog. Outside of dumb luck, I don't see a plot arc that favors Richard's team at all. Especially when one of the overarching themes is that over the seasons the "underdog" throws friends under the bus, hacks competitors, rents a botnet, lies, commit fraud, and all kinds of other abuses. What's the difference between Richard dumping a gf because she uses spaces and Gavin screwing over Jack because Jack wanted to get dropped off first from the private plane? The only difference I see is that Richard's narcissism doesn't come with the weight of a $100 billion company behind it. Richard's bad behavior comes off as less jarring because almost all of the time he has considerably less power than Gavin. Richard doesn't have a wall of lawyers who he can casually probe about assassinating a foe. Gavin does. Edit: clarification ~~~ Novashi You know, the show continuing well past where the story makes sense is very much in the vein of Silicon Valley. Plot planning be damned. ------ imgabe King of the Hill has also resurfaced on Hulu recently after not being available to stream anywhere. Mike Judge has a real talent for nailing essence of a culture. ~~~ komali2 Woah, I had no idea Mike Judge was involved with King of the Hill. Growing up in Texas, I never appreciated how on-point the show was, until I left the state and realized that the subtle culture cues of Texas didn't exist elsewhere, which means that King of the Hill _nailed_ it. I mean, _every detail_ is perfect. ~~~ c3534l Hank Hill was basically the "stop hwackin' off in muh toolshed" guy from Beavis and Butthead. ------ felipesoc I always like to compare Silicon Valley to The Big Bang Theory. TBBT seems like a parody of the stereotype of the people they are parodying while SV is a true parody. I'm always thinking "haha, that's so true" when watching SV, but never while watching TBBT. ~~~ rchaud TBBT is not a "parody". It is your standard-issue broadcast network sitcom about 3 males, 3 females and their friendships as they date and break up with each other, marry each other and have kids. This is a successful premise that has stood for decades in American TV. Friends and How I Met Your Mother followed the same principles almost to a tee. That's how you get a show that runs for 10 seasons in this day and age. Pointing out that TBBT's parody is poor is like saying Will & Grace did not portray a representative picture of gay urbanites. ~~~ InitialLastName It's funny that you compare TBBT to Will & Grace, since they have very different receptions among their subjects. I know lots of gay urbanites who feel well-represented by Will & Grace. I know lots of people in the "trad nerd" set, but none of them see The Big Bang Theory and say "yep, that's me". ------ Brimstone I believe that some of the genius of the show has to go to Dan Lyons as well. He worked at HubSpot for a stint and wrote a book about it called "Disrupted" ([https://www.amazon.com/Disrupted-My-Misadventure-Start-Up- Bu...](https://www.amazon.com/Disrupted-My-Misadventure-Start-Up- Bubble/dp/0316306096)). Really funny, in a sad way. ~~~ rkho I read through this book in a few hours and really couldn't put it down ------ dekhn I asked my friend if he watched it (I don't) and he said it hit too close to home. I nodded, then he added "... because I'm a consultant for the show, and every year they meet with us and we give them ideas from our jobs and things to put in scenes" ------ wingkongex Dan Lyons, author of "Disrupted," is also on the writing staff for the show. Not quite Silicon Valley but if you read the book, some of the stuff from his time at Hubspot makes it into the show. Judge surrounded himself with a lot of different perspectives on all of this. ------ adtac Bill posted this on /r/SiliconValleyHBO: [https://old.reddit.com/r/SiliconValleyHBO/comments/9yh7dp/wh...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SiliconValleyHBO/comments/9yh7dp/who_wore_it_better/) I like to think he photoshopped it in his spare time lol. ------ adoago Pied Piper has the Conjoined Triangles of Success. Asana has... [https://wavelength.asana.com/pyramid-clarity-strategic- align...](https://wavelength.asana.com/pyramid-clarity-strategic-alignment/) ------ wturner Dan Lyons, one of the writers of the show recently wrote a new book titled "Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us ..." ~~~ gcmac Also worth reading his book "Disrupted" \- the book is every bit as funny and relevant as Silicon Valley ~~~ Zanni I loved Dan Lyons fake Steve Job columns, but Disrupted didn't work for me at all. He presented himself as the lone adult in a sea of misfit children, but came across as a clueless and bitter crank. The same (admittedly keen) observations about the corporate culture would have gone down so much better (for me) if he hadn't tried to crammed every page with so much smug superiority. ------ saagarjha I mean, he's not really from Silicon Valley, so I guess we should take his viewpoint with a grain of salt ;) > I have friends in Silicon Valley who refuse to watch the show because they > think it’s just making fun of them. But yeah, it's good to take a look at satire of yourself once in a while. Often they can tell you stuff that you may have overlooked, and generally they're not too hurtful when doing so. ------ cutler You might also like "Nathan Barley (2005)" \- a savage British TV parody of the mid-2000s startup scene in Shoreditch, London. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqfkuc5mawg&list=PLTM- Dbun10...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqfkuc5mawg&list=PLTM- Dbun10Dp86u1TzEKkRkPNqvb0Qt2k) ~~~ nmca I'd second this recommendation - it's incredible. ------ Zelphyr Maybe it’s longing for byegone days on my part but it feels like the atmosphere of the Valley and tech in general has changed so much so quickly that my head is spinning. It feels, well, not fun anymore a lot of the time. Development by copy-and- paste and gluing other peoples code together to arrive at a half-baked solution instead of exploring the code to try to understand it as a system so the solution you arrive at is the most effective that time and skill permit. Being more infatuated with nerd culture than building something great. (I see this a LOT!) Chasing dollars instead of knowledge. And, don’t get me wrong; it’s ok to want to make money. Even a lot of it. But that should be the icing on the cake of solving real problems. I feel like we used to do this stuff because it was what we loved to do. But now it feels like too many people do it because they want to look cool and/or they want a lot of money. The romance is dying. ------ localhost Dan, "Fake Steve Jobs" Lyons also worked as a consultant for Silicon Valley. ------ pkaye Silicon Valley is more than just Web 2.0 companies. If you went to an average ASIC company I doubt it would this crazy. ~~~ esmi Maybe not today. But we’ve had our moments. [https://youtu.be/-P28LKWTzrI](https://youtu.be/-P28LKWTzrI) ------ dudul I found that the first few seasons (maybe first 2 or 3) did a great job at parodying the Valley. They were truly uncanny to watch for me sometimes, and I don't even live in SF. The past few years, the quality degraded significantly IMO. It mostly turned into "The Office but with developers and geeks!!" \- which doesn't make it a bad show, but not as witty and thought provoking. I wonder if it's past the point where it needs to reach a wider audience, just like any other show. ~~~ mav3rick The Office deliberately has a mockumentary style with the characters breaking the "4th wall" in a very believable way. SV doesn't have that and you don't really know the "real" motivation and feelings of a character till the plot unravels. They couldn't be further apart in structure. ~~~ dudul I'm talking about the general plots/storylines, not the structure of the show. ------ PopeDotNinja HBO's Silicon Valley isn't a comdedy, it's a documentary. I've met archetype on that show, and have been a couple of them myself. ------ coleifer This well-written article has been discussed before, but I figured it was worth posting. It's a bit more in the "black humor" vein than Silicon Valley, but it also just nails the real SV vibe: [https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny- valle...](https://nplusonemag.com/issue-25/on-the-fringe/uncanny-valley/) ------ justifier > Even a huge believer in technology like me has to laugh when some character > talks about how they’re going to change the world with an app that tells you > whether what you’re eating is a hot dog or not. sorry bill but one could argue in a round about way that andrej karpathy did do just that ;P the hot dog identifying app is one of my favourite examples of how spot on the show is here(o) is a question i asked to one of the show's technical consultants whether the choice of 'not hotdog' was a reference to one of karpathy's early demos(i\|\|ii) timanglade> Ha seems like a fun coincidence. (o) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14639161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14639161) the yt link is now a dead link.. use either of the below (i) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6aEYuemt0M&t=465](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6aEYuemt0M&t=465) ; Title: Deep Learning for Computer Vision (Andrej Karpathy, OpenAI) ; Desc: The talks at the Deep Learning School on September 24/25, 2016 were amazing. I clipped out individual talks from the full live streams and provided links to each below in case that's useful for people who want to watch specific talks several times (like I do). (ii) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyovmAtoUx0&t=5787](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyovmAtoUx0&t=5787) ; timestamped from the full stream; Title: Bay Area Deep Learning School Day 1 at CEMEX auditorium, Stanford ; Desc: Day 1 of Bay Area Deep Learning School featuring speakers Hugo Larochelle, Andrej Karpathy, Richard Socher, Sherry Moore, Ruslan Salakhutdinov and Andrew Ng. ; ------ Symbiote > This kind of back-channel relationship—satirists texting casually with the > satirized—is a departure from much of comedic history. _Yes, Minister_, which satirizes the British government, supposedly had close access to several people in government, though it was probably careful rather than casual. The clips on Youtube are all distorted, don't bother with them, but find S01E04 "Big Brother". ------ pier25 Mike Judge, one of the show runners, was in the valley during the 80s so it makes sense that there would be some truth. ~~~ rkho Dick Costolo and Dan Lyons also worked as consultants for the show. ------ christophilus Reminds me of this talk by a reporter turned startup employee turned author: [https://youtube.com/watch?v=G7vrCpWbmDw](https://youtube.com/watch?v=G7vrCpWbmDw) One of the funniest things I’ve seen, while also being sad, because it’s so true. ------ VikingCoder Silicon Valley The Internship The Circle It's possible to get a somewhat accurate view from watching these, but you have to know which parts to completely ignore. I kind of wish there were "this is accurate" edits of those shows and movies. ~~~ Apocryphon There's also the short-lived Betas, on Amazon Video. It wasn't as good as HBO's show is (the characters are far more grating), yet the younger and scrappier milieu feels like it captures the youth-obsessed, juvenile segment of startup culture better. And it's also based in San Francisco, unlike the South Bay-centered Silicon Valley. ------ selimthegrim The Lena easter egg in plain sight was amusing during a few episodes [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenna) ~~~ adtac I don't think that was a easter egg given that they work on compression. It's a standard test for image compression, after all. ------ Nuance I wonder what Bill Gates thinks of the character Jack Barker. ~~~ idontpost I thought he was more a send-up of Ballmer than Gates, although that might just be the physical resemblance. ~~~ dmschulman He is a Steve Ballmer sendup, but Gates and Ballmer worked closely for many years at Microsoft and had many fundamental disagreements about the direction the company should take. Ballmer refocused Microsoft from software to hardware when he became CEO (hence "The Box" joke on the show). Ballmer himself probably doesn't like the caricature (he's a bit of an internet darling, isn't he? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I14b-C67EXY)), but would someone who worked with Ballmer find it accurate? Likely. Not to mention, Gates wrote the article about Silicon Valley linked in this thread. ------ tnolet People who enjoy Silicon Valley should read the book Disrupted. The writer went on join the writers at Silicon Valley. ------ Stratoscope So how does one subscribe to this show without subscribing to HBO? I looked at their website and don't see anything else I would want to watch. I really want to watch Silicon Valley, but that's the only thing HBO offers that I'm interested in. Can I buy just this one show from them? ~~~ thaas53 Just subscribe to HBO Now from your choice of providers for one month and binge watch all the seasons. Cancel when done and only paid $15. ~~~ Stratoscope Thanks, I suppose that would work. It would probably take me a few months to watch all the episodes, but if the show is as good as everyone says, it would be worth it. ------ newnewpdro Office Space, Idiocracy, and Silicon Valley. It's practically a NatGeo series about the USA. ------ blimey74 If you like Silicon Valley check out The IT Crowd, also equally hilarious take on the world of IT. ~~~ rchaud Aside from the completely overused line "Hello IT, have you tried turning it off and turning it back on again?", the show has almost nothing to do with IT. Apart from a couple of IT-related plotlines, most of the episodes take place outside their office. ~~~ humanrebar > ...the show has almost nothing to do with IT. "The Internet" device. All the tech illiterate coworkers. Jen's imposter syndrome. Moss's on-the-spectrum reactions. Online dating when it was still nerdy. Novelty websites. Viral cultural events. But it wasn't exclusively geek humor. There were broader episodes involving Jen's and Roy's romantic lives too. ------ zby What is the best way to watch it online? I have bought Netflix subscription - but I am dissapointed now - the library of historic films available for me (in Poland) is very small and the current productions are kind of mechanistic. And no SV in Netflix. ------ orarbel1 Everything you need to know about how Silicon Valley funding works in a little over a minute [https://youtu.be/BzAdXyPYKQo](https://youtu.be/BzAdXyPYKQo) ------ dragonwriter The final instance of “Silicon Valley” should be set in italics as a title (or quoted, if HN titles don't allow italics.) (Would presumably be just as true the other way around, but that's not the title of the piece.) ------ sergiotapia Does the show get any better? I stopped around the time they hacked the phones in that conference, I think season 2? It was a constant the leader fucking up and the gang coming through at the end - over and over and over. ~~~ agoodthrowaway It’s sad that’s all you got out of it. There’s a quite a bit of subtext in the show, particularly if you’re in SV. I often wonder if people outside the valley pick up on the themes or if it’s jusy slapstick to them. ------ davidwitt415 I don't think BillG quite got the 'Hotdog Not Hotdog' joke.. ------ stevewilhelm "Conjoined Triangles of Success" and "ruinous empathy." Pure genius. ~~~ dmschulman I have a copy of the Conjoined Triangles of Success tacked to my office wall. I don't think anyone I work with has keyed in on the fact yet that it's a joke from a TV show. It captures serious business jargon and corporate culture so well that it doesn't read as anything but. ------ dmode As someone living in the bubble, Silicon Valley felt way too real. Does this apply to tech company culture outside of the valley ? ------ sAbakumoff Also, read "Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start Up Bubble" that was written by one of the SV script authors. ------ joshu Fun fact: I'm in the background of the basketball court scene in Season 4 (and I am a consultant for the show) ------ kaizendad The fact that this is true just makes it hurt more that I am obviously Jared. ------ jiveturkey needs 2016 tag. ------ glenrivard Love the show and do think pretty realistic in an exaggerated way. ------ torgian I’ve only seen one episode of the show a couple years ago, and I basically found it boring. Keep in mind I’ve never been to Silicon Valley. All the comments here make it sound like a depressing place to be ------ samstave In 1999 we were working a very long shift waiting for the batch process on the AS/400 to go through and our FTP "edi" trNsfers to Sun to complete (an ftp script written for us by these four hacks, who founded linuxcare after this episode) (sifry, dibona, etc) We decided to go grab a beer and play pool while we waited for this new thing to execute based on this new language sun was having us convert everything to, XML... While at the pool place these girls in lingerie were walking about selling raffle tickets. We asked what they were for. "We are putting ourselves through school and we are selling raffle tickets for the lingerie we are wearing, for $5 a ticket." "I see, where are you ladies going to school" "Oh, we go to ___silicone_ __valley college... " \---- I wish this was a scene in Silicon Valley... it was ridiculously funny. ------ russellbeattie I haven't watched the show much, as I've lived and worked in Silicon Valley for 20+ years and I don't see much besides a superficial resemblance. I saw a bit of an episode where a few 'brogrammers' were making fun of the main character like it was a 'mean girls' high school, and I thought it was ridiculous. Then I saw another bit where one of the characters was threatening a kid for his Adderall prescription and, again, thought it was moronic. I haven't watched much else. I compare the show to Entourage: Amusing to those outside Hollywood, but completely ridiculous to anyone who actually works in the industry. ~~~ otachack Mike Judge does his homework. Being in the industry myself, he does many other aspects in the show. I recommend you try another episode, such as one that involves the VCs.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Effect of treating Covid-19 with hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin - AaronFriel https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1198743X2030505X ====== AaronFriel From the abstract: > Results > The initial search yielded 839 articles, of which 29 articles met our > inclusion criteria. All studies except one were conducted on hospitalized > patients and evaluated the effects of hydroxychloroquine with or without > azithromycin. Among the 29 articles, 3 were randomized controlled trials > (RCT), one was a non-randomized trial and 25 were observational studies, > including 10 with a critical risk of bias and 15 with a serious or moderate > risk of bias. After excluding studies with critical risk of bias, the meta- > analysis included 11,932 participants for the hydroxychloroquine group, > 8,081 for the hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin group and 12,930 for the > control group. Hydroxychloroquine was not significantly associated with > mortality: pooled Relative Risk RR=0.83 (95% CI: 0.65-1.06, n=17 studies) > for all studies and RR=1.09 (95% CI: 0.97-1.24, n=3 studies) for RCTs. > Hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin was associated with an increased > mortality: RR=1.27 (95% CI: 1.04-1.54, n=7 studies). We found similar > results with a Bayesian meta-analysis. > > Conclusion > Hydroxychloroquine alone was not associated with reduced mortality in > hospitalized COVID-19 patients but the combination of hydroxychloroquine and > azithromycin significantly increased mortality ------ AaronFriel Something I personally would find helpful is if someone with the appropriate background could talk through these results and some of the acronyms. This passage is quite dense, and I think I and - hopefully I'm underestimating the audience on HN - others would have difficulty parsing it: > After exclusion of studies with critical bias, the pooled RR for COVID-19 > mortality was 1.27 (95%CI: 1.04-1.54, n=7) indicating an increased mortality > linked to the use of hydroxychloroquine with azithromycin. With a baseline > hospital mortality of 26%, we identified a significant absolute risk > difference of +7%. We found an increased risk of mortality in patients > treated with hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin compared to standard of > care (RR: 1.29 (95%CI: 1.06-1.58, n=6)) among non-randomized studies but > this relationship was not found in the single Brazilian RCT, with no > heterogeneity observed across the study design (Pheterogeneity between = > 0.28) (Figure 3). There was a low heterogeneity across the included studies > (I2 =38%, p=0.14). Egger's test (p= 0.70) and Begg's test (p=0.65) were not > significant but the asymmetry in the funnel plot indicates that a > publication bias could be present (Figure S7). However, the number of > included studies was small. Subgroup analyses are described in supplementary > material (Table S4, Figure S8). The Bayesian meta-analysis led to similar > results with a pooled RR for mortality of 1.32 (95%CI: 0.97-1.68, n=7 > studies) (Table S5, Figure S9). The increase in mortality was also > significant with influence analysis (Figure S10). RR is relative risk, HR is hazard ratio, OR is odds ratio. Are there any red flags in reading this, and how relevant is it that studies were excluded for critical bias, that the single randomized controlled trial did not show this relationship. The number of studies of HCQ with AZI was also quite small - is that a problem, and how likely is it that we could expect further studies to point in the opposite direction? 5% likely? More or less? Lastly, many HCQ proponents advocate zinc in this mixture. That wasn't included in this meta-analysis. Is there a clinical basis for believing zinc changes the therapeutic effect of HCQ and AZI? ------ LatteLazy >Hydroxychloroquine alone was not associated with reduced mortality in hospitalized COVID-19 patients but the combination of hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin significantly increased mortality. So many studies showing what we already knew. It really worries me how much science seems to be dictated by fashion these days... ------ giardini Not a study or experiment but a "meta-study" where an attempt is made to merge data from many different experiments and form some conclusions. They started with 839 studies and, in the end, used data from only 29 of those studies to draw conclusions. Two obvious flaws: 1\. "All included studies except one (Skipper et al.) were carried out on hospitalized patients". This means all patients got HCQ very late. But the recommended course for HCQ has always been to give it _early_ at first symptoms and to _never_ wait until hospitalization. In the "selected" experiments of this meta-study all patients were hospitalized prior to receiving HCQ, far too late for it to do it's magic. 2\. "Mean (SD) age of participants was 62.1 +/\- 8.5 years." The patients chosen were near elderly or elderly, those most likely to die from covid. So they set up a meta-study by cherry-picking experiments having populations of elderly patients who were provided HCQ treatment only after hospitalization. That is, choose the weakest patients who were treated at the last possible moment and include only those patients in your meta-study. Finally, at the end of their paper they state _" Our results suggest that there is no need for further studies evaluating these molecules,"_ In other words, thanks to this meta-study no further studies, not even the "golden standard" randomized controlled trials are required to "know" that HCQ doesn't work! The meta-study's authors see all, know all, and know best even though they haven't done a study or trial nor examined a single patient for this meta-study. The chutzpah of these authors is astonishing! But just as in the movie "Wizard of Oz" Dorothy is instructed to "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" we must ask just who IS the "man behind the curtain"? There is a hell of a lot of money (trillions projected) that wants to put the hush to HCQ so that big pharma can sell us an expensive vaccine! Remember what has happened in the recent past: "What Is Gilead's Role In The War On Hydroxychloroquine?" [https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/what-gileads-role-war- hydr...](https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/what-gileads-role-war- hydroxychloroquine?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zerohedge%2Ffeed+%28zero+hedge+-+on+a+long+enough+timeline%2C+the+survival+rate+for+everyone+drops+to+zero%29)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Oatmeal fights back, snaps photo of cash, sends money to charity - evo_9 http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/the-oatmeal-fights-backs-snaps-photo-of-cash-sends-money-to-charity/ ====== Vivtek Carreon's wife sounds even crazier than Carreon himself, apparently saying that there is a conspiracy of actual grammar Nazis killing Americans and that the Oatmeal is part of it. You can't make this stuff up, folks. ~~~ gms7777 Right? Reading the second response by his wife was particularly disturbing. "...Just look at their cartoons. They like to kill. They think it's fun to kill. They think their friends will admire them if they kill. Without mercy! ...They are stupid, silent people, who are absolutely worthless to our society. Really, what good is their life, but a burden to the planet?" She is accusing "these people" of being murderers? Honestly, from the following comments, I'm quite a bit more concerned that this whole story will end with her going on a killing spree. I'm slowly becoming more and more convinced that this is one majorly elaborate practical joke, concocted by the oatmeal and funnyjunk to raise tons of money for charity. Because I'd rather believe that than believe that people this dense actually exist. ~~~ drostie As I recall, the same thing happened with a lawyer named Jack Thompson. I think it's just something about Law as a discipline that it attracts people who can be very literal-minded and who at least in their own mind are moral crusaders. (Disclaimer: I don't know whether Carreon's wife actually does anything legal herself or whether she just married a lawyer.) I think when you mix that sort of mentality with modern entertainment, you get quotes like these. Sure, we say, "any normal person" understands the difference between cartoons and real life. Perhaps Mrs. Carreon would even agree that _she_ understands the difference. But she is somehow not convinced that _we_ understand the difference. Jack Thomson was the same way; he referred to games as "murder simulators" and assumed that anyone attracted to them was merely 'in the closet' about actions that they secretly intensely wanted to do. Since indulging a normal addiction usually makes it worse and not better, it's easy from this screwed-up perspective to imagine that The Youth will fail to be satisfied one day with the latest violent media -- and will turn to violence itself in their craving. There is another aspect here which is: the things that disturb us about others are usually things which disturb us about ourselves. It's about resonance. Normally if someone is being stupid people say "to hell with him, he's stupid." But let us all endeavor, when we find ourselves outraged, to ask not only "what is wrong with THEM?!" but also "why does this bug me so much? What resonates here?" If we apply that to Mrs. Carreon, I think we'll all see that we've all been on the wrong side of a dispute, that we've all been wronged before and wanted to "get back," etc. ~~~ JackC _I think it's just something about Law as a discipline that it attracts people who can be very literal-minded and who at least in their own mind are moral crusaders._ Since this whole case is, um, horribly embarrassing to my profession, I'll just respond here and move on. The huge majority of lawyers I know are much more like the EFF lawyers here than like Carreon. They're smart, creative, resilient, flexible, and more often than not they're honest and respectful. Some of them do it for moral reasons and some are just doing a job; some of them make the world a lot better in my opinion and some of them end up screwing it up. But there's not one lawyer I know who I can imagine acting anything like Carreon, let alone his wife. I mean, even the few jerks would at least make more effective choices. In short: don't think of this guy as a typical lawyer. He's not. Think of him as a typical guy-screwing-up-his-career-with-a-weird,-paranoid-flameout,-in- an-unusually-public-way-thanks-to-the-internet. It's just too bad he happens to have a career that will let him waste a lot of other people's time in the process ... ~~~ drostie Oh! I'm sorry, it occurs to me that my comment can indeed be read that way, and that's not what I intended. I mean it as "they attract these people", not "they are mostly these people:" the tiny percentage of society which is A is much more likely to be L, but that does not mean that most L's are A. So for example I would guess that most programmers are pretty sociable people, but we have a nasty reputation as highly antisocial because we attract people who prefer programming to partying. The Catholic church can tell you all about their difficulties with this type of thing. ~~~ JackC Hey, thanks for the clarification. That's a totally fair point. I was probably a little over-eager to reply here since this story so much invites the lawyers-are-evil thing and I've been looking for a chance to put it in context. Like, "yes OK lawyers are evil sometimes but this isn't that." :) After thinking more about it, the literal-minded moral crusade is something I've definitely seen in the legal system, not from lawyers but from pro se parties -- non-lawyers who are representing themselves. There's a group of people who are absolutely sure that the world has wronged them and that they'll eventually be able to make everyone understand, but are unable to parse or accept the reality checks they're getting back from the system, so they go through a series of lawyers before striking out on their own. I bet any clerk's office you walked into, they could name a handful of people like that who they recognize by sight when they come in to file their next complaint (and then a complaint against the judge who handled the last complaint, and so on). They're sad situations. I don't really know anything about Carreon or the rest of this mess, but assuming that's what's happening, maybe there's some observer bias here -- the reason we're hearing about this at all is that he _is_ a lawyer, so he's able to navigate the system well enough to cause real trouble, at least for a while. ------ richardv It is really hard to understand how Carreon and his wife don't realise that they are digging themselves into their own hole. They even went out and bought the shovels themselves. Getting involved in a battle which isn't yours and then stretching it this far is beyond belief. It's as if they have never heard of the internet before, and expect _everyone_ to side with them. It's pathological ignorance. ~~~ freehunter Shooting off your mouth about an ongoing case is just asking for trouble. All of this could be brought into the courtroom, with Tara being an associate of Charles. It wouldn't be the first time a judge has ruled on a case partially due to professional behavior outside the courtroom. ~~~ danielweber On the evening of June 14th, Carreon told Forbes that he didn't know what was wrong but he'd find _something_. “California code is just so long, but there’s something in there about this.” That evening around 9pm he donated $10, and then filed his suit the very next day claiming he had been misled. ~~~ travisp Sadly, he's probably right. Many estimates suggest that the average American is unknowingly committing multiple felonies every day due to vague criminal statutes. ~~~ protomyth Try getting a definitive list of state or federal laws. No such list for the Feds and most states. ~~~ jrockway I have the list: 1) Don't do anything an agent of the government doesn't want you to do 2) Don't do anything a future agent of the government won't want you to do And they say the legal system is complex! ------ eridius I didn't even realize until this article that Carreon had actually donated to the campaign, apparently expressly for the purpose of then claiming that Inman was going to use the funds in a different way than promised? Except I have no idea how he can possibly argue that taking the picture of the funds is somehow wrong, when that was kind of the main objective of the fundraising (with the secondary objective being to then distribute the funds to the 2 charities). ~~~ tfm > different way than promised Once the originally-planned $20k had been exceeded, Inman suggested that he would find some more charities that might benefit from the cash. This thought was abandoned shortly after Carreon cried foul about the "different way than promised". So, good-good for the bears, they'll get a bigger money pit to roll around in. ~~~ eridius I'm not sure what bearing that has on taking a picture of the cash. Nor do I see how this could be related to the current lawsuit if Inman abandoned that idea. ------ bravura "One man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric." -Inman's lawyer This is going into my quotes file. ~~~ ender7 Inman's lawyer is quoting Justice Harlan in Cohen v. California: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cohen_v._California> ------ inthewoods This is starting to feel like one of those fake hip-hop artists fights (recognizing that The Oatmeal is clearly in the right imho). I wonder if FunnyJunk is now just continuing this for the publicity. ~~~ nicholassmith It left FJs hands a while ago now, this is all on Carreon. Unsurprisingly FJ haven't mentioned anything for a while. ~~~ danielweber Given his previous attempt to drum up public outrage over Mattel's failure to take him up on his offer to represent them over another trademark dispute, there's a good chance that this whole thing was entirely Carreon's idea. "Hey, you should get a trademark, and then let me file a contingency suit against that guy who is more successful than you." ------ nthitz Wait so where are the photos? ~~~ ch00 Seems like the Ars headline is inaccurate. Inman posts in his blog that the money is still with IndieGoGo pending a restraining order to have it transferred. "Once the money is moved, I still plan on withdrawing $211k in cash and taking a photo to send to Charles Carreon and FunnyJunk, along with the drawing of Funnyjunk's mother." <http://theoatmeal.com/blog/fundraiser_update> ~~~ danielweber Yesterday, IndieGoGo filed documents, revealing that 1\. the money donated by PayPal was _already_ in Inman's hands. 2\. the money donated via credit card was already sent to the charities. Oddly, Inman's blog isn't as up-to-date as the court filings. Inman's filing is here: [https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/OatmealOppT...](https://www.eff.org/sites/default/files/filenode/OatmealOppTRO.pdf) ~~~ wccrawford It could be that Inman was unsure what he could legally say, and didn't want to make things worse. He'll get his 15 minutes and rushing things won't make any difference. ------ jnsaff2 Let me quote Humphrey Bogart for you: "The only reason to have money is to tell any SOB in the world to go to hell." ------ Bobby_Tables Am I the only one who thinks Carreon wants to be the new Jack Thompson? ~~~ dougabug That's exactly what I was thinking. How long before they disbar this clown for abusing the legal system with frivolous, vindictive lawsuits? ------ macey Tara and Charles are most clearly mentally ill. At least they have each other. ------ runamok It's rather difficult for most of us to accept criticism but at some point most sane people would try to take a step back and conclude that if thousands upon thousands of people think you are behaving poorly it might be prudent to at least _consider_ their viewpoint is valid. ------ necenzurat don't wanna be a 9gag supporter but even 9gag gives some source/credit ------ specialist About that hate speech... Tara Carreon responded: "There is now plenty of proof that Matt Inman is one of a gang of people who promote the same type of ideas that inspired Jared Loughner to try and kill Gabrielle Giffords," she wrote. "Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, who studies hate groups and hate speech, examined Loughner's sites and concluded that his material on grammar, in particular, likely came from the writings of far right activist David Wynn Miller. If you Google Matt Inman + grammar, you will find a similar obsession. And similar hate." Citing SPLC suggests Tara Carreon is left leaning. But her misunderstanding / misuse of "hate speech" is very right wing. Kind of like how trogs don't grok that Colbert is making fun of them. Hate speech is wishing harm on your opponents for political reasons. Calling people names is not hate speech. Neither is making fun of people. That's just being a dick. Alas, wingers don't get that distinction. I suspect the root cause (mental failing) also explains trogs rampant false equivalency (e.g. Clinton got a blow job == Bush allowing 9/11, illegally invading a foreign country, killing 100,000s of its citizens, making refugees out of a few million, and using depleted uranium to convert much of the formerly inhabited areas into Superfund sites). I once had a winger tell me that the Rodney King riots in LA were an example of left wing hate speech. The stupid, it hurts. I honestly can't decide if trogs say ridiculous non sequiturs because they're thick or if it's merely to distract and enrage (a la Limbaugh, Beck, Coulter). I've decided to simply judge people by their actions, vs their intent. The grandma having sex with a bear is obviously funny. To you and me. But the trogs can't see it that way. Any mocking is a direct personal attack demanding a defensive response. Inman didn't know the Carreon's were mentally impaired. But for future, just know that trogs will misunderstand, misinterpret, twist, assume the worst, distort, etc. No one can control the audience's reaction. But in my mocking, I do try to avoid borderline humor which can be labeled "hate speech". No sense giving the trogs another chew toy. And there's no shortage of funny stuff to say. ~~~ jongraehl You come close to smearing roughly half of _all_ people with the comical stupidity of the worst within that half. All of what you say seems true, but even describing reality along those lines (even without your epithets) arouses passion+stupidity. ~~~ specialist Just half? I had to read Tara Carreon's quote for myself. The "hate speech" reference jumped out. No one else had commented on it. Probably because few here are as political as me, so wouldn't know that it's a politically charged phrase. Oh, I forgot to mention something. Carreon's equating Inman to Jared Loughner is just sick. As in reprehensible. No different than invoking Hitler (Godwin's Law). And is a pretty good example of hateful (vs hate) speech.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How do the rest of you feel about Quora.com? - AwesomeTogether https://www.monosnap.com/image/I2Q29GVCDfHcYtgi7DAzLjw3P ====== Fuzzwah I receive the Quora Weekly Digest emails and will tend to open them up and have a skim when I'm looking for something to read. I'd say that roughly 50% of the time they include a topic / response which grabs my attention enough to click through. I don't engage with the site beyond this, so personally it fills a similar role as scoopinion and other "content recommendation" sites I occasionally hit up to find something to kill a few minutes reading. ------ qzxt Am I the only one who thinks this is unnecessarilly rude and abhorent? The lady was just doing her job for duck sake. For someone whose main point of argument is that they show humanity, you seem to have very little of your own. ~~~ selfexperiments Was he rude? Yes. No excuse for that. But what he dead on right? Absolutely. ~~~ qzxt Are you saying there was no other way to pass on the exact same message with the exact same effect without being a total cunt about it? ------ bougiefever I received the same email, but I deleted it instead of responding. I guess Tom's response is more likely to get the point across to them that they suck. Nothing makes me click away from a page faster than seeing the word "Quora". On second thought, they probably don't care what anyone thinks of them given the way they so obviously try to suck you in to exploit you. ------ RogerL Why would I ever go there? If I go to their home page, all I get is a "sign up to read Quora". Umm, no, you don't get my email just so I can see what you are about. Okay, I've come across quora plenty of times in google searches, so I know what you are about, but I've never felt that I am terribly missing out by not being able to read the link. ------ throwaway420 Tom's reply here is awesome and it would be funny to find out if he ever received a reply to his message. Personally I think Quora had a lot of potential (and still could radically improve) but I stopped bothering with it when I couldn't actually read it without logging in. ------ iterationx I'm a polymath here's my answer... Seriously? Somehow this only happens on Quora. ------ davesmylie I'm never going to register (or login) just to see if any responses to questions are relevant to my current problem at hand. I'll visit quora if it came up in a google search. If the answer to the question is not right there, that tab's being closed. (This is pretty much the reason that experts-exchange.com died as much as did) ------ DenisM About sums it up for me. I don't like being herded, so I don't visit Quora anymore. ------ atoponce Never heard of it. Oh, wait. That's the site that tries to be like [http://stackexchange.com](http://stackexchange.com), but is behind a login, and they steal your data, violating your privacy, tracking you through their mobile app, and is run by former Facebook engineers? Not interested.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Hacking Ruby's Default Arguments - pwim http://blog.mobalean.com/2009/02/28/hacking-rubys-default-arguments ====== jamesbritt I don't quite see this as "hacking" anything, but it's a useful thing to know. Along similar lines, I was coding some Ruby and calling a method that took a flag argument. E.g. save_something @something, true and it bothered my that it was not obvious what that last value was for. I figured that one approach might be to create a throwaway variable and use it in place of the literal: overwrite_existing = true save_something @something, overwrite_existing ... and then decided to just pass that first expression in as the argument itself to tighten things up: save_something @something, overwrite_existing = true Basically, a handy (hackish?) way to document any argument.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The American origins of Telegram - doener https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2015/11/23/the-secret-american-origins-of-telegram-the-encrypted-messaging-app-favored-by-the-islamic-state/ ====== nickpsecurity Interesting backstory. I didn't trust the app early on and now trust it less. Far as ISIS, only had to roll my eyes at the repeated pokes at Telegram playing a key role in ISIS and their "moral responsibility." Tell the U.S. military and covert ops community about moral responsibility so groups like ISIS develop less in the first place. Plus the bankers and oil traders funnelling the money with a lot less auditing than I get on a checking account or credit card. Or our friends in Saudi Arabia pushing hardcore doctrine and schools that creates the terrorist mindset. You don't media and government calling out for any of these to be disbanded, backdoored, or do a 180 on moral grounds. Telegram can feel free to block ISIS channels to disrupt them. However, they're not the problem and shouldn't feel morally obligated to solve it. If Telegram blocks them, they just use another app. It's that simple. If anything, U.S. intelligence should be exploiting the presence of ISIS on an insecure app as a way to track and fight ISIS. ------ iamnothere I've seen a lot of FUD about Telegram recently, and plenty of shady stuff that reeks of government pressure, including Facebook banning Telegram links from Whatsapp and banning its "official" FB page. This article rings a couple of alarm bells for me -- the subtext seems to imply both that Telegram is not to be trusted (stay away, vulnerable users!) and that they aren't doing enough to stop illegal usage (ban it!). The crypto concerns are valid, though. Telegram needs a professional audit. ~~~ jhasse > that they aren't doing enough to stop illegal usage (ban it!) I don't think a messaging app should stop illegal usage at all. Similar to ISPs. > Telegram needs a professional audit. According to [https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging- scorecard](https://www.eff.org/secure-messaging-scorecard) there has been a recent code audit. I couldn't find more info though. ~~~ iamnothere > I don't think a messaging app should stop illegal usage at all. Similar to > ISPs. I agree, just saying that the article seems to suggest this. Like I said, there's been a lot of attempts to scare people about Telegram lately. ------ adrtessier On one hand, I am happy that Telegram exists; its founding story, homebrew crypto, cute marketing and "not-American" position has made it a shit magnet for a lot of people that don't know what makes things secure, and are convinced by some Zuck-esque figure's charisma that he knows what's going on encryption-wise. It makes it a lightning rod for this type of press, attracts the idiotic bits of Daesh, and keeps this press-fueled, IC-backed anti-crypto heat off of other systems that actually _work_ to keep people secure. On the other hand, some others inevitably become collateral damage, using Telegram's (entirely) insecure defaults and thinking they have "secret" messages, or worse yet, enabling MTProto and believing they are safe in high- risk environments. Given this latest PR stunt, though, I think the benefits of Telegram's existence seem to outweigh its costs.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: How to host a live website on your laptop (or anywhere else) - HerraBRE http://pagekite.net/ ====== Animus7 Reliability? Scalability? Apparently if your lappy goes down, so does your site, and if your site ever makes the front page of HN your ISP will probably cut the figurative cord to your house. Unless the purpose of your site is to show pics to grandma or host a tiny blog, this doesn't look like it would end well. And if that's all you're doing, there's a million easier, more reliable ways to do it than have your own web server. ~~~ HerraBRE Sure, this doesn't replace traditional hosting unless you are really big on the privacy thing and want all your data on your own hardware. But it's pretty useful if you are designing websites or writing web-related software and want to be able to show off your work to a colleague or client, without having to go through the hassle of deploying it to some remote server.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: anybody working on a non-profit startup? - vijayr something like Kiva, for example. ====== cperciva I think most startups are non-profit, actually. Startups which are _deliberately_ non-profit is quite a different matter, of course... ~~~ vijayr I meant startups that are deliberately non-profit, thats why I gave the example of kiva.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Against privacy defeatism: why browsers can still stop fingerprinting - randomwalker https://freedom-to-tinker.com/2018/06/29/against-privacy-defeatism-why-browsers-can-still-stop-fingerprinting/ ====== fpgaminer Over the years I've noticed this, privacy defeatism, amongst other excuses used to push back against security and privacy enhancements. Another is security chicken and egg. "Because A isn't secure, there's no point in securing B. And because B isn't secure, there's no point in securing A." I've seen arguments along those lines used against improving the security of, for example, DNS and SNI. Or just DNS in general. "There's no point in securing DNS because your ISP can see what IP addresses you connect to." The all-or-nothing argument has been used to argue against HTTPS. "State actors like China can circumvent HTTPS, since they control trusted CAs! So why use HTTPS at all?" Then there's the arguments against security because "it makes development harder!" People have argued against mandatory HTTPS saying that it makes developing websites harder. The list goes on. Luckily it seems that pro-security and pro-privacy succeed in the end, for the most part. But those that use these pathological arguments have certainly delayed things more than they should have been. ~~~ neverfone I'm not a privacy defeatist, but I am a fingerprinting defeatist. Here's why: I don't think it's realistic for caching and anti-fingerprinting to co-exist, and given those two options users will always pick the former because the latter would be perceived as slow. The classic example is: <script src=foobar.js> Where foobar.js just returns something like "var id=0x1234567", the user who doesn't want to be fingerprinted cannot cache this script because it could be uniquely generated. ~~~ DennisP Why not cache it for the user, but go ahead and retrieve it in the background? ~~~ neverfone I don't understand the question, it's either cached or not. If it's not cached, then it has to be fetched synchronously for anything depending on its value to work - so it's slow. If it is cached, then the cached value is known. ------ hartator Chrome has no interest in doing that. Google uses browser fingerprinting for their ads, and to make sure a real user is requesting their services. I would trust Safari a lot more to implement something like this. ~~~ AngryData That is a big reason I stopped using chrome. I block all the cookies and scripts I can but they were still collecting data from other shit and serving me obvious directed ads. ~~~ gsnedders I don't know about Google, but AIUI FB does targeted advertising based on source IPs if there's a very small number of users from a given IP. As long as they know the source IP, they can implement some form of tracking. ------ mikedilger There are two ways to defeat fingerprinting: 1) Be common: have your data match what others are sending 2) Be unique on every page request: scramble your data Browsers in category (2) are not trackable, even though they appear to be fingerprintable. Each page request is a different fingerprint. What is unclear from the article is whether the studies mentioned (EFF, INRIA) considered that and tested that. Does anyone know? Because privacy does not require non-unique fingerprints, it just requires untrackability. ~~~ incompatible Are there any readily-available browser plugins (or whatever) that implement (2)? ~~~ beagle3 Firefox has two about:Config settings, one stops canvas fingerprinting, the other notifies. Other settings stop giving out a list of plugins or fonts. And e.g. unlock or umatriz can rotate your user agent. It’s not perfect, but with a few tweaks Firefox is much much harder to fingerprint - though IPv6 tends to undo all of that because many providers assign a prefix per customer which will never change and can be used by anyone to correlate. ~~~ gsnedders How common is the setup those settings put you in, though? Are you more or less unique in that bin? ------ kodablah > why browsers can still _stop_ fingerprinting (emphasis mine) > privacy defenses don’t need to be perfect. Many researchers and engineers > think about privacy in all-or-nothing terms So browsers can't stop fingerprinting but they can reduce it, and the article author's title falls in the same all-or-nothing trap that they criticize others for. Too often practicality is viewed as defeatism. I don't remember defeatism, I remember practical limitations to stopping all uniqueness vectors but realization that some can be stopped. ~~~ incompatible I remember somebody who worked with Firefox saying that even the idea of not by default revealing the OS and hardware platform received too much opposition. ------ csours To be clear: Yes we should fight fingerprinting... But: I don't care if only 5% of internet users are uniquely identifiable. I care if _I_ am uniquely identifiable. ~~~ Iolaum If you are not uniquely identifiable but 99% of the users are that's enough to identify you. That's why US Navy funded the tor project. If their people were the only ones that could hide from other governments then those other governments knew who those unidentified people were. ~~~ meowface This is also a big issue with NoScript and similar plugins. A very small percentage of real users (ignoring bots and headless browsers and such) intentionally disable JavaScript, so they're painting a target on themselves while trying to do the opposite. ~~~ mikedilger This is true. However, most users of NoScript/uMatrix/uBlock are blocking the script that actually does the fingerprinting. So while the server could infer information because the script didn't run, usually they get no notification and tracking simply fails. ~~~ progval For once, let's thank web developers who assume everyone has javascript enabled. ------ TekMol The whole article seems to be based on this study: [https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~maffeis/331/EffectivenessOfFingerp...](https://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~maffeis/331/EffectivenessOfFingerprinting.pdf) And sees it as an indicator that preventing fingerprinting is possible: Only a third of users had unique fingerprints, despite the researchers’ use of a comprehensive set of 17 fingerprinting attributes. To me, the 17 attributes do not seem comprehensive at all. For example they don't make use of the users IP. So much can be derived from the IP. Carrier, approximate location etc. They also don't use the local IP, which is leaked via WebRTC: [https://browserleaks.com/webrtc](https://browserleaks.com/webrtc) They also don't seem to measure the performance of CPU, RAM and GPU when performing different tasks. But yes: Browsers should do more to prevent fingerprinting. But it seems they have no inclination to do so. That they don't plug the WebRTC hole that leaks the local IP is a strong indicator for me that privacy is low on the list of the browser vendors. Or maybe not on the list at all. ------ mirimir There's generally a tradeoff between usability and performance, and resistance to fingerprinting. If your browser has WebGL enabled, the machine (not just the browser) can be fingerprinted. If it caches resources, adversaries can discover browsing history. ~~~ amelius > If your browser has WebGL enabled, the machine (not just the browser) can be > fingerprinted. Curious, how would that work exactly? (I've never used WebGL yet in any code). > If it caches resources, adversaries can discover browsing history. Same question. I was under the impression that cached resources can be accessed only by the domain that introduces them. ~~~ deleted_account This paper discusses the details: [http://yinzhicao.org/TrackingFree/crossbrowsertracking_NDSS1...](http://yinzhicao.org/TrackingFree/crossbrowsertracking_NDSS17.pdf) You can also visit their site to see it in action: [http://uniquemachine.org/](http://uniquemachine.org/) ~~~ mirimir And re the demo: > Your graphics card does not seem to support WebGL. So NoScript is blocking WebGL, as promised. ------ xg15 The irony seems to be this: > _But there’s another pill that’s harder to swallow: the recent study was > able to test users in the wild only because the researchers didn’t ask or > notify the users. [2] With Internet experiments, there is a tension between > traditional informed consent and validity of findings, and we need new > ethical norms to resolve this._ So the result of their privacy-advocating study was itself only obtainable by breaching the privacy of their participants. (I.e. making them participants without them knowing or consenting to it) ------ ape4 The article mentions Canvas, Battery, Audio,and WebRTC. Should these all request a user OK before being used? ~~~ alkonaut Definitely for high entropy APIs at least. Checking if audio or canvas exists is just two bits. But e.g. being able to read canvas pixels is absolutely insane that it’s allowed. So if just these sources of huge entropy were default swithed off, as the article says, fingerprinting would be a lot harder. ~~~ arendtio Especially, canvas would become useless in an opt-in scenario and would just foster permission fatigue (people just clicking "Allow" because it makes those dialogs go away). Another option might be to define closely (pixel-by-pixel) how a canvas should look like after a specific action. That way vendors would have less room for 'their way' of drawing things but the result would look equal and would be useless for fingerprinting. Similarly, one could define a list of fonts which every browser should bring and all other fonts should be loaded from a server. It would eliminate the 'you have special fonts installed' problem completely. ~~~ alkonaut The canvas wouldn’t be opt in, only the _pixel reading_ feature would be - and that’s an edge case that I can’t imagine being used in even one in a thousand uses of Canvas. Just drawing to a canvas has no privacy implications and covers almost all uses. ------ textmode "Another lesson is that privacy defenses don't need to be perfect. Many researchers and engineers think about privacy in all-or-nothing terms: a single mistake can be devastating, and if a defense won't be perfect, we shouldn't deploy it at all." This "all-or-nothing" perspective is rampant on www forums discussing computer topics and certainly HN is no exception. It is particularly acute in any discussions of "privacy" or "security". There are countless examples. Earlier this week the topic of SNI rose again to HN's front page. A minor percentage1 of TLS-enabled websites require SNI. An unfortunate side effect of SNI is that it makes it easier for third parties to observe which websites users are accessing via TLS because it sends domainnames unencrypted in the first packet. Forum commenters will thus argue because there are other, more difficult means for some third parties to observe these domainnames, e.g., through traffic analysis, that the unencrypted SNI is therefore not an issue worth addressing. All-or-nothing. If the privacy achieved by some proactive measure is not "perfect" then to these commenters it is worthless. But the HN front page reference suggested otherwise: It was an RFC describing how the IETF is taking a proactive measure, trying to "fix" SNI, encrypting it to prevent third parties from using it in ways detrimental to users. There is an easier proactive measure. The popular browsers send SNI by default, even if the website does not require it. The default behaviour is to accomodate a minority of TLS-enabled websites at the expense of all users, including those who may not be using this minority of websites. To make an analogy to fingerprinting, imagine sending 17 unique identifiers with every HTTP transaction when, say, only 5 are actually needed. The all-or- nothing perspective adopted by forum commenters would dictate that it makes no sense to reduce the number unless the number can be reduced to zero. Amongst the security folks there is a concept sometimes called "defense in depth". Commenters in discussions about security often agree there is no such thing as "perfect" security and they cannot rely on a single, "silver bullet". They must use multiple tactics. Is privacy somehow different? There are many tactics users can take that, cumulatively, can make things more difficult for the data collectors. 1 Survey of websites currently appearing on HN Number of unique urls: 367 Number of http urls: 43 Number of https urls: 324 Number of https urls requiring SNI: 38 Number of https urls requiring correct SNI: 26 "Requiring correct SNI" means SNI must match Host header. Summary One can fetch 286 of the 324 https urls currently posted on HN with a HTTP client that does not send SNI. An additional 12 can be retrieved by sending a decoy SNI name that does not match the Host header. ------ gasull There is Privacy Possum, a Firefox and Chrome extension that works better against fingerprinting than Privacy Badger: [https://github.com/cowlicks/privacypossum](https://github.com/cowlicks/privacypossum) ~~~ aendruk How does it differ from Privacy Badger? (In goals, threat model, implementation, etc.?) I found the readme to be a little incomprehensible. ------ auslander It starts saying all the right things, I was, like, expecting real tech stuff, after intro, and ... post ends. Where is per browser stats, correlations, data points and features? Canvas vs IP vs User-agents? ~~~ ComodoHacker That's what hypertext is for. Follow the links. ------ raven11 What is needed is a community written and funded privacy browser. Mozilla the billion dollar non profit and Firefox their so called privacy first brwoser is the biggest exfiltrator of user data. Their default 5000 user settings are all geared towards feeding them and Google real time user activity feed. They have moved from being Google data bi.ch to a major data collection thug themselves. As such fingerprinting becomes at best a tangential issue. ------ jstewartmobile Sets up a straw man of " _privacy defeatism_ ", then knocks it down with an analysis of some French website's logs-- _as though any of this were a technological problem in the first place_. This is not a case of " _defense in depth_ " or " _something is better than nothing_." This is the case of a surveillance capitalism asset performing to spec. Privacy in the browser is/was f-ed, plain and simple. Patch one hole, make two more. That's how it's been for at least 20 years now. I see no reason for that to change until the browser is obsolesced by something even better at fleecing the peasants.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Getting 100x better search performance on Riak - gwf http://blog.clipboard.com/2012/03/18/0-Milking-Performance-From-Riak-Search ====== gfodor The deficiency with AND queries due to term based partitioning reminds me of a hack I did a few years ago trying to build a basic IR system on simpledb: [http://codingthriller.blogspot.com/2008/04/simpledb-full- tex...](http://codingthriller.blogspot.com/2008/04/simpledb-full-text-search- or-how-to.html?m=1) Of course, I was backed into this corner by the various constraints at the time, and this was just a fun hack. It sounds a bit precarious to consider using Riak for text search, at least compared to something like Solr, if it truly has issues with the basic bread and butter of search like sorting by recency and conjunctions. (of course I am only going on what is in this post, I have no experience with Riak) ~~~ gwf It really isn't all that bad. When you compare what we had to do compared to keeping two big data systems in sync (instead of Riak, which is a breeze), I think we got off easy. ------ pkulak Mecha is being built to directly solve these exact problems: <http://vimeo.com/30396564> ------ tpsreport What's the baseline? When the baseline is terrible, getting 100x performance is not a big deal. No good engineer would cite "100X improvement" without quantifying the baseline level. This is PR, not engineering and not science. ~~~ gwf The baseline was a substantial test corpus that we scaled several orders of magnitude over a series of runs, all meant to simulate typical clip size with typical word frequencies. The 10-100x gains had two contributions that each was in the 3-10x range. We tested it against the standard search which incorrectly performed pagination because of the misorder on sort versus slice. We also tested in on two types of map/reduce jobs that correctly implemented the sort and slice (and had been in production). Ideally, we would have kept the data around to give a fuller a report. But the truth is we did this over 9 months ago and didn't save the data. After informally sharing the impact with a lot of people, we heard a lot of encouragement to share the techniques. And you're right, this is not hard core science nor engineering. But it is a good tip, which you can take or leave. ~~~ tpsreport I'm still not seeing you report something that says "an operation that took X ms now takes Y ms." Note the absolute numbers whose units are in seconds. That's what I'd like to see for a baseline. And I won't even comment on the "we did this 9 months ago and did not save the data" part. That kind of stuff would not fly in medicine or science or most traditional engineering fields. Why should you be exempt? ~~~ gwf To be clear, operations in our test corpus that took X ms on average took 100X ms. Is that the statement you are looking for? One thing that I think you're missing is that while we experienced a 100x gain for our application, our findings aren't strictly empirical in the sense that the gain is always 100x. In many applications it will be more. The insight in the blog post is analytical, not empirical. Specifically, most people (I think) would assume a text index to be document partitioned. In Riak it's not. On a fundamental level this means that AND operations take time O(max(\|A\|,\|B\|)) instead of O(min(\|A\|,\|B\|) where \|A\| and \|B\| are the sizes of results that match query A and B, respectively. If you pick words at random from a power law distribution (which is typical in all natural languages) you will more often than not see many orders of magnitude difference in the \|A\| and \|B\|. If you sample queries from real query streams, you will see the same. For some intuition, just think about a query which has a common tag (like "funny" used in the example) and something restricted (like a particular user). The first will typically be an understood fraction of the size of your corpus while the second will have size that is more like a constant. Putting this all together, the savings that we find for moving the intersection where we did will only grow on a relative basis as we get more users and clips. This hack costs 2x the storage size but always give O(min(\|A\|,\|B\|) complexity results instead of O(max(\|A\|,\|B\|)). 100x win is just shorthand for saying that those two set sizes typically varied by two orders of magnitude because of power law distributions. But in academia, we refer to that as "really fucking big". The "presort" option that we added will scale differently, but have equally dramatic impact because pagination is effectively broken in Riak search if you do not use relevance sort. In this case, the O(.) argument is murkier because one version is done entirely within the index (which is usually in RAM) and the other has to hit the disk. In formal engineering circles, we refer to this type of boost as "unfucking real". So, we could have measured things with more precision, but this was such an obvious win that it was almost pointless to calibrate it further. ~~~ tpsreport You have a knack for producing a lot of text with no supporting evidence. Especially of a quantitative nature. This might go over well with a certain class of people, but it offends my engineering sensibilities. ~~~ Shalen Hi TPSReport - You realize that "gwf" is the Gary William Flake who has written an award winning complex book that is used in colleges worldwide as well as has run R&D for many companies like Microsoft, Yahoo, and Overture right? I'm sorry to say this but personally I'm finding your comments on this post as well other posts negative and lacking value. It would be great and helpful if you have any constructive/positive ideas, tips or experience to share to add value to the community. I'm sharing this in a positive constructive spirit. Thanks. ~~~ tpsreport Let me reiterate my constructive suggestion that the OP provide actual data. I can see how the author wrote a pop book, as he is quite verbose, but any engineer can tell you that he is also quite evasive on technical questions. "What's the baseline?" should not pose a tough question for anyone writing about performance improvements. ------ joshu Hi Gary! ~~~ gwf Hey Josh! ~~~ joshu Man, it's downvote central over here. ~~~ gwf The hive mind is cute when it's temperamental. ~~~ jpeterson Well, you guys could use email or IM for this trite stuff and reserve HN for meaningful discussion.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The UBI Bait and Switch - chrismealy https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/01/ubi-finland-centre-party-unemployment-jobs/ ====== aminok How utterly shameful that programs based on imprisoning people who refuse to hand over a share of all currency they receive in private trade are the primary political objective of major subsections of the population (the 'left'). What depravity man engages in out of greed.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Codecademy Launches New API Course Track with Parse - csmajorfive http://blog.parse.com/2013/01/09/codecademy-launches-new-api-course-track-with-parse/ ====== sergiotapia Previous discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5032504> ------ 6thSigma The Parse documentation is already pretty good but the Codeacademy lesson should be even better for beginners. ------ davidwhodge Nice work, guys!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
I have a different view on stack ranking - jamesjyu http://theludwigs.com/2013/08/i-have-a-different-view-on-stack-ranking-than-the-spate-of-critical-microsoft-articles/ ====== pjungwir As someone interested in someday building a development firm on a partner/associates model, I really appreciated reading the different perspective in this article. "Up or out" is controversial but in certain kinds of companies it can make a lot of sense. It can be a way to adapt your company's organization and culture to the reality that most programmers only stay in a job for a few years anyway. I think the author is right about people complaining in part because Microsoft is not growing. A corporation is compelled to expand in order to provide promotion opportunities to newer members.[1] If there were places for good- but-cursed-with-better-team-mates team members to go, stack ranking wouldn't seem such a problem. [1] See David Maiser, Managing the Professional Service Firm, for this principle applied to partner/associate service firms.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Are there other developers trying to learn design? - mattedigital Just curious as to whether the big recent 'designers should learn to code' idea goes the other way for any developers out there? ====== BjoernKW Absolutely. I've been more actively learning more about design for about 4 years or so and not only is it fascinating but it has also helped me tremendously in becoming a better developer. Design, UX in particular, is what makes or breaks a software. Software can be great from a purely technical point of view but if the user can't figure out how to use it or if your software requires more effort than a competing, well- designed - if perhaps technically inferior - solution your software has failed its purpose. ------ Lordarminius Yes and hating it all the way. I used to think myself alone but after reading a few opinions on the issue and hearing Linus Torvalds admit that he disliked frontend too, I gained some relief(?). My take on this is that frontend and backend development call forth different aspects of talent and personality. Frontend is predominantly artistry backend; logic. Since starting to learn UIX, my respect for UI creators has grown ~~~ mattedigital Do you have a link to the article "Linus Torvalds admit that he disliked frontend too", curious to read up about it. Tried searching for it but top result was your comment ha. ~~~ aaossa I think he syas something like that at 13:51 in this [1] TedEx talk. Really nice talk btw [1]: [http://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_linu...](http://www.ted.com/talks/linus_torvalds_the_mind_behind_linux) ------ saluki Doing full stack development you naturally learn what is good UI/UX which I think is more important than design. Focus on UI/UX rather than learning design. Is it easy to use? Provides a good experience? True Designers can come in and polish it up further if needed. Having a good eye for what looks good and what works for users is a great asset. ~~~ mattedigital Really helpful thanks ------ cableshaft Took a graphic arts class in high school, was deep in the flash animation/game scene for a long time, then made my own UI's for my own games, tackled multiple different designs for websites over the years, did some mobile app design, now I've gone more analog and designing physical card games with Illustrator. So yeah, I've been using design skills pretty much my whole life. That being said, I'm not great at creating art, just putting together existing art assets or assets provided to me. I'm kind of glad the current trend is flat simple colors for everything. It makes design so much easier for me. I do still struggle with overall composition and brainstorming different visuals for how something can look, though. ------ siquick Most definitely, this book has been a god-send for me. [http://www.amazon.com/Design-Hackers-Reverse-Engineering- Bea...](http://www.amazon.com/Design-Hackers-Reverse-Engineering- Beauty/dp/1119998956) ------ Cypher Yes its quite fascinating, I focus more on the physical engineering side of design such as a car dash board or what design makes an awesome umbrella instead of colour and UI placement. ------ wprapido i'm a designer who gone developer way and being able to understand both helps me a lot, even when i don't do them both developers, learn some design designers, learn some development ~~~ kleer001 Same here. Nearly 20 years in the vfx industry. Finally getting some time to catch up with the latest advancements (and some old friends, oh hello python 2.7) in computer vision, machine learning, and automation. It's funny. I used to think IFTT was pretty great. But once I spent a little time with cron and launchd (thanks zerowidth.com!) I was like, what? that's all it can do? I'm sure there's a lot of overhead with a bunch of users and such and so many services. But still, really limited against a dinky XML file and 20 lines of python. ------ artur_makly IMHO..It's more efficient to simply partner up. But learning the basics will definitely make you a better coder in the end. So who want's to partner up? I'm always looking for a talented dev to tag-team on projects. Also helps increase your chances on getting that big client since you can deliver faster with more man-power/experience. ------ shanwang Yes, I'm doing a design course on coursera, I actually like it. ~~~ tonyedgecombe Which one? ~~~ shanwang Interaction Design Specialisation, I'm not paying for it though, just going through the materials	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The epic startup story of Karl and Bertha Benz - geopsist https://medium.com/@Giorgosps/a-tale-of-karl-bertha-a-revolutionary-startup-and-the-importance-of-marketing-f38b9ea77bf#.jjecvusye ====== devnonymous Oh that last statement... Such a disappointment. The entire post was well written and brought out the point of a partnership and 'doing what it takes', 'giving it all you've got' pretty well and then it ends with 'a _woman 's_ ingenuity and persistence'. Is that the point of the post? That sometimes you need a woman 'cos they bring some special ingenuity and persistence? ~~~ geopsist nope it was not :) but you can agree that she did "see" it with another view. just my two cents :) no offence there ~~~ devnonymous Sorry, I might've jumped the gun and read it in way that was unintended. The statement could very well have been '...That or a person's unique insight and persistence.' I guess the reason I misread is because as I was reading the post I was thinking 'wow, that's awesome ! she did all of that _despite_ being a woman in the 1800s (when typically I presume this behavior would be frowned upon)' and then I read the last bit and thought, is he saying that she did that _because_ she was a woman ? Interesting how the content you read (past tense) influences what you read. ~~~ geopsist You are right. It was just pure awesomeness that she did back in 1800s. Sorry for my bad writing :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Learn data science in your browser - emre https://dataquest.io/ ====== vikp Hi everyone: Very exciting to see this posted here. I'm the maker of dataquest. I'm a self-taught data scientist/coder, and I wanted an easier way for people to get into the field. I've been working on it for the past three months, and I'm really excited to see people learning with it. I chose to teach python because it's one of the best first languages to learn, it's useful outside of data science, and a lot of production data science work is now done in python. It's missing advanced content, but I'm working on it. Let me know if I can help, or answer any questions! Vik ~~~ zarify Been having a play and it looks good, although the way that variable assignment is referred to in some of the problems feels inconsistent and is sometimes confusing. In some problems you talk about the variable first and the value second, and in others the value first and variable second. Also it really pains me to see you recommending using a for loop to count list members when there's a perfectly good len function there to do it for you. I can understand the desire to do it from a fundamentals point of view, but it feels overcomplicated in the crime mission. Edit: Is it ok to like the video bits but hate then stylus? It feels like an actual whiteboard or something that drew less artificial (and noisy) lines would be friendlier. The narration is good :) ~~~ vikp It's really hard to approach problems from the perspective of a beginner. I did some testing around using "magic" functions like len vs building intuition, and it's really important to understand how the things are working. Otherwise, you can't really generalize the concept easily. I'll look into the variable assignments more. Making content has been way harder than I imagined it would be. I think I need a better graphics tablet -- I got a cheap refurbished one, and it lags a lot. ------ TheAceOfHearts Small suggestion, you're still using the Yeoman favicon, you should add your own ;). ------ ycaspirant I'm curious to know what made you decide to teach Python 3 instead of Python 2? (I'm only asking because most courses these days seem to favor teaching Python 2). ~~~ joelthelion Because Python3 is the current version of python? If you're starting new projects, there are very few valid reasons not to use it. ~~~ xasos A bunch of data sciene material, in particular, is written in Python 2.x, and it wouldn't be bad to teach Python2 either. You could always use the _future_ command for newer modules as well ------ jonalmeida That's a beautiful website you have there. I find it easier to motivate myself to learn something when it's pleasing to the eye :) ~~~ bufordsharkley I couldn't help but think of how much it reminded me of this parody of flashy, boilerplate sites: ([http://jonhendren.com/](http://jonhendren.com/)). My eyes kinda glaze over when I see Bootstrappy style (or something similar). ~~~ jonalmeida The colours compliment each other and it's simple. If I had to be harsh, it could do without the gliding animations. The parody site was instantly painful though, I think it was a to do with the grey/green on white; amusing afterwards. ------ bouh I have thought of something like that for teaching programming language, you dit it, this is very good ! You should make your tool a generic plateform an sell it to teaching organizations. ~~~ vikp Thanks! Do you know of any organizations that want such a platform? There are a lot of players in the LMS space, like edX, Canvas, etc. ~~~ jonwachob91 It'll be difficult for you to sell the platform. Follow your own gut, but investors/buyers don't care how great your platform is. You have no IP so they can pay someone to build another version. Investors and buyers purchase users. Get a lot of users on your platform and then consider selling. That being said, codecademy and code school are both model templates that you could use to turn this into a business if you'd like that route. You can also find hacker schools teaching data science (such as iron yard - [http://theironyard.com/academy/python- engineering/](http://theironyard.com/academy/python-engineering/)) and see if they'll be willing to add your curriculum to their pre-course requirements. You might be able to get them to have students help build our your curriculum as part of their course projects. Any kind of media coverage (such as fast co, popular science, etc) will help garner attention and users. If you are able to get access to current sports data (nba, nfl, baseball, etc) and are able to help teach data science around those data sets you could probably get a lot of motivated but non-cs educated users and media coverage. That is also a feature you could probably charge a subscription for. I'm shooting ideas from the hip, so take them and turn them into something that is more familiar with your background. Whatever direction you choose to take dataQuest, talk with your potential users and get their feel. Make a decision to move in a direction that'll have minimum push-back with maximum achievement of your desired goals. Focus on user growth and you'll garner the attention of affluent individuals. Good-Luck and let me know if you need any help or someone to bounce idea's off of! ------ neo_optimus This website looks great. Hopefully sites like these will help the new comers in data science to jump start their education. ~~~ hsparikh Agreed. There are many different components to learning the basics of exploring, analyzing, visualizing, and interpreting real data. Checkout Tuva's incredibly easy to use tools to get an idea of how these concepts can be brought to life for data novices and young learners. [https://tuvalabs.com/datasets/us_cities__part_i/#/](https://tuvalabs.com/datasets/us_cities__part_i/#/) ------ Flimm I somehow missed the "no sign-up required" in the front page, because of the login link. ------ nkangoh Excellent website. What did you use for the front-end, is it based off a template? It looks great! ~~~ vikp Thanks! The frontend is written in javascript, and uses angular. Design is based on bootstrap. Frontpage is a modified template, rest is custom. ------ ffumarola Great work Vik! Nice to see you getting a lot of great feedback and attention. ------ jalcazar Looks very good and definitively more affordable than datascience@berkeley. Thanks! Looking forward to use it ------ rbxs That's the first course I actually like. And it's free too! ------ jarcane Perhaps the thing I find most impressive about this it's that it runs quite usably in my phone browser (WP8.1). It's the first one of these I've found that does. ------ fatolutoye I just finished the first two missions. Amazing!!! ------ jjsz Is there a javascript version a la freeCodeCamp? ~~~ jarcane I had not actually heard of freeCodeCamp. That looks pretty cool, and will probably shoot to the top of my list for entry points to JS. Thanks for the mention! ------ radhouane It is very similar in concept to [http://coderscrowd.com](http://coderscrowd.com). Good job ------ sw00 This is really incredible. Thank you. ------ jsonne This is really incredible! ------ brianberns This looked intriguing, but all the lessons seem to revolve around learning Python, which doesn't interest me (since I'm already a software developer). I guess I expected something more science-y like R or maybe Julia. ~~~ vikp I actually learned a lot of coding with R. It's hard to learn, but once you do, it's great for hacking up models and trying stuff out. But, because of R's quirks, it's generally easier to write and deploy consistent, good-performing code in python. Python code is also more readable, which makes it easier to collaborate. All of my data science work, including plotting, is now done in python. I'm working on more advanced content for dataquest, and thanks for the feedback. ~~~ noer I'm curious what reseources you used to learn R. I've had it on my list of to- learns for awhile. ~~~ jonwachob91 Code School as a free introduction course that'll get your feet wet and use to a lot of the concepts. It's a nice intro to the O'Reilly book	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
An Update on Facebook Ads - the_watcher http://www.facebook-studio.com/news/item/an-update-on-facebook-ads?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+facebook-studio%2FhxhX+%28Facebook+Studio+Blog%29 ====== the_watcher I'm disappointed that they are removing offers. We've had great success with them, although I am hopeful we can replicate most of the success with link posts.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
First “Appstore” for WordPress and Drupal Coming Soon - felicianotech http://melitix.org ====== mixologic Considering that virtually every plugin for Drupal is available on drupal.org, for free, and that all drupal modules are released under the GPL, I think you're going to have a hard time including Drupal in this. Not to mention you'd likely not even get to use the Drupal trademark without Dries' approval, and I strongly doubt this is the kind of thing that would get that approval. ~~~ felicianotech That same thing applies to WordPress. To goal isn't to replace all the free plugins or anything. Have you ever actually dealt with Drupal and it's modules? The process to install and upgrade them is extremely poor. WordPress is much more technology advanced in that area. The only way to sanely deal with modules in Drupal right now is by using Drush. While using Drush is great and CLI tools will always be needed, other options have an opportunity here. ~~~ mixologic Yes, I have. I am on the drupal.org engineering team. I suggest you look into composer for managing modules. Also there is momentum on building an automatic update system for drupal, ([https://www.drupal.org/node/2367319](https://www.drupal.org/node/2367319)) so, while things can be improved, there really isn't much business opportunity there. ~~~ felicianotech Oh that's great. Thanks for all the food work. Composer doesn't provide the same user experience that some people expect coming from the mobile world, which is the intention here. As for as the background updates Drupal Issue opened, that's absolutely great and I think sorely needed. I hope it gets pushed through. That doesn't solve the issue of installing or removing, or handling billing, across multiple sites. Pantheon has some really good tools built-in but outside of that, there's not much available at the moment. ------ jeswin I am not sure HN should be a sounding board for ideas. A better way to do this might be to make a tiny prototype and do a Show HN. ~~~ felicianotech What's show HN? ------ mtmail "Meetup.com Alternative in the Works (melitix.com)" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12309589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12309589) Are you building two businesses at the same time? Or just two static pages? ~~~ felicianotech I'm testing market interests in two different ideas so that I can determine which one would have the best chance at succeeding. Thus, which one to invest my time in. ~~~ elmin FYI: [https://eager.io](https://eager.io) ~~~ felicianotech Interesting, taking a look. ------ newsat13 This is really strange. Just 5 days ago there was [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12309589](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12309589) which said this was a meetup.com alternative. This is taking startup minimalism to new levels. i.e just build a web page with no actual code. But this is what Sam Altman advocated in one of his lectures - how these students stuck posters everywhere on campus about food delivery with no product. FWIW, I upvoted this. Since this is a good experiment in startup thinking ~~~ felicianotech This is my first time testing an idea this way. I'm still skeptical myself but as you mention, Sam Altman and the whole Lean Startup philosophy suggest testing this way. I'm looking for my next startup to have the best chance to succeed possible so worth a shot. I appreciate the upvote. ------ dwd You might want to look at Envato's Themeforest and CodeCanyon ~~~ felicianotech I've seen those. This idea would be different then that. Someone commented another site that looks like it might be actual competing site though. ~~~ swiftisthebest You will lose to them. CodeCanyon is well run and established. ------ felicianotech I'd be happy to answer any questions and discuss ideas with people.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Havana syndrome: Exposure to neurotoxin may have been cause, study suggests - goodcanadian https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/havana-syndrome-neurotoxin-enqu-te-1.5288609 ====== aug_aug Possibly related tidbit - I used to roll my own cigarettes when working in the field as a geologist, left a pack of papers under the seat of my truck which had no carpeting, spilled 100% DEET on the floor, DEET absorbed into pack of papers. Months later found those same papers (what luck!) and rolled a cigarette without thinking about it, minutes later I was asking my now wife if she "could hear the helicopter sounds!!?" and thought I was losing my mind. I put it all together weeks later when I remembered the DEET spill from several months earlier. Pesticides/insecticides, in my experience at least, can induce those symptoms, lol - maybe the mosquito spraying was a little heavy by the hotel? And now I hope I don't have brain damage, thanks internet. ~~~ skim_milk When my father was a child, he would bike behind the trucks that sprayed DDT all over the neighborhood because the DDT mist kept him cool. I hope you'll be fine, because people have done much worse! ~~~ t1lthesky Ha I remember doing the same thing when I was ~6 years old in South Korea. There would be these trucks that went around spraying mosquito killing fog in the apartment complexes and all the little kids from the neighborhood would run behind them. Well now I'm 30 and so far things seem to be ok! Fingers crossed ~~~ therein Yup, this has been my experience growing up outside of the US. Watching this video made me facepalm really hard. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2NmuQW8cjE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2NmuQW8cjE) ~~~ emerongi The description on that video is hilarious. ------ PentiumBug (Cuban here.) I find this result very interesting, really, as we're exposed to these chemicals in varying degrees and frequency. I personally live in a epidemiological controlled/safe (-ish) area of Havana, so my exposure is very limited. However, I do know that some other areas are way more affected by vectors since they are less urbanized and with more population density. In those cases the authorities are more aggressive in the use of mass fumigation, particularly during the summer and autumn; but still I don't think that such elevated frequency produces the effects shown in the article, for the general population, that is. It is true that we're particularly vulnerable to zika, chikungunya, yellow fever, and dengue fever (especially in 2016); and what I can easily imagine (and conjecture) is that diplomatic personnel were overly (and rightly) concerned, and liberally applied these products with more zeal than necessary. Thus, increased their exposition to these chemicals. ~~~ goodcanadian They were apparently spraying INSIDE the offices. I'm not particularly concerned about pesticides in general, but I would NEVER use them indoors. Also, the diplomatic buildings are likely well sealed and air conditioned while I suspect local buildings use more natural cooling (open windows and the breeze) and are thus better ventilated. ------ alexandercrohde tl; dr: \- Neurological studies show actual damage to the same region of the brain for these diplomats \- Pesticides (organophosphates) are put out as a candidate theory. \- Research shows people whose residences were sprayed MORE with pesticide had greater symptoms, adding strong evidence \- Mass Hysteria is dismissed as a theory, as the group of people experiencing it is highly vetted and because the diagnosis is only applicable when no underlying cause is present. In this case, the actual measurement of the brain show there is damage, ruling out the theory. ~~~ wyldfire > The embassies actively sprayed in offices, as well as inside and outside > diplomatic residences — sometimes five times more frequently than usual. > Many times, spraying operations were carried out every two weeks, according > to embassy records. This suggests that in fact it was the US government (following the host government's lead) that introduced the toxin into their environment. If so, it seems like the Cubans may be owed an apology. But did the embassy use stronger concentration than Cuba? Or a different agent? Are any local Havanans experiencing these symptoms? ~~~ alexandercrohde The article answers this ~~~ wyldfire Specifically this section I suppose: > The symptoms experienced by the victims — headaches, hearing loss, cognitive > problems, loss of balance, etc. — are frequently found in the general > population, these scientists argued, and can be attributed to many causes. ~~~ zkms also page 35 mentions that there's genetic factors (PON1 gene) that affect organophosphate susceptibilities ~~~ tudorw Possibly CYP2D6 polymorphism has a role too [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26723569](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26723569) ------ hellofunk > The embassies actively sprayed in offices, as well as inside and outside > diplomatic residences — sometimes five times more frequently than usual. > Many times, spraying operations were carried out every two weeks, according > to embassy records. Wow, that is really alarming. I would never feel comfortable with that inside my home or office. ~~~ bilbo0s You kind of wonder, if someone's fumigating your office that often, and then you suddenly get sick, why wouldn't that be the first thing you look at? Like, "Hmm, what about this giant cloud of bug spray? Maybe I'm allergic or something?" Why did they jump to, "The Cubans must have Marvin the Martian's P-U-38 Explosive Space Modulator that they're shooting at my ears." ~~~ agapon But, did the spraying start short time before the symptoms appeared? Or has it been going on for a long while? In the latter case, it's not strange that they didn't make a connection initially, because "nothing changed". ------ narrator Reminds me of all the people mysteriously dying in the Dominican Republic[1]. The best I could figure out from reading about it was that illegal pesticides were being used in hotels to eradicate bed bugs and they ended up getting on bottles of stuff in the minibar and in the food and randomly killing or making people extremely sick all over the country and the resort chains covered it up. [1][https://nypost.com/2019/06/28/fbi-to-release-toxicology- resu...](https://nypost.com/2019/06/28/fbi-to-release-toxicology-results-in- rash-of-dominican-republic-deaths/) ~~~ zkms also reminiscent of [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorpyrifos#Tourist_deaths](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorpyrifos#Tourist_deaths) ------ throwaway66920 Maybe we would use less pesticides if we just called them neurotoxins. ~~~ fritzw Fun story... VX nerve agent was discovered and originally introduced as a pesticide. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_(nerve_agent)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/VX_$nerve_agent$) ~~~ vilhelm_s Not exactly VX, but Amiton (also known as Tetram or VG). It's about one tenth as toxic as VX, and similar in toxicity as sarin. In 1975 the Iraqi ministry of agriculture negotiated with a U.S. company, Pfaudler, for a contract to build a pesticide production plant. The deal eventually fell through because Pfaudler did not understand why the Iraqis insisted on manufacturing Amiton instead of some safer alternative. ------ cat199 Interesting findings, but how do we blame the Russians for this? [https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latin-america/u-s-officials- sus...](https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latin-america/u-s-officials-suspect- russia-mystery-attacks-diplomats-cuba-china-n908141) " The suspicion that Russia is likely behind the alleged attacks is backed up by evidence from communications intercepts, known in the spy world as signals intelligence, amassed during a lengthy and ongoing investigation involving the FBI, the CIA and other U.S. agencies. The officials declined to elaborate on the nature of the intelligence. " ~~~ codezero At this point I think we owe Cuba and Russia an apology for the hysteria involved. However, if you're looking for a reason you can always find one. From the article, it sounds like the spraying of pesticides was "more than usual" which might mean it was done intentionally to appear as an accident, since the spraying is a good cover. I expect this would be easy enough to check on if they _only_ sprayed with more frequency at diplomatic residences and the embassy. Edit: a few replies here are really more thoughtful than my comment. I recommend reading them :) ~~~ gvb > At this point I think we owe Cuba and Russia an apology for the hysteria > involved. We are at the point where we need to confirm the hypothesis. _If the hypothesis is confirmed_ we owe Cuba and Russia an apology. ~~~ codezero Yep. Fair conclusion thanks for pointing that out. ------ jlpom I find this hypothesis slithly more plausible than a pulsed radiofrequency/microwaves attack where the way this could alter white matter seems unclear, but especially given a precedent [0] both are good candidates. This is compatible in my view to a russian interference in the midst of warming relations between Cuba and the US/Canada. The diplomats seems ro be the only members of the embassy to be affected and the russians know how to not leave their footprint when they don't want to (e.g. not Novitchok or Polonium). [0] : [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Signal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moscow_Signal) ------ rb808 I preferred the top-secret Russian microwave neuro-weapon headlines. :) ------ hoseja It was just a gas leak! Nothing to see here, move along citizen! ------ empath75 This seems completely plausible to me and I hope it puts the absurd "sonic weapon" theory to bed. Combination of stress, genuine brain damage from excessive pesticide fumigation, and a little bit of mass hysteria. ~~~ sohkamyung For reference, the "sonic weapon" may have been very loud crickets [1] [1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/04/science/sonic-attack- cuba...](https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/04/science/sonic-attack-cuba- crickets.html)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Would the economy be better off with $18,126.88 per person - throwaway_jobs Tomorrow the government will likely pass a stimulus bill that could pay each person in the US (based on a pop. of 331M) $18,126.88 each.<p>Some taxpayers will receive direct payments, up to $1,200, and the rest is going to businesses and the Fed.<p>Would the economy not sort itself out quicker and it be more equitable for law makers to give people to funds? ====== Someone1234 Apples and oranges comparison. While individual citizens are getting "free cash," businesses are getting low interest loans that need to be repaid. A lot of the rest is going to emergency agencies, hospitals, and states. So if the question is: "Instead of loaning businesses money to stay afloat, funding emergency agencies, hospitals, and states we just give each citizen tons of free money while ignoring everything else?" My answer is an easy "no." That makes no sense. The only way this question makes sense is if you know nothing about the stimulus bill. ~~~ bb88 Let's be fair here, this is not a stimulus bill. This is a "stay afloat" bill to keep the US running. Stimulus bills don't include emergency funds to keep hospitals running. Let's try this, instead of assuming the questioner must be ignorant about something or other, how about taking the question head on. And by that I'm assuming he's asking the following: "Is it better to give money to businesses or people in time of economic crisis?" ------ joejohnson Yes, I think that would be a much more equitable way to stimulate the economy. That, or loan/debt forgiveness programs, would benefit poor and working people over large corporations and their boards. Matt Stoller has covered this legislation on his blog, and has much more detail on how this bill is a massive coup for many large corporations: [https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/stop-the-6-trillion- coron...](https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/stop-the-6-trillion-coronavirus- corporate) ------ Proziam Simplest solutions are usually best in cases like this. As such, paying out the sums directly to the people is definitely a viable solution. However, I prefer a different solution because $1200 isn't enough to cover the _rent_ for a lot of people, let alone all their necessary costs of living. I would propose a freeze on all the obvious payments like rent, mortgages, all types of loans, utilities, and insurances. Then I'd give everyone $200 a person for food, and guarantee the businesses that are affected by the aforementioned freeze loans to cover the gap. This covers people regardless of their cost of living so fewer people get wiped out by bad timing. Of course, it doesn't have the benefit of saving large companies from their irresponsible financial management policies, so it would never pass. [0]Nor does it guarantee all the _obvious partisan garbage_ that was being pushed during the negotiations. [0] “This is a tremendous opportunity to restructure things to fit our vision,” Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.)[https://thehill.com/homenews/house/488543-house-democrats- ey...](https://thehill.com/homenews/house/488543-house-democrats-eyeing-much- broader-phase-3-stimulus) ------ gok Where did you hear it's a $6 trillion stimulus? It's $2T, much of which is loans, not grants. ------ cycrutchfield Why are you equating loans with cash? ------ morninglight Thousands of people will be killed by the corona virus and many more will have their lives torn apart. However a few will make a killing with high-frequency trading on the US stock markets. Maybe this is the time to slow the markets down and require stocks to be held for _at least_ 48 hours before they can be sold. There is enough turmoil in daily life that we should consider adding some stabilty. Why would anyone think high-frequency trading would benefit a society in this situation? ------ dumbfounder There is no perfect answer, and ideally you would need to do case-by-case for every person And business. But that’s not feasible. We want people to have jobs when this is over so that’s why the money is going to the businesses, to keep them open. Otherwise we have people with money for a while and then businesses die and there are no jobs for people to go back to. ------ jerome-jh Banks are cash multipliers. When they receive 1€, they lend 7€. Speaking for EU. The ratio may be higher in the US. That's why the Fed gets so much, because then it lends to banks, banks lend to businesses and to individuals, usually at a somewhat higher interest rate. ------ steveeq1 That stimulus bill is going to cause hyperinflation. ~~~ viklove If you give everyone money, the hyperinflation only affects the richest, aka billionaires. Who gives a shit about them? They'll be fine. ~~~ robjan A billionaire doesn't care when the price of a loaf of bread increases by 10% and, in any case, the money will eventually trickle up to the billionaire. ~~~ viklove Are you seriously saying we can't produce enough food to feed our populace in the US? That's not the issue. The issue is that we're willfully keeping it out of the hands of hungry people because of our "economic system." The purpose of our economy is clearly not to feed people, it's to enrich the wealthiest among us.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: A site that helps you find the perfect gift by showing you random stuff - sufyanadam https://itsonsale.today/ ====== luxegift That's cool dude! This site also shows you gift ideas [https://luxegift.co](https://luxegift.co) and [https://luxemiss.com](https://luxemiss.com)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Flickr Accidentally Wipes Out Account: Five Years And 4,000 Photos deleted - barredo http://techcrunch.com/2011/02/02/flickr-accidentally-wipes-out-account-five-years-and-4000-photos-down-the-drain/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=Google+Reader ====== JacobAldridge Since the original discussion has been overtaken by this link, I shall link to it - <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2167808> so nobody here misses it. ~~~ barredo Wow, thanks. Missed that link. Should I delete this post? ~~~ JacobAldridge No, I don't think so, it adds to the discussion (ie, it's not a dupe, it's just on the same topic from a different website). It will rise on its own merits - I just added the link to the previous so that we didn't have the same conversations on two pages!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Beginner's Intro to Coding Fundamentals - jdaudier http://blog.learnstreet.com/fundamentals-of-coding/ ====== saiprashanth93 I am new to programming.How much truth is there in the statement"90% of code consists of for,while,if loops"?Even though the page states it is a made up statistic? ~~~ songzme I write if while for all the time. So there is much truth in terms of actual code. The other times you are just calling other methods ~~~ saiprashanth93 sites like learnstreet,codeschool,codcademy can they really teach you enough programming to solve huge problems?most of them seem to be just teaching syntax and a few problems to solve seem to be given.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How Computer-Hacking Laws Make You a Criminal - ck2 http://www.livescience.com/26383-are-you-looking-at-this-website-you-might-be-breaking-the-law.html ====== maxharris "Computer criminals" doesn't get us anywhere conceptually in this instance. When people bring up Gates, Jobs and Woz, it's nearly always because they're huge successes, financially or otherwise. Gates and Jobs were both pro- copyright, pro-intellectual property. They built incredible businesses and were very successful. Far more successful than Woz, who was himself more successful than Swartz. If you want to relate these four people in a useful way, rank them in terms of how far left their ideas were on IP. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bill_Gates_Letter_to_Hobby...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bill_Gates_Letter_to_Hobbyists.jpg) ~~~ adventured Rank them by how far left their ideas were on IP? That makes absolutely no sense. The biggest copyright trolls are on the left. Unless you mean "left" to represent the ideology root of the copyright trolls today. ~~~ dllthomas The entertainment industry backs predominately Democratic candidates, but this is more or less orthogonal to the notion that strict or lax copyright is ideologically leftist. The parties certainly lean one direction or another overall, but they are conglomerations of agendas by convenience and happenstance not carefully constructed to reflect an ideological framework. ------ danso Woz is the only one of the three whose situation and mindset compares closely to Aaron. I think one thing worth learning is that it is really hard to find absolutes in justice. There is no absolutely "good" act or absolutely "harsh" penalty. The discussion about how many people basically ignored Aaron's fundraising attempt on HN showed that not everyone thought his motives and acts were noble. Steve Woz has only luck to thank for why he didn't spend a good amount of time in jail. Not for the blue box stuff, but for putting a fake ticking bomb in his high school locker and causing a scare. If that had happened today, he'd likely get more than just a temporary suspension, and no one would really care because he'd just seem like another stupid kid who needed to be smacked down. It's just a tragedy that Aaron did not have that same luck. ------ jetti "He was arrested, indicted twice on multiple counts of fraud and, at a trial that was to have begun in April, faced 50 years in federal prison and a $1 million fine." This is wrong. He faced UP TO 35 years in prison and UP TO $1 million fine. It wasn't an all or nothing. He was also charged with 13 felonies. Which means that the following: "Swartz was facing more prison time than he would have if he'd committed a serious physical crime, such as assault, burglary, grand theft larceny or involuntary manslaughter." Doesn't hold true either. Yes, his 13 felonies could have netted him more time than if he had committed the crimes the article listed. But if you committed those crimes 13 times then, it would be a different story. It amazes me that with all of the stories floating around, that people would still not have their facts straight. Link for proof: [http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us- gov...](http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120917/17393320412/us-government- ups-felony-count-jstoraaron-swartz-case-four-to-thirteen.shtml) ~~~ nzealand I think you are missing the bigger picture. Typically someone charged federally will face intense pressure to plea out. Fighting the charges effectively adds years onto your potential imprisonment. Federal crimes also tend to be non-violent (illegal entry, wire fraud) yet typically result in longer sentences than state sentencing which typically includes more violent crimes. ~~~ pyre The longer (maximum) sentences are to reflect the magnitude of the damage that can be done. A single instance of 'hacking' can cause millions or billions in damage (depending on the situation). As others have stated, there needs to be a tiered system so that lesser crimes committed 'with a computer' aren't under the same blanket law as criminals that hack into financial institutions in an attempt to steal money. Sort of how a death can result in a manslaughter charge, or various degrees of murder charge (each having different maximum penalties and distinct qualifications). ~~~ eridius If you hack a computer and cause millions or billions in damage, why the heck can't you be prosecuted for causing damage rather than for accessing an unauthorized system? ~~~ fiesycal Because you shouldn't be accessing an unauthorised system? If someone unlawfully entered your house shouldn't they be punished for doing that not only if they take something? ~~~ Bud Sure. Yes. But that punishment doesn't need to be multiple felony convictions and 30 years in prison for a minor, non-violent, victimless crime that nobody directly affected is interested in prosecuting. That's all. ~~~ pyre Please read my post suggesting a tiered system. A tiered system would set limits in specific circumstances 'in stone' so that there isn't this idea that all computer trespasses can be sentenced on the same scale (e.g. from 0 - 30 years). The specific circumstances can take into account things like: \- Did the defendant aim to profit financially from the actions? \- Was the defendant attempting to cause malicious harm? (i.e. he didn't want to profit, but he was trying to cause damage) etc. The most innocuous being "no financial gain + no malicious intent." ------ JasonFruit All this does is show that it's possible to commit crimes and later in life be successful in business. I don't think that knowledge gets us anywhere useful. ------ jack-r-abbit What a stupid article filled with hyperbole. ------ saraid216 Reading this title made me think of the opening scene to the new Ocean's Eleven, when Danny is at his parole hearing: "Well, as you say, ma'am, I was never charged." ------ maeon3 The best minds among us have a healthy disrespect for "the law", especially when the laws are wrong. The us government killed one of its own prized children, in situations like this, the citizens should look around and notice that the united states is falling, like a bad hard drive that will eventually have to be replaced with a newer one. sadly the replacement will involve our blood, we will have to die for our country and our freedoms once again, so that our great grandchildren can live in a world worth living in. ~~~ pi18n We've told them multiple times their country is sliding downhill. If Americans want laws "protecting" them from terrorists, let them have it. The ones who get clued in can emigrate to an actually free country.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Getting screwed out of rent by my non-ebooks - xrd http://www.webiphany.com/2011/05/20/ebooks-are-only-licensed-well-at-least-they-are-not-living-rent-free-in-my-house/ ====== josephcooney The true cost of books is not the price you pay for them, or the space they take up on your shelf - it's the time you spend reading them. ------ wccrawford The last time I moved, my books were the single biggest pain. I resolved to start getting rid of them (and promptly donated about 1/6th of them right off) and I'm watching for more of my favorites as drm-free ebooks to handle them, too. I'm starting to consider ripping the covers off, throwing the rest away, and downloading them.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Google Meet Studio Mini – Change your appearance with a browser script - xingyzt https://x-ing.space/mercator ====== skybrian This looks like pretty clear trademark infringement to me, unless you work for Google and I think that's unlikely. I'm surprised Google lets anyone post a Chrome extension with a title beginning with "Google". ~~~ xingyzt You’re probably right, but seeing that Google Meet isn’t enforcing its trademark on extensions used by tens thousands of people (“Google Meet Grid View”, “Google Meet Enhancement Suite”, “Google Meet Push to Talk”, etc), I’ll just keep the name. ~~~ seanwilson I'd be careful. On August 27, they're getting stricter on spam [https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/spam- faq](https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/spam-faq) so don't be surprised if they start cracking down on this as well. "...for Google Meet" will probably be okay. They have specific examples like that here: [https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/branding](https://developer.chrome.com/webstore/branding) ~~~ xingyzt Got it. Thank you both for the warning :] ------ diiq Neat! This would be pretty useful to me if the settings persisted between sessions -- I don't have the time to fine-tune my camera for each meeting, but if I could tune it once and use it again and again, that'd be worth it. ~~~ xingyzt Implemented in 1.13.0. Update is pending review from the webstores. ------ khimaros The source is also available on GitHub [https://github.com/FlyOrBoom/mercator](https://github.com/FlyOrBoom/mercator) ------ wyxuan OMG I love this. This is like the photobooth application but for google meet. This needs to have the weird lens effects like fish eye. ~~~ xingyzt feDisplacementMap [1] should work, although I have no idea how to make one, and Google Meet on Firefox is having problems with SVG filters [2]. [1] [https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/SVG/Element/feD...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en- US/docs/Web/SVG/Element/feDisplacementMap) [2] [https://github.com/FlyOrBoom/mercator/issues/2](https://github.com/FlyOrBoom/mercator/issues/2) ------ 29athrowaway Change the extension name. This is not an official Google product. The name is misleading. e.g.: Mercator for Google Meet	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Microsoft Whiteboard - pizza https://blogs.office.com/en-us/2017/12/05/microsoft-whiteboard-preview-the-freeform-canvas-for-creative-collaboration/?eu=true ====== taylodl "It’s designed for teams that need to ideate, iterate, and work together both in person and remotely, and across multiple devices." _So long as all those devices are running Windows 10._ I'm sorry - in this day and age any software billing itself as a collaboration tool had better be able to run on Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android and iOS. Those are the platforms people use, those are the people with whom I need to collaborate.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Absence of evidence - henning http://www.johndcook.com/blog/2011/02/22/absence-of-evidence/ ====== baddox The big point here, which the author doesn't mention, is that you can have absence of evidence _without searching for evidence_ or you can have absence of evidence _after rigorous searching_. I believe that the former situation is the one covered by the saying "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." For example, I personally haven't observed any evidence of gravitational time dilation, because I haven't looked. I would be a fool to interpret this lack of evidence as evidence that gravitational time dilation doesn't exist. The engineers of the Global Positioning System have evidence. However, after a reasonably rigorous search, one may indeed reasonably conclude that something doesn't exist if no evidence of it has been found, especially when evidence would be easily visible if the thing did exist. The examples the author gave fall into this category: Most likely, given the distribution of humans on Earth, there would be evidence of dodo birds if they were extant. Now, it's important to be careful when estimating the likelihood of stumbling upon evidence of something. Hundreds of new species (most only subtly different than known species) are discovered every year, and there are undoubtedly thousands of oceanic creatures that have never been seen by humans, much less captured and dissected. It would be foolish to deny that there aren't hundreds or thousands of yet-undiscovered species simply because as of now we have no evidence of them. ------ smanek It's a pretty straightforward implication of bayes' law that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence. In fact, we can quite easily quantify just how strong the evidence it provides is. [http://lesswrong.com/lw/ih/absence_of_evidence_is_evidence_o...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/ih/absence_of_evidence_is_evidence_of_absence/) ~~~ PaulHoule But, with Bayesian methods you're feeding in prior information which can itself be flawed. When it comes to some question like 'What is reliability of the space shuttle?' the largest uncertainty in the calculation is that there is some failure mode you haven't thought of. Despite decades of changes to the space shuttle to improve safety, the official estimate of the failure probability hasn't changed since 1975. In conventional logic, we say that a reasoning method is sound if it never comes to correct conclusions. One version of 'A of E' -> 'E of A' is the "closed world assumption" which, in one variant, means that "if you haven't been presented with X, then not(X) is true." Now, we know that's not sound, not correct 100% of the time. However, when doing 'commonsense reasoning', the CWA can sometimes be a highly effective heuristic. (Note also that's there's no completely satisfactory way to deal with logical negation in knoweldge based systems at this time, so we've got to choose some poison, or otherwise deal with a system that "can't say no". Part of that is that 'commonsense reasoning' is probabilistic. For instance, an effective hold 'em player has to estimate the probability of improving his hand at drawing, have a guess about what his opponent(s) may be holding, and how the opponent may respond to his actions. From that he's able to estimate odds which help him decide what to bet. Poker's a pure example, but the same kind of probabilistic reasoning is necessary for hunting, software project management, scientific research, and many of things that people do. ------ _delirium If you're going to take it as an absolute statement, sure. But the more usual meaning in science, at least, is that the lack of evidence for something doesn't _by itself_ constitute evidence against it (or at least, it's evidence with weight arbitrarily close to zero). You need something more, such as absence of evidence _and_ a reason to believe that finding such evidence, if it existed, would have been at least somewhat probable. (Which is of course why the example in this post is doing the calculation of what observations we would've expected under each scenario.) ~~~ pjscott Sometimes I think this would be a lot easier for everyone if we just hauled out Bayes' theorem and had done with it. If a hypothesis (weighted with your confidence in it) predicts that a set of observations would turn up more evidence for it than you actually find, then that is evidence against that hypothesis, and should cause you to lower your estimate of the probability that the hypothesis is correct. And vice versa. For example, suppose that I want to explain why my apples have been stolen from my apartment. I live in a hypothetical universe where there are only three possibilities, all of which have roughly the same likelihood, _a priori_ : spontaneous combustion, alien abduction, or theft by a troupe of dastardly harlequins. If the apples combusted, I would expect to see scorch marks, or perhaps soot stains on the wall nearby. If they were abducted by aliens, I would not expect to see anything, since everyone knows that alien abduction rays leave no signs. Finally, if the vile harlequins made off with my fruit, I would expect to see some signs of their passing -- face-paint on the doorknob, perhaps a fool's cap hastily discarded in a corner. Now, I inspect my apartment. I find no scorch marks, which is evidence against spontaneous combustion. If my apples had burst into flame, it's technically possible that they could have done so without leaving marks, but unlikely. I find no evidence of alien abduction, which is exactly what I would expect to find, so it does not change my estimate of that hypothesis' likelihood. Finally, I find a scrap of ripped, brightly-colored cloth which appears to have been torn from the outfit of an interloper hastily scurrying away through my pointlessly-large ventilation ducts. My face grows grim as I raise my estimate of the likelihood of my third hypothesis. Harlequins! Foul creatures of the _Commedia dell'arte!_ My apartment has been defiled by their acrobatics and shenanigans! And they stole my darn apples! So, in the case of spontaneous combustion, absence of evidence was evidence of absence. For alien fruit abduction, absence of evidence wasn't evidence of anything. In the third case, there was evidence above what I would expect from my prior beliefs, so that was evidence for the harlequin hypothesis. ~~~ _delirium I buy that, but I guess to me that _is_ what the slogan is supposed to imply, but I do agree it's not always taken that way. That is: merely not finding evidence tells you nothing. However, not finding evidence, _when_ you have a prediction of what evidence should be found, may be evidence against. So you need two things there: 1) absence of evidence; and 2) a prediction of what evidence there should've been. If all you have is #1 by itself, you have no evidence of anything. Hence, absence of evidence (without more) isn't evidence of absence. Maybe I'm in the wrong debates, but most of the times when I see the slogan applied, the person doesn't have the second part. For example, a common elementary error is to conclude that variables are uncorrelated because you calculated their correlation in your data set and it was not significant. Failure to find a correlation in a very large population study that's large enough that it should have found one, can be evidence of no correlation (or no large correlation, at least), but you have to do a separate analysis for that. ------ tjmaxal The turkey comment reminds me of black swan investing. Just because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it won't in fact for certain things, it actually increases the odds that it will happen the more time passes without it occurring, like Volcanic eruptions. ------ Silhouette Another slightly annoying saying is "The plural of anecdote is not data". Any anecdote is a data point, if you assume that it is factually correct. You may or may not be able to draw any significant conclusions from that data, once you take into account sample size and bias, of course. But unless you're going to "sample" the entire population of interest, pretty much all statistical analysis in the real world is done based on multiple anecdotes. We just try to minimise the bias and to choose a sample size large enough to give results significant enough for our purposes. ~~~ Panoramix I disagree. I interpret that phrase as stating that an anecdote is something fundamentally different from a valid data point: the data point came from a carefully designed experiment using properly tested equipment, control groups, rigorous mathematical analysis, perhaps using double-blind, randomized trials where it applies, etc... whereas the anecdote is a story you hear from somebody, as per its definition: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anecdotal_evidence>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
A Call of Duty exploit - danso https://momo5502.com/blog/?p=34 ====== movover Interesting read - This is actually how a ton of game trainers/bots are made (especially ones used by Chinese gold farms in MMORPGs), along with private servers (except the other way around, where you send packets to the client). For some games, the bots are advanced enough where they can interact with all of the game's network protocol and behave similarly to a human, all while just being a 'terminal' for the game that sends custom packets. Hacking games via packet manipulation is nothing new either - I remember one of the big MMOs ~10 years ago having an exploit which would allow anyone to delete anyone else's in-game guild, and similarly, log into any user's account under some specific conditions. ~~~ arca_vorago On the opposite end, I have used a program that does image recognition called sikuli to a act as much like a human as possible instead of doing the low level thing. My favorite hack I feel responsible for was the wow zeppelin hack (zeppling fly points were stored client side ) so you could change them and the zepplin would take you somewhere else! ~~~ Mononokay > My favorite hack I feel responsible for was the wow zeppelin hack (zeppling > fly points were stored client side ) so you could change them and the > zepplin would take you somewhere else! Wait, really? I'm surprised I hadn't heard of this. ~~~ arca_vorago It was back in the vanilla wow days. I was active over at some german run wow hacking forum, did some reverse engineering, and posted about finding the values being stored client side in ram. A few months later someone did it... and then it was patched almost immediately. It's entirely possible they weren't related and whoever did it found the values themselves, but that's not as fun a story to tell myself or others so I stick to my version. Now you have me feeling all nostalgic for the day wow went from beta to live... and those early vanilla days of 40 man raids. ~~~ Mononokay So weird that they're bringing back Vanilla servers - maybe that'll be possible again? ------ gsich On the Steam Forums they deleted all threads regarding this. ------ vectorEQ a lot of work is done in game hacks to inject network packets, but they usually rely on packets not being sanitized and just injecting other values. Like for instance in some mmorpg you can edit packets that are sent, to add extra skill points on leveling up or other edits in the binary information. Encrypting would help against this. I haven't seen them exploiting clients with malicious packets. This kind of thing is a little scary, for instance, what if you let their game install some known hack into itself? Then you would be able to get all playes VAC bans, which are permanent in any case i think as VAC cannot decern if the hack was inject by another player or the player who was victim of this install. if you would do that in matches, you could get adversaries banned from tournaments etc. ~~~ tokyodude it's far far worse than that. you can inject arbitrary code to all opponents so install a root kit and read their Bank account or install a cyberlocker ransomware or turn their machine into a bot net. Windows and Mac (and Linux) really need to switch to as sandboxed systems and deprecate the 1980s style of code execution. The threats have changed and it's completely unacceptable how much access desktop apps have ~~~ Flow Apple tried sandboxing everything from the Mac App Store. Developers hated it. Was it just the execution of the Mac App Store processes or the limitations of that particular sandbox implementation that was bad or are desktop apps incompatible with sandboxing because of the historical freedom they enjoyed? ~~~ pvg Why 'tried'? It's still there and OS X itself is progressively making it less trivial for random unauthenticated code to do whatever it wants in general. ------ icebraining It's missing the actual exploit, no? ~~~ taspeotis “As the vulnerability has been patched, the code is available on GitHub.” ~~~ gsich Well patched, they downgraded the game to an older build with other problems.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How I Sold My Bible App Company - reuven http://trevormckendrick.com/how-i-sold-my-bible-app-company/ ====== trevmckendrick Trevor here, creator of the Spanish Bible app. IkmoIkmo got this spot on in his/her comment. Biggest two mistakes people are making in this thread: 1\. $100k was revenue, not profit. 2\. I get capital gains rates on the sale, versus ordinary income rates. (If you didn't know about #2 you should probably sign up for my accounting and tax course for freelancers and entrepreneurs: [http://trevormckendrick.com/accounting-course-for- entreprene...](http://trevormckendrick.com/accounting-course-for- entrepreneurs-and-freelancers/)) ~~~ Veratyr Sorry if this is incorrect but wouldn't a better term be long term capital gains rates? Short term capital gains are taxed at ordinary income rates but they're still capital gains. ~~~ trevmckendrick :) Yes you are correct. I try to avoid details when higher levels of abstraction are sufficient for my audience. ------ mattchamb For anyone interested, this is the relevant information about the sale in Salem Media's SEC filings: > On September 3, 2015, we acquired the Spanish Bible mobile applications and > their related website and Facebook properties for $0.5 million in cash. ------ emptybits I sold my company (Verrus PayByPhone.com ) several years ago and so much of this resonates with me. Thanks to the author for his candid sharing. It was cathartic to read, even. > ... over 7 months, hundreds of emails, ... psychologically exhausting and > definitely the hardest part of the 3.5 years I ran the business. This. The hardest part for me and my cofounders was keeping the business operating, and _growing_ , while spending what seemed like full time on the "distraction" of a sale process with several potential buyers. > I always assumed it was dead until the cash was finally in the bank. ... > various levels of depression occurred throughout the sales process. Yet, in the end: > The deal made a ton of sense and I’m glad it got done. Amen and congrats to you! ~~~ jastanton Hey, I use PayByPhone all the time in Seattle, I'm really glad you made it, it brightens up my day any time I can use it! Thank you, and congrats on the successful exit! ~~~ emptybits Thank you for the kind words. Seattle was a good, early proving ground for us. (We were HQ'd in Vancouver, BC.) ~~~ jastanton Did you do Seattle before Vancouver? ~~~ emptybits Off-street lots and garages in Vancouver and Seattle went PayByPhone gradually around the same time (early/mid 2000s). City streets didn't happen until much later. ------ bigtunacan Trevor, This is an interesting read and congratulations to you. If I understand it correctly the app was pulling in $100,000 a year and required only an hour of maintenance per month? I'm curious why you chose to sell for $500,000 rather than continue with a long term revenue stream? Was there concern on your part that you could keep these revenue up in the long run? ~~~ fencepost I suspect there was also an element of "A big dog in Christian Media wants something like my app. I can sell to them or I can fight the new thing they'll build and cross-market." By selling he gets a chunk of money in the bank (possibly less than he'd have earned over time and certainly less than Salem thinks they can earn with the app), but he also avoids a marketplace battle and he can go work on other things. Salem avoids having to develop a competing app and gets a significant and likely fast-growing installed base. My suspicion is that both sides feel like they came out ahead - Trevor got a couple years of good revenue followed by a nice exit; Salem got a market- leading app that likely will prove popular in some global markets where smartphone usage or capabilities are likely to increase over the next decade - what are the forecasts for smartphone usage in Central and South America? Additionally, if Salem isn't already an international player, having a top- rated app may let them expand other operations to cover more international international markets without having to do a lot of risky physical investment or international marketing first to break into those markets. ~~~ jscheel There's something to say for his place in the market, but I think you are right. Salem has infinitely more capital to create a competitor. By selling, they don't have to deploy that capital, and he doesn't have to fight against competitors eating away his revenue. ------ flippyhead > Basically I spent 2 weeks convincing them to let me write this blog post! And I'm grateful you did. This was very interesting to read. Thank you! ------ Sealy > My wife was out of town so to “celebrate” I treated myself to In-n-Out for > lunch! I love your frugal approach. You deserve everything you got. Nice to see how professionally you both handled the negotiations and it certainly teaches me the virtue of patience! ------ yohann305 What a great story! I want more stories like these. The author Trevor, really gave us so many behind-the-curtain information, at some point I even thought it was so much that he could get in trouble for it if the buyers read the story. (he mentions later in the post that he got it covered) Thank you! ------ junto The joy of Streak, and the fact that they work remotely, is that I could see them forwarding my email to each other. You’ll see in the map below that it was opened in multiple locations, multiple times. It’s like sending a text to someone you’re interested in after a date, and knowing that they’re talking to their friends about how to respond. They’re interested. This doesn’t always work obviously, but it gave me a ton of confidence in the moment. Interesting... Tracking people opening your app. I assume this tracking using a hidden image in the email? ~~~ frgewut "hidden images" don't work with most clients. I guess it was some link with a token they were clicking. ~~~ andyjohnson0 See [1] for a description of how the tracking works - scroll down to "So how does that tracking work?". It appears to use embedded links to message- specific 0-by-0 pixel remote images. [1] [http://www.ghacks.net/2014/02/22/can-streak-really-track- gma...](http://www.ghacks.net/2014/02/22/can-streak-really-track-gmail-emails- read/) ~~~ frgewut "Whenever a user opens the email without proper protection" is the caveat here. ~~~ peteretep Someone posted a site they'd built recently that would send you an email with all the nasty tracking tricks in them, and let you see which your client fell for. I was sad to see gmail choked on most of it. ~~~ sp332 Make sure to check that the IP addresses are yours. Gmail loads images to their own servers and then serves them to your Gmail UI from there, so trackers shouldn't get your actual IP. ------ x5n1 I don't see how any small time hacker agrees to any indemnification. It's not as if you could even if you wanted to even defend a small lawsuit (I don't know how much they paid him). So what's the point. If you are afraid of being sued, buy yourself insurance. You are a large company, that's something you can do. And it will actually provide you protection rather than a contract which I can not possibly fulfill. ~~~ roddux I was also rather confused at this. Why would he be liable for anything that happens with the app after it's been sold? Is this standard practise in such deals? ~~~ JabavuAdams I imagine it's the acquirer protecting themselves against due diligence oversights. ------ Sealy > Since the app performs so consistently and takes so little of my time (~1 > hour per month) it needs to make financial sense to give it up… Can I ask what you did with the rest of your time? ------ timsayshey There is a ton of opportunity in the christian media industry with huge markets. I hope more christian developers get involved and start making stuff that would help believers, missionaries, churches, etc. There are so many things to disrupt. For those that are interested and want encouragement or help finding ideas. I found a christian startup slack community [http://thirdpathinitiative.com/christian-startup- community](http://thirdpathinitiative.com/christian-startup-community) and there is also a really cool hackathon organization [http://codeforthekingdom.org](http://codeforthekingdom.org) ~~~ misterbwong I'm interested in joining your community but there are a couple things that look like red flags to me about this. 1\. It costs $25 to join the slack community. Is this normal? 2\. The overview" page mentions all the things in the ThirdPath coaching process but lacks one important thing-how it has anything to do with Christianity. It reads like every other startup coach/bootcamp process. Makes me think that this bootcamp is just targeting Christians because it's a big niche, not because you believe that there's truly a need for _Christian startups_ ~~~ arsalanb No, it's not. Your religion doesn't affect how well your startup does, as you pointed out. This is just an unfortunate case of somebody using religion as a tool to sell you something you may not purchase otherwise. This is against the Slack Terms of Service. [https://slack.com/terms-of-service](https://slack.com/terms-of-service) Clause #6.7 ~~~ timsayshey I wouldn't build a christian startup because there is something magic about the christian label. It might even fail. It's about personally believing in the mission of Christ and wanting to share the love of Christ through your gifts and talents. Also I will reach out to Slack's team to find out about the ToS. If this is truly the case then many other slack communities are in violation as well :/ ~~~ treebeard901 I find it odd that someone would charge a fee to join a chat room. Doubly so if that chat room is meant as a way for like minded religious people to communicate. Is there at least an animated collection plate that comes up during the sign up process? ~~~ nkrisc Sounds like exactly the sort of thing someone looking to exploit religion to make money would do. ~~~ saryant I've seen a number of Slack rooms try to charge that had nothing to do with religion (nomads.io comes to mind). ------ kdamken This was actually a really fascinating article. It was cool to read what it's like when you finally hit it big. I have a lot of respect for your negotiating as well. It's hard enough keeping that up during the interview process for a job, I can't image doing it for six months, for that much cash. Congrats on your success man. ------ robbiet480 This was an excellent read giving a great insider look at an acquisition from the seller side ------ bpicolo That full page ad on first load is incredibly annoying ~~~ giarc I thought I had clicked on the wrong link. ------ titomc @Trevor, Curious to know how did you get hold of the content for the Bible App. Did you purchase it or compiled it on your own ? ~~~ nkrisc The first comment on his blog post actually asks that. Q: Yen Tan > I’m very curious – isn’t there copyright on the bible/ translated bible? How did you deal with that? A: Trevor > Great question. The first first I used was in the public domain. I also sold other versions later as in-app purchases, but I licensed those from their respective copyright holders (i.e. Biblica and The American Bible Society) ------ wtbob > A few more emails/phone calls laters (this became a theme) they finally made > their first offer. It was around 3.5x revenue. Is this the standard opener now? Also, is that 3.5 _annual_ or _monthly_ revenue? For centuries I believe that 20x annual revenue has been a rule of thumb for properties, companies &c. ~~~ vinceguidry I think online properties are generally worth less because they take less time to cultivate and build. Also while their earning potential might be solid over the short term, over the long term it's not so easy to gauge. His Bible app is obviously different than most such properties, which is why he was able to bump up the offer. But still, if the app landscape changes, that can make their purchase worthless overnight. So you have to price that into the offer. ~~~ prawn Some online properties are valued at 17-20x monthly revenue. This guy did fine! ------ raverbashing I wonder where did he got the Bible text from though? Was it a public domain translation? ~~~ workitout You can get it free here: [http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10) There is an aspect to be considered about making money on this topic. ------ novaleaf can anyone give advice on what a reasonable indemnification clause would be? (reasonable for both parties) ~~~ OldSchool I'm surprised this isn't more discussed in the comments. It's a major element to consider when you're selling your business. He correctly identified it after all, as a potential deal breaker. You're selling something, so in an acquisition you will have to represent and warranty what you actually own and you're selling. This sounds simple on its face, but technology isn't nearly so well-defined and legally sorted as, for example real estate. In software, even if you are 100% certain you can transfer all of the code and there are no potential content copyright issues or latent prior agreements by yourself or other sellers, current/former employees who think they own something, etc, you still have at a minimum, a hard-to-quantify "Sword of Damocles" in the form of thousands of potential patent claims hanging over you, trolls or not, it doesn't matter in a sale. As in business itself, the bigger the money involved, the more visible you become to potential claims. A publicly-traded buyer is likely to be less flexible on terms, but in any case you as a seller have also to consider that in a sale, you're most likely going to be forced to shift liability from your corporation to yourself personally. If you're prudent, as this seller was, you realize this creates a time period _increased_ personal risk, despite your increased assets. Keeping this period as short as possible and limiting its scope and magnitude is your objective. A few limitations I can vouch for making it past public company scrutinity are 1. any dispute costing less than $X are not your responsibility. 2. a maximum liability limitation equal to the purchase price in cash / shares (in case share prices drops) 3. a time limit of two years or less. 4. escrow of a portion of the purchase consideration (shares and/or cash) as a warranty cap for the duration of the warranty, perhaps with release/reduction over time. The tax treatment of this arrangement would have to be considered carefully. Finally, it's worth noting that insurance for an acquisition deal may be available from big name insurers, likely for some low single-digit percentage of the deal value. However, their legal department will undoubtedly be more sophisticated in this area than your counsel, so at its worst insurance gives you little more than a contract with an insurance company over which to sue, likely at great cost. Overall, as lawyers always say, "it depends." Unless the deal and/or your resources are immense, likely it is a problem with no risk-free solution. If you're young and have nothing to lose, risk is an easier choice. For everyone else, all you can do is optimize based on present knowledge. ~~~ shostack So assuming you get a short time limit of <2yrs, would it be smart to stick it in a low risk account somewhere and not touch it until that term is up? Or was that the intent of the escrow? ~~~ OldSchool I'll suggest that the escrow route is an alternative to agreeing to indemnification in a simpler form; I can't imagine a situation where having both would be of benefit to the seller at least. I think ideally escrow would nicely encapsulate risk for a seller and ramp it down over time. When applied to cash it could create tax issues if a payment is recognized as income in one tax year and only becomes available in a subsequent year. For shares received by exchange for existing shares structured as a merger, this is likely solvable. If a selling party holds only stock options though and is issued shares on closing, again, my initial guess would be that would be deemed a "taxable event." Another aspect of escrow is that it eventually requires sign-off from the buyer to release it to you, effectively giving them control of your proceeds that they might attempt to exercise outside of the original intent of the escrow. So, as for handling your windfall during the indemnification period, yes, purely the simplest approach would be to hold the proceeds in the most risk- free way until your indemnification period ends. This is however, again complicated at least by tax implications if you need some of the money to pay taxes due on cash received in the closing. Furthermore, there is a strong argument for using some cash to hedge against a decline in the value of shares received (if any), simplistically illustrated by purchasing put options on the acquiring company's stock, since you're forced to hold it throughout some inevitable lockup period. Put options on a reasonably closely-correlated financial instrument might also be viable if the acquiring company isn't so large as to have an active options market, since public stock prices seem to move broadly, barring any company-specific failures. To put some entirely fictional numbers to the hedging argument, imagine you're obligated to sit on $10M worth of public stock for two years and you could spend $250K cash today to gain a significant level of protection against a drop in the share price. After your two-year wait, you either have $10M or more in stock if the price held or rose ($250K is gone but you spent it on insurance of a sort) or perhaps the stock dropped 80% and you now have $2M in stock but another $4M made back from the put options you bought, so while $6M pre-tax isn't $10M, it's a lot more than $2M. ------ bpg_92 Congrats!!! I got a small app and some ideas, stories like this make me want to pursue this fultime. ------ aprdm Thanks for writing this! Really good article. ------ seibelj 1 hour of work per month, $100k per year, each hour of his time was worth nearly $10k. Cool story but I never would have sold. This is the ultimate side business. ~~~ rpgmaker It's crazy, he was dying to sell his first company. Vanity makes us do crazy things. ~~~ cpwright He has 0 risk once his check for $500K clears. Every month he keeps the app there is a risk that something goes wrong; and that 1 hour a month probably doesn't include time that is spent thinking about those things going wrong. Getting the money all at once reduces his ongoing cognitive load. ~~~ infinite8s Well, except for the stuff he indemnified them against. ------ ericjang This was a great read. Congratulations! ------ bambax > _8\. If there is any content in the app who wrote it?_ Err... God? ~~~ pbhjpbhj God wrote it with His Spirit in the hearts of the believers and they provided a translation in to [mainly] Hebrew and Greek, those that have translated those translations then created new copyright works (NASB, NIV, NKJV, ESV, Vulgate, etc., etc.). I think it's these later translators the question is concerned with. For example News International owns Zondervan who own the NIV copyright; I wish that those who got together to write the NIV (one of the most popular English language translations) would have used a CC license. ------ itaysk Very interesting!! thanks for sharing ------ pklausler Another app idea for making money off Christians: the Rapture Alert, which would set off an alarm if a configurable proportion of its users suddenly vanish. ------ overcast $100,000 a year doing basically nothing, and you sold it for basically nothing. They made the deal of the year, and you lost out big time. I applaud this guy for creating something popular, and monetizing it well. But that is up there with one of the worst self offs I've ever read. With only $500,000 now you're on the five year crunch to get a new product built or find a new job. ~~~ sixQuarks There's no guarantee that app would continue doing $100k a year - competitors pop up, platforms change, economy collapses, you name it. I think he did alright. ~~~ overcast So rather than a chance that something may happen, you've guaranteed nothing will. The app could have just as well doubled its revenue. Selling out such an absolutely minimal work involved app is not worth the chance that the "economy collapses". Spend all that free time setting up apps on all platforms. You don't get anywhere without taking chances. ~~~ rconti $500k is nothing to sneeze at. Some folks get too wrapped up in how important they THINK their business (or stock options, or whatever) should be worth or might be worth. Rather than valuing them at what they're ACTUALLY worth.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Climb In, Tune In: A Renaissance for Sensory Deprivation Tanks - phodo http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/us/climb-in-tune-in-a-renaissance-for-sensory-deprivation-tanks.html ====== Zelphyr I tried that very location in Colorado. My experience was good though not earth shattering like Joe Rogan makes it out to be. Then again, I didn't ingest any edible cannabis prior to jumping in like he does. I would like to try again though. That location is clean albeit not very spa like. I can see where the Wild West aspect of it might be a problem for some places though. It's probably best to research places first. Even stop by for a visit prior to floating.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
U.K. to Trigger Brexit March 29, Starting Two Years of Talks - antr https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-20/u-k-to-submit-formal-brexit-notice-to-eu-on-march-29-pm-s-spokesman ====== cstross I would just like to note that March 25th (Saturday) is the 60th anniversary of the Treaty of Rome, which created the European Economic Community (from which the EU evolved): [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Rome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Rome) Imagine serving divorce papers on your spouse on a significant wedding anniversary, and now consider the message it sends. It's like Theresa May has carefully picked the time to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty that will cause maximum offense to the people she's about to negotiate a critically important trade deal with (from a position of inferior leverage). ~~~ corford In her defence (not that she really deserves it), Theresa May was fucked either way by setting March as the deadline. The sad part is I'm sure it was incompetence rather than a calculated slight. ~~~ moomin Grey's law: Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. ------ agd The filter bubble/group think is incredible in this thread! You'd think people are fleeing the UK in droves and driven to despair all round based on some of the comments here. In reality, none of the dire predictions for the economy have come to pass and people are getting on with their lives. None of my friends (all educated, well-off remain voters) are talking about leaving. Some people in this thread still seem to be in denial about the situation and completely ignore the flaws of the EU. Yes there are costs of leaving, but there are also potential upsides. e.g. having a more interventionist national economic strategy while pursuing more international trade deals. And it's likely that any trade tariffs imposed by the EU will be more than offset by the currency depreciation we've seen since the referendum. There are risks for the UK going forward but I'm more worried about the EU at the moment. If it doesn't reform, we'll continue to see rising extremism on the continent - look at Holland, Italy, France, Austria where extreme (and anti EU) parties all receive more votes than UKIP does in the UK. ~~~ MagnumOpus The most immediate prediction of a big FX sell-off has come to pass - and it has already lowered living standards and will continue to do so for the next few years. (Those few hundred quid that I have left over at the end of the month suddenly aren't enough for a holiday in Lanzarote or a new Macbook anymore. Gotta learn to love holidays in Blackpool or Brighton...) As to living in a filter bubble and "none of my friends are talking about leaving"... It doesn't even take our EU friends leaving to get a shortage of talent. Shortages will occur even if new EU talent stops coming - as is evident in areas like nursing where that sort of thing is tracked [1]. The NHS nurse/doctor shortage is bad and it will get worse and worse year by year due to Brexit. [1] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/01/25/number-eu- nurs...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2017/01/25/number-eu-nurses- coming-uk-falls-90-per-cent-since-brexit-vote/) ~~~ gambiting I'm friends with a couple CS professors at a Russel Group university, and they said that since last year the number of EU students applying for funded PhD positions went from hundreds to nearly zero this year - and several students who were going to start studying this year have pulled their applications, quoting brexit concerns. At our company we are trying to recruit for about 10-12 programming positions, and we had two programmers from EU who were deep into the recruitment process and they both resigned citing that they don't want to commit to living in the UK because of brexit. The process is not even fully defined yet, and it's already scaring people away - but things like less PhD students won't be damaging until 3-4 years from now, and then everyone will blame whatever else but brexit. Things might not be going down the drain right now, but there's no way it will turn into anything positive for years. ------ merraksh I'm moving from Birmingham UK to northern Italy at the end of the year. I will work remotely for the same employer, life is cheaper down there, and actually quality of life is higher in terms of healthcare, transportation, and services. I didn't imagine the last part before I moved here, but a few years dealing with both the NHS and private health providers, plus poor bus transportation and street safety in Birmingham, changed my mind. I have a similar opinion of the healthcare in the US, where I also lived for some time. Central Europe provides surprisingly good healthcare and even the private option is far cheaper. I actually was looking for a house outside of Birmingham, but I decided to wait until after the referendum. After that I had little doubt I'd leave. The net effect for the UK will be that I'll pay taxes to another country. I'm not even complaining about paying more taxes. ~~~ vr46 I hear you. People are harping on about potentially positive outcomes, but right now, things are quite rubbish, and it's the present that I'm finding the problem, not a theoretical outcome. I lived through a previous round of all this in the 1970s and 80s, and I really don't think I should do it again when I have a choice. ------ orph4nus I don't understand how they can still go through with this. As far as I've been following the analytics, news and coverage on this, the outcomes for UK are only negative. Can please someone enlighten me the good outcomes that will come out of this? Or is this really just about pride and stupidity? ~~~ Brendinooo Which outcomes - economic? I'm not from the UK, but my impression was that for many it wasn't about economic optimization, it was also about the notion of freedom - being less intertwined with the EU (and thus its regulations, economics, security concerns, etc.). Immigration was probably an issue as well. If freedom was the issue, you get the freedom and work out the consequences later. Some people would rather feel like their nation has more control over their destiny, even if that destiny isn't as comfortable as it could have been under someone else's control. I would also contend that as long as Brexit hasn't happened, there are plenty of forces that would want to keep the status quo and would therefore try to project as much negativity as possible. Also, I'm not an economist, futurist, or a stockbroker (so one can correct me if I'm wrong), but humans aren't always great at predicting things in these areas. So it's not fair to assume that there is no positive outcome. ~~~ moomin This is a funny one. The economic argument was principally a Remain argument, and was for the most part ignored. I think this was for two reasons 1) there's plenty of people who just didn't buy it, there was enough smoke thrown for many believe it wasn't settled, but I think more powerfully 2) a lot of people don't really think their economic well-being is linked to the country's economic well-being. In particular, there's a belief that a worse economy will principally affect London. (Sadly, it appears the opposite is the case.) Anecdotally, I've spoken to a number of Leavers who talk about taking back control (most of them also believe immigration is a problem). They tend to be working class and feel that the government doesn't listen to them. I really seriously doubt this vote will make a blind bit of difference on that front. ~~~ icc97 It's still my feeling the underlying powerful reason for people voting for Brexit was immigration. The rest was just a smokescreen to pretend like that wasn't their only reason. ~~~ pja According to Dominic Cummings (who ran Vote Leave) it was absolutely the case that immigration was the No 1 driver for the vote to leave the EU. So much so that they had to explicitly set aside 15 minutes at the beginning of every focus group to let people rant about immigration before they could get them to move on to anything else at all. Anecdotally, this is also what my parents found on the doorstep. ------ tehabe I wonder when the actual talks are starting, in April France elects a new president. In September Germany elects a new parliament. Who knows how the situation is in October and who May has to talk to. ------ splitrocket Politics assumes a zero sum game. Experts create non-zero sum outcomes. Humans, due to their loss aversion bias, prefer politics to expertise. Thus brexit. ~~~ AnimalMuppet I don't think your logic works. Wouldn't loss aversion lead you to prefer the non-zero-sum game? After all, in a zero-sum game, you might lose, and if you do, you are guaranteed to be worse off. In a non-zero-sum game, you are not guaranteed to be worse off, even if you "lose" (win less than someone else). ------ danmaz74 The referendum results really saddened me, but at this point the sooner this is over, the better. ~~~ TillE There were any number of ways that they could have backed out of this disaster in a politically acceptable way. A second referendum on a specific plan for what "leaving the EU" actually means, for example. It would be an uncomfortable situation, but it's vastly preferable to a decade or more of economic turmoil. Not to mention the probable loss of Scotland, huge questions about the Irish border, etc etc. ~~~ alva > could have backed out of this disaster in a politically acceptable way I don't think any retreat would have ever been politically acceptable. The general public saw through the "hard/soft" Brexit angle, it was clear that remaining in the single market would not have delivered the majority of leavers wishes. Worse still, this heavy push on "soft Brexit" made the perception that certain sections of the establishment was trying to deceive their way out of the vote stronger. This sort of feeling, that outside powers are pursuing objectives against our wishes, was a strong driver in the ref vote. ~~~ coroxout "it was clear that remaining in the single market would not have delivered the majority of leavers wishes" Well, with a 52:48 majority for leave and with almost all Remain voters probably preferring "soft" to "hard" Brexit, it would only need to satisfy a tiny % of leavers for it to have more a mandate than the "hard", no-deal Brexit cliff edge the government seem determined to steer us all over without any debate. ------ TazeTSchnitzel Only took them 9⅕ months! (With nought achieved in the meantime, too.) ~~~ cjrp I wouldn't say _nothing_ was achieved [http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=1Y](http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=GBP&to=USD&view=1Y) :( ~~~ arekkas Devaluation of currency is what every central bank is after for the last 10 years. Apart from you having less money when buying foreign things or traveling abroad, this is actually a good thing for the British export economy as it is now more competitive than before, simply because things are cheaper now. It's basically why Germany sees this enormous trade surplus - the bad economic shape of southern states such as Greece, Italy, Spain "artificially" keeps the euro low, and Germany profits from that in a major way. Of course, this isn't 1:1 because the devaluation of the GBP also means that trust was lost in the GB economy, which might hurt British companies in the long run. Anyways, charts that show upwards/downards trends are not always bad/good and should be taken with a grain of salt. Especially if used by either party for making the other look dumb. This is true for the US stock market right now as it is for the GBP. ps: I'm German and I do not support Brexit, but the world is not black and white. ~~~ cjrp > Apart from you having less money when buying foreign things Isn't this bad given that the UK currently operates with a trade deficit? ~~~ AnimalMuppet No, because peoples' behavior changes. They buy fewer imports (because more expensive) and sell more exports (because less expensive to foreign buyers), so the balance of trade improves. ~~~ cjrp That assumes everything can be made in the UK without any dependence on foreign countries anywhere in the supply chain. ~~~ AnimalMuppet No, it assumes that _more_ can be made in the UK with _less_ dependence on foreign countries in the supply chain. ------ baq i wonder what the results of a referendum about joining the EU would look like if it was done today. ------ 46Bit Any sense of how this will affect London tech? ~~~ zelos Google[1], Apple[2] and Dyson[3] (ok, not quite London) are making quite big noises about big new offices, so I guess things can't be that bad? Possibly they're betting on picking up lots of tech staff cheap if the banks start leaving London? [1] [https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/15/google- co...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/nov/15/google-commits-to- massive-new-london-hq) [2] [http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/revealed- apple-to-crea...](http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/revealed-apple-to- create-stunning-new-hq-at-battersea-power-station-a3356201.html) [3] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england- wiltshire-39117982](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-39117982) ~~~ hueving The big companies that already have a presence in multiple European cities won't have a big impact on staff. Take Google for example, people staying in London can keep working at that office, people that want to leave (or are forced to leave) can work in many of the other European locations (e.g. Berlin, Paris, Zurich, Vienna). Smaller tech companies will probably be hit the hardest if they only have a London presence and they lose half of their employees. Depending on the employee composition, it may even make sense to move the company entirely to another country in Europe. ~~~ zigzigzag Why would they lose half their employees? The only way Brexit involves people being forced to leave where they live is if the EU forces it to happen. The UK has already said many times it wants to take that possibility off the table as soon as possible. ~~~ cmdkeen There are also all sorts of legal barriers to kicking out people who have been in the UK for any length of time. It simply isn't the case that there are going to be millions of people forced to leave. Future immigration policy will need to be decided - I can't see a scenario in which talented Europeans who want to work in the UK are going to be turned away. More interesting will be what happens to tech immigration from the rest of world. It is entirely possible that we end up with easier immigration to/from North America as a result. ~~~ Angostura > There are also all sorts of legal barriers to kicking out people who have > been in the UK for any length of time. Such as? I don't believe that there are. ~~~ cmdkeen There are arguments the Vienna Convention has created acquired rights, and the ECHR's right to a private and family life. There's also the ability to apply for permanent residence if you've been in the UK for more than 5 years. This is all being predicated on a more specific settlement not being reached with the EU. Given the UK says it wants one that shouldn't be a problem and may well turn into the UK making a unilateral grant of residence even if the EU decides to play hardball. ------ zigzigzag Hacker News is full of people who are anti-Brexit. I see little understanding of the opposing point of view. I am quite happy to see Article 50 finally happen and will sum up why here. Take it or leave it. 18 months ago I was pro EU. Not strongly so, just because it was the status quo, in my mind was vaguely associated with co-operation and so I was for it by default. Today I am pretty strongly eurosceptic. I think it's important for the UK to leave and if anything I'd like to see it collapse entirely. Europe would be stronger, more prosperous, more cooperative and freer if the EU were to die. My reasoning goes like this. The EU is not simply a kind of really big working group for finding new ways to cooperate, as I had once tended to assume. It is a quasi-religious ideology with disturbing similarities to a cult. The people who control the EU and many European politicians don't simply see it as a way to foster collaboration and trade but rather as a way to replace existing European countries with a new country, one which would in my estimation be significantly worse than the countries we have now. Calling the EU a cult may seem extreme, but to me it's not: The EU and its supporters are not interested in debate on the future of Europe. The future is their intended future, and no other alternative futures are legitimised through recognition. The EU does not provide any channel for people to reject or modify their plans. Its leaders consistently see referendums or politicians that are not blindly pro-EU as dangerous and if they occur anyway, often due to constitutional obligations, the results are simply ignored if they run counter to what the EU's leadership wants. The so-called Parliament cannot actually change anything about the EU itself (it is not a real Parliament) and is thus stuffed with yes men whose only reason for being there is ideological commitment to the vision itself (there are also a handful of no-men who got themselves voted in purely to try and slow it down, but they can't do anything and have no real power). Indeed, we can safely assume that the new federal superstate the EU wants to build would not be a democracy. Given the EU's consistent lack of interest in actual, real democratic mechanisms, it is likely that if their plans succeed Europe's future looks pretty grim: something like the USSR of the 1980s. It is the avoidance of this fate that led me to vote out. In common with many cults the EU deliberately tries to make leaving it as difficult as possible, through a variety of techniques such as insisting that the remaining cult members (who were of course previously supposedly loving friends and allies) shun the traitor and have nothing to do with them. Any sustained connection with members requires complete membership and suggesting it doesn't is an evil attempt to undermine the unity of the group. The EU routinely abuses language in manipulative ways, for instance using the word "Europe" when they mean "the EU". They do this to plant the idea that any rejection of their plans is actually a rejection of "Europe" and "Europeans", although it isn't. They also like to suggest that any rejection of the EU is dirty backwards looking "nationalism", although the EU has its own civil service, its own "parliament", its own borders, its own currency, its own courts, its own flag, its own national anthem and wants its own army. The reality is that the EU is a country-under-construction and the EU is a fundamentally nationalist project. Finally, the most disturbing similarity of all is the fact that the modern EU is a project held together by fear. Its leadership happily and openly says so: President Hollande's memorable "there must be a threat, there must be a risk, there must be a price" quote (on the topic of Brexit) being the most extreme example, but even today I read that Juncker is saying that there's no risk to the EU because the British "example" will show others what happens to countries that leave. They frequently imply that the alternative to the EU is World War 3. European leaders talk this way constantly, apparently either not realising or not caring that it makes them sound like some sort of Mafia. There is no reason European cooperation must take place through such an organisation. Before the EU was formed in the early 1990s there were many parallel integration projects that were improving cooperation independently. The EU eventually absorbed them all, but if it were to collapse, the result would not be World War 3 or a dark age of hatred. It'd be a return to the days when deals and international bodies were set up independently and countries could independently assess which were working well and which were not, instead of an "all or nothing" arrangement that artificially ties trade and cooperation to an irreversible loss of local control. Edit: -1 within a few minutes. What a surprise. Don't downvote if you disagree, you won't change anything that way. Reply and debate instead. Second edit: Thanks for the replies. I would like to engage and continue the debate with you guys but HN has throttled me so I can no longer reply. I'll try following up tomorrow and see if the throttle has been lifted. (I'm starting to conclude HN is not a particularly good place to debate political issues for this sort of reason ...) ~~~ polmolea I read your entire rant and it's based on the sole idea that the EU is a cult, not a single quantifiable fact. This is the kind of judgement that leads to bad decisions. I think it's best we make this kind of decisions based on numbers rather than abstract thinking. For the record, I want to understand why people voted "leave" but every time I try I end up reading something like this which doesn't get me closer, it just upsets me. ~~~ vixen99 Try this: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/03/23/leaving-...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2015/03/23/leaving- the-eu-could-cost-britains-economy-84-billion-a-year/#1e006fd32fbf) 'So, obviously, it's not in fact the leaving or not of the EU that causes the changes in the economy. It's the policies of openness to trade that do.' ------ open-source-ux This is very depressing news. For those not living in the UK, I cannot recall a time in recent memory when UK politics has felt so dysfunctional, oppressive or regressive than it currently is. ~~~ bnastic We knew for quite a while that the trigger will happen end of March. If you're depressed it's not because of the current news. ~~~ gsnedders We previously knew for quite a while that the trigger will happen the day after the referendum. A further statement saying that it will be March 29th instead of "by the end of March" makes it seem ever more likely to happen (compared with the seeming uncertainty last summer). ------ baby Any idea of how this will affect the currency? ~~~ chumali Assuming export volumes fall - which is the likely scenario - then we should see Sterling fall relative to the Dollar. This is not considering any external pressures on Sterling however. ------ perseusprime11 Worth talking of the pros and cons of a Democracy vs. a Republic. Are we sure listening to a lot of people makes long term sense? ~~~ twen_ty Here's a little anecdote: [https://www.indy100.com/article/brexit-leave- remain-voters-1...](https://www.indy100.com/article/brexit-leave-remain- voters-120000-dead-result-7463341) Problem is, a non-binding referendum with just a binary subject with virtually zero clarity on how the process will be exercised was shoved down our throats. It's easy to blame the masses but the real problem was created by the politicians (e.g. David Cameron/the Tories) and their arrogance and short- sightedness. ~~~ hunta2097 It was a war of the negatives. Neither side chose to express the positives. Brexiters were portrayed as small-minded xenophobes. The EU took the "We won't throw you a bone, what are you going to do about it?" approach. If there was a middle-ground option it would have won by a landslide. I don't see large enough majority worthy of this amount of change. ------ pavlov So in April 2019, the NHS's budget will increase by £350 million / week. Right? ~~~ chrisseaton I think this was the proposal of a campaign group, not of the Givernment. The campaign group aren't in power, even though the referendum went their way. So it isn't reasonable to expect policies they proposed would be be enacted, whether or not you support the policy or the policy made any sense. ~~~ k-mcgrady There was an official leave and an official remain campaign (as well as some unofficial ones). The £350m NHS promise was part of the official leave campaign headed by Boris and Gove. "The pledge was central to the official Vote Leave campaign and was controversially emblazoned on the side of the bus which shuttled Boris Johnson and Michael Gove around the country. "[0][1] [0] [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/24/nigel- farage-350-...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/06/24/nigel- farage-350-million-pledge-to-fund-the-nhs-was-a-mistake/) [1] [https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit- vote-...](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-vote-leave- wipes-nhs-350m-claim-and-rest-of-its-website-after-eu- referendum-a7105546.html) ~~~ chrisseaton They weren't representing HM Government when they made those suggestions. I think the claim didn't make sense either, but it wasn't proposed by any group with the authority to enact it. It wasn't a general election and Vote Leave haven't formed a government or written a Queen's Speech. ~~~ k-mcgrady Boris Johnson is a senior member of the government and the reason the promise isn't being fulfilled isn't because the government don't want to do it - it's because it was utter nonsense and never possible as a result of the referendum. ------ Von_Jones 1\. Cost of living soars in Britain. 2\. Britain's young people want to leave: Europe offers a better deal. Cheaper property, better employment conditions, better looking men and women, good food. 3\. Britain's codger population votes to pull up the drawbridge - not to keep the foreigners out, but to keep its youth enslaved. You poor bastards, good luck to you. ~~~ hamstercat I'd like to invite all the young poor bastards to have a look at Canada. We have a great immigration policy for young people looking for a new home! ~~~ Svip I couldn't get a job in Canada, because your immigration policy required a bachelor's degree. That was even if I had a job offered to me before seeking a visa. I think Canadian immigration policy is a bit over hyped for being 'great'. Trudeau took a lot of great PR with getting some Syrian refugees, but getting into Canada is still hard. Just easier in comparison to your neighbour to the south. ~~~ mstade Really? A friend of mind lived a few years in Canada, and to my knowledge he doesn't have a bachelor's degree. (In fact, we both dropped out at about the same time.) He _did_ have a job before going there, which was apparently helpful, but as far as I understand it the whole process was pretty smooth. Nothing beats the EU though. Live in one country working a job on Friday, move to another over the weekend and start a new job on Monday – I've done literally this multiple times now. This alone is reason to stay in, as far as I'm concerned. The UK leaving is incredibly sad. :o( ~~~ Svip To be fair, the company said they've tried hiring people without bachelor's degrees in the past, and it hadn't worked out. So I actually never got as far as to apply for a visa. But I check out the point systems the Canadian visa system has, and it turns out that I could get without a bachelor's degree, but only if I aced the language test. Apparently, without the degree, you have to get the highest points available from the language test. See this for more details: [http://www.canadavisa.com/canadian-skilled-worker- immigratio...](http://www.canadavisa.com/canadian-skilled-worker- immigration.html) (Also, I think they changed the immigration policy a few years ago, so your friend may have been able to get in before they changed it.) ------ deepnet Robert Mercer owns Cambridge Analytica[1], a Facebook analytics & targeted advertising company. Allegedly CA has close ties to Brexit and donated services to the Brexit campaign, that went undeclared [2]. Cambridge Analytica data exists outside European Data protections. Mercer also owns Breitbart .com [3] [1] [https://cambridgeanalytica.org/](https://cambridgeanalytica.org/) [2] [https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb](https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb) /26/us-billionaire-mercer-helped-back-brexit [3] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election- us-2016-38005983](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-us-2016-38005983) ~~~ ZeroGravitas Even before either of the campaigns they were involved in succeeded, I've read articles that seem to suggest they were better at marketing themselves and selling than actually delivering what they claimed they could. Maybe they got better at it, but personally I'd point the finger at decades of Murdoch-led media brainwashing rather than anything new-fangled. It used to be Boris Johnson's actual job as a journalist to make up lies about the EU to be fed to nationalistic, right-wing old people. And that demographic did much more for them than the (relative) youngsters on facebook. ~~~ deepnet [edit] I am inclined to agree.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple deletes an entire galaxy - scottshea http://boingboing.net/2011/08/11/apple-deleted-a-galaxy.html ====== mwexler They were dropped for not adhering to the App Store guidelines. They are appealing, but it's unclear which star violated which guideline, so they are probably out of luck. ~~~ raganwald I don't find them appealing at all, I find them dim and uninteresting. ~~~ sliceof314 Apple went super-nova on that galaxy!	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Syrian Electronic Army Hacks DNS Records Of Twitter, New York Times - gz5 http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/27/syrian-electronic-army-apparently-hacks-dns-records-of-twitter-new-york-times-through-registrar-melboune-it/ ====== ballard At present time: tw is back, nyt returns 500.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Snapchat for documents? - saimiam FD: this is part tongue in cheek, part market research.<p>The other day, I had to hire someone to do some writeups for me. They generously provided me final samples on the subject under discussion. It got me thinking that I could have taken their samples, told them I hated their work, edited it a little, and passed it off as my own.<p>That's when the thought came to me that maybe there's a market for documents which disappear after the first viewing from the receiver's device - a Snapchat for documents.<p>Use cases:<p>1. Play memory games or tests<p>2. If you want to send a VC your pitch deck but you don't want them to forward it to a company in their portfolio.<p>3. You may want to share some medical records with a remote friend or family but not let it linger on their device.<p>4. Share a treasure map with a fellow adventurer to convince them that you're legit and X does mark the spot.<p>5. Share a screenplay with Harvey Weinstein remotely because you don't want to have sex with him (sorry, this is a topical reference in case you're not in the United States right now.)<p>6. Share a sneak peek of financial data to reporters do that they can write glowing reports about your business acumen<p>7. Prove to Glenn Greenwald that you actually have real NSA documents<p>What does HN think? Should I drop everything, do this full time, and go from 0 to distinctly non-Thielian 0.05? ====== sarcasmic The Verge: "Mozilla's Send is basically the Snapchat of file sharing" [1] Engadget: "Mozilla file sharing test wipes files after one download" [2] Firefox Send [3]; about page [4] [1] [https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/2/16086272/mozilla-send- file...](https://www.theverge.com/2017/8/2/16086272/mozilla-send-file-sharing- service-launches) [2] [https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/02/mozilla-send-file- sharin...](https://www.engadget.com/2017/08/02/mozilla-send-file-sharing/) [3] [https://send.firefox.com/](https://send.firefox.com/) [4] [https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/send](https://testpilot.firefox.com/experiments/send) ~~~ saimiam Send is ortho to what I had in mind. Downloading the file expires the link ( _oh, this is what the other commenter was saying_ ) but leaves a copy with the receiver. ------ andreareina What's your threat model? You can't counter someone who wants to store the document -- just take a video of the device. So what you _can_ do is prevent _accidental_ saving, and keep honest people honest. For this, an expiring link will suffice for text, and other formats can be supported using e.g. data URIs (content isn't cached on-disk AFAIK, unless paged out), serving PDFs as images, etc. ~~~ saimiam If they take a screenshot or video, maybe I can report the action back to sender notifying them that the receiver is not trustworthy. I'm told Snapchat does this for screenshots. I'll look up expiring links but do they need people to upload content to a server first before generating an expiring link? Threat model - none as such. For a person who makes a living writing blogs for others, their threat model is plagiarism. For a startup sharing trade secrets with a VC, the model is violation of NDA and so on. E1: never mind about expiring links. I figured out what they are from the other comment. You mean Send, right?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Bank economists warn of disruptive threat from mobile and crowdfunding - Irishsteve http://www.finextra.com/News/FullStory.aspx?newsitemid=24986&topic=internet ====== oofabz For now, banks continue to profit from crowdfunding. They get a percentage of each credit card transaction. However, they could be in serious trouble if an alternative payment system becomes popular. The stage is set - NFC and Bitcoin are growing in popularity, and the federal government recently began allowing merchants to charge a credit card fee. If a taco cost $1.50 with my smartphone, or $1.75 with my credit card, I know how I'd pay. ~~~ jjoonathan They already force retailers to not give discounts for using cash. If they've figured out how to make _that_ legal, why do you think BTC would be any different? What we really need is for the justice department* to explicitly include the goal of making markets competitive in its short list of (un)official objectives. * Or any branch of government. I mention the judicial because I think it is the branch least susceptible to bribery. Since competitive markets are bad for business, that makes it the most likely candidate to promote this kind of change. ~~~ spc476 I suspect that's more or a contractual thing than a legal thing. I know gas stations around South Florida are now advertising cash and credit prices (so my thought is---the gas companies have enough pull to get favorable terms from the credit card companies). ~~~ rayiner To date it has been contractual. However, as a result of an antitrust lawsuit, Visa and Mastercard changed the provisions that ban merchants from charging a credit card surcharge. But states are now trying to bad adding those surcharges: [http://www.cnbc.com/id/100485094](http://www.cnbc.com/id/100485094). ~~~ ams6110 Funny though, if you pay your taxes with a credit card there is ALWAYS a fee for that. ------ rossjudson The easiest way for banks to deal with this disruptive threat is, of course, to make it illegal. Watch the lobbying efforts first; that's where you'll see "helpful" investor safety rules be proposed that begin the erosion of kickstart models. ~~~ jaydz The casinos did this with online poker and it worked. ~~~ cinquemb On which side of the Atlantic? ~~~ vermontdevil On the USA side. ------ mmahemoff I've been consistently disappointed by UK retail/commercial banks' online services. My "business" bank (Cater Allen) provides maximum 13 months electronic history. Anything else you have to call and ask nicely to pay £10 for a snail- mail printout. Fully aware this would be a problem, I tried to do due diligence before signing up and there's nowhere to get a decent comparison, e.g. see feature matrixes and screenshots of the various offerings. They'll spend millions on football sponsorship and inane TV ads, but none differentiate on the basis of first-class online services a la Simple. Whoever is cloning Simple, please do it fast! ~~~ IanCal What I'm really after, which doesn't feel like a hard thing for a large company to add, is a read-only api. Give me an access token and a set of endpoints to get my data out and I'll be a happy bunny, because then I can build my own tools on top. I find it's a shame that they don't really compete on features like this. Most people still go on personal recommendations (/OH GOD AVOID THIS BANK comments from friends). Either that or who will give me a few quid a year? ------ aggronn Everyone in the comments here seems pretty pessimistic about what this is implying. I got the opposite impression--I think this report is actually very progressive, and that we should commend the economists at BBVA bank for identifying a trend so far in advance. Most significantly, there is this quote: >"For banks, crowdfunding poses a challenge ... However, banks should be prepared for this trend and make it work to their advantage." Making crowdsourcing 'work to their advantage' is very different than making crowdsourcing illegal. It would be much more profitable for them to start up their own crowdsourcing platforms. That way, people deposit money into the banks interest earning accounts, AND they get a cut. Instead of 7% interest with a non-trivial chance of default (which, if you account for ~3% inflation, means their true benefit is only 4%), they get a clean 5% fee right off the top. With no risk. At all. Its free money. This is a no-brainer for me. Banks are built to help people get the money they need to do what they would like to do. They would only stand to gain money by doing this on their own. Shutting down the whole system would be stupid, and I think the economists at BBVA would agree. ------ ballard Article seems to be inventing a need in the banking set for yet another crowdfunding meets YC knock-off. For them I also have a bridge for sale, low mileage and runs great. ------ christiangenco Looks like Simple[1] is perfectly positioned for the future of banking. 1\. [http://simple.com](http://simple.com) ~~~ radicaldreamer That's complete nonsense, Simple is simply a front-end for one of the worst banks out there: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Bancorp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Bancorp) There's a reason they're no longer called Bank Simple- because the law is very clear on what you can actually called a bank. Simple is not a bank. ~~~ parsnips They are not a front for US Bancorp. They're a front for Bancorp Bank ([http://www.thebancorp.com/](http://www.thebancorp.com/)), which is in fact a completely different and unrelated small bank. ~~~ radicaldreamer Ah, thanks for the clarification! ------ dreen > To what extent crowdfunding platforms will displace commercial banks in the > retail and small business segments remains to be seen. If crowdfunding gives banks too much trouble, they will simply complain to governments that they are "too big to fail" and that crowdfunding websites need to be regulated to their death. ------ pathy BBC's Bottom Line did a podcast on alternative banking earlier this year, which might be of interest when discussing this topic. Especially about M-Pesa, which is truly disruptive in Africa. [http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qkmwl](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01qkmwl) ------ apineda The government doesn't have to though cause it has our money anyway ( and our communications information ). ------ aet Which investment has more risk? A typical market neutral hedge fund or a typical crowd-funded type start up. Obviously there are tons of idiosyncrasies, but I'm thinking on average. I noticed that I am allowed to invest in companies via crowd funding, but, since I'm not an accredited investor, I can't invest in a hedge fund. I would also venture to say that most people investing via crowd funding are not accredited investors. ------ Apocryphon How are credit unions affected by mobile and crowdfunding? ~~~ aet I think crowd funding competes with investment banks more so than credit unions.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why we don't develop for platforms other than iPhone - niyazpk http://www.thisismobility.com/blog/2009/04/11/please-dont-mistake-my-apathy-for-a-lack-of-understanding/http://www.thisismobility.com/blog/2009/04/11/please-dont-mistake-my-apathy-for-a-lack-of-understanding/ ====== dejb Repost from comment by Tom Hume (mobile developer from UK) > Whilst I don’t believe that you’re blinded by iPhone-lurve, it’s not the > only game in town. There are profitable businesses running across other > devices, and have been for years.... I think it's a bit of a USA vs Rest of the World thing. For the US (and specifically Silicon Valley) to suddenly wake up to the potential of mobile and then decide that they are the only game in town and nothing else of value exists is a bit off. ~~~ pavlov Indeed. There's no shortage of success stories in mobile development before Apple or Google came along, but they mostly took place a long way from Silicon Valley. In 2004, I was working as a graphics artist for a Finnish startup that was in the business of making Java games for phones. The company had started with three founders two years earlier, and when I got there, they employed over 30 people and kept growing. They had struck deals with operators across Europe, and game sales were taking off in a serious way. (Ordinary people were buying millions of units of over-the-air distributed Java software for phones already in 2004 -- but I guess those that were successful in this market were not terribly interested in attracting competitors by making a lot of noise about it.) The games were good enough that everybody could be proud of the work. On the best phones, the graphics and sound quality was on the level of Amiga or 386+VGA PCs. But more importantly, the games scaled down graciously to the most primitive color-screen phones with resolutions circa 128*80 pixels: thanks to a well-thought out set of APIs, an asset workflow designed for scalability and an extensive database of device capabilities, games could be easily built for dozens of devices. I ended up leaving that job fairly quickly because I figured out I'd rather be pushing around millions of pixels on the GPU with code, rather than pushing around individual pixels in Photoshop manually. But I know the company was acquired by a large American corporation not long after, and I think the founders ended up very well rewarded for having created that rare combination of technical competence (the APIs and development process), marketing (the relationships with international operators) and artistic integrity (the games looked good and played well). ~~~ gtufano True, definitely true. What the difference is, IMHO, that with iPhone and AppStore a single individual can develop something in relatively easy way and have a very good distribution channel. The toolchain is reasonable and Obj-C is fun (well, not fun like python but really funnier than Symbian C++, who tried it know what I mean). Ovi Store (last time I checked) will not even accept app from individual doing development part-time, without having a company. So, for me and many many other it is a dead game. Nokia does other very interesting things (N810 and maemo comes to mind) but Ovi store is a no brainer (at least for me). I'm talking as an european that had only Nokia phones in the last 15 years and uses an N95 as main phone (and an iPhone for apps and browsing). ------ chez17 I do some web design for a company that makes iPhone apps and he made the point to me that the biggest issue is hardware. His company is small, two developers, and they couldn't be half as productive if they needed to test for a thousand different hardware configurations. With the iPhone, you are guaranteed that there is only one or two configurations and you know exactly what they are. I imagine a lot of these companies are small groups of developers in similar situations. Also, people with iPhones are people with money. Not a bad demographic to develop for. ~~~ ja2ke Replace every instance of "iPhone" with "Macintosh" and you've also to a large degree explained the continued success of small Mac shareware houses like Panic and Delicious Monster. ------ wallflower Many of my friends who own an iPhone do not care who wrote it or how the application was written - they just want to be entertained or connected. Salient comment from Jason Devitt of SkyDeck.com (proprietor of cloud-based mirror of your mobile phone's information) > Downloading applications for a Nokia phone is not obvious, not easy, and > often no fun at all. It’s confined to people who in your words are ‘more > tech-savvy’ and ‘more likely to try things out.’ >I have many friends whom I do not consider ‘tech savvy’ and who never downloaded an application for a mobile phone in their lives - until they bought an iPhone. Nokia VP New Markets Anssi Vanjoki talking about their Ovi store. It will have a feature the iPhone App Store could use/implement. >It’s different from other stores because of its relevance engine. It learns from your own use, the location where you are, and your interaction with your friends. You will not get tens of thousands of crap applications. You will get what is relevant to you. [http://venturebeat.com/2009/04/02/nokia-aims-to-prove- there-...](http://venturebeat.com/2009/04/02/nokia-aims-to-prove-there-is- mobile-demand-beyond-the-iphone/) ------ nuclear_eclipse I find it interesting that nowhere in that article does the author even admit that the G1/Android Market exists, considering that the Android SDK is quite excellent IMO, allowing super-easy (basically plug-and-play) development and debug testing on your own phone (no cert bullshit to deal with for testing) and from what I've seen, the Market is a pretty good place to get into now that paid apps are available... ~~~ mechanical_fish From a Gartner report, via the Guardian: [http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/mar/13/iphone...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/mar/13/iphone- android-smartphone-sales) In Q4 2008 Apple sold 4.1m iPhones (10.7% of the smartphone market), and Google is estimated to have sold 0.64m, or about 1.7% of the market. Gartner's estimate for Google might be a bit low -- other sources claim over 1M G1 _preorders_ \-- but the conclusion is clear: Apple still claims only a fraction of the smartphone market, and Android claims a fraction of _that_. So it's natural that an article like this one would focus on the question of "why aren't you developing for Symbian (47% marketshare), RIM (19.5%), or Windows Mobile (12.4%)?" rather than "why aren't you developing for Android?" (which has a 2 to 4% marketshare, 20 to 40% of Apple's market.) Symbian, RIM, and Windows Mobile are the elephants in this room. ~~~ evanmoran And that is just for Q4 2008. Iphone sales are 30m worldwide. ------ systems > Is the Nokia store supposed to challenge Apple? Or Microsoft supposed to? Or > RIM? Yes, Nokia, MS and RIM I can be sure, are trying and will continue to try to challenge the iPhone. I personally work for a large company that standardized on windows mobile for the sales team. I am also sure that in time Android will be a strong competitor. I also know many people who picked a Nokia Eseries because it's cheaper. I know for sure that my next phone won't be an iPhone. So in many way I am almost sure that Nokia is well positioned to compete with the iPhone. And that the iPhone dominance wont last for long ~~~ ohhmaagawd I have some contrary anecdotal evidence. I have seen/know dozens of people who carry their work phone (usually a blackberry). And then they carry the phone they really want along with it: the iPhone. Windows mobile is a joke. Hardly anyone installs apps with it or uses it for anything other than a phone/calendar/contacts. Android could be strong though. ------ msie Now if only MS and SONY would let the little guy develop for their consoles (the XNA platform doesn't count). They make it so hard for an individual to acquire an SDK (firstly, you have to be a real game company). Are they making the same mistake as the big mobile players? If only Apple would enter the console market and shake things up. ~~~ shimi Apple went into the Mobile Market business only because they knew that its standing still. The gaming market is soldiering proudly!!! ------ gollywog Is developing for android similar/as hard as developing for symbian, or more on par with the iphone? ~~~ hboon iPhone. ------ TweedHeads Word by word, the best response to why WE don't develop for platforms other than iPhone. ------ c00p3r There are one very simple answer - screen size along with ARM arch is what matters. Or just simply - if you cannot watch ordinary porn clips on certain mobile device (small screen, slow cpu) this device worthless for developer. =) iPhone simply outnumbered Nokia N-series and E-series handsets which are worth of development.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Introducing – Hacker Fund - brezh http://blog.hacker.fund/introducing-hacker-fund/ ====== vinay427 I'm excited to follow their progress. I've had the privilege of following Justin's Facebook posts for a while now, and his passion for the mission seems unstoppable.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
FontSprite - a new approach to custom fonts on the web - digitalclubb http://jasper.clarkberg.org/fontsprite/index.html ====== winestock From the website: "By using the FontSprite generator, you can create sprite images of glyphs from your chosen font. Then, give the FontSprite engine your image, and the metrics data that the generator calculated for you. On your website, the engine creates a span for every letter, and perfectly sprites and places the rendered font as a background image, to create the illusion of custom fonted text! Best of all, you can copy and paste! (kinda)" This is such an ugly hack. I'm giving this story an upvote just for the persistence this guy showed. To see how this affects selecting text, go to the examples page: <http://jasper.clarkberg.org/fontsprite/engine.html#examples> And try to select the text at the top of the page (viz, Here is some text set in Adelle. Make it casual with some Idolwild! Even Zapfino kinda works) Notice how the selection appears offset from the displayed text? Jarring. I admire this hacker for his ingenuity and persistence, but font-embedding will only be practical for websites with a dedicated audience, I'm afraid.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
CIA Offers Proof Huawei Has Been Funded by China's Military and Intelligence - karambir https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/04/20/cia-offers-proof-huawei-has-been-funded-by-chinas-military-and-intelligence/#68bfd7647208 ====== contingencies A country with 1.4 billion people and a centralist governance stratagem that allowed them to essentially leapfrog from telex to become the world's largest internet population and the world center for mobile payment penetration through government stimulation and investment. Now the CIA "reveals" that branches of the government had a relationship with the single most advanced telecom equipment manufacturer over the period. I would be more surprised if they didn't. Anyway, thanks to brave individuals we've heard a lot about US government methods ... this is a case of pot / kettle / black... "now give me my budget!". ~~~ dahdum Does it make a difference if the pot is calling the kettle black here? Even if the US admitted it, that would strengthen the argument. “We know it’s a national security threat, because we do it”. ~~~ ellius There's a weird moral element to these discussions though. Lots of people think this is "wrong," or that the CIA is accusing the Chinese intelligence services of doing something wrong, whereas other people admit that all countries play the game and simply are showing this as a legitimate threat. That confusion between morality and cold threat analysis confounds a lot of national security discussions. ~~~ CyanBird > simply are showing this as a legitimate threat The issue is with the perspective, China is certainty a "legitimate threat" to the US, at least from a technological perspective, the problem is that China IS NOT a threat to the rest of the world or at least not in the same degree it is to the hegemonic power of the US, meanwhile the US indeed IS a technological and military threat to countries around the globe, so wherever the US and its agencies gaslight about China being a threat, it is always too funny, when you remember that the US has all sorts of military bases, drones subs and spy satellites deployed, not to mention it is already spying digitally on the entire planet (this conversation included ofc) ~~~ dba7dba China had not set up military bases around the world in the past because they "did NOT have" the ability to do so. Now that the nation has the fund, they are certainly starting to do so. The Chinese army set up a major base in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa just a few years ago. It is the PLAN's first overseas military base and was built at a cost of US$590 million. I'm sure it won't be the last. If China can do what US can, they will do it. To think otherwise would just be naive. ~~~ zaro > If China can do what US can, they will do it. To think otherwise would just > be naive. Thats a bit of overstatement don't you think. Its very different culture after all, and you are speculating based only from the American exceptionalasim viewpoint which I think is very very outdated. ~~~ Teever It's not a statement on culture but human nature. Every country in the world would be an empire like the US if they only could. Its a matter of opportunity not motivation. The bigger issue is what would China do with all that power? We know what the US does with it and I don't think a world lead by China would be as nice a place as a world run by America. It depends on what you want. Me, I want a world with democracy and due process. I don't see anything like that eminating from China and I doubt I ever will. ~~~ caprese > Every country in the world would be an empire like the US if they only > could. Not every country has an expansionist policy Surprise. ~~~ Teever And I don't have a policy regarding dating super models. do you know why? Because I don't have the opportunity to do that thing so I don't plan for it. Rest assured if that was a thing I could do the. I would certainly have a policy regarding it. Its the same for countries and expansionism. Those that can, do. Those that can't, dream. ~~~ mrobot How do you know this? ~~~ Teever Survival of the fittest Those with sufficient survivial instinct will have a drive to dominate and those that don't won't dominate. ~~~ CyanBird All the things you are saying such as "human nature" or "survival instinct" are just ideological and cultural precepts you simply can't back those assessments up ------ ncmncm Does anybody have a clue what this is really about? Obviously it's not about the Chinese gov't putting backdoors in Huawei equipment. They put backdoors in everybody's equipment, as does the NSA and, where they can, GCHQ, the GRU, and Mossad. It's surprising any cellphone still works with all the backdoors in the baseband processors, completely invisible to (e.g.) your Android kernel running as a contained guest. My best guess is that this is about competition with local makers of equipment, which it is much easier to hide NSA backdoors in, and easier to keep Chinese backdoors out of. Or maybe just competition with local makers, in general. The US State Dept has been caught many times with their thumb on the scales on behalf of US exporters, such as taking countries to court to stop anti-smoking campaigns. France was similarly caught spying on behalf of Airbus, vs Boeing sales. ~~~ NikkiA It's about trying to slow china's growth towards 'beating' the US at global trade. Part of it is FUD, part of it is justifying tariffs and bans. ------ codewiz Couldn't Huawei debunk the allegations of having backdoors by just releasing all source code of its 5G equipment, along with a verifiable build? It wouldn't even have to be licensed as open source, just available for security reviews. The CIA could still claim that Huawei is hiding backdoors in microcode, or even in the ethernet connectors, but it would greatly weaken their credibility. ~~~ ianai That only works if they’re not putting back doors into their hardware. ~~~ secfirstmd It's work reading the UK GCHQ NCSC reports on Huawei. They consistently complain about the difficulties of verifiable builds for its software and also use of third party or outdated protocols. ------ Cypher Sounds like another WMD show, I'll get the popcorn. ~~~ stubish Indeed. There is a history of only the answers the politicians want to hear being presented, and doubts and counter arguments being swept under the carpet. It's propaganda unless a reputable source can corroborate it. ------ echaozh Receiving funding is different from being funded by, right? It may have been payment for the service provided by Huawei to the China's military and intelligence, right? Or can Huawei not provide service to them even if it's a Chinese company? ------ atemerev I am not a fan of Chinese goals and methods, but this doesn't mean anything. The entire Internet has been funded by US military and intelligence, so what? ------ coralreef Heh, the CIA funded Facebook via In-Q-Tel ------ sudoaza SOrry didn't the CIA funded Google and Facebook? Who do segmenting of people, face recognition and more? [https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made- goo...](https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/how-the-cia-made- google-e836451a959e) ------ ycombonator Of course it is funded by the communist regime. Why else they would fight tooth and nail against the bans all over the world. ------ jplayer01 I'm a bit alarmed at how disinterested people are being here. Here is China, a global power, doing all it can to undermine Western countries and amass influence/power, and nobody here cares. While they steal the IP of the companies that allow us our quality/way of life, you guys are all "Ah, well, we do it too". Well, fuck, I hope so, because the US is the only superpower with anything resembling Western values that I'd like to see remain the dominant value system. And the West is the only cultural sphere that has any interest in things like due process, democracy, free press, freedom of speech, etc., while China and Russia are more than happy to jail anybody who's critical of them or their policies if they can. \- A concerned German ~~~ chillacy I think it is an issue worth discussing but the way it’s usually framed is from some sort of morally superior position instead of a tactical position. You’ve framed it like a game of chess, which is closer to how geopolitics works in reality, so I can get behind that. ~~~ jplayer01 I used to be more of a pacifist and idealist. The whole "the industrial- military complex is evil" shtick or "US global hegemony is terrible" thing. I've watched all of Chomsky's talks, read his books. I'm painfully aware of all the legit evil things the US has done in the name of protecting its sphere of influence and I've always been deeply suspicious and critical of the US (that whole Iraq war, black sites, etc. tend to be things that don't sit well with people who think values are important). And I probably would've remained that way if I didn't watch on the news how Russia literally annexed a part of Ukraine without a "war" while NATO twiddled its thumbs and went "Well, they didn't invade, so dunno". Or how the US squanders its influence and power while China branches out into Africa, Asia, Europe and the US by buying out everybody and everything they can - meanwhile ensuring they maintain an iron fist over their own press or any critics, and their entire economy and culture and population. In the middle of all this, Europe is in a decade-long crisis over, well, everything and Germany couldn't influence its way out of a paper bag, despite its impressive economy. For all its flaws (and there are a depressing fuckload), I prefer the US's world order over China's, where they can imprison a million Muslims with no repercussion. I just wish the US were _better_ , in every way, because I know there are tons of people who'll point at the US-Mexico border and what Trump has done and say "See, they're just as bad". And they have a point that the US does terrible things, while still missing the point, and it's both infuriating and depressing because if the US actually held itself to its own standards, I wouldn't have to qualify my every statement where I defend the US over China/Russia. ~~~ chillacy I totally agree that I would prefer a US world order. I think a lot of people around the world agree. But geopolitics usually just comes down to self interest at the end of the day. And if you look at every action from an inhumanely rational point of view, geopolitics makes more sense. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realpolitik)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Industry standards for locking down a SAAS product to prevent abuse? - Terpaholic I've just finished the software side of my first SAAS product, and was wondering if there are any industry standards or pre-made solutions/API's for signing up/email recovery, managing billing to those accounts, and enabling free trials while minimizing trial-abuse (through cookies etc)? ====== tomfakes If you are using Ruby on Rails, you can buy a base application with a whole bunch of best practices built in, including many payment systems. This will save you much more time than the cost of the kit. Check out <http://railskits.com/saas/> for the SaaS Rails Kit * Disclosure - I'm friends with Ben, the owner of RailsKits, and have done work for him in the past. ~~~ tptacek I'm surprised that this is the first of these I've seen. This is actually a really good idea. ~~~ jplewicke It's been around for a few years, and I'd definitely recommend it. It's very comforting when you find yourself saying "Wait, what if I need to do refunds or dunning emails? Oh, that's already handled." I've saved many hours of development time by starting with it as a base, and would recommend it to anyone writing Rails-based SAAS. It has a few wrinkles though, mainly from being actively developed in 2008, with mainly bugfixes and Rails 3 support coming since then. The main ones I'd highlight that tripped me up: \- Expects payment gateway authentication credentials to be stored in a YAML file in source control instead of loaded from the environment. \- A number of the controller actions trigger immediate email sending, which can cause customer-visible 500 errors if the email sending fails and is a less reliable way of making sure the email gets sent. \- Use Stripe API v1 instead of the current v2. \- A lot of the customer email templates are kind of boilerplate-y and would not win the Patrick McKenzie stamp of copywriting approval. I believe they're loaded in from the gem rather than from the app. My main piece of advice would be to vendor the entire gem right off the bat -- you're likely going to be tweaking several different parts of it, and there's almost no active development that you'd have to incorporate. ------ kvnn Congrats on finishing! I'm building a SaaS product right now and finding that there aren't very many sources for finding industry standards. Non-enterprise SaaS is quite new. That said, I think the best thing to do is wait until you spot abuse, and create measures to prevent it. Work on your analytics and reporting systems rather than trying to contrive possible service abuses. ~~~ Terpaholic Hey thanks! Especially for the MVP, I think you're absolutely right about the abuse part. As for the login/recovery, have you had any experience with signup rates using Facebook/Twitter authentication? Reinventing the login flow seems like a bad idea to me at this point. For billing, I'm examining Recurly and Paypal Subscriptions (although I'm wary of Paypal). ~~~ kvnn I don't have experience, but I've read this : [http://blog.mailchimp.com/social-login-buttons-arent- worth-i...](http://blog.mailchimp.com/social-login-buttons-arent-worth-it/) . I'm rolling my own signup (which is easy enough in Django), but I'd consider doing a Google login. Facebook & Twitter I wouldn't care to implement: My target audience wouldn't want to be mixing their social logins with my service.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
YC News Users / Startup School Attendees - Drinks @ The Bus Stop (Downtown SF) on March 23? - semigeek ====== semigeek I've left this note on the Facebook group but also wanted to put it on YC News. A few of the attendees that I know will be gathering at The Bus Stop for drinks on Friday Night. If you're attending, or live in the area, feel free to stop by and join in on the random discussions. Leave your cell if you want an SMS about this next week. I can be reached at ak (at) semigeek dot com, or 216-394-3336.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why don't humans have a penis bone? Scientists may now know - vezycash https://www.theguardian.com/science/2016/dec/14/why-dont-humans-have-a-penis-bone-scientists-may-now-know-baculum ====== gomijacogeo I always figured it was fallout from moving to bipedalism. So many structural changes going on - femur, pelvis, spine, pelvic floor, ligaments, muscles, etc. It doesn't seem that outrageous that a regulatory change needed for bipedalism might also affect baculum development. Also, once you're bipedal, the penis is, well, out there. There might have been advantages to not having a bone in a much more exposed penis. And it's just as easy to envision changes in penis anatomy driving changes in social behavior as it is the converse.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Can't override procrastination settings anymore - sanj For anyone who was also surprised, PG has made good on removing the override switch on the no-procast settings.<p>Now I can't undermine myself. As much. ====== ars Can I ask for an option to _yes_ override myself? Otherwise I'm going to have to turn it on and off every day, or on weekends. I use it as a reminder, not as a force. And you can't even get to your profile to change it once it locks you out! I don't like it. What if I post something, and I need to edit it? 90% of the time I override, it's for that. ~~~ dlytle Same here, actually; I use it primarily as a reminder. Some days I get a lot of value out of the anti-procrastination feature, as it will warn me when I've been here. I actually start my browsing on work days with HN, because if I get the warning, I know I should just stop. Also, fairly frequently I open a few articles, and by the time I get back to click to the next page I've been locked out. Override is really handy then. ~~~ Retric I would suggest a 5 minute reminder before being locked out. ------ sgk284 Thank you pg. I had recommended giving a karma penalty (-1) for every override, but this works too. It seems others are requesting an "override allowed" setting, which could definitely be useful but as it stands I'm really liking the no override. ------ hs i love this new feature ... might as well take the retry button since refreshing the pages accomplishes the same thing	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Should We Abolish User Access to rm? (2011) - giis http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7950/ ====== TallGuyShort This would break _so_ many scripts. In such environments, surely it would be preferable to transparently implement "trash can" functionality behind RM transparently? (As on commenter on that site mentioned). Rather than unlinking, in some circumstances it would transfer the data (or rename it - I know `delete` in DOS used to just change the first character in the name to ?, which has hacky but fast and enabled utilities like `undelete`) to a recoverable repository. ~~~ alperakgun why would a rm wrapper, with move to trash behavior by default, break scripts? ~~~ koenigdavidmj Simply replacing 'rm' with a no-op or error command (or removing it entirely) would break scripts. Trash can would not. ------ nine_k Why, decapitation definitely rids one of headaches, but why not consider less invasive options beforehand? A file system might implement `rm` so that it does not lose data outright, but keeps a few recently deleted files intact for undeletion. I suppose every journaling FS already includes everything necessary for it. E.g. [http://extundelete.sourceforge.net/](http://extundelete.sourceforge.net/) uses ext3/ext4 journals. AFAICT NTFS undelete works the same way. Some file systems have explicit snapshots and other tools that facilitate rolling back changes: xfs, ext3, ext4 all support snapshotting on Linux when run under LVM. It's even better than undelete. ~~~ keenerd > I suppose every journaling FS already includes everything necessary for it. Depends. Ext seems to use a F̶I̶F̶O̶ LIFO for the empty block list. It can make recovering data more tricky. Last time I tried to recover some deleted data, it was about an hour after the delete took place. The recently deleted blocks were the first over-written by normal background tasks and everything I wanted to save was gone. Every file more than a few hours old was easily recovered, right back to projects I had deleted a year previously. edit: Thanks. ~~~ colanderman I think you mean LIFO? A FIFO would imply that your old projects (first in) would be re-used soonest (first out). ------ SiVal If you alias rm for some users, you'll train them to think that rm has an undelete feature: bad idea. Experienced *nix users often work from an ordinary user account and turn to "sudo" only for special cases so they don't accidentally mess things up. When you use "sudo", you know you have to slow down and be careful. So why isn't an undoable file delete function not the default file deletion command, with rm reserved for special cases where you slow down and make extra sure you really want an irreversible delete? Automated scripts would use rm as always, but for interactive work, especially on client machines with giant disks such as the typical general purpose user computer these days, there should be a different standard command for deletion that everyone learns long before they learn about rm. ------ verbatim Leaving aside technical arguments against doing this, I don't think it would solve the problem anyway. Users would inevitably decide that they want a real "remove" operation (because yours is now wasting their disk space, etc.), and teach themselves to call their new fancy "really_rm" alias. And then just accidentally delete files with that instead of "rm". (Anyone ever gotten too used to shift-Delete in Windows? Yeah...) Instead, automate backups or file system snapshots. ~~~ takluyver Yes, in both Linux and Windows, I've got used to hitting shift-delete, return, when I want to delete a file. And yes, at times I've done that only to immediately realise I'd got the wrong file. I think GMail has this right: instead of a confirmation, it does what you asked for, and has an obvious non-modal undo button. Also, because I know things in the trash will be discarded after 30 days, I don't feel any pressure to 'really delete' them myself. ------ deepblueq Is this really that common an issue? It seems like anyone who's at a level where they're using rm regularly should know that that's a command you think before issuing. If they didn't, then that's exactly why you have backups. Then, if it was in the backups, the short-term problem is solved, and maybe the experience will scare them into being a bit more careful in the future. If it wasn't in the backups, the most likely reason would seem to me be that it was created since the last backup (not that I'd know, IANA sysadmin), in which case there wasn't a ridiculous amount of work lost - maybe the experience will make them a bit more careful in the future. Of course, the above doesn't apply with the sort of user who thinks IT is magic and can do anything, but if they're using rm, you've got bigger problems. Also, personal opinion, but I hate automatic trash folders - rm is supposed to delete stuff. If I want a recycle bin, I'm happy to mv to a folder I created for the purpose. ------ dkrich I like the solution but I am actually opposed to an out-of-the-box solution. The reason is that precisely what makes Unix such a stable, fast OS is its minimalism. It trusts the user to know what he/she is doing. Once you cross over into taking into account user error you start to add bloat. I've seen this happen recently in Rails 4. Well-intentioned developers add a bit here and tad there and pretty soon you have 400% of what you need to perform your daily tasks to protect yourself from 0.001% occurrences. Which is actually ironic because I remember DHH stating that he was vehemently opposed to type-casting. Anyway, I think it is best to leave it up to end-users to build their own solutions and plug-ins for desired functionality but to leave these types of catch-all's out of the core product. ~~~ Someone I somewhat agree with what you say, but: _" to leave it up to end-users to build their own solutions"_? Is that optimism, naïvety, or am I overlooking a dose of sarcasm? ~~~ dkrich Ha, well not sarcasm. I guess I assume that if you are working in Unix you know enough (or can learn) to create a script to handle this for you. Of course that doesn't prevent somebody from running rm, but it does at least put the brunt of the blame on the person who used rm anyway, despite the admins advising against it in favor of the archiving script. I guess the basic question is- should users be entrusted to permanently delete anything? rm is probably my third or fourth most-used commands because it is so fast and easy. It does exactly what it should- get rid of shit you don't need anymore, and very quickly. For example, I use templates to generate web applications and when I test new templates I will frequently want to get rid of the auto-generated one I just created. Without rm this would be an incredible pain in the ass or at least take more time and storage than it should. I like keeping the core strictly utilitarian and leaving the layers of safety to be built by bureaucracies after it has shipped. ------ drcube How about we just don't backup anything? That's the user's job, and if they didn't do it, they know their data is 100% gone, no backsies, when they delete it. So maybe they'll be more careful. Backups are a moral hazard. But seriously, I don't see an issue here. There are backups for a reason. If it takes too much time to go through the bureaucracy of requesting backed up data, that sounds like the problem that needs to be fixed, not the existence of the "rm" command. And if the delay is there on purpose, it sounds like everything is going according to plan. What's the problem? ~~~ ramy_d What about the argument about loosing things between backups? Also, my understanding what that this issue is about using administrator time, not bureaucratic time. ------ jjindev I was just thinking back to the 80's, when newspapers actually printed stories about "rm" and "ls" and unfriendly computers. This was as the GUI came in and cryptic commands were eschewed. It took us a long time to accept the best of all possible worlds, GUIs more most people, and genuine, expressive shells, for a few. For those few, rm is not a problem, no. In fact, it's a reminder that this isn't Kansas anymore. ------ ThatGeoGuy One thing the article mentions is to alias rm, but they never mention just performing a chmod to change the user/group permissions on the actual command itself. I can't see why it's impossible to change the permissions on the real rm command, while providing an alternate (or aliased, whatever you prefer) command to move "deleted" files into the Trash/Recycle Bin/What have you. You can later implement another in company program to perform the actual deletion, with strict warnings, which can execute the real rm command with the appropriate group permissions. Ideally, this should at least deter users from blanket deletion of their file systems, though eventually some will come to abuse the true deletion program, believing they know better than IT. However, this is largely inevitable, and some users will always behave that way, so you need to consider this when discussing any technical measures taken towards something like rm. ------ mindslight Yes. It should be replaced with wipe(1) instead. ------ cschmidt I do remember a case on a mail list that shall go unnamed, where an "experienced" member of the list sarcastically told a newbie that typing "rm -rf /" would "solve her problem". Unfortunately, she dutifully tried it and wondered why her machine wasn't working any more. There was quite a shitstorm on the list after that. The smartass did feel very bad afterward.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
We cannot afford to be indifferent to internet spying (2013) - octosphere https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/09/internet-surveillance-spying ====== gpvos (2013). _> However, I believe that we have turned a corner: we have finally attained Peak Indifference to Surveillance. We have reached the moment after which the number of people who give a damn about their privacy will only increase._ While I have seen a slight increase in interest, have we really turned a corner in the last five years? Certainly the EU has started to change the rules on privacy, but I haven't seen a dramatic increase of giving a d*mn in the general populace. ~~~ 1001101 It looks like the needle has only moved slightly over time, although, there's a lot less left to the imagination or relegated to tin-foil hat territory. Pew research gives a good lay of the land for the US [1] The tldr: 70% believe it's for a purpose other than stated, 25% have changed the way they interact with technology, 27% believe content is being snarfed, 57% disapprove of use on US citizens. [1] [http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/04/how- american...](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/06/04/how-americans- have-viewed-government-surveillance-and-privacy-since-snowden-leaks/) ------ jchw Here's my question: where is the software that circumvents internet spying and censorship? Where's the user friendly decentralized end-to-end encrypted software? Closest I'm aware of is tox.chat, but it hasn't been audited and it isn't really that user friendly. In the modern era of the internet, I really think such software is going to be needed. ~~~ octosphere > where is the software that circumvents internet spying and censorship? 1.) [https://geti2p.net/](https://geti2p.net/) 2.) [https://www.torproject.org](https://www.torproject.org) 3.) [https://openprivacy.ca/blog/2018/06/28/announcing- cwtch/](https://openprivacy.ca/blog/2018/06/28/announcing-cwtch/) Tor is an obvious choice here and has penetrated the mainstream when Gawker ran that article on Silk Road. Now and then newspapers run sensationalist articles on the Dark Web in an attempt to wake up the masses about Tor and its famous (unsecure) Browser Bundle. ~~~ jchw Sure, Tor and I2P are great. Tor Browser Bundle even tries to be useful to the average person. And yet, I still think there's work to be done. I'm thinking we need a new application platform entirely. There are some contenders for that, but progress has been slow. ~~~ octosphere > I'm thinking we need a new application platform entirely. Well the state of the art seems to be Whonix[1] and Qubes[2],and TailsOS[3] [1] [https://www.whonix.org/](https://www.whonix.org/) [2] [https://www.qubes-os.org/](https://www.qubes-os.org/) [3] [https://tails.boum.org/](https://tails.boum.org/) The idea behind these Operating Systems is that even if you somehow got hacked, it limits the damage caused. For example, in Qubes you can open a potentially malicious PDF in a separate dedicated Fedora template/image, then delete the VM after viewing the PDF. With Whonix/Tails, you can also limit the damage caused, so if some intel agency decides to drop an 0day/RCE vuln in your Tor Browser session, then your real IP can't be leaked, because it defaults to Tor for _all_ network activity (and spoofs the MAC address in the case of TailsOS). But for the 'average person' as you describe, these tools are typically not within their threat model. I can understand journalists and marginalized communities using them, but not run-of-the-mill users who like to Skype grandma on their Windows machine and have Internet Explorer as their main browser. ------ buboard Wishful thinking. Despite privacy cannons from the media, people still don't care, they don't even bother to ask governments to stop spying on them. ~~~ thelittleone Indeed a disturbing truth. If I was a government with the goal of total surveillance nirvana, I'd do it the same way as I'd eat an elephant, one bite at a time. Programmatically reducing the expectation of privacy through invasive technology and policies at the maximum speed possible that does incite a revolt. ~~~ 908087 I'd do it the same way the US government has been doing it: Allow massive corporations such as Google/Facebook/Amazon free reign to spy on the entire population, then share in their spoils courtesy of the third party doctrine and/or trading political favors and protection for access to surveillance data.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Quasar Framework about to hit 1.0 (Vue for web and mobile apps) - digitaltrees https://medium.com/quasar-framework/quasar-1-0-sneak-peek-727b4e490899 ====== digitaltrees I thinking about Quasar for a new project but wondered if anyone familiar with something similar in scope.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
When Value Judgments Masquerade as Science - donohoe http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/27/when-value-judgments-masquerade-as-science/?src=twr ====== Retric This blogger _appears to have_ an extremely superficial understanding of economics. Economists have no problems talking about economic efficiency when a few benefit at the cost of many. Corruption and Monopoly's are both economically harmful for similar reasons and both been studied for a long time. Edit: Based on his credentials I suspect he is simply assuming his audience is both ignorant and biased. ~~~ MichaelSalib _Economists have no problems talking about economic efficiency when a few benefit at the cost of many._ I'm not sure you got his point. If the government imposed a tax that cost 1 million people $1K each and gave Bill Gates $1 billion, that policy would have neutral efficiency. In terms of efficiency, there is no rational basis for objecting to that policy. So economists who justify their normative claims by talking about efficiency do have a serious problem talking about policies whereby a few benefit at the cost of many when those policies have small or zero deadweight losses. ~~~ Retric That's a straw man argument. If you tax 1 million people for $1K each and gave Bill Gates $1 _.5_ billion or a $1 Billion -> _$1.5K_ per person then both of those increase efficiency. But you say "how can taxes do that?" And the answer is normally taxes don't result in wealth creation, however policy's can both create wealth and destroy it. Breaking up AT&T dramatically lowered most people’s phone bills in the US. For a direct contrast you can look at Mexico where high phone bills directly resulted in one of the largest fortunes in the world and a huge loss to the Mexican economy at the same time. ~~~ Confusion That's a straw man argument. The argument doesn't exaggerate anything. It strictly adheres to the Kaldor- Hicks criterion and shows that it can be used to justify all kinds of immoral policies because, as the OT states, it doesn't take into account 'who Jack and Jill are'. If you use the Kaldor-Hicks criterion to claim something is _good_ , you are implicitly assuming the good of the collective is the good of all and imbuing your argument with morals. As MichaelSalib's example shows, those morals can have consequences many others consider immoral, which is exactly what the OT argues. ~~~ Retric All taxes have dead weight costs. Thus, suggesting something which is objectionable on efficiency grounds is ok on efficiency grounds is wrong. More directly to the point, saying X does not cause an objection means little. Perpetual motion machines don't break the laws of gravity that does not mean you can build one. And even more directly, saying X is independent of Y so we should do X because of Y is irrational. PS: I have 4k karma to burn, if you want to down mod me on ideological grounds feel free. However, if you really believe I am wrong please try and create a rational argument as to why. ~~~ ynniv _if you really believe I am wrong please try and create a rational argument as to why_ Your comments in this thread have been haphazard and difficult to follow. You are correct that taxes have deadweight, but no one is arguing this point and it has little relevance to the overall discussion. You started off by attacking the author without providing a compelling argument of his ineptitude. Maybe you are tired or stressed? I suspect that you are being downmodded for being noisy and shallow, not wrong. ~~~ Retric I say: "Economists have no problems talking about economic efficiency when a few benefit at the cost of many." However, for clarity _many_ means society at large including them. Vs his argument: _I distinguished in last week’s post between changes in public policies (reallocations of economic welfare) that make some people feel better off and none feel worse off and those that make some people feel better off but others feel worse off._ _The first type of policy can unambiguously be said to enhance social welfare. But no such claim can be made for the second_ He ignores magnitude of change. His actual argument is if any one person is worse off then it's not an economic argument. So, if one person lost 1$ and 1 billion people gained 1 billion dollars then according to his argument it's outside the scope of economics. And yes that is his argument. He disagrees with: _the Kaldor-Hicks criterion and the efficiency criterion amount to the same thing. When Jack gains $10 and Jill loses $5, social gains increase by $5, so the policy is a good one. When Jack gains $10 and Jill loses $15, there is a deadweight loss of $5, so the policy is bad_ Because: _Evidently, on the Kaldor-Hicks criterion one need not know who Jack and Jill are, nor anything about their economic circumstances._ Edit: There is actually a lot of research into both corruption and monopoly's and the negative effects both have on an economy. Farm subsidies are another example of a harmful policy that benefits a few people which has been well researched. PS: Yea, I am tired, but I this guy is so out there I can't help but wonder if it's some sort of parody that I am missing. ~~~ silverlake > this guy is so out there I can't help but wonder if it's some sort of parody > that I am missing. I think you wildly misunderstood Reinhardt's simplification to express a simple opinion. Unfortunately, your writing is very unclear and difficult to follow. Since I'm waiting for the delivery guy to bring dinner, I'll add my dim understanding of Reinhardt's post. Landsburg writes, "When Jack gains $10 and Jill loses $5, social gains increase by $5, so the policy is a good one." Reinhardt disagree that this is _always_ "good". Society must make a value judgement about Jill's loses: if it's her last $5, is the policy still good? And if Jack is a billionaire, would that $10 gain offset Jill's suffering? He's not saying that economists _never_ think about this problem. He's saying that economists often will make a policy recommendation (lower tax on capital, higher tax on income) that presumably raises social welfare, while skipping over the ethical issues (higher tax on the poor, lower tax on the rich). We want to pump $10 billion into the economy now. Should we give tax rebates as a % of taxes paid (more to rich, less to poor)? Or should we cut the payroll tax by a few thousand dollars (same for everyone, but more meaningful for poor)? The result is the same ($10B), but Reinhardt says there's a value judgement in the choice. This issue pops up everywhere, particularly in health care.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Facebook, Carnegie Mellon build first AI that beats pros in 6-player poker - moneil971 https://ai.facebook.com/blog/pluribus-first-ai-to-beat-pros-in-6-player-poker/ ====== maximilianroos What's its edge in some understandable units (e.g. BB/hand)? This doesn't mean anything: > If each chip was worth a dollar, Pluribus would have won an average of about > $5 per hand and would have made about $1,000/hour playing against five human > players. ~~~ maximilianroos This might imply that 5 chips = 0.05 BBs, but from a different section > There were two formats for the experiment: five humans playing with one AI > at the table, and one human playing with five copies of the AI at the table. > In each case, there were six players at the table with 10,000 chips at the > start of each hand. The small blind was 50 chips, and the big blind was 100 > chips. ------ doodliego Should we be worried an AI developed by Facebook excels at a game of deception?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Has anyone made money on Amazon Mechanical Turk? - cdvonstinkpot I'm out of work at the moment, & am considering trying this to make at least something until a real job materializes. What are people's experience with this? I'm curious to hear what users have to say. ====== tinkerrr Check out the subreddit, which sometimes has useful discussion on this topic: [http://www.reddit.com/r/mturk](http://www.reddit.com/r/mturk) Also, I must concur with gwintrob, it's better to look for freelance gigs that will pay more than AMT. Just browse through Upwork and see if any categories make sense to you. Not all of it is very specialized ------ gwintrob AMT is geared towards anonymous tasks (e.g. classifying adult images) and finding projects on Upwork (formally oDesk) will probably be better if you have marketable online skills. Also, do you live somewhere with Uber? ~~~ cdvonstinkpot I don't drive, and I'm not sure I have 'good enough' skills to freelance. I can hold my own doing Wordpress sites, but it's nothing to tout, as most people can do that, too. Thanks for your reply.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: Flint – The filesystem linter in go - z0mbie42 https://github.com/astrocorp42/flint ====== z0mbie42 Hi, author here. This is commonly accepted that naming convention and style convention have no place in code reviews so we invented style linters (eslint, prettier, golint...). But what about filenames and directory names ? Here is the reason of flint: have a consistent naming convention among your files and directories in your projects.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
If the US Government used personal finance software - ry0ohki http://budgetsimple.wordpress.com/2011/04/13/the-us-government-budget-in-budgetsimple/ ====== adestefan That's not a budget, that's a cash flow statement. Budgets are expected income and expected expenses. The problem with the US budget is that income is down and they always lie about expenses. The income is down because every budget show rosy projections for the economy which means they expect a larger tax base ("Unemployment is going to magically drop 3% in less than a year!") The expenses are higher because they add more all the time without paying for it ("Oh we need to do X, what's a couple million on top of a trillion anyway.") ------ woodall This isn't an article about the US using budgeting software. It's swipe at war/military spending. It would have been nice to see an unbiased and full feature article on this. ~~~ ry0ohki I'm really not biased about this (I'm very apolitical), it's just clear when you lay it out like this that the main discretionary spending that needs to be cut to get a balanced budget is what they classify as "Security". Stealth bombers and other fancy things are nice but it's clear we can't actually afford them at this point. ~~~ protomyth There is a pretty good case based on how many times money changes hands that the "Stealth Bomber" is a pretty good economic stimulant. Two things: First, The US pretty much hovers between 15 - 20% of GDP being brought in as revenue for the federal government. This is despite a lot of tax policy changes. Second, when Clinton did his defense cuts, one of the things cut was various supply buying from small contractors (mostly minority). We had two factories. One lost all its contracts (although it did stay open just a little longer to ship tents to Florida after a hurricane). The other lost half its workers. All the people who these people bought stuff from had hard times. Of course, welfare spending went up in the area. The plans to move into civilian supply never got off the ground. Welfare doesn't make as many hops through the economy as defense spending. Target spending cuts based on what happens to the money afterwards. ~~~ Afton > Welfare doesn't make as many hops through the economy as defense spending. What does that mean? ~~~ protomyth Sorry, should have given references. The concept is called velocity of money <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity_of_money> Although, I learned a slightly different definition than the wikipedia article. When I saw the studies, it was defined as "Number of different players a $ changed hands from before returning to the government". The study I saw said each $ spent on defense made 12 jumps, where each $ spent on welfare made 7 jumps. ~~~ Afton thanks. Interesting idea.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Al Jaffee / Mad Magazine Fold-In Effect in CSS - thomaspark https://thomaspark.co/2020/06/the-mad-magazine-fold-in-effect-in-css/ ====== fluxsauce This is fun, thanks for making that! There's a treasure trove of Al Jaffee's work that can be shared with future generations. Al Jaffee just retired at 99! Here's article on his retirement, which is also linked to from the original site: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts- entertainment/2020/06/06...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/arts- entertainment/2020/06/06/al-jaffee-mad-magazine-retires/) ------ acomjean how the fold in came to be an every issue feature is kinda a fun story: From his 95th birthday article (gothamist). It has a nice video too: [https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/hanging-with-al- jaf...](https://gothamist.com/arts-entertainment/hanging-with-al-jaffee-mad- magazines-95-year-old-journeyman-cartoonist) "One morning I woke up and I spread out all the magazines I was subscribing to which included Playboy, and National Geographic and a couple of others. When I opened them up, the things that popped out was the first one, Playboy, was the fold-out; and then National Geographic had something that showed the new stadium being built by some athletic team. Then there was another one with a fold-out. Of course, the way we work is something triggers a thought, and what triggered in me was if all of them are doing expensive, full color fold-outs, why doesn't MAD Magazine do a cheap fold-in? MAD was black and white at that time. I thought about it for a moment, and then I looked in the newspaper and there was a story about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and Eddie Fischer and accusations that Elizabeth Taylor was going from one guy to another. I thought, "Well, that might make a fold-in. I did something very simple, which was to put Elizabeth Taylor on the left side, and Richard Burton was somewhere in the middle, but on the right side, there was just some young guy. The question was something like, "Who's going to be Elizabeth Taylor's next?" We thought it would be Richard Burton, but if you folded it in, it was just that guy on the right side, and it says, "some guy in the crowd." That was the gag. I took it into the editor, Al Feldstein. I said, "Al, I've got an idea that strikes me funny, but you're going to reject it because if you printed it, it would mutilate a page in the magazine." He looks at it. He says, "I like this." He immediately jumped up and ran into Bill Gaines, and then came back to me and said, "Bill said, 'Lets do it. If the kid folds the page, and he feels he's ruined the magazine, he'll buy another magazine for his collection.'" Ever the money man. I did it, and that was it. It was a one shot gag. A couple of weeks later, Feldstein rushes up to me—I happened to be up at MAD at that time—and said, "Where's the next fold-in?" I said, "Al, there is no next fold-in. That's it. It was a one time gag." He says, "I want another fold-in." " ------ staycoolboy This is such a great example of how CSS is often overlooked. Very impressive. I learned a lot from reading it. I bet if you had asked how to do this on StackOverflow without any prompting about language, you would have seen a LOT of javascript Me included. EDIT: I literally just went to a project I'm working on and removed a piece of JS code that animated a feature because of what I learned from this example. ~~~ ponker What is the advantage of doing something in CSS vs JS? ~~~ staycoolboy All of the peer answers are excellent, here are my $0.02: As a design principle, it makes sense to use/re-use the capabilities of a component, rather than an agent acting on that primitive. For example, HTML already has a built-in CSS engine that can animate. Re-writing the animation in JavaScript is redundant and adds more code, which means more bugs, more size, more maintenance, etc. Consider this example in C: using printf("%f", val) versus writing your own convert_float_to_characters_to_stdout(val) function. There are cases where you may want to do the latter because printf is a very large function for embedded controllers and sometimes excludes format specifiers to save space, especially %f. But normally you just use what you are given rather than re-inventing the wheel. ------ jedberg Cool effect but totally broken on Safari. :( The halves don't line up, and then when it's done the right half flashes back to a random portion of the image, and then when you move away to "unfold" it's missing a chunk in the middle. ~~~ reaperducer _Cool effect but totally broken on Safari_ Works fine in my Safari: 13.1 (15609.1.20.111.8) on Catalina (10.15.4). ~~~ jedberg I'm on Safari: 13.1.1 (15609.2.9.1.2) on Catalina 10.15.5 ~~~ jeffhuys Check your pinch-to-zoom. I can mess it up by zooming while it's animating. But it looks okay on normal zoom levels on Catalina with Safari 13.0.4. ------ nsxwolf Broken for me on Chrome, after the animation a portion of the lower right quadrant re-appears, flipped. ------ bjarneh Every time I see something like this I'm reminded of how little CSS I actually master. ~~~ gridspy It's OK! No matter what possible specialty you pick, there is probably someone better at it than you. But only you have the exact mix that makes you... you. Just focus on what brings you joy, and appreciate the skills you do have today. I'm sure you could figure CSS out if you decided it was your main goal. ~~~ bjarneh There are certainly people a lot better than me when it comes to CSS. Some of the dynamic aspects of CSS (i.e. anything that contains a "duration" for instance) seems somewhat unnatural to have in the CSS, but that might be taste. I once worked for a company large enough to have its own designer who created the designs in Photoshop. Then we had another guy who created HTML templates + CSS from it; then all I had to think about was the back end code, those were the days. Now I'm a one man band struggling with some of the instruments :-) ------ Yhippa These were great growing up. The March Madness one made me laugh. It's good to know that these things still give that effect. Will almost certainly be lost to future generations. ------ dang See also [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442041](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23442041) about Jaffee. ------ golem14 Awesome (on MacOS Chrome)! Really neat what you can do with CSS. And thanks for the shoutout for Al Jaffee! BTW: Does anyone know if there's an archive of the german mad magazine ? The translation is an experience in itself, and while I found a commercial CD with all the mad archives in English, nothing for German. ------ Osiris Can someone explain exactly how this is work is working? I realize it's using CSS transforms but I can't visualize it in my head from reading the code. ~~~ grenoire Right half folds inward, and right half's right half folds outward. ------ latchkey I built the renderer and thus page turner mechanism for Wrap [1], which kind of reminded me of this. It was interesting to build it and I learned a lot about performance optimizing CSS. Apologies if it sucks now as I haven't been involved on the project in many years. [1] [https://www.wrap.co/](https://www.wrap.co/) ------ gkoberger EDIT: I misunderstood how this works! Really cool! Might be good to make the "closed" the default and the mouseover open it? ~~~ function_seven That would be like telling the punchline first, then the joke. The folded-in view is the surprise. ~~~ pbhjpbhj Except in this image, isn't the folded out view much more interesting, ie more of a surprise? I thought the idea was to have a juvenile joke, but the hammock coming out from tri-fold and the cake appearing from the cauliflower-haired old man appears to be the surprising part. Anyway, the text is a little off for me - the letters clash NO, AM, FO, IN (almost the whole I is gone) - but it appears to be the underlying thing is just an image, so is the image off. A ½px margin sort of fixes it. Overall impression is very slick. ~~~ adrianmonk The way it works in the paper magazine is that the image is printed on a single page, and you receive it unfolded like any other page. (That's why there are instructions on the top right about how to fold it. If it came pre- folded, you wouldn't need those instructions.) So the format of the joke as used in the magazine is that you see the unfolded version first. Anyway, in the one you're talking about, if you read the top-center text, it talks about what the artist gets to do for his birthday. As he blows out the candles on the cake, he wishes he could spend his birthday on the beach. The joke is that he actually celebrates it by trying to think of something to draw, i.e. he has to work. ------ neovive These are wonderful! I resubscribed to MAD Magazine a few years ago when my oldest son was able to understand the humor. The fold-ins were his favorite part. What an amazing run for Al Jaffee and MAD magazine--truly a part of history. ------ TheRealDunkirk Aaaand the two halves don't line up in Safari, ruining the effect. Figures. ~~~ minxomat Same on Mobile Safari ~~~ city41 Try it again, the author said he fixed it in the comments on his page. It is working correctly for me on iOS. ~~~ jtbayly Not working for me on iOS. ------ matthewfelgate Oh, is this what they did in that episode of Malcolm in the middle... ------ hachibu As a kid, this was my favorite part of Mad Magazine. ~~~ allenu Same here. I think as a kid I tried to work out what the fold-in would look like without messing up the page itself. :-) ~~~ zwieback Me too. I grew up in Germany and on one of our trips to the US (late 70s maybe) we discovered Mad Magazine. My dad decided we all needed a subscription - he was always trying to find ways for the kids to brush up on their English. So for many years we had Mad Magazine mailed to us in Germany. We tried not to mess up the page for the other readers in the family. ------ chrisweekly Cool idea, but (1) :hover excludes mobile users, maybe pick a more accessible event trigger? and (2) alignment issues ~~~ qznc Touch works for me due to :active.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Glassomer: Glass shaping at room temperature - lucioperca https://www.glassomer.com/ ====== cududa Not sure if this is supposed to be a marketing plug or generate discussion? Either way, the company would’ve been better off making a blog posting and posting HQ images of what they can do. The images on the site kind of suck and you have to go digging ~~~ lucioperca OP here; I am not associated with this people in any way and wanted to create discussion. ~~~ dang I think the problem was that you editorialized the title, and it sounded like marketing ("Glassomer – glass structuring is becoming as easy and fast as plastic processing"). A better approach would be to make the title reflect what the page actually says, and then to post a first comment explaining what you find interesting and what sort of discussion you were hoping for. ------ jasonwatkinspdx So the website is pretty crappy at giving a simple summary. Nature's video is better: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBMB4FNoYz4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uBMB4FNoYz4) TL;DW: they sell glass powder that's mixed with a polymer binder. You can buy it as a liquid or solid. It can be cut/machined as a solid, cast or 3d printed as a liquid, and there's versions that set from liquid to solid with UV exposure. Final processing in a kiln burns away the binder and melds the glass powder together, forming the final object. ~~~ skykooler I suspect that the glass powder will quickly wear through machining tools and 3d printer nozzles. So I'm not sold on this actually being economical. ~~~ ericb Nozzles are fairly cheap. ~~~ lucioperca Diamond coated tools are not that expensive either. ------ dougmwne Not a great link for HN, but I was surprised to learn they have a process for 3D printing glass objects using photo curing. Sounds neat. ------ blix I would imagine that burning off the polymer binder in the final processing step leads to significant volume change and porosity, which would be a major challenge in many applications. I'm not seeing any information about how they approach these problems. ~~~ lucioperca See the publications of Frederik Kotz: [https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=TQBKvzsAAAAJ&hl=de](https://scholar.google.de/citations?user=TQBKvzsAAAAJ&hl=de) Citing from the Nature publication: "The shrinkage of the part during the sintering process is isotropic and dependent on the solid loading (hence can be calculated; see Supplementary Information). The sintering shrinkage for stereo- lithography and microstereolithography does not depend on the scale of the sintered parts (for example, the honeywell structure in Fig. 1a with a solid loading of 37.5 vol% showed the expected linear shrinkage of 27.88% in height from 3.05 mm to 2.2 mm and width from 2.177 cm to 1.57 cm)." "During a final sintering step at 1,300 °C the density of the brown part is increased (ρ final = 2.2 g cm −3 ) to that of high-quality fused silica glass with no remaining porosity and no cracks." But of course these processes could be quite sensitive to hard to control parameters. ~~~ blix If they can reliably get those densities and shrinkages from this procedure that is quite impressive. After a brief look through the papers, there is some promising evidence but I'd like to see a more thorough characterization, especially demonstrating spatial homogeneity of porosity and shrinkage. It's certainly a very interesting technology, and I think it could potentially be applicable to materials beyond glass. ~~~ jlokier > I think it could potentially be applicable to materials beyond glass. It's been used for quite a few years already. Precious metal clay is basically this. You can 3d print with it, then fire it and it turns into solid metal. ~~~ blix What's most interesting to me is subtractive manufacturing of ceramics. From what I've seen in metals, there's a preference for powder bed technologies over binder technologies. But it's not like I have a wide scope of current industry or research. ------ yutopia Wow this looks promising, wonder if the technique can be used to cheaply prototype optics. Stratasys has VeroClear but material properties aren’t ideal (e.g., lack of heat resistance), and injection molding is rather expensive for making a bunch of one-off prototypes. ------ etaioinshrdlu This is very cool - it looks like you have a substance that looks and feels a bit like ceramic clay -- but when fired, it becomes true silica glass! ------ jlokier Very nice! If I'd known about this last year ago it would have been a serious contender for the shell of a photonic processor. I'll definitely keep this production technique in mind for future projects. Shaped & machined glass is really useful. ------ voldacar The thermal expansion coefficient seems pretty good - I wonder if this could be used for making lab glassware? Lab glass with complex shapes (think condensers, soxhlet, etc) can get _very_ expensive ~~~ Gibbon1 I was just thinking that it might be useful for making lab glassware. Often you have complex shapes which takes a master scientific glass blower to make. 3D printing would make that a lot more accessible. In case anyone is wondering it takes years to become proficient as a scientific glass blower and the wages totally suck. Used to be scientific glass blowers would up and quit and open a neon shop because it paid better. ------ d_silin A more interesting part is here: [https://www.glassomer.com/index.php/technology](https://www.glassomer.com/index.php/technology) 3D printing glass, hmmmm. ~~~ hinkley Dumping us on the home page isn't really news, especially when there is basically no 'about' information there. Even the tech page is 2 screens long with only 3 paragraphs, and I can't find any news articles about them in the last 6 months. So it's a feedstock for very high resolution 3d printing, cured by UV to set it and then annealed in an oven to fuse it properly? ------ macrolime You can get 3d printing filament with a mixture of like 80% metal powder and the rest PLA that can be sintered, ie heated to be like 1200-1300C, to end up with a metal object that's essentialy printed on a regular 3d printer. Maybe glass powder could also just be mixed in melted PLA and then extruded to get a filament that could be used in regular 3d printers and then sintered to get a glass object. ------ jszymborski It'd be interesting if they could create some sort of laminated or reinforced plastic by also printing a PLA scaffold. It'd reduce the amount of plastic but also combat some of the brittleness you get with glass. ~~~ _Microft Only the shaping takes place at low temperatures. The material still needs a heat treatment at well over 1000°C for its final form. ~~~ abdullahkhalids > The conversion takes place at 700 °C below the temperature for handling of > silica melts (~2000 °C) and thus safes [sic] a considerable amount of > energy. [https://www.glassomer.com/index.php/technology](https://www.glassomer.com/index.php/technology) ------ ebg13 Is glass dust sintering really so special? Hasn't SLS printing been done for a while now? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_laser_sintering) ~~~ IshKebab SLS typically works with plastic not glass. ~~~ ebg13 This is plastic that has glass dust in it. The plastic burns away during sintering. ------ Gravityloss How does it compare with other materials from end-of-life and waste / recycling standpoint? ------ robertlagrant > Meet our competent team of scientists, technicians and entrepreneurs. We > have competent solutions for your needs. Maybe a thesaurus? ~~~ singingboyo This looks like an overextended version of something similar to "A competent team, with competent solutions." Which, well, still doesn't sound very convincing to me, but at least it flows better.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
XXY Oscilloscope - rbanffy https://dood.al/oscilloscope/ ====== flowless This needs some samples https://dood.al/oscilloscope/#-0.05,-0.8,0,0,0,0,0.0,3,1,sin(at-t/5)cos(at/b)cos((a+b)t),sin(at+(t/11))cos(tt/(ba)),3,5,0,0.74,125,0,0,0 https://dood.al/oscilloscope/#-0.05,-0.8,1,0,0,0,0.0,3,1,sin(22at-t/15)cos(at+t/12+t/30),sin(at+t)cos(t/a+t/3),2,5,0,0.74,125,0.07,0,0 ~~~ irickt Here's the music and oscilloscope art demo, the artistic goal of the project ... [https://m1el.github.io/woscope/](https://m1el.github.io/woscope/) ------ aroman Try this one: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtR63-ecUNo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtR63-ecUNo) `youtube-dl -x "[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtR63-ecUNo"`](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtR63-ecUNo"`) ------ matt12345678 An hour ago and on the front page with no comments. Probably because we are all still playing with it. ~~~ tomxor This :P ~~~ tomxor Way to spoil the lighthearted mood of a fun oscilloscope simulation... I've noticed, and dislike how unwelcome it is to make a simple acknowledgement or agreement on HN. Must be something about the voting system. ~~~ kbenson It's because it doesn't really contribute anything, and some people are stricter about that than others. The easiest way to turn that simple acknowledgement with downvotes into a neutral or upvoted comment is to just add a simple sentence with your own thoughts, or what it reminds you of, or anything that actually justifies the use of a comment instead of just the upvote button. It's just one of the ways HN is slightly different than other forums, and while it sometimes comes across as negative, I think overall it encourages better comments. ~~~ tomxor I can sort of understand the "this is not a chat room" attitude only leave constructive comments or whatever. But sometimes you want to just leave something more than a button click because there was more resonance than is expressed in a binary "yes", yet you don't necessarily have anything insightful to add. Anyway... that is my opinion, but I expect it's unpopular and will not be surprised if more downvotes come hurtling my way. ~~~ kbenson I think the disconnect is believing it has to be insightful. There's a large area there where you can work within to make a comment more signal than noise. Just explaining why you agree is usually sufficient. Some forums are perfectly fine without a distinction of contribution, such as reddit. Others, such as here, have a culture that tries to promote more substantive comments. Neither is better than the other, but both excel at specific things. If I want reddit style comments (and I do, often), I'll visit reddit. If I want HN style comments, I visit HN. Forcing redditors to be more serious or HN users to be less serious doesnt serve either community well, and would likely cause both to be similar and mediocre compared to what they were before. The whole point is that this is a place where someone can dive deep on the differences in etiquette and culture between reddit and HN and not worry too much about being called out for being too serious or cramping other people's good time, because some people find a discussion like that a good time even if they also like 10+ comment chains of jokes and crowd sourced movie quotes at other times. For that reason, I don't really expect you to get downvoted. You explained and justified your position, which I find is usually all most people here really expect as a minimum. ------ acidburnNSA Very nice and realistic effect. As a low-level electronics hobbyist I was pleasantly surprised to find "entry level" 50 MHz digital oscilloscopes in the $150-$200 range these days. I picked up a Siglent to help me through Horowitz & Hill's The Art of Electronics labs and it's been pretty fun. I also have used it just to see what's going on on a cheap digital level I bought with USB output and some other things. Definitely a neat tool. It does sit on the desk more than I'd like these days though. ------ ttoinou I made this oscilloscope simulation + sound last year : [https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ldSfWV](https://www.shadertoy.com/view/ldSfWV) Beware : you need a good GPU ~~~ Exras Nice reflection on the monitors edges. ------ tomxor For those of you a bit lost with the initial setup, click the "sweep" and "microphone" checkboxes to get something more familiar. ~~~ dsr_ And try whistling, snapping your fingers, and growling and humming, not just speech. Most people can whistle a nearly perfect sine wave, and shortly thereafter you'll see what frequency and volume really mean. ------ peatmoss The obvious musical selection to use in conjunction with this is “YYZ” EDIT: Okay, I'm watching / listening to Dave Holland’s “Jugglers Parade” which is punchy and whose dynamic range builds slowly. It’s pretty freaking cool. I’m sure everyone here has musical favorites that they’re having fun with too. ------ dsego Love the visuals, is the source code open? A nitpick, I should be able to click on "microphone" instead of having to aim at the small checkbox, this is easy if you wrap it in an HTML label tag. ~~~ ancaster source code: [https://github.com/m1el/woscope/](https://github.com/m1el/woscope/) ~~~ ysleepy The repo was only the source for the line drawing code. ------ sllabres related: [https://www.reddit.com/r/oscilloscopemusic/](https://www.reddit.com/r/oscilloscopemusic/) ~~~ JKCalhoun Down the rabbit hole: [https://oscilloscopemusic.com](https://oscilloscopemusic.com) Vinyl "music for oscilloscopes".... ------ claforte Awesome, my whole family played with it for 15 minutes, a great way to introduce wave theory to 8-10 years-olds! Works great on Windows 10 + Chrome. ~~~ fdavison Seeing an oscilloscope displaying a Lissajous pattern when I was eight years old was one of the things that sparked my interest in electronics. In 1962, by cracky! ------ DINKDINK awesome! would be nice if the engine interperlated between parameter changes instead of getting those abrupt digital steps. >To get audio from another program, you can either physically connect your audio output to your audio input, or use third party software, such as VB- CABLE on Windows or Soundflower with SoundflowerBed on MacOS. Read my mind ------ kakarot I can't get it to display anything. The console is ablaze with CORS errors. Firefox 58, Fedora 27. ------ lennoff try it with [https://github.com/m1el/woscope- music/blob/master/oscillofun...](https://github.com/m1el/woscope- music/blob/master/oscillofun.mp3) ------ pantalaimon I tried playing some of Jerobeam Fenderson's music on it and it works great! :D ------ ysleepy Reminds me of the Scan Processor Studies by Woody Vasulka & Brian O'Reilly. [https://vimeo.com/7517418](https://vimeo.com/7517418) Really eerie stuff. ------ anilakar Acid test: run Youscope on it. Seems to work relatively well. ------ zmix https://dood.al/oscilloscope/#-1,-1.2,0,0,1,1,0.13,7,1,sin(2PIat)cos(2PIbt),cos(2PIat)cos(2PIb*t),2,0.5,1,0.72,111,0,0,0 ------ JKCalhoun Wow, very cool. Kind of an inverse oscilloscope though — you adjust the input freq not the display freq. ------ jeffhuys >Unavailable in Safari. Only stereo in Chrome. It IS available in Safari, but not stereo as it says. Sierra. ------ eigenvalue This is amazing! Turn on your microphone and try playing with the sliders! ------ rosstex I don't see any visualization, on Mac 10.3.2 and Chrome 66. ~~~ hazeii Click on 'Signal generator'? ~~~ rosstex I hit "Reset All" and it started working :) ------ the-dude Completely locked up my FF + iMac. ~~~ johnpowell No problem here on FF 58.0.1 and OS X 10.13.2	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Show HN: I ported this classic DOS game to HTML5 - woj http://www.heartlight5.com ====== e1ven It looks like a great accomplishment, and I'd love to read a blog article on the process of porting it. Perhaps you could share that ? ;) ~~~ woj Sure. I wasn't certain anyone would be interested in it, but will do a writeup soon.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Windows non-LAN, wormable RCE 0-day discovered - nerdy https://twitter.com/taviso/status/860681252034142208 ====== buster I'm curious what "don't need to be on the same LAN" means. If it would be exploitable over internet wouldn't you just write that oder even leave the part about LAN out? ~~~ rdtsc Because other remote vulnerabilities weren't exploitable outside the LAN. So while they are "remote" it's a different class of "remote" so to speak. ------ Kenji So little information. We will have to wait until this is patched to know more about it, won't we. ------ mynewtb I don't understand the LAN bit, does this mean 'over the internet'? ~~~ paulv Yes. Non-LAN meaning the attacker doesn't have to be inside your home/work local network. ~~~ londons_explore It could mean two things. Either it could mean it is not a requir mentioned to be able to send broadcast packets to the machine. Windows uses broadcast packets for lots of things, like discovering UPnP devices, media centers, other machines file/printer shares, etc. Or it could mean no need to have the ability to send the machine IP packets directly, so one can attack even if the machine is behind NAT. There are far fewer ways to attack a machine behind NAT with no user interaction, but things like sending back false NTP or DNS responses, spoofing windowsupdate servers, or some of the peer to peer services built into windows sound like possible ways. ~~~ pdkl95 s/NAT/firewall/g NAT does _not_ provide security on its own, it's the firewall that drops packets. Most of the time you see both together on the same device; it's very rare to see a NAT-only device, which usually _will_ route packets to hosts on the LAN. ~~~ rocqua Nat certainly does provide basic security. If you aren't routable, they can't setup a connection to you. ~~~ mshook They can, it's called firewall punching... Skype does that routinely: ever wondered how it can setup a point to point connection without port forwarding? So to agree with PP, NAT is not a firewall... ~~~ dec0dedab0de I believe that's called ICE. and still needs both clients aware that theyre about to connect, and making outbound connections to each other with the goal of opening up sourceports. This does not negate the fact that NAT(PAT) provides protection against directly connecting to a device. ~~~ mshook If you know a bug in the DNS resolving stack of the client, you can make it send a query to your DNS server and exploit it to establish a connection. So no, it doesn't have to know it's about to connect. A query is easily triggered by sending an email with a an external picture embedded or something like that. Nothing NAT/PAT can protect you against. ~~~ dec0dedab0de thats also something a firewall cant protect you against. ~~~ rocqua The difference is that NAT doesn't track the counter party, so after you reached out to the DNS, any other service can use the opened port to connect to your PC. With a stateful firewall, it tracks that the port was opened only used for the DNS server. If a connection to that port from a different IP address than the DNS server is made, the firewall will block it. ------ ENTP A wild stab in the dark: remote code execution using a standard codec/library, easily triggered in the context of an ad. ------ atroll does this mean that it can be triggered by a web browser ? ------ disposablename Clickbait title? Zero info? Windows is evil! To the front of hacker news we go! ~~~ anon1385 Are you suggesting that Tavis Ormandy is making this up? This is upvoted because of the reputations of the people reporting it and because it sounds very serious. It's nothing to do with any kind of anti- Windows agenda. ~~~ UnoriginalGuy There's absolutely zero info. So even if he isn't making it up, there's still nothing to discuss on this, and he's ratcheted the hype up to 11. ~~~ rdtsc > there's still nothing to discuss on this, Oh I think there is a lot to discuss. How Windows has handled vulnerabilities in the past. Can talk about how disclosure works. Maybe mention recent Intel vulnerabilities as well. Connect to CIA and NSA leaks them hoarding 0-days and so on.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple to release OS X 10.9 with new power-user features, more from iOS - uladzislau http://9to5mac.com/2013/04/29/apple-to-update-os-x-with-new-power-user-features-more-from-ios-later-this-year/ ====== dljsjr Rumors. All rumors. Why is this here? I'm one of the biggest OS X 'fanbois' in the world, and I read the rumor mill sites every day, and I enjoy them for what they are: speculation. But this isn't news; news is typically factual. And the Apple Rumor business is abysmal; 9to5mac, and specifically Mark Gurman, have one of the best track records in the game[1]; even then, it's a horrendous track record. If this stuff shows up, then yay. I'll be thrilled. Especially proper multi- monitor support for full-screen apps. And I'm not saying that Mark Gurman is wrong (after all, he has "sources"). It's entirely possible that everything in this article will show up in 10.9 But it doesn't change the fact that it's still chaff, not wheat. [1]: [http://www.quora.com/Who-has-been-the-most-accurate-in- predi...](http://www.quora.com/Who-has-been-the-most-accurate-in-predicting- next-moves-by-Apple) (sorry for the Quora link, the cited site is no longer up) ~~~ 1qaz2wsx3edc It just looks like Apple integrated TotalFinder, but considering that is closed source, I imagine it will not be an integration with TotalFinder, but there own brew. I only hope 10.9 doesn't break TotalFinder. ~~~ dljsjr Screenshot in the source article is a screenshot of the existing TotalFinder. We don't know if Apple has done anything at all to Finder. ------ Tyrannosaurs When I saw power user features I wondered if it might be something that might convince people that OS X isn't going further down the locked down iOS route and certainly multiple monitors and more advanced use of finder are towards the power user end of things. On the other hand it would be fair to say that they're relatively a small investment on Apple's part and it would be possible to read too much into them. Looking at changes like this my take is that the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I don't think Apple are going to lock down OS X the way iOS is locked down but nor do I think that power users are as critical a part of their target audience as they once were. The end result - small changes for power users, enough to give them faith that they're not being completely ignored, and more significant investments for the new breed of typical Mac user. ------ doktrin >> " _The new operating system includes major enhancements to the Finder application such as tags and tabbed browsing modes._ " This would certainly be a welcome improvement. However, not sure this ranks as a " _power user_ " feature so much as a " _fixing a really broken_ " feature. The finder in OSX ranks up there with the single-button mouse as among the most nonsensical stubborn non-features Apple has clung to over the years. ~~~ dechols Yeah, I didn't see anything I'm interested in as a "power-user". OSX lately has decided to hide a ton of features out of the box that require changing values in Terminal before being useful. A quick list I know of: \- Hiding full paths in Finder \- Launchpad can't actually delete things. \- Library is hidden Other weird default settings: \- Scroll with trackpad is inverted It also doesn't have Ubuntu's nice window snapping or Windows' snap to sides feature, which is a big time saver. Finally, I don't feel like "port iOS features to OSX" has been a win for Apple. It just seems to confuse people by adding more crap to the OS. ~~~ X-Istence Library being hidden by default makes a lot of sense. It contains user specific application configuration, it's the same as on Windows having AppData which is hidden in the users "home" directory. There is almost no reason for a user to ever be in the Library folder, let alone why it should be visible by default. \--- As for scroll being inverted, they did this so that it matches what you do on iOS. You move up to scroll down the page since you are physically dragging the page, and you move down to scroll up. I recently used a friends computer where the scroll was still inverted and he said it felt much more natural. To each their own, it is a non-hidden setting! ------ wsc981 I can't say I agree with the many people that think the Finder is broken. For my purposes the Finder works fine, doesn't get much in my way. Might be because I've used Apple computers for around 20 years now. I can imagine people migrating from other platforms have more issues with the Finder, since it works quite differently from Windows, Linux OS-es. Actually, I don't think I interact much with the finder directly nowadays. I start apps using Apple-Spacebar and switch between apps using Apple-Tab. Finder is pretty much only used for some file management purposes (moving files to other folders, copy files etc...) and for those purposes it seems to work fine for me. I do really wish Apple will fix full-screen display for multiple screens. I can imagine a lot of Apple developers would like to see this changed as well. Perhaps Steve Jobs blocked this change in a previous Mac OS X release due to personal issues with it? I can't imagine any Apple developer implementing full-screen support as it stands currently, only if it was forced by management, cause it makes no sense at all with regards to multiple screens. ------ lorenzfx There isn't anything in there that would get me back on board (I jumped ship about two years ago). I would consider proper multi monitor support for fullscreen "apps" a bugfix and not a feature. Where is the proper window manager (or at least some hooks for 3rd party window managers) and the modern file system (at least give us snapshots and copy-on-write)? ~~~ TillE OS X works extremely well on a laptop, which has been Apple's primary Mac focus for a while now. Flicking between virtual desktops/fullscreen apps on a multi-touch trackpad is a wonderful way to use a 13" screen. If you replace the awful Finder with something usable, I'd argue that it's the best OS (desktop environment) for that particular form factor. For a proper workstation...well, they haven't even bothered to update the hardware for years. No surprise that the software has been neglected as well. ~~~ andyhmltn That's a good point, although a huge part of that is how good the trackpad is and how deeply it's integrated into the OS. ------ account_taken These look like good moves. While Microsoft and Ubuntu are shunning their desktop users, Apple is making me look the smarter for choosing a company who still stands believes in a desktop OS :) FYI, I was a decade long Windows user who switched to Mac then to Ubuntu then back to Mac after Unity. ~~~ Shorel As a happy Ubuntu Raring user, I can't honestly agree with the complains against Ubuntu. It's the best desktop experience I've ever had. ~~~ account_taken I tried Ubuntu 12.10 again briefly and was disappointed that intel HD4000 wasn't fully supported in 3D. Graphics is dog slow in Ubuntu on the same hardware. It looks like shopping spies still on by default in 13.04. I doubt I'll ever use Ubuntu again on that principle alone. Even Apple doesn't force that on you in Spotlight. Still cannot move taskbar. Still cannot resize taskbar without 3D support. ~~~ evilduck Hear hear! I just installed 13.04 on a relatively modern computer yesterday (C2Q, 8GB RAM, an "old" 9800GT) and had what I consider the typical linux experience. Any one of these might halt or scare off a newbie: * It wouldn't let me choose the encrypted/LVM option when formatting the drive before installing. Unencrypted worked though. I didn't bother to really investigate why, maybe the HD is at fault? * Defaults to the nouveau drivers for obvious reasons and I swapped it to the NVidia binary (for specific reasons). Screen dumped to console on its own while it reset X. Functionally fine, but scary looking compared to anything you'd see in Windows or OSX. * Changing the GPU driver now makes the system boot up in a not-native resolution until LightDM loads. Visually unappealing. * The computer has a Broadcom Wifi card installed that I'd like to use. Oh boy! (read that as... fuck broadcom). Obviously not handled by Ubuntu out of the box so I drag out an ethernet cable. Trying to install their binary driver requires command line magic which temporarily breaks dpkg/apt when a installing kernal module stalls out. I fixed that and then installed an open source version which grabbed the binary for me, which worked, but I wouldn't ever expect a layman to figure it out. Requires a reboot to finally function. * Numerous "application encountered an error" popups in the 10 or so hours I was working with it. Nothing that halted the OS, but several apps had to restart. It dings my confidence in the quality a bit. And the computer's RAM checked out fine a couple months ago and all temps were normal, I'm going to lean towards either my suspected aforementioned drive issue or actual errors with the apps. Didn't investigate, but they could happen to anyone. * Annoying Amazon and Ubuntu One monetization techniques defaulted into the Unity. It's not a functional issue, but raises concerns about the future of the free software ethos at Canonical and treads awfully close to the adware and spyware that plagues Windows users that the OSS community has been railing against for years. Compare that to OSX where I could just turn it on and have none of these problems, it's not quite rainbows and unicorn farts. I like linux for many reasons and Ubuntu has made great strides towards making Linux available to the masses, but it's still relatively easy to want to do normal things and encounter rough edges that require technical prowess. ------ gcv Really, FTFF is in the works? I'll believe it when I see it. (I don't know why Apple hasn't just bought Path Finder.) ~~~ pattern Since I had to look it up: FTFF = Fix The &$%#ing Finder[1], a blanket term for OS X Finder woes! [1]: <http://www.applematters.com/article/ftff/> ------ bkeating Makes sense. Good focus. As the masses flock to pocket OSes, OS X becomes more streamlined for the audience that remains; the creators. ------ SurfScore I'm more concerned about what large feline they will name 10.9 after. Do they even have any left? OS X 10.9 - House Cat FTW ~~~ apendleton There hasn't been one called "cougar," which is a scary-cat name people think of, I think. Of course, "cougar" is another name for the puma, but then, so is "mountain lion," so that may not be a barrier. Cougars(/pumas/mountain lions) are also interesting because they're not big cats, taxonomically speaking, so potentially the entire felidae family is in play, and it's pretty big. "Lynx" is a possibility... maybe also "wildcat" or "bobcat"? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felidae> ~~~ ryanpetrich Wildcat was already used as the codename for the iPad, though I suppose it's possible they could repurpose it. ~~~ SurfScore I'd vote for Wildcat ------ emehrkay Lets hope that it doesn't require us to re-install all of our nix tools like every other release did in the past. ~~~ dljsjr I've never had to reinstall my nix tools when using OS X. Where are you installing them? OS X respects all of the guarantees in the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard so if you aren't installing custom-built binaries in /usr/local then the problem isn't OS X. ~~~ emehrkay With every update I seem to have to reinstall just about any command line tool that I've previously installed because either they've moved some executables, or deprecated something , or the old binaries simply do not work with the newer version of the os. MySQL is probably the biggest annoyance with regard to upgrading. I don't believe that this is just a thing that I go through because the answers to my problems are a Google search away and I've taken an 07 MBP from Leopard to Mountain Lion. ~~~ dljsjr I've never had that problem, but I've only been on OS X since Snow Leopard, and it seems that things have remained pretty consistent. I also try to do as much installation from Homebrew (<http://mxcl.github.io/homebrew/>) as possible, so that I can let the package manager worry about stuff like that. ------ Millennium The first thing I noticed is that this would be the first OSX release to be named after something other than a great cat. Instead, they seem to be going for alcoholic beverages now. Why do I find this darkly hilarious? ~~~ smickie It says 10.9 is 'internally codenamed' so I assume Cabernet not the the final release name. Fingers crossed for OSX Ocelot. ~~~ Samuel_Michon I think ‘Lynx’ would be neat, as it is the last major version before OS X 11 (or whatever they will call it), linking it to the next generation. It also reminds us of the lowly text web browser and the fact that the web is only 20 years old. ~~~ evan_ You don't think they'll do OS X 10.10? ~~~ Samuel_Michon Em, no. Of all the possibilities, I’d say that is one of the least likely. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_versioning#Sequence- ba...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_versioning#Sequence- based_identifiers) ~~~ evan_ Are you sure you read that correctly? I quote: > In this system, the third digit (instead of the second digit) denotes a > minor release, and a fourth digit (instead of the third digit) denotes bug- > fix/revision releases. Because the first digit is always 10, and because the > subsequent digits are not decimals, but incremental values, it is likely > that a hypothetical 11th major version of OSX, should it exist, would be > labeled "10.10" rather than "11.0". They did 10.4.10 and 10.4.11 so I'd say its within the realm of possibility. ~~~ Samuel_Michon All very good points. I think it would look silly, but sure, it’s possible. However, I think Apple would only choose it if the version after 10.9 didn’t look all too different from 10.9. If they did some kind of UI overhaul, it would be a good time to jump to a new major version – maybe even ‘OS XI’ or ‘OS 11’.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Sex robots to “feel” human touch with new ‘smart skin’ - oedmarap https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/8030636/sex-robots-feel-human-touch-smart-skin ====== fastbeef Every day it seems more and more like were living in a Black Mirror episode. How do I get off? ~~~ jandrese When we realize that the these smart skins are fragile so we program the robots to feel pain. Then people start torturing them. Cut to end credits.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
PayPal Restores Seafile's Account after File-Monitoring Row - TimWolla http://fortune.com/2016/06/22/paypal-seafile-monitoring/ ====== mtgx Sure, an apology - because the negative PR is starting to hurt Paypal. But how many other tens or hundreds of other companies experience the same kind of censorship from Paypal, but never get to cause the same level of outrage for Paypal to "apologize"? ------ binarymax The page does not translate very well, but is PayPal admitting fault here? Does this open them up to litigation from Seafile? ------ pjc50 Remember, customer outrage (sometimes) works! ------ JoshGlazebrook Paypal only apologizes when they can't get away with being themselves quietly. ------ Argorak So, they apologize. I'm sure the damage inflicted is noticable, will PayPal cover that? And this is the problem of the modern service industry: they never stand in for damages, even if the damage is inflicted through a wilful decision. As a client, you are at their whim. ------ cheriot I've been hoping they would become a better partner as an independent company. Maybe this is the first sign. ------ cprayingmantis After working with a non-profit who had transactions frozen because they mentioned Cuba in a comment field I have stopped using Paypal on all future projects. It's easy to implement for non profits but it's just not worth it to these people to have to worry about the hassle of actually getting their money. ------ ryan-c This appears to contains comments from a previous post that linked to google translate, but I don't see a comment from dang mentioning a change/merge. Too early in the morning? ~~~ TimWolla It was changed by 'sctb': [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11961301](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11961301) ------ ckastner And yet again, no explanation what this "illegal content" is supposed to be. ~~~ mtgx Or a change to a more clear policy for that matter. ------ puddintane If not a duplicate at least here's a non translated form for English users. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11960092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11960092) ~~~ notwhereyouare wow, at least the translated verion mentions seafile in the title. the fortine article doesn't mention it at all in the title, just dropbox alternative ~~~ puddintane Yeah that site has odd SEO - I believe this is why Google uses multiple methods to parse an article title - as such I'm pretty sure they parsed the title from the <title> tag on that page If you search the link on most search engine's it shows that the title is "PayPal Restores Account of Dropbox Rival Seafile After Monitoring Row" "<title>PayPal Restores Account of Dropbox Rival Seafile After Monitoring Row - Fortune</title>" Of course the article title in-line doesn't have that but it was probably a bad move on the developer's part to not create as much duplicated content on the page would be my guess as to why that occurred. Either way it is very confusing I agree! Just thought users would like a non-translated form as not everyone can spend extra time re-reading sentences to understand the exact context of the article! ------ al_chemist Let me guess "We are sorry that you went public with our unlawful request"? ~~~ richardwhiuk The request wasn't unlawful - it might not be legally required, but it's fine for any business to impose almost any requirement on any other business before doing business with them. ~~~ nailer It violated EU privacy law if my understanding is correct. ------ ketzu [http://www.golem.de/news/sperrung-paypal-entschuldigt- sich-b...](http://www.golem.de/news/sperrung-paypal-entschuldigt-sich-bei- dropbox-alternative-seafile-1606-121694.html) The original for everyone capable at reading German. ~~~ heartsucker Man sagt "capable of reading" und nicht "capable at reading." Tut mir leid, wenn das unhöfflich ist, aber ich gehe davon aus, wir alle besser schreiben wollen. :) ~~~ wnesensohn Es heißt "unhöflich", und da fehlt ein "dass" (...gehe davon aus, dass wir alle...). Stilistisch etwas besser wäre: "Es tut mir leid, wenn das unhöflich wirkt, aber ich gehe davon aus, dass wir alle unseren Schreibstil verbessern wollen." (I'd say the first comma should be left out, but I have the tendency to leave out vital commas as well, so...) ;) ~~~ heartsucker Bah. Das ist was passiert, wann man Deutsch in Berlin gelernt hat. Schlampig und umgangssprachlich. ------ bluetidepro Slightly off topic, but does anyone else feel like the article title used here ("Paypal apologizes to Dropbox Alternative seafile") is a pretty big slap in the face to Seafile? First off, why include "Dropbox Alternative"? Putting the competitor's name in an article title about the other company? Seems a bit odd/kind of putting down Seafile. That'd be like seeing "XYZ happens to Twitter alternative Facebook." Secondly, they didn't even capitalize Seafile's company name, but they did capitalize the competition's name (Dropbox). May not seem like much but it's pretty shitty, if you ask me. EDIT: I guess the 2nd point is more the fault of Google Translate. I still think the first point sticks. It's odd to have that in the title, it wouldn't be as weird if that was in the body of the article, though. ~~~ nopzor I don't think it's shitty. Firstly nobody knows who seafile is, so it's just clearer. Secondly, by comparing them to Dropbox they are also acknowledging that seafile is a "legit" file sharing company. ~~~ markokrajnc I agree. By adding "Dropbox alternative" everybody immediately knows what the company Seafile is doing... ~~~ dublinben Like snooping on their users' files, and reporting them to the police? Because that's what Dropbox is doing, and is exactly the opposite of what Seafile is doing. ------ awalton I still don't understand how anyone does business with Paypal. Their abuses and shitty business practices like this just continue, and will only continue to get more abhorrent. This is yet another tissue paper apology issued after the fact it's already cost someone business, and only offered after it made more bad press for Paypal. There are alternatives now. You don't have to keep doing business with these colossal assholes. ~~~ JoshTriplett Many people who won't give you their credit card number will pay you via PayPal, because PayPal is perceived to have more consumer protection. (They maintain that perception by having a massive bias towards consumers at the expense of merchants.) Some people who don't _have_ credit cards use PayPal. ~~~ icebraining Paypal follows the sane system of having the payer tell them who and how much to pay, instead of CC's process where the seller tells them "it's cool, the buyer totally wanted me to have $X" and the payment processor simply complies. /rant (Yes, 3-D secure exists, but as a user it's impossible to verify that the site is actually using it before handing over the CC info) ~~~ JoshTriplett Agreed; this and actual cryptographic signatures should be a requirement to process any payment. I'd like that for a bill pay system, too. Right now, I have to choose between systems with direct bank account access that can debit any amount, or systems that require manual entry of amounts. I'd like to see a standard where the source of a bill sends an invoice to my bank, and I then direct the bank to pay it (either via direct authorization, or by setting parameters like "automatically pay if less than $X"). ~~~ icebraining What pains me is that the committee that created the new SEPA Direct Debit standard had the choice (the two processes were used in different EU countries) and they chose the dumb one! We actually had a sane direct debit system here in Portugal, in which the invoice would come with a code that you could input into your bank's site or ATM, therefore authorizing future debits from that company. It was safe, it could be easily revoked, and we lost it to implement SEPA's crappy version.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Produce different behaviour in all versions of your language - lelf http://codegolf.stackexchange.com/questions/48898/produce-different-behaviour-in-all-versions-of-your-language ====== PaulHoule I am amused that Python is the most popular language here, since the Python 2 to Python 3 transition was so badly botched. (Had it not been so botched, we might be seeing Python 4 and Python 5 at this time.)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Review my new product (startup) - rogerthat_au We are a web agency startup (langoor.com) who recently launched a mobile website building tool:<p>www.langoor.mobi<p>We would love your feedback on the tool and whether you think it is useful for SMEs. Thank you! ====== aioprisan One piece of feedback on the 4 step process that you highlight on the homepage, shouldn't steps 3 and 4 be flipped? I'm finished and published everything on step 3 but on step 4 I have to add code to my site still? ------ aioprisan and on the Pricing page, I'd remove the "Popular" tag on the $300 plan and replace it with "Best Value" or something along those lines there. I mean, is it really popular now? didn't you just launch? Would someone just sign up for a $300 plan from the start? Some will, but the popular choice will be the free/$9 version ~~~ rogerthat_au Great insight - thanks for your advice. It all makes sense.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The one thing wrong with sites like Digg - mattculbreth http://onstartups.com/home/tabid/3339/bid/1393/The-One-Thing-Wrong-With-Social-Content-Sites-Like-Digg.aspx ====== mojuba That's unfortunately not the only problem. Socially selected content sucks because it is being selected by an Average Joe, while actually what I, as an Average Joe need is a better content, provided (and selected/voted) by people better than me. ------ timg The users.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Vimes Boots Theory: Further Reflections - panic https://siderea.dreamwidth.org/1477942.html ====== Androider Louis CK has a fantastic bit about this: "When you're broke, the bank starts charging you money... for not having enough money. If you have a lot of money, they give you money. Because you have a lot of money! You have so much money that we should give you some! Because you have a lot, you should have more! Here, take more money! Take this guy’s $15, fuck him, you should have it!" Like the article says, class boundaries are also knowledge boundaries. Because you don't know of any alternatives, you bank at the local BoA and get taken advantage of to the tune of $15/month in perpetuity with a low balance, or even pay a percentage at the corner check cashing place. Or you can get free banking and around 3% APY today if you have savings, know how and where to bank and how to structure a 12-month CD ladder. It's expensive to be poor! ~~~ kwhitefoot I have never paid for banking in my life. I lived for thirty years in England and then moved to Norway where I have been for 32 years and have had accounts with several different banks. The only charges I have ever had to pay are in Norway where I have to pay an annual fee for a credit card from my bank (I have several other credit cards that cost me nothing). As far as I know this is normal in the UK and Scandinavia, not sure about the rest of Europe though. So how do US banks justify USD 15 a month? ~~~ l0b0 As a Norwegian with no affiliation, a huge shout-out to Sbanken (earlier Skandiabanken) for providing _anyone_ with no setup fee (at least when I got mine almost 20 years ago), free unlimited accounts, no credit or debit card fees (even abroad!) other than a standard yearly renewal fee, and all-round fantastic service. Their "secret" is so simple it's ridiculous: they are online only - all services are through their web site. They also enforce multi-factor authentication using any one of several services, most of which can also be used with other banks and government websites. I've many a time longed for something like it while living in various other Western countries, but for some reason (regulation, inertia?) there seems to be nothing like it elsewhere. ~~~ kwhitefoot Yes, that's my bank, they're brilliant. So much better than the account I have with Santander in the UK. But even DNB (former Postbanken) is better than banks in other countries and has been for a very long time. I had online banking with the Postbank even before I had Internet. ------ losvedir Heh, last year I bought expensive boots explicitly because of the Vimes' theory, but I have to say in _my_ case it didn't work out. Maybe this comes from what the post says about "knowing _what_ to buy", but I bought boots made by a 2nd generation shoemaker constructed out of leather carefully prepared here in Chicago. They're recraftable so I figured after the bottoms wore out I could fix them. But here I am a year later and the inside sole is coming up and squeaks with every step. I'm going to have to take it in to get it repaired, for probably $15-$20. From a consumer waste and natural resources perspective, I'm still happy with my purchase, but I'm pretty convinced that shopping every year or two at Walmart would leave the average person ahead, cost-wise. More generally, I wonder to what extent the Vimes theory is true. Richer people buy higher quality items and generally have a more _luxurious_ life, but I'm not sure that it's cheaper overall. Or at least, there's a point where it's obviously the case (c.f. the T ticket vs Charlie card point in the post), but I think it happens pretty early on in wealth. Case in point, I bought a nice 2 year old Chevy from a dealer with low miles for $12,000 a few years ago and haven't had a problem with it. I can imagine _that_ paying itself off quite easily vs. making do with a $3,000 beater that keeps falling apart and needing service. But from a purely _cost_ perspective (not luxury), I don't think beyond maybe $15k or so, more money in a car will save you in the long run. So, I still kind of get Vimes' theory, but I only think it applies from, say, poverty to lower middle class level. Beyond that, I think upper class people spend more money on stuff, and get a sweet life because of it, but not as a cost saving measure. ~~~ Fins Insole can probably be glued back easily enough. With things like these though, it's important to know if you are paying for quality, luxury/prestige, or some combination thereof, as these are different things that may be considered worthy of paying extra for. With things that are not (strictly) utilitarian, it could be far more of the latter than former. Shoes made of leather from the butt of a baby purple dragon would be quite expensive, but that leather isn't necessarily as strong as your run of the mill cowhide. Gets even worse/more complicated if the maker used to be known for quality but starts taking shortcuts and quality goes down, but price doesn't. As some anecdata, I have a couple of leather belts that are if not older than I am but certainly pushing 40, worn very often. Still look as good as new, but I am sure they were very expensive when originally purchased. Another belt is a few years old, from a brand that's known for making quality luggage (or used to be), not worn too often, and wasn't cheap. Leather's already cracking. On the other hand, really cheap ones look terrible even sooner, so the law still holds as a general rule. ~~~ siruncledrew The indicators used to appraise the quality of something have a big part to do with the overall successful application of Vimes theory. Consider a merchant has 2 classes of boots: TypeA that cost $100 and last 5 years, and TypeB that costs $60 and lasts 2 years. Both boots are made by the same merchant, and TypeA has better materials than TypeB, which is primarily why it lasts longer, not necessarily due to the merchant’s craftsmanship ability. In such case, if someone could afford the TypeA boots, we can make sense of Vimes theory because it comes out to be cheaper over the life of the item due to better quality of materials, since quality of craftsmanship is basically the same. Of course, this is pretty idealized. There’s many other factors that influence quality and how it’s perceived. OP could have paid a premium to a longstanding brand traditionally known for quality that has cut corners over time and now uses cheaper practices. I think there’s a lot of cases similar to OP now, where people pay a premium for a TypeA item expecting better quality construction and durability for the price, yet end up getting something not that different than a TypeB item. Marketing also has a lot to do with this. It’s particularly frustrating when buying from a brand that _used_ to make good stuff, and now sells stuff way worse under the same name (I’m looking at you Pyrex). I also hear a bunch of watch fans calling out the formerly high-end watch brands for cheapening their construction quality while still keeping the price high because buyers pay for the label not the actual quantitatively measured useful quality of the item. Once brands get to that level, they know they can basically put out mass manufactured expensive garbage and people will still buy it because they associate the brand with former traditional quality construction (much like many fashion brands of today that are made in similar overseas factories with similar textile suppliers). ~~~ Fins Exactly. I remember when HP printers were built like tanks, too. The problem, too, is that apart from goods that are tested for durability, there aren't many signals a layperson can use to judge if say boots are well- built and made of quality materials. Then, of course, "quality" is multi-faceted, too. Type A boot could cost more because it is better-looking, light, flexible, comfortable, and made of thin, soft, supple leather as smooth as baby's bottom. But because of that, it will fall apart as quiclly as WalMart boot for $20; you'd just enjoy wearing it more. ------ mrdoops Taken further we find the problem of bottlenecked economic throughput or market participation due to the poor's access to capital. Markets thrive on distributed inputs to arrive at a consensus on value - the more participants participating, the more throughput of information being supplied to our markets. More participants is more information which allows healthier markets which provides more opportunities for growth. So what's the cost of a loan or other financial products? Of course there's utility in providing upfront capital in exchange for time-spread payments and interest (buy the $200 boots today), but what of the macro-cost of decreased market participation for the duration of the payments? The loan payments with interest is money that could've been used by an individual participating in the market that is instead piped to the financing provider who, by definition, is already richer. Given the rich, or a rich organization, has different buying habits and participation in the markets (different perspective = different information), how much economic flow, throughput, and growth are we losing from financial mechanisms which go from poor -> rich? In this sense wealth concentration is a problem of bottle-necking economic potential by depriving our markets of participants and diverse perspectives. ------ l0b0 Related is something which bug me about online ratings: there is just no way to know which of the people who voted on a category of products have anything like the same idea of "quality" as you do. I've certainly bought absolutely awful stuff online which had a 90%+ positive or better than 4/5 star rating. What ends up happening is that analysing the ratings of hundreds of thousands of customers is very often _less valuable_ than chatting to a single person who has had a good experience with a single product. This is how flawed online ratings are. ~~~ Fins There's also the selection bias -- people who think the product is OK, but nothing special probably will not spend too much effort posting a review. But of course even if they do bother posting a review, ratings often do not have anything to do with the quality of the product. ------ hyperman1 My personal shoes where €40 models that would last a few months at most. I bought more expensive ones, and they would also last a few months at most. Both me and my mom are known in the family for being total shoe disaster zones. So I'd given up that particular fight. Then one day my wife and me ended up in a small, local shoe shop. No customers there, just the owner. We weren't even looking for shoes. The owner was getting pension-aged and would close his shop in a few months. He told about how some company would make great but expensive shoes, and build a name for quality. After a few years, a big company would buy the brand, raise the price, lower the quality, and coast on the perception for a few years. He told this cycle goes on and on. He stopped selling the shoes as soon as he know the quality went down. Shoe salesman kept trying talking him into selling these shoes as it was easy money, and he kept throwing them out of the shop. He was getting very pissed off at this point. He talked me into buying a pair for about €160, which isn't the most I've paid for shoes, but more than I would give for that specific pair - they looked like my normal €40 models. Now these shoes lasted for about 7 years, which basically obliterated any personal record. Unfortunately, the shop is gone now, and the only shoe shops left are the big chains. I am still willing to spend the money, but I have no idea what I should buy. ------ CM30 I suspect the accuracy of this theory is very, very market/area dependent. Sometimes paying more will get you a better product sure, but sometimes you'll have markets where the free/cheap solutions are better or where prices are mostly the same for the same quality products across audiences. Software is the obvious example of the former (with open source software often being as good or better than paid alternatives), but information/journalism/research/whatever could count to some degree too. If you know where to look, there's free content on par with some of the best newspapers and journals, especially now with the internet and passion projects/people using Patreon or donations to fund their work. They're the channels I feature in some of my underrated channels lists. For fields where you can't really pay more for a better service, well entertainment usually comes under that. That CD or DVD or video game or book will cost roughly the same regardless of who buys it and what shop they get it from. The idea works pretty well for clothing and appliances, struggles when it comes to software and is virtually irrelevant for movies or games. Then again, I guess you could say software is a field where at a certain level, the only thing that even remain are opportunity costs. Get skilled enough, and every buying decision becomes a question of whether you want to buy/download to save time or rebuild it yourself over the next few weekends or so. ------ darawk This is a pretty incomplete metaphor. If the rich person bought the cheap boots, they could invest the remainder of their capital in the market at say, a 7% annual return, over the long period they're not actually saving money by buying the more expensive stuff, most of the time. ------ golem14 Since neither the OP, nor the comments give them, I'd like to have a few examples of high quality expensive shoes ... If anyone has suggestions, please enlighten us. ~~~ veddox I bought a set of Lowa Renegade boots 1.5y ago: [https://www.lowaboots.com/mens/hiking/renegade-gtx-mid- sepia...](https://www.lowaboots.com/mens/hiking/renegade-gtx-mid-sepia-sepia) Originally for hiking, but they have also seen daily service as winter boots. Been very pleased with them for both purposes, and they're still as good as new. (As a student, this was a pretty big investment for me, but I'd definitely do it again!) ------ Jaruzel Off topic, but is dreamwidth.org a Livejournal clone? ~~~ Avshalom Sort of, it's started from a fork of LJ code and has been developed since. I can't remember why exactly the fork was made though because LJ has shot itself in the foot basically every two years since it started. ~~~ cowpewter IIRC, Dreamwidth was forked off LJ after one of LJ's great fandom purges (probably either Strikethrough or Boldthrough). Basically, they cracked down on ton of fandom communities for adult content, and the fandom communities said, fine, we'll just make our own then, and did. ------ Alan_Dillman The thing I don't like about Vime's theory is that it postulates only two price points. That being said, I buy 200 dollar boots. ~~~ n4r9 I don't think it _postulates_ two price points, it just uses two for the sake of argumentation. ~~~ Alan_Dillman The essayist doesn't but Vimes world character arc requires that he see the issue in black and white, top and bottom. I'm sure that was an allusion by Prachett: you're not supposed to think like Vimes. His books always have layers of meaning. ~~~ hyperman1 Leave of the white. I'd say he sees issues in black. He's a stark cynical copper who has seen anything. A lot of his internal monologue talks about how he wants to unleash 'the beast' but can't because his inner watchmen won't let him.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Prettier 2.0 – Opinionated JavaScript formatter - kristiandupont https://prettier.io/blog/2020/03/21/2.0.0.html ====== Waterluvian A bit irritating that formatting zealots are changing the defaults. What can possibly drive the decision to change whatever option it is they landed on and deployed? It's contrary to everything they claimed Prettier was about: for better or worse, we have decided on X so we can all move on to more important issues. I feel like the cost of changing defaults is wildly underestimated because it's decided on by people who are so deeply engaged in the product. It means either all my code now needs a config file added or all my code will need to be updated. ~~~ greentrust Is the cost really that high? For the vast majority of projects, all developers will need to do is run "yarn prettier". We can't expect everything to be perfect on day one, nor should we be stuck with the poor choices we made when starting a project. Maintainers should be allowed to change their mind after careful consideration and community consensus. ~~~ afshin Part of the calculus for the cost is losing the immediate utility of git blame once every file has been reformatted. ~~~ lonelappde Configure your git blame to ignore cleanup changes. [https://www.moxio.com/blog/43/ignoring-bulk-change- commits-w...](https://www.moxio.com/blog/43/ignoring-bulk-change-commits-with- git-blame) ~~~ Waterluvian This changes everything. Thank you!!! ~~~ davidmurdoch If GitHub doesn't automatically support the feature (article says it doesn't) I don't think it'll be very useful for many teams. ~~~ capableweb If you can use GitHub but not Git, I'm not sure you can really say that you know version control. Fine for designers who are just helping out in projects and don't really know to but developers who manages merges, backports and alike should really know the insides of Git, not just the GitHub GUI. ------ franciscop > Improved method chain breaking heuristic This is great! When I'm _scripting_ in Node.js I tend to prefer either of these two styles, with the second one being normally a cleaned-up version of the first one: const res = base .map(a => a.b) .filter(b => /abc/.test(b)) .join('\n'); const res = base.map(extractB).filter(isAbc).join('\n'); The second one would be split into different lines with Prettier 1.x, which was annoying since I would explicitly extract those methods into separated functions for clarity. So this is amazing for my personal projects. However at the same time I'm not thrilled about prettier breaking changes. It _is_ supposed to be the one way of doing things, so now a project might have different people with different prettier versions, making it a ping-pong game if someone has prettier 1 and someone else prettier 2. ~~~ atombender I prefer Gofmt's strategy/philosophy, which is to mostly let the developer control breaking, and only format around it. Gofmt will format everthing strictly, but will leave decisions about "layout" to you. This is a wiser design because the formatter _can 't_ know what the best layout is, and a formatter really ought to only format something where there's is an _unequivocally, universally correct way of formatting something_. As an example, sometimes table-driven test are better written compactly, sometimes better verbosely. As a naive example: for _, c := range []testcase{ {input: 1, expect: 10}, {input: 2, expect: 20}, {input: 3, expect: 30}, } { assert.Equal(t, c.expect, someFuncToBeTested(c.input)) } If the formatter starts splitting each testcase entry up over several lines, like so: { input: 1, expect: 10, }, ...then you potentially lose readability. In other cases, you have more complicated structs that might fit on one line, but deserve to be formatted across multiple lines. This is something Prettier doesn't always do correctly, and with Prettier, you _don 't have a choice_. Opinionated is good when there is just one answer, but not when there's a range of possibly answers. ~~~ triyambakam You've perfectly explained my daily frustration with Prettier. I am sad a few times a day about this for a project I'm on at this time. ------ simonw I'm still really hoping for Jinja2/Django template support: [https://github.com/prettier/prettier/issues/5754](https://github.com/prettier/prettier/issues/5754) / [https://github.com/prettier/prettier/issues/5581](https://github.com/prettier/prettier/issues/5581) ~~~ j-f1 This is actually quite challenging because the template language allows you to insert template tags into any location in the template file, and while people _usually_ put them in reasonable places, there’s no guarantee. For example, someone could do a thing like `{{ less_than }}div class="foo">abc</div>` and that would be totally valid but a nightmare to parse. That’s different from a more structured template-style language like JSX, where there are only a few valid places to embed JS expressions so it isn’t too challenging to make them all look good. ------ dang Related from 2018: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16549966](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16549966) 2017: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14108718](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14108718) [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13365470](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13365470) ------ stared Did they change an option to disable lineWidth? In 1.* it was not possible, which was my single biggest issue with Prettier. Many times it made code less coherent, due to forcing a few lines to be collapsed into one. See Prettier example in ESLint section of "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Types & Tests", [https://p.migdal.pl/2020/03/02/types-tests- typescript.html#e...](https://p.migdal.pl/2020/03/02/types-tests- typescript.html#eslint). ~~~ hombre_fatal Why not just change it to a high value? Or prettier-ignore exceptional lines? ~~~ 11235813213455 if you put a high lineWidth value, you'll have your object literals or destructuring mostly one-lined, etc.. often not desirable (for 4+ props) That's mostly why I don't like prettier, sometimes you want a bit of control over code formatting when several options are possible, prettier don't allow it. I use vscode formatter (actually it's TypeScript compiler formatter) instead Other things I dislike with prettier, like how it'd force parenthesis in a `2 + 3 * 4` expression, where it's a bit superfluous. Or string templates line returns on expressions [https://github.com/prettier/prettier/issues/3280](https://github.com/prettier/prettier/issues/3280) ~~~ Hurtak You can controll the formatting with empty comments eg, if you dont like const {a, b, c} = props; you can do const { // a, b, c } = props; ~~~ monkpit But please don’t. ------ tony In order to get this working with vim's prettier highlighting, I had to add this to `.prettierrc`: { "trailingComma": "es5", "arrowParens": "always" } Prettier 2.0 changed this to be the defaults, but for some reason the editor plugin wasn't acknowledging it. Also I added a script command to format all the code in package.json: { "scripts": { "prettier": "prettier src webpack data --write" } } Then `npm run prettier` got me sync'd with the latest defaults (the trailingComma and parens styling). It even formatted my JSON and SCSS files. Didn't recognize prettier could do that. ~~~ crooked-v > but for some reason the editor plugin wasn't acknowledging it Is it using a bundled pre-2.0 version of Prettier? ~~~ tony Not sure, but it's this package: [https://github.com/prettier/vim- prettier](https://github.com/prettier/vim-prettier) ------ ssutch3 I have been looking for, but haven't found, a similar package for Java projects. Ideally my team can add it as a save-hook for everyone using IDEA, then we can have a pre-commit hook that checks to ensure compliance. Would be eternally grateful for anyone that can point me in the right direction! ~~~ dodobirdlord I suggest [https://github.com/google/google-java- format](https://github.com/google/google-java-format) ~~~ davnicwil I'm very happy using this, coming from prettier with JS/VSCode and looking for a similar dev experience in Java/Intellij - it has an IntelliJ plugin that works well. Last time I looked I couldn't find any good IntelliJ plugins for the Java implementation of prettier which was a dealbreaker - I need the format on save. Anyway, this is a great tool, just works. Only couple of issues it has is no 'ignore formatting for this piece of code' feature and it occasionally formats comments oddly (i.e. enough to make them unreadable) in certain edge cases like in ternary expressions, so you have to manually edit comments from time to time, but this hardly ever comes up. ~~~ tomnipotent > I need the format on save Check out Preferences -> Tools -> File Watchers. ~~~ davnicwil Great shout! Didn't know about this feature but this solves the problem elegantly. Will give it a try. ------ berkayozturk IMHO, when writing long logical expressions, putting the logical operators to the beginning of each following line (instead of to the end) makes them much easier to read. ------ msoad finally you can run `npx prettier --write .` and get a folder formatted without any installation or configuration. This is a great decision. Congratulations on the release team! ~~~ mnutt That's probably useful in some cases but I'd still recommend pinning the version, since different versions of prettier format code differently and different team members will end up with conflicting changes. ~~~ mceachen ^^^ what the op said. You'll regularly seen diffs in minor versions, and even patch versions. ------ k__ Doesn't it defeat the idea of "one formatting to rule them all" if they change the rules? ~~~ brlewis I'm not sure how dedicated prettier is to "one formatting to rule them all" since it's configurable per-project. Switching between different projects with different prettier configuration is very low friction. Speaking for myself, I advocate "one formatting to rule them all" in terms of just taking defaults, and one of my arguments is that, if there's something universally wrong about a prettier default, then it should be changed universally. And if it isn't universally wrong, just go with the default. ~~~ k__ Yes. Some things are obviously bugs, especially the chained line break problem. Bur the semicolons config they added back in the days just baffled me. ------ jsthrowa Friendly reminder that this will not necessarily build the same code from two different sources with the same AST. For that, you can use: [http://estools.github.io/escodegen/demo/index.html](http://estools.github.io/escodegen/demo/index.html) ------ ng12 const identity = function (value) { return value; }; This change is really confusing to me. I've never seen anyone who puts a space after the `function` keyword in an anonymous function. ~~~ capableweb Not sure how much open source you've done, but StandardJS is used in a lot of open source JS libraries/projects, and they have the "Add a space after keywords" and "Add a space before a function declaration's parentheses" rules in it, so plenty of open source projects does it like this. ------ iddan Prettier is one of my favourite pieces of software! I only wish they had a binary that doesn’t rely on Node.js ~~~ tln Why? Are you avoiding NPM as well? Seems like a curious requirement for JS development ~~~ mattlondon I avoid NPM if I can for JS development (after all not all JS/TS development requires NodeJS) so it is painful to see people use npm as the installation method for their projects or tools when I am trying to write something simple. For what it is worth, the replacement for NodeJS (Deno) is removing the use of npm, so I am not alone in my dislike of the centralised registry idea it seems. ~~~ fictionfuture Deno will fail at this, they are fixing something that isn't broken. ~~~ ss3000 IMHO, Deno's approach to package management, that is to say, no package management ("packages" are just source files that you'd import directly using urls or file paths), is a breath of fresh air compared to the status quo in node where to import some javascript that's already hosted at some url (say on github), you first have to "package" it by describing it with some manifest, uploading it to some registry at a different url than the original, and then "install" it using a package manager from that other url, and at the end of the day not even have any guarantee that the content of that thing you installed actually matches what you saw at the original url. Deno's approach on the other hand is doesn't force any of that indirection onto the user, and is analogous to (and compatible with) the model of modules on the web. Package management systems can be easily layered on top of that if the use case actually warrants that extra indirection, rather than having it baked into the core of the runtime.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask HN: Must do's and must know's when switching to Windows? - Tenoke I am switching to Windows from Linux (and MacOS on my last work laptop). It used to be my main OS years ago, and I think the time has come for another try. I know I won't be especially happy with it, just like I am not especially happy with Mac and Linux, so I am looking for anything that can make the experience more pleasant. ====== udp Tried this recently as an exercise in broadening my horizons. \- Expect not to be able to SSH into your machine, for example when you really need to remotely make that git push you forgot before you left work. \- Expect either a very slow unix emulation through Cygwin, or a very glitchy one through the new Ubuntu subsystem for Windows. \- Expect installing software to be a royal PITA, and expect to start trusting binary blobs from random vendors because that's just how software is delivered on Windows. Expect every single piece of software to have its own update system, each of which will notify you separately when updates are available and have their own varying degrees of reliability in performing the update. \- On Windows 10 you can not permanently install unsigned drivers even if you really, really want to. The closest you can get is booting up in a one time development mode which is disabled the next time you reboot, or enabling a test mode which _watermarks your screen_. Very annoying if you have esoteric or bespoke hardware, and I don't like being told what I can and can't do on my own system. Other than that, my major issues - common to Windows and every linux DE I've tried - were with running on my MacBook with retina (high DPI) display. It's a 1/3 chance for a given piece of software whether it will gracefully support the higher pixel density, will display as a tiny window with unreadable text, or a combination of both. Lack of smooth zoom and scrolling with the trackpad was also annoying, though not a showstopper. ~~~ tyfon For SSH: [https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/Install- Win...](https://github.com/PowerShell/Win32-OpenSSH/wiki/Install- Win32-OpenSSH) For "unix", you can actually run linux on windows now: [https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/commandline/wsl/install_gui...](https://msdn.microsoft.com/en- us/commandline/wsl/install_guide) If you want to use windows store, it acts like any other walled garden store regarding "binary blobs", but personally I have never used this. The only software I have in windows is Steam which acts like an "app store" for games. Now, I use Linux almost exclusively (there are one or two games I boot my gaming machine to windows to play), but it's actually gotten better over the years, not worse. Just remember to block all the telemetry stuff in your firewall. [https://github.com/crazy-max/WindowsSpyBlocker](https://github.com/crazy- max/WindowsSpyBlocker) ~~~ udp > If you want to use windows store, it acts like any other walled garden store > regarding "binary blobs", but personally I have never used this. The only > software I have in windows is Steam which acts like an "app store" for > games. Have you ever used an installer? Because _that 's_ a binary blob. ------ altano \- If you miss Bash, lookup "Linux subsystem for Windows" \- The command line is much improved. Look through the properties to see what new options are available (text wrap, copy/paste, etc) \- If you're getting a laptop, pay a lot of attention to the trackpad. Windows laptops have a huge range from unusable to really good. \- If you're a developer you owe it to yourself to checkout the development tools like C# and Visual Studio, if only to set the bar for good tooling in your head regardless of what environment you actually program in. \- Check out the modern Windows 10 apps in the store. Mostly garbage but I regularly use and prefer a number of these to their web equivalents, e.g. Microsoft Groove, Netflix/Hulu, etc. \- When I got a PC, despite not gaming for a really long time I've gotten back into it. It's amazing how many wonderful games there are that are up my alley now-a-days, e.g. Broken Age, Firewatch, N++, Obduction, etc. If you've ever been a gamer, give that world another go. \- Get a great, high-dpi display. Windows support for it is fantastic and all those that say otherwise are crazy. \- If you're sufficiently nerdy and end up having a house full of Windows machines, you can invest in a dedicated server to handle things like a central file server and backup. Windows Server Essentials can make for a fun, accessible-but-still-nerdy project. \- If you're super concerned about privacy there's some reading to do to turn off all the new telemetry in Windows 10. I don't bother with this. \- Microsoft Office is best on Windows, and cloud support is better than ever. I enjoy using OneDrive and OneNote everyday on both my PC and iPhone. Give them another go if you gave up on them while using other OSes (Outlook on Mac is particularly awful). \- Windows is so fucking crazy keyboard accessible. Going back to using Windows involved me unlearning some of my bad habits from Mac. \- Windows 10 can be a little buggy in surprising ways. I had to reinstall at some point because the start menu broke. Seriously. And I tried really hard to fix it without reinstalling. Just keep backups and it should be fine, it's not way buggier than macOS or Linux, just older versions of Windows. \- Set "Developer mode" [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Windows10DeveloperMode.aspx](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/Windows10DeveloperMode.aspx) (does a bunch of useful things like turning on file extensions in Explorer) ------ Mister_Snuggles I don't use Windows very much, so I don't have a lot of recommendations, but here are a few. As another commenter said, Windows has its own way of doing things and expecting it to act like Linux or MacOS will just frustrate you. My recommendation would be to, if you don't build the machine yourself, buy a Microsoft Signature PC. These don't come with all of the crapware that Windows machines tend to come with. If you decide to install the OS on an existing machine, make sure you find the appropriate network driver and save it on a USB stick first. This is probably the only driver you will actually need - once Windows can connect to the network it can download the drivers for everything else from Windows Update. Some Windows stuff doesn't work as well as the Mac and Linux equivalents, and vice-versa. The built-in MacOS VPN client and the NetworkManager StrongSwan CPN client are both a lot better (for me, anyway) than the one in Windows 10. On the flip side, accessing network files (through SMB, of course) is lightyears beyond the way Linux and Mac do it - UNC paths are at the top of my list of things I miss about Windows. ------ ilogik I really recommend ninite.com as the first page you visit after installing Windows. Check all the programs you need, and you will get an installer for everything, without any bloat (toolbars, etc). You can re-run the file at any time and it will also update everything that has an update ------ zamalek Break your habits. Windows 10 has a very specific workflow that is highly efficient, trying to shoehorn Linux, Mac or Windows 7 workflows into it will frustrate you. Learning powershell is part of that. ~~~ meggar And expect to re-learn powershell every time you need to use it. What's the less-than operator again? ~~~ AndrewDucker -lt Which is short for..."less than" Would you care to guess what "greater than" is? ------ Retozi I'm using a MacBook Pro with Windows on it as my main development environment except for iOS native stuff obviously. 1\. install chocolatey [https://chocolatey.org/](https://chocolatey.org/), and install everything with it 2\. install conEmu for a decent command line 3\. install git for windows, which comes with a bash shell that brings you all the linux commands, inlcuding ssh. This brings a Windows PC relatively far. You can even get ssh-agent working with an according .bashrc script (along the lines of [https://github.com/joaotavora/holy/blob/master/share/zsh/ssh...](https://github.com/joaotavora/holy/blob/master/share/zsh/ssh- agent-windows.sh)) This does it for me to do node / web-dev / java/ android centered development, I prefer it over macOS and Linux. Things I do not use: 1) Cywgin. Quite the behemoth, and I get by with git bash just fine 2) The Ubuntu Subsystem. I tried it, had trouble with ssh stuff, seems not ready yet... 3) putty. the open-ssh that comes with git is better and closer to linux. ~~~ blacksmythe >> 3. install git for windows, which comes with a bash shell that brings you all the linux commands, including ssh. Thank you! I often wished that each HN user got one '10x upvote' a week. I would give it to you this week. ------ x86dev [https://chocolatey.org/](https://chocolatey.org/) [https://cmder.net/](https://cmder.net/) ------ nxrabl (Assuming Win 10) \- If you have a HiDPI screen, you may run into problems with older programs looking blurry. The fix is to right click on the .exe, click 'Properties', go to the 'Compatibility' tab, and check the box next to "Disable display scaling on high DPI settings". \- File extensions are hidden by default in the file manager. To turn them on, open File Explorer, go to the 'View' tab, and check the box next to "File name extensions". \- Use a text editor like Notepad++ or Visual Studio Code which lets you switch back and forth with your line endings and encodings; Some editors _cough_ Notepad _cough_ add a BOM to the front of your unicode documents. (As an aside, I've been using the FTP plugin for Notepad++ lately, and it is just a pleasure to use.) \- Between Powershell and WSL, there's rarely anything you can't do on the command line as long as you're willing to code switch a little. In particular, WSL works great for SSH. Cmder is a wrapper around ConEmu (mentioned elsewhere in the thread) and makes for a great terminal environment. \- Chocolatey is the closest thing Windows has to a package manager. (I'm still hoping that OneGet becomes a thing.) \- Other recommended programs: Everything search (life changing, bind it to a hotkey and never look back), Sumatra PDF, Glasswire, CCleaner, either Irfanview or Xnview, WinDirStat. ------ LarryMade2 \- Switch all your search settings to google, or something you deem reliable/less spammy. Most installs start with Bing or Yahoo which are way more ad oriented over what you want. \- Install an anti-malware program for when you do get malware. \- Install adblock plus, or other recognized ad blocker this will reduce your malware infections. \- Be VERY VERY WARY when you download files and install software (especially if some web popup says you need some media player or driver update). Make sure you are getting any software from legit sites (which bing and yahoo don't necessarily put high on search results). When running installer be wary of the ride-along installs of additional malware (changing search settings, toolbars, dubious security shovelware, etc.) sometimes you have to check or un-check boxes cancel install dialog before the real program install dialog, etc. \- Decide whether you like the pre-installed anti-virus, want to un-install and activate windows defender, or get another 3rd party anti-virus. Usually the co. who pays the PC manufacturer the most gets their AV installed - doesn't mean its good. \- Check the installed browsers and remove pre-insalled unwanted plugins or extensions. \- If you depend on PDFs just working make sure whatever PDF solution in your machine works for you, might want to switch to Acrobat Reader if it isn't Adobe. \- Learn how to invoke the task manager (control-alt-delete) shut down tasks, restart the system in safe mode etc. Some malware will thwart progress without knowing these things. - A second computer and google will help get you out of a lot of these situations. \- Any pop-up official looking message saying "you" are in trouble, your computer is infected - call this number, etc, are likely scams, be prepared to see that stuff too. Think of it this way - now you will have stuff to talk about with all your friends who use Windows. ------ codegeek If you are a programmer, then I will suggest a few do's: \- Install git bash for command line. \- Install ConEmu: a windows console emulator [0]. This takes console to next level on windows. I highly recommend it. [0] [https://conemu.github.io/](https://conemu.github.io/) ~~~ dfcowell Installing WSL and learning PowerShell properly are much better alternatives to the above. ------ hs86 This is just a very small change but imho a very important one. This setting has the wrong default: [http://www.thewindowsclub.com/show-file-extensions-in- window...](http://www.thewindowsclub.com/show-file-extensions-in-windows) ~~~ Tenoke Oh, man - they are still doing this? I remember spending an hour searching for this setting back when I switched from 98 to XP. ------ LordWinstanley You'll be glad to know Windows also has a "Greengrocer's Apostrophe" key ------ Joeri Random advice: \- You really want to be on windows 10, not 7. It's better in all ways but one to 7. The one is the forced updating. To avoid having updates forced on you in the middle of a day, give windows a chance to do updates by shutting down every once in a while. \- Settings are spread across the settings app (start), the control panel and various control applets (right-click on start), the registry (windows+R, regedit <enter>) and files on disk (like the hosts file in windows/system32/drivers/etc). Honestly, it's a mess, and google is your friend. It bites you in the beginning, but once set up it really doesn't matter. \- Secondary screens: windows+P switches modes (mirror, second-only, ...). Saves you from unplugging and replugging cables with your fingers crossed. Mixed dpi is a mess, still. You can configure the scaling of different screens separately from display settings, but apps which haven't been updated (properly) for compatibility with mixed dpi look blurry, tiny or huge on any screen that wasn't the primary screen when you signed in to windows, and sometimes look off even on that one. This is getting better, but still a pain. \- People will advocate the linux subsystem for windows, and it's great, but it lives in its own walled garden. If you want access to linuxy tools from the regular cmd.exe consider installing something like msys2 to get the basics in your windows path. Or learn powershell. \- Learn the shortcuts to manage your windows / virtual desktops. Windows is pretty good at managing windows. [https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/4915/windows-10-...](https://www.thurrott.com/windows/windows-10/4915/windows-10-tip- master-multitasking-keyboard-shortcuts) (props to Paul Thurrott for his many awesome tip articles.) \- Be more careful where you get software from. If you were last a windows user in the era of download.com and the like, forget about those sites. They're all malware-ridden. Only get software directly from the vendor's site. Also, ninite is pretty good to get a basic set of software going. You don't need a third-party anti-virus, the baked in one is good enough. ------ farresito I have both Windows and Linux installed on this machine. I try to stay away from Windows for anything closely related to programming. It's a pain in the ass. Once you have to touch the terminal, things start to get messy, and it's hard to ignore the terminal when programming. Granted, I use the terminal more than the average coder, but I still would never touch it. That said, to answer your question, you probably want to install the Bash on Ubuntu on Windows thing, which should allow you to run git, bash, etc. on Windows without having to use cygwin. ------ pandemicsyn So, whats the best windows ssh client these days? Still putty ? bitwise? other new hotness? I've been getting pretty frustrated with my new mac and im supe r tempted to try out a Razer Blade. ~~~ Tenoke I belive you can ssh without any troubles using Bash on Ubuntu. If I really have to start using PuTTy for my ssh needs, I am going back to linux immediately.. ~~~ nxrabl Yep, ssh works out of the box with WSL. ------ taivare Curious if anyone has used this at Github alirobe/reclaimWindows10.ps1 And what they think. I wish Redmond would give older laptop users an option to turn this off so it wouldn't spin up my hard drive. If I move to Linux this will be the reason ! [https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1](https://gist.github.com/alirobe/7f3b34ad89a159e6daa1) ------ hellojason A lifelong Windows user, I wrote an article about nitpicky differences (UI and otherwise) between Windows and macOS after being issued a Macbook at work. You may find useful information in it - [https://hellojason.net/blog/nitpicky- differences-between-win...](https://hellojason.net/blog/nitpicky-differences- between-windows-and-os-x/) ------ wink Maybe you'll find something useful in this post: [http://f5n.org/blog/2016/tools-windows-2016/](http://f5n.org/blog/2016/tools- windows-2016/) \- it's the stuff I use to not tear my hair out when I need to get something other than gaming done. I think it's missing VS Code, which was a pleasant surprise. ------ philonoist I am very happy that I am the first one to comment here about [https://www.listary.com/](https://www.listary.com/) which is the best suggestion which again, I got here. Install it. ~~~ ropeladder Yes. Listary is the one thing I miss from Windows after I switched to Linux Mint. (well, that and running Foobar2000 natively) Also I wanted to mention 7+ Taskbar Tweaker ([http://rammichael.com/7-taskbar- tweaker](http://rammichael.com/7-taskbar-tweaker)), which is a fantastic little util that helps you make your taskbar just the way you want it. Mousewheel over taskbar for volume control, middle click closes programs, etc... ~~~ philonoist Thanks! these things make me feel like God! ------ cyber_dude Windows is case INsensitive. Just merged two repositories accidentally because of that. ~~~ brak1 so is OS X by default: $ cd /tmp $ mkdir Abc $ mkdir abC mkdir: abC: File exists ------ Rubiks3 If managing multiple ssh/vnc/rdp sessions RoyalTS is a must have. [https://www.royalapplications.com](https://www.royalapplications.com) ------ cdvonstinkpot A few of my must-have apps: Classic Shell (simpler start menu) 7-zip (lzma, etc.) SyncBack Pro (local/s3/on-insert backups) JetAudio Plus (BBE harmonic extrapolation mp3 HF restoration) USBDLM (external hdd serial # based drive letter assignment) ------ anotheryou Do not use or even rely on windows file-history for backups! It can and does fail silently. (e.g. with too long path names or simply no backup drive attached in a long time) ------ andreapaiola The file system limitations... ------ alexvoda I'll pitch in since some of the things I recommend are not on this page yet: \- Generally Windows 10 is better than 7 other than the privacy and forced update issues. (Windows has a tick-tock of good and bad releases so forget about 8.x) Management: \- As others said, the typical way to remotely manage Windows is not to SSH into the machine you want to manage. Instead, you do one of 2 things: \- - Use RDP/Remote Desktop Connection/Terminal Services to connect. RoyalTS from www.royalapplications.com makes it even better \- - For anything that used the MMC (Microsoft Management Console) you can just open it locally and connect to the target computer. The MMC is one of the things I miss on Linux. A single coherent graphical interface to control so many parts of the system and you can even use it remotely. YaST is the maybe the closest thing I know on Linux. Apps: \- Use portable apps from PortableApps.com and maybe a few other sources. Most of the essential apps I use have portable versions. Portable apps is another thing I miss on Linux. They are apps that have everything contained in a single folder. The intent is to carry them on a flash drive but you can also keep them on the computer. The effect is that, if for whatever reason you can no longer boot/need to reinstall/need to move to a different computer/etc., you can just open the case of the PC, connect the HDD/SDD to a working windows PC (optionally copy the folder with all your portable apps) and just use those apps with all the settings you had before. There have been attempts to bring this to Linux but without success. \- Use chocolatey.org This is the Linux package management concept brought to Windows \- If you need the tools you are used to on Linux look into either Cygwin (both Win7 and Win10) or the Ubuntu subsystem for Windows (Win10 only, also there are ways to change it to Arch or OpenSuse) \- Win10 only: right now there are rather few non-Microsoft apps on the Store that are actually great. The Microsoft apps however are quite cool. \- Win10 only: don't bother with the Edge browser YET. It is not ready. Sure rendering is fast and battery efficient but we expect much more from a browser. Right now it is still very limited and there are very few extensions available. \- Some other apps I use: RamBox, F.lux, Visual Studio Code, Shazam, QTTabBar \- Use Alternativeto.net to find alternatives to the apps you use. Security: \- No.1 rule: be very careful where you download stuff from and what you install. \- Some may say otherwise but I no longer see the need to have third party anti-virus software for On-Access scanning . Some third party AV products may even make your computer less secure. Win10 comes with AV by default, and on Win7 there is Microsoft Security Essentials available. \- Use the VirusTotal Uploader for On-Demand Scanning. You upload the file and it is scanned with most antivirus products (69 of them at the moment). Development: \- The Microsoft tools are great and may may be free for your use case: \- - Visual Studio is top notch (Community edition is free) \- - SQL Server is also great (Developer edition is free for development, Express edition is more limited but free for any use) \- - Learn PowerShell \- - Use the Tortoises (Tortoise Hg/Tortoise Git/Tortoise SVN) for version control. They integrate great with Windows Explorer. Other: \- - Enable showing the file extensions in Windows Explorer. This is a stupid default. ------ omilu Install cygwin.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
How 6 people were rescued from an elevator at the Hancock - erentz https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-met-hancock-building-elevator-rescue-20181116-story.html ====== greenyoda Previous discussion: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18508693](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18508693) ------ emayljames The Chicago Tribune is blocked in the EU.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Why business analysts and project managers get higher salaries than programmers? - Unosolo http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45776/why-do-business-analysts-and-project-managers-get-higher-salaries-than-programmer/45814#45814 Whether project managers get higher salaries than programmers and business analysts at all exist as a class depends squarely on the software world you live in. ====== DanielBMarkham Geesh. Was it me, or did that explanation run on for a long time? I can say that because I was going to give a similar explanation, but I think it's even simpler than all of that. People get compensated more the more social IQ they have. The real question is: why do we have roles? The answer to that question involves the film school and widgets and such, but as far as the simple issue of money, people skills beat technical skills. I love coding, and I love being a code monkey. There's something about solving problems that I find very relaxing and rewarding. But I learned a long time ago that anything you do with more than 2 people quickly elevates social skills to a critical point -- something we coders hardly ever talk about. We're all off on SO reading articles about dependency injection while somebody else already knows dependency injection and is learning how to communicate with people who have different primary channels and personality types. Many times we find such training "fuzzy" or "fluffy" or somehow of dubious value. So somebody else becomes the code monkey who can do both and we become the person they are trying to help. That means the other person is more valuable. Life is not a intellectual test. It's a social game played by groups of people. (Lionhearted is right too. Lots of times it's just there for the asking. But knowing when this is true and when it is not, knowing how to negotiate your rates, knowing how to ask -- we're right back to social skills again) ------ edw519 Not anywhere I've ever worked. Hmmm, makes me wonder about this meme... 1. Ask why a myth is true. 2. Discussion ensues. 3. The mythiness gets lost and is accepted as a given. ~~~ sudonim I second this. I'm the product person at a startup w/ 5 devs. I know for a fact that rails developers in NY generally command a higher salary than I am making. I can't speak about their equity situation. My responsibilities are to decide what we build and why. I'm also the shit umbrella for the developers, and end up having to speak with clients. Ultimately it's me who is held responsible for the success / failure of the product. The myth of project / product people being paid more may be true in LargeCorp, Inc. but in Startup LLC., the developer is king. ~~~ sdm I third it. Actually in every company I've worked at -- startup, midsized, fortune 500 -- a pm or analyst makes less than an engineer at the same experience level. It's always much harder to find good engineers, especially now a days. The confusion might come from large companies where PMs tend to be more senior to a lot of the development team. But once a engineer matures and gains experince they will pass them. I my experience, it's very common to make more than the person who manages you. ------ evo_9 I think it's purely confidence. I just got a new fulltime job last week. I wasn't happy with the salary they offered, it was much lower than my previous fulltime job. I made it clear that salary would not work from the first conversation with HR. At no point did I change my stance. I even suggested we should be creative asking if I could work from home twice a week so I could play hockey with some ex-pro's I'm in with (Stephen Yelle is my center...). I didn't even try to conceal why I wanted to work from home - I was straight up saying it was a quality of living issue. They gave me the job and the two days off; they even came up halfway on the salary, going 8k above what they said they would ever pay for this position. Bottom line: you have to ask for what you want; if you do that with confidence and a strong reason you can heartily defend you just may get everything you are asking for. It doesn't always work out this way, but I've never stuck to my guns so thoroughly before either and I gotta say, I am definitely going to always try to be creative when I negotiate now. ~~~ tastybites It takes people a while to figure it out (it took me almost 10 years in my career) - bosses pay more money to people they respect. Having standards is a respectable thing. ------ cao825 It really depends on how your departments runs. A lot of times the gathering of requirements for BAs is by far the hardest, most time consuming, most frustrating task on the project. They have to travel, deal with users / clients, play political games, etc. If the programmers are more of code monkeys in the organization: in that they get tech specs with pseudo code and just transition it to real code, then they do not necessarily deserve to get paid more. I have been a support analyst, programmer, software architect, and BA (and worked with several PMs). You really can't have one blanket generalization in this area because it completely depends on structure and job responsibilities. ~~~ cal5k Exactly. The answer offered here is surprisingly ignorant and one-dimensional. The reality is that there aren't two types of software development companies, there are a spectrum of them. At our company, because we don't sell products, client interaction, requirements gathering, coaching, politicking, etc. are all extremely important functions. It's really, really hard to find people who get our industry and can do this well. Often because of this they command a high salary. On the flip side, we pay our developers above-market rates, and again it depends on their skill level and interaction with our clients and even with each other. Scrum Masters will earn more than developers (in most cases, not all). Senior developers will earn good money too. An entry-level developer will earn about the same as an "analyst" or product manager. ------ far33d I'm going to ignore all the "social" aspects of the supposed pay difference in my analysis. I think they are valid and accurate, but don't paint the full picture. This is coming from the perspective of a programmer turned PM. Note, however, that I haven't actually observed any pay difference - in the current startup/tech climate, good engineers are in high demand and are commanding super-high salaries. The best engineers are often the highest paid (cash-wise) in the company. The reason good PMs are paid highly is because they use leverage to create more value across the organization than they can provide as a single contributor. A great BA or PM guides the whole project and the whole team, making a group of people more efficient by properly prioritizing their work and getting more value for each hour worked. A great PM measures these results, and shows the difference they make. A great PM tunes the product to the customer. Great PMs are held accountable for the product and its success in the marketplace. Great PMs can't do their jobs without great engineers and respect that fact. You only need one great PM for every 5 great engineers, so you can be more discerning about who you hire and how much you pay them. Since great PMs are accountable, they command high equity value, and should accept that instead of higher salaries (like salesmen take commission). If this isn't true where you work, you should work somewhere else where it is. ------ duke_sam I'm also pretty sure this is why software houses run as widget factories will produce sub-standard solutions. The hierarchical structure gives more weight to the ideas of the people managing. This works if the manager is an expert (or at least as knowledgable as their reports) in their field but with software it results in the most informed opinions being ignored or devalued especially if the costs/benefits are not immediate, so lots of technical debt. If you are managing a team of good developers your role is one of administration and occasionally cat herder (someone has to call time on yak shaving arguments). I've seen a bunch of government software contracts go down this road, they all try to use the same "tried and trusted" solution even when the assumptions that underpin it have changed wildly (developers are just looking to play with fancy toys and so can't be trusted). They hire based on cost, 3 developers being paid 20k are worth as much as one developer being paid 60k and generally won't fight to retain staff. I find this incredibly ironic since government projects are often challenging and novel, they are dealing with scales or activities that businesses (mostly) don't touch. It always struck me that the area crying out for a creative, original solutions implemented by a film crew team. ~~~ Joeri Apple is a widget factory run by an expert. When Jobs left the company, it took a nose-dive. He came back and immediately things started improving. The man is a dictator, but he knows his stuff. However, if I were an apple shareholder, I would be very worried about his medical condition. Because when he leaves, apple will dive again. ~~~ bitwize If he's not stupid he would have prepared for this contingency, and arranged for competent lieutenants who know how to do things "the Jobs way" to take over when he kicks off. Of course the thing about power-mad dictators is that power-madness interferes with the ability to seriously consider transfers of power. ------ lionhearted Because programmers don't ask for more money often enough. Seriously. Here's the three minute version of doing it: 1\. Work hard on tangible stuff, document and claim credit for doing it, and notify people with _what benefit the work provides_. This sounds maybe stupidly obvious, but a lot of non-technical people don't understand the value in something. So, "Upgraded XYZ so our website loads faster, which is proven to make customers more likely to buy according to ZYX paper" - I know, what a waste of time, right? Wrong! It's going to make you a lot of money. Tell people what you did. 2\. Before you go to ask for more money, prepare a BATNA (Best Alternative to Negotiated Agreement) - if they say no, what will you do? You need to know this. Having other offers is obviously good. Savings are good. You don't even have to mention your BATNA, but you need a Plan B. Most people don't make one of these, so if their first attempt doesn't go swimmingly, they're in trouble. 3\. Go in and stress _how much more you'd like to do going forwards_. This is _huge_. Do not mention what you've done in the past, except in the context of how it proves how much more you can do going forwards. So go in and say, "Hi boss, as I mentioned in all my various weekly reports, I've been learning new stuff and kicking massive ass. [that was step one] Recently I've picked up some new skills, and I've been getting recruited for a bunch of projects [step 2], but I really like working here. Actually, I think I can deliver even more value here, if I take on new responsibilities. I'd like to train a successor to gradually take over my current role, while I do ABC-stimulating-enjoyable- task that will bring the business new money. I don't even want to be compensated much more for it - I'm going to be bringing in lots more value/assets/sales/cash/whatever, but a moderately small raise is enough for me because I like working here so much." Then lay out what you're asking for. Business people learn how to do this. You're leaving lots of money on the table _and_ not getting a chance to work on cooler stuff that you'd like to do if you don't do this. 1\. Regularly update with the work you completed, and the benefit it provides. 2\. Decide what you want, and what you'll do as Plan B if your current company won't give it to you. 3\. Go stress that you'd be able to _produce more value_ if you transition your role to a more highly paid and enjoyable one. Be friendly and complimentary. Whenever possible, try not to ask for more money for the same role from the same company - people hate price increases, so it's better to expand your role to something that's also more enjoyable and produces more in their eyes. If you want a raise for doing the same exact work, it's probably good to start looking outside the current company as well for other offers. ~~~ jasonkester I find that in practice, it's a lot easier to do steps 1 and 2, then simply take one of those offers to work someplace else. Your value as a developer increases so fast early in your career that you'll literally double your market rate during the course of your first job after college. There's simply no way that you can convey to a company that they need to pay you twice as much as they did when they hired you 3 years ago. They simply won't believe it. Sadly, the only way is to demonstrate it for them by actually accepting a job somewhere else for twice the money. The key is to remember that you're in this game for yourself first. It's nice to work for a good company with a good environment and a fun team, but at the end of the day it's not worth leaving tens of thousands of dollars on the table just to stay there. ~~~ sskates It's widely held that the best programmers are orders of magnitude better than the worst ones. [1] This also goes for you x years ago versus you now. Why this isn't reflected in pay everywhere is beyond me. While people exploit these inefficiencies (exhibit A:startups) I'm surprised that the market still allows things like this to exist. Perhaps it's because there isn't such a large disparity for the vast majority of other professions? [1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html> ~~~ umjames No, it's more likely the idea of "you don't get rich by writing checks" at work. I think most programmers dislike the idea of what they see as kissing their boss's ass so much, that they'd rather start their own startup to get what they want (more interesting work, potentially higher pay, more amenable working conditions, etc). I can't say I blame them. ------ petenixey Consider the possibility that PM/BAs are not paid more because they are perceived to _add_ more value but instead as a safeguard against them _destroying_ more value. If you purchased a chainsaw and you had £10 left to spend on accessories, which would you rather purchase, a guard that protected against lethal chain breaks that happen 20% of the time or a more comfortable handle? A bad developer will slow a project but in almost all cases will not destroy it. A bad PM can totally destroy a project and many, many BAs have specced projects that are at best irrelevant and at worst destructive. In most businesses, the risk is not that a project will only deliver 100% of expected value it is that the project will fail. Given that avoiding failure is the primary goal, investment should follow accordingly and so we are willing to spend more to avoid a bad PM/BA than we are a bad developer. ------ baguasquirrel Here's an answer counter to the conventional wisdom, which feels a little too self-serving. What if ideas are things that need to be worked on and hammered out as well? After all, isn't that why working on a startup is more rewarding? The programmer isn't just a programmer anymore, (s)he's also the PM _and_ analyst all rolled into one. Of course, the person in charge has to be good at it all in order for it to work out. Startup people have to "pivot". I have friends at Apple and Google, and they tell me engineers are encouraged to work on their own ideas. Analysts have shown that those companies have fairly high productivity per worker. One of my closest friends at Apple does all the mockups for her team's features, despite officially being a programmer. It feels as if the role of PM is spread out amongst a number of programmers, who aren't exactly brain-dead with regards to what a polished product should be. Now in most companies where PM is in charge, it feels as if the toolchain has been optimized to deemphasize the importance and reliance on good programming, hence PM/analyst becoming more proportionally value-dense (whether this is a good approach or not I will not debate). ------ sambeau Project managers either deal with the money and set the wages or they hang out with the people who deal with the money and set the wages. The further away you are from the money, despite how important your role is, the less you will be paid. ------ tobtoh I believe it's because it's far harder to find people with good people skills than find people with good technical skills. If you talk to people who hire/interview and manage people as their primary role, you will often hear them say that the candidates attitude/people skills is more important than their technical ability. If the candidate has good attitude/people skills, they can be taught (or will pick up on their own) good technical skills. But if they only have good technical skills, but lack a good attitude, that is something that is very difficult to teach/improve. ~~~ j_baker > I believe it's because it's far harder to find people with good people > skills than find people with good technical skills. I disagree emphatically. Good people skills are far more common than good technical skills. However, it _is_ incredibly rare to find someone with both the technical skill and the people skill to be a technical manager. ~~~ tobtoh Yes if you are taking about the general populace, I absolutely agree good people skills are far more common. However we're talking about BA/PMs in a technical company (at least that is my assumption given the original question) in which case there is already a pre-filtered environment of basic technical familiarity/knowledge. In this environment, good people skills and more specifically 'attitude' is a lot rarer than technical skills. ~~~ j_baker It sounds like we agree except on the semantics. My point is: people skills = easy to find technology skills = more difficult to find technology skills + people skills = incredibly tough to find ------ itsnotvalid TL;DR Simple answer: people who knows how to negotiate a better deal often be able to negotiate a better salaries. Now tell me who is a better negotiator: business analysts or programmers? (I skip project managers because quite a lot of them were programmers one point) Or put it this way, if those programmers feel that this is not good and continue to work in a company like that, it would be their own problems since they either couldn't change the situation, or they don't know how to express that to who pay them. Not to mention if the company itself also makes even more money in some cases. ------ math All else being equal, BA's and management are making higher level decisions which have more potential than developers to create stakeholder value. All else being equal, they are therefore worth more as measured by the potential return their work brings to stakeholders. Unfortunately, those higher up in the decision tree aren't necessarily more competent than those lower down doing the actual work - often quite the opposite (maybe because these types of people are driven by different motivations). So the reverse situation can occur - developers can create a brilliant product which succeeds despite the best efforts of management. I have a great deal of respect for genuinely good leadership, vision and management skills. Personally I find such things as quantum mechanics and reasoning about complex distributed systems far easier. ------ gadders As a Project Manager who has worked in Investment Banking for most of their career, I would say the risk is greater for a project manager. I have quite often seen Project Managers "let go" when a project fails, but rarely do the developers on the team suffer the same fate. Ultimately, in a corporate environment, the buck stops with the Project Manager. Having said that, for esoteric technical skills (quant level programming, advanced risk stuff) the pay is probably higher for a developer. ------ Timothee There's a lot of assumptions in that question: 1. that programmers are paid less than business analysts and project managers, and 2. that "programming is much more difficult than creating documentation or even creating Gantt chart and asking progress to programmers". I would like to see some real-life numbers about point #1, and #2 is clearly biased. How can you compare two things that have so little in common? For one thing, you can't reduce BA/PM to this, and regardless of if #1 is true or not, the salary is not just based on skills. If having a good PM means that the project will be delivered on time and that it makes a big difference for the company, they might deserve more than the people who made the product. If the insights from a business analyst means that the product is exactly what the market wants, they might deserve more too. It's very easy to imagine two products that require the same technical abilities but one being very well-defined and on-target, while the other misses the mark. The programmer's work in both cases would be the same. The work done by BA/PM makes the difference. (in that particular imaginary example) And, of course, it's very easy to imagine the same product requirements being a great success or a fantastic failure, depending on the dev team that implements them... TL;DR it's not as simple as that. And check your assumptions first. ------ encoderer This isn't always the case. I don't feel comfortable disclosing my salary today, but for some reason I don't mind telling you my salary 4 years ago :) At the time, I was a developer doing mostly web stuff, with 7.x years professional experience, in a low COL market, at $80k plus bonus. My girlfriend was a "Jr. BA" (she held an MBA but little experience) and her wage was $45k. I doubt her salary would be doubled if she had a few more years experience. ------ j_baker I can think of one valid reason why managers get more than programmers. Jobs don't pay people based on the value they're providing the company. They pay based on supply and demand. The best managers are ones who have been programmers before. Now how do you incentivize programmers to be managers? One possible way is to give them more money. ------ snorkel Pay structures are stupidly hierarchical but who enforces that? The managers enforce it by threatening to quit if they discover someone below them on the org chart is being paid more. Sure, some managers are replaceable so let them quit, but the organization has to weigh the cost of disrupting an entire branch of the org chart, and perhaps losing a talented manager, vs. just giving them the raise (plus pile more work on their plate to justify it) Programmers can be managers too by volunteering to lead new initiatives that will require new staffing. The key to being seen as a an effective manager is to manage down (relate and motivate your direct reports) and manage up (relate your team status and exciting initiatives to your boss) To continue up the org chart you must volunteer to take on more responsibility at every opportunity until you don't go home at night at which point you have to ask is this really worth it? ------ saw-lau I believe the following answer is the best of the bunch: [http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45776/why- do-...](http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/45776/why-do-business- analysts-and-project-managers-get-higher-salaries-than-programmer/45963#45963) TL;DR - companies will get away with paying as little as possible. ------ misterbwong _reposted from the other dupe_ This is the best advice I got about this subject when I was a wee programming padawan: Your skills are worth what you're getting paid. No more, no less. As much as we'd like to say we create more value than other branches of the company, we don't. Value is determined by the buyer, not the creator. It's simple-much of the working world values the work of managers and analysts more than the work of the programmers. Therefore, they are paid more. Value is malleable so as you increase your perceived value, your pay will increase accordingly. ------ karlmdavis I was going to challenge the assumption in the question but it seems that it might actually be correct: PMs and BAs do seem to make a bit more, on average. [1, 2, 3] At least, if one trusts salary.com's figures-- I can never decide if I should or not. Nonetheless, I don't think the salary differences there are huge, or unreasonable. While I'm passionate about the importance of excellent engineering, I think excellent project management (and to a lesser extent, business analysis) is just as crucial to a business' success. Coders (myself included) tend to focus on the technical challenges of a project to the exclusion of the "why" behind it. As an illustration, I'm reminded of the frequent articles here and on proggit about programmers who built some awesome sprocket, only to later realize that there wasn't a market or need for the sprocket. There's also a lot of truth to lionhearted's point that programmers often aren't the best negotiators. His advice is awesome and of the best variety: encouraging folks to make themselves more valuable by actually generating more value. [1] [http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/Programmer-V-Salary- Detai...](http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/Programmer-V-Salary-Details- San%20Francisco,%20CA.aspx) [2] [http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/Business- Systems-Analyst-...](http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/Business-Systems- Analyst-V-Salary-Details-San-Francisco-CA.aspx) [3] [http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/Project-Manager-III- Salar...](http://swz.salary.com/salarywizard/Project-Manager-III-Salary- Details-San-Francisco-CA.aspx) ------ momotomo It's a lot to do with risk ownership and the fact it can be a genuinely hard role to fill as a BA / PM. Yes, programmers make it happen, but in an organizational context, the bookends of a BA on the front and PM on the back make sure it happens in a context that provides business value and a tangible outcome. I've known plenty of brilliant programmers in a corporate setting that while technically excellent couldn't get a real project completed to save their life. They're often a different breed from people building things in startups. They're almost robotic in their following of the prescribed scope and you have to hammer them to bring things in on time or in a controlled way. Additionally if the whole project collapses in on itself or delivers something of little business value, it's not going to be the programmer that gets hung for it. Note, this is just in a corp / large org structure setting. As mentioned, I find guys in startups and small shops much more competent and scope definition and management. Just don't underestimate how unbalanced the skillsets can get in some fields. ------ dominostars Because the ability to deal with and lead people is, always has been, and always will be, the most valued skill anyone can possess. ------ ChuckMcM The referenced article is not even wrong. Take the pool of qualified people who can do a job, order it by most able to least able. Now intersect that line with demand for people who can do the job. From the intersection point to the top you will see a gradual rise in salary with a sharp peak in the top 1%, below the line you will find unemployed folks. Has nothing to do with vision, widgets, or films. The question is can you be replaced by someone who will be as productive as you are, for the same salary? Then you're on the short list. If you can be replaced for less salary, you will be. Caveat the presence of an external force which warps the economics. ------ rapicastillo Here's my twocents: I think BAs and PMs are for the management side of the industry. Currently with big payout, however plateaued. While programmers are on the innovation path, who will eventually (co-)create a really great startup. In the longrun, a really huge payout. Though most programmers I know tend to jump from one company to the next, they target small tech-companies as the churning is acceptably high without the usual non-compete clause, and ask for higher salaries in each company. It is, apparently, a very good strategy, albeit opportunistic(?). ------ jhamburger Because the more real, tangible work you produce, the less need you feel to sell yourself as an employee. Programmers think their work should speak for itself. It doesn't. ------ dennisgorelik Higher compensation level for Managers has little to do with negotiation skills. The real reason is that replacing average manager with good manager adds more value to the company than replacing average programmer with good programmer. The reason for that difference is that good manager improves output of the whole team, while good programmer improves mostly single person output . In order to attract and keep good managers companies are willing to pay more. ------ djhworld Business Analysts and so on tend to have face to face interactions with many external/internal people, so they have to have good people skills and good negotiating skills in meetings and so on. Programmers sit at their desk all day and work as part of a team, with little or no outside contact. Businesses value people-skills more than anything IMO, that's why BAs and so on get a lot more money. ------ switch +1 to what lionhearted wrote - Because programmers don't ask for more money often enough. __ In particular, Programmers never focus on 'ensuring they get what they deserve'. Other people take advantage of the fact that programmers never focus on this part. ------ KeyBoardG I think about this a lot. A great pm can be a huge help to senior devs. However in the cases Ive seen senior devs end up doing most of the pm's thinking. ------ anonymous246 Hopefully this comment won't get lost and I can get some contrary views. Everything IMHO; I'm trying to formulate my own views on this top. Be kind. :) Among other things, I think open source and free software has devalued software and programming in the eyes of business owners. The root cause for this is that a culture of self-employment doesn't exist in the programmer community. All of us are looking to polish our resumes and make them look good. The easiest way to do that is to clone some existing idea and make it open source so that it can be reviewed by a prospective employer. IMHO, no other profession gives away their crown jewels for free like we programmers do. ------ wazoox This is a beautiful answer, which thoughtfully explains what makes the difference between "big entreprise java coding monkeys" and "startup rockstars". I love it. The difference between "widget factory" and "film crew" explains also most of the differences between Java (archetypal "widget factory" tool) and dynamic ( or lesser known) languages, too. ~~~ Sandman I don't get your point. The choice of a language determines how a company will be run? No startup would ever use Java to create their product? Java is a bad language because it's used in large companies? What _was_ your point exactly? Or is it that there is no point and you just felt the need to bash Java a little? ~~~ wazoox Many Java features are tailored to allow splitting a project in many submodules, and distribute tasks among a lot of coders with a spec. Many dynamic languages features are made to allow the quickest development by only a handful of developers. Working in large teams with Ruby is harder than with Java. Getting a web app online in a week at 2 people is easier with Python than with Java. Don't you agree that different languages are more or less adapted to various workflows, teams, applications, or environments? Then about taste : passionate programmers learn by themselves. They may learn any language, Java, Python, C or Delphi. However the kind of people programming without passion mostly use Java, or C#, because the only matter of choice is language marketability. Therefore there many more poor, bland Java programmers than Python, Perl or Ruby programmers. There are many more Java programmers anyway :)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Redesigned GNU C Library manual - elmerland http://elmerland.com/gnu_manual.html ====== hurin It really doesn't work for me. Here is why: A big part of manuals is being able to read or scroll fluidly into the next or previous section - very often one doesn't know whether what they are looking for is mentioned in 1.3.1 or 1.3.2 - having to manually click each section is completely atrocious for usability. Not to mention you just broke search. If you want a responsive design that's actually useful as opposed to counterproductive, leave the sidebar for navigation (down-scale it to 50% it's huge and distracting) and restore the document to a contiguous form. There is a reason manuals have been written the way they are for dozens of years, hip and flashy design elements might sell products - but they do not help with productivity. ~~~ detaro _A big part of manuals is being able to read or scroll fluidly into the next or previous section - very often one doesn 't know whether what they are looking for is mentioned in 1.3.1 or 1.3.2 - having to manually click each section is completely atrocious for usability. Not to mention you just broke search._ This, it is often split in sections smaller than the screen so you have to uncollapse way to many items. Make the navigation jump to the right section in the document, maybe allow to collapse sections, but have it all visible by default. ------ Hello71 $ links https://www.gnu.org/software/libc/manual/html_mono/libc.html Link: [start: Top] Link: [index: Concept Index] Link: [contents: Table of Contents] Link: [up: (dir)] The GNU C Library Short Table of Contents * [1 Introduction] * [2 Error Reporting] * [3 Virtual Memory Allocation And Paging] * [4 Character Handling] * [5 String and Array Utilities] * [6 Character Set Handling] * [7 Locales and Internationalization] * [8 Message Translation] * [9 Searching and Sorting] * [10 Pattern Matching] ^C $ links http://elmerland.com/gnu_manual.html The GNU C Library [About] [By: Elmer Landaverde] Edit: Added [] to show selectable links (note that [] are not actually displayed in links' output) ~~~ striking This is the most graceful CSS-degradation I've ever seen. The world needs to learn from this manual in how to do HTML right. If you haven't tried it yourself you're missing out. It's truly art. ~~~ jdjb And yet the whole thing doesn't load if you block javascript. No content at all. ~~~ elmerland That's right, this was intentional. The content is loaded dynamically. I thought this would help with mobile users, to reduce the amount of data used. ~~~ xorcist I am actually on mobile, and the biggest problem on mobile is spotty coverage. I click stuff and there is a slight animation but no more data shows. I have no idea if that was because a TCP connection broke, or if this is just a design concept and the actual data is missing. I have to reload the _whole_ page, then click down to the sub-heading I just opened and try again to know. I haven't looked, but I get the impression you don't have any error handlers (or maybe there are crazy high timeouts?). You should always, especially if your users are on mobile networks, to put up some sort of spinner when loading data and make a serious effort of handling the errors that inevitably happens. ------ cplease I have a big problem with this. The header says "The GNU C Library" and then in big letters "By: Elmer Landaverde". You did not write either glibc or the manual. The original authors did not credit themselves, yet you've appropriated credit for what is essentially restyling the HTML output of texinfo into a less usable, unscrollable, unsearchable form. If you insist on the huge attribution, change it to something accurate like "Style template by:" ~~~ elmerland That's fair. ------ DanBC These types of comment are now officially off-topic so I wouldn't normally make them but, since this submission is about the design of the webpage: [http://imgur.com/NNmmxdx](http://imgur.com/NNmmxdx) [http://imgur.com/qv6BPj4](http://imgur.com/qv6BPj4) This is latest Chrome on iOS. That header banner is fixed (that's sub-optimal) and all the content is in that little box. ~~~ aw3c2 As someone who often makes these comments, were they declared offtopic somewhere official? ~~~ DanBC Here's a comment from dang. Someone made a good, technical, submission. For a while the highest comment was about the design of the blog. [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9238739) > A reader emailed to complain about how this and other HN discussions often > become derailed by off-topic carping about blog design. I agree completely. > Could there be a more classic form of bikeshedding? It would seem parodic if > it weren't sadly real. This has become more of a thing on HN lately. It > needs to become less of a thing. > I don't mean to pick on you personally, or just on this one comment. (Your > second sentence alone, by the way, would have been a helpful contribution.) > The problem is the tedious stampedes such comments spawn. This submission is a bit different because the design of the page is the thing being submitted, but I'm aware that I too easily make comments about the design of the page rather than the content of the page. Some design choices are weird and prevent people from being able read the content and I wish there was a way to provide that feedback without derailing a thread. ~~~ aw3c2 Aye, that was my comment. :) I hope HN will come up with a nice solution to allow these kinds of comments but have them be less distracting. ~~~ krapp Arguably, a threaded forum by design encourages tangential discussions which deviate from the topic the deeper you go. The problem in HN's case is all the threads are open and entirely visible - which is one of the cases where its minimalist layout works against readability. I think the best solution would be thread folding (which I know is being worked on anyway) where the default is that all threads are collapsed. Then, off topic discussion wouldn't take up any more than a single post's worth of space by default. Having it be a conscious choice to move deeper into a thread also ensures that no one has to scroll past much content they don't care about. ~~~ aw3c2 That would be incredibly annoying on touch interfaces and generally not allow quick scanning of comments anymore. It would take a lot more time. ~~~ krapp I suppose open threads by default would be more friendly, or maybe defaulting to open for mobile layouts. But it taking more time would kind of be the point - opting in to participate rather than opting out by scrolling past content means fewer sarcastic comments about how a thread is off topic and irrelevant. ------ nirvanis On a semi-related note: Man Pages in HTML that do not look ugly: [http://linux.bar/man1/memusage.1.html](http://linux.bar/man1/memusage.1.html) ------ fit2rule This is a really great resource - so great, I'd love to have an offline copy for reference. However it doesn't look like its set up for easy mirroring with wget .. does anyone else have an idea how it could be mirrored locally for offline use, or shall I just contact the author? ~~~ edwintorok You can mirror with wget the original, it has the same contents AFAICT, just different CSS: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9245753](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9245753) ------ dman Could you get the sections to start out expanded by default? ~~~ elmerland Yeah I could definitely do this. If I were to add a collapse/expand all button would you still prefer for all the sub-sections to be expanded by default? ~~~ dman Yes I think so, the pane on the left already allows the user to control which section they are reading. I would assume that once a reader is in a section they would likely want to read/scan all of it. Excellent work by the way! ------ pekk Unless I've missed something, this isn't a redesign of the library, it's a restyling of the manual as a website. ~~~ elmerland You are correct, this is just a restyling of the manual. Just curious, what did you think 'redesign' meant? I have mostly a front end background and I thought I was using the word correctly. But I might have been wrong. ~~~ samatman Redesigning the GNU C Library would be, well, redesigning the GNU C Library. What you've done is redesign the GNU C Library manual, HTML edition. Which you have done well, IMHO. It doesn't seem to involve refactoring C code. ------ notdang Doesn't work without javascript ------ kasabali It looks great! I haven't inspected how you did it but I guess it shouldn't be hard to apply it to other GNU manuals also, as all are very similar in the sense that they all are produced using the same tools. Another idea: local search function similar to Sphinx's would be really nice. ~~~ elmerland Thats a great idea! This project was somewhat of a proof of concept. Maybe I will refine and apply it to other manual. Thanks! PS: I couldn't find the local search function that you mentioned. Can you put a link so that I can see how it works? ~~~ kasabali Sure. Python documentation in [https://docs.python.org/3/archives/python-3.4.3-docs- html.zi...](https://docs.python.org/3/archives/python-3.4.3-docs-html.zip) is a good example. You can extract it anywhere and search just works without needing any server side components.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Making of Prince of Persia - alex_c http://jordanmechner.com/blog/2009/11/the-making-of-prince-of-persia/ ====== wlievens This is a totally awesome read. It's basically Microserfs or JPod, but for real. Total treasure trove for guys who grew up in the nineties with games like Prince of Persia. ------ there and via reddit, original source code documentation (pdf): [http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/a6ai7/prince_of...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/a6ai7/prince_of_persia_original_source_code/) ~~~ alex_c Thanks for posting that link, that's how I found the journals :) ------ cousin_it Especially eye-opening was how they waited two years after release hoping the game would spread by word of mouth, it didn't, so they did a traditional marketing push and succeeded. ------ gcv I stayed up way, way too late reading this. An astounding story, and very well told. Amazing and inspiring that someone could blend the arts, hacking, and business to such a degree. ------ Poiesis Really cool read. It appears to be down now, which is a shame because I'm halfway done! ------ rimantas Not sure what was more thrilling to read "Dracula" or this "Old journals". ------ ludwig Nice journal! I should start one for my next major project. ------ idleworx prince of persia and wolfenstein were what got my interestes in computers when I was a kid. great times.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
We (Mozilla) Fight For the User - Garbage http://www.aminutewithbrendan.com/pages/20110721 ====== michaelchisari I've sent Mr. Eich an email, I'm very interested to see where Mozilla is going in terms of open social networking. While Google+ might be the next centralized ship that everyone jumps to (after Facebook, Myspace, Friendster), I have no doubt that the future of social networking is decentralized. While there is very interesting work being done (and hopefully my project* would be included in that assessment), it may be the case that an organization with the clout and resources of Mozilla may be the most likely hope for moving away from walled gardens. * <http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/> ------ kierank This tweet is apt: <http://twitter.com/#!/spectralhole/status/69513328166313984> ~~~ ZeroGravitas While I agree with at least part of the sentiment in the tweet, I'm not sure it's relevant, for multiple reasons: 1\. The photo's 4 years old, 2\. It's not clear that they're all running Mac OS X 3\. Mozilla actually delivers products on OS X 4\. Mozilla's stated mission is web freedom, not software freedom (though the two are intertwined to a degree). 5\. What nice things are being denied? (The only candidate I can think of is H.264, which again was an issue of web freedom, not software freedom). Very similar points apply to Mozilla delivering a webkit-based browser on iPhone/iPad. ------ pasbesoin Every time I make my browser do what _I_ want, rather than what some cruft- riddled server wants, I'm reminded of this. Just don't let the designers hollow you out from within.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Steve Jobs' first boss: 'Very few companies would hire Steve, even today' - filvdg http://www.siliconvalley.com/ci_22884138/steve-jobs-first-boss-very-few-companies-would ====== untog The only thing that worries me about bringing focus to stuff like this is that people will walk away with the reverse impression- that if they're unhireable it must mean that they're just like Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs could be many things. Inspired is one of them. An asshole is another. Just because people think you're an asshole doesn't automatically mean you're inspired. ~~~ pekk I'm worried about your impression that if you don't like someone, they can't do interesting things as Jobs did. Who is actually "unhireable"? And even if they are, does that mean they cannot accomplish anything? Are you in charge of deciding who will never amount to anything? ~~~ untog They could well do interesting things, as Jobs did- I'm not saying they can't. I'm more trying to say that there is no guaranteed connection between the two, in the same way that wearing black turtlenecks isn't going to make you any more enlightened either. ~~~ pitchups This reminds me of PG's essay about startups - where he says that all great ideas look like really bad ideas in the beginning. Like black swans, the next big thing, and the person to create the next big thing seem to share the trait of not being easy to predict or spot. ~~~ yen223 Of course, bad ideas also look like bad ideas in the beginning. ~~~ raverbashing Humm I disagree There's "obvious" bad ideas like trying to sell sand in the desert. There's the bad (underwhelming) ideas, maybe that's the most common of them, it's probably the 'trying to make a weird idea sellable'. Like 'french fries are amazing but unhealthy so let's try to sell potatoes cut as fries, but baked, with no salt' There's also quirky ideas as bad ideas, which is the way most people go and what PG probably meant. Not to mention sometimes your idea looks like the same as a failed one already but the devil is in the details. ~~~ mikecane How bad of an idea is it to sell a stupid rock to people? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pet_rock> There are some days I must grudgingly agree with screenwriter William Goldman's "Nobody knows anything." If you're not more confused by life as you get older, you haven't been paying enough attention. ~~~ drzaiusapelord Depends on your investment strategy. Fads are nearly impossible to predict. So you have $100,000 to invest and this guy comes up to you with pet rocks. Another guy with toilets that sing. Another guy with shoes that play music. Who do you give the money to? Any of these guys? Just because fads exist, doesn't mean bad ideas don't. Banking on the pet rock was a huge gamble for someone and it somehow worked out. Fad toys must have 1 out of 100,000 success rate, if that. ------ kamaal That's sort of straight obvious. Basically because if somebody like Steve Jobs doesn't have a Steve Wozniak to build things for him in the start he is more or less a arrogant egoistic tantrum throwing hippie kind of a guy whom nobody would like to deal with. You meet a genius co-founder like Steve Wozniak very very rarely. Nearly every program manager is a lesser version of Steve Jobs, that is how authority looks cool and glorified. Giving an impression that the manager is automagically creating success out of thin air while a engineer somewhere pushing 19 hr daily schedules to make it happen doesn't count or is irrelevant. Steve Jobs reminds of Peter Keating from Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead'. ~~~ mikecane >>>Steve Jobs reminds of Peter Keating from Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead'. Seriously? You think Hank Rearden developed Rearden Steel without all of the efforts others had first made in steel? Dagny _inherited_ her damn railroad. She didn't create it. Richard Halley didn't invent music. John Galt was working in a damn auto factory. He didn't invent autos nor the idea of an engine. Midas Mulligan was a goddammed banker. He didn't invent currency or the idea of stored value. ------ dmk23 I do not understand why anyone would find this quote surprising, controversial or even newsworthy. Employees operate within the rules established by their employers - they have a boss and are expected to be a "good solider" to support objectives of their company / business unit... People like Steve Jobs are successful because of their audacity to disregard the rules and make their own. These are entirely different mindsets and skillsets. Employees are given direction, entrepreneurs set the direction. What I find a lot more interesting is that quite a few startup founders act like employees rather than leaders - constantly asking (explicitly or implicitly) for approval of others. Look around and see if you can recognize people who care about the opinions of press/investors/advisors/peers more than achieving product/market fit followed by revenue/profitability/growth. ~~~ keefe You don't actually have to be that much of a soldier at most places and most places today, imho, would hire steve jobs. I have a day job and my personal ventures and the bottom line is if you do your job, nobody cares. I think the vast majority of successful leaders also had a successful period working on someone else's project beforehand. ------ Cardeck1 The sad, harsh reality is, no one would hire Steve Jobs today or almost no one.Why?Because times have changed (In a bad way).We live in a world full of arrogance, stupidity and ignorance.We no longer think how to change the world but how to make a lot of money. Steve Jobs was a non-technical guy.We have 1 million topics on HN bashing these guys for 1 million reasons.Even on this one we have engineers talking about the same thing over and over. How about being realistic at least once. We do not give these people any chance of working with us.Because we are so arrogant these days that we think the world belong to us and only we (programmers/engineers) can change it. We cannot find a Steve Jobs when we are not willing to risk at all.How many of you helped a non-technical guy building a project without asking for a huge amount of money or 100% equity?Probably not many.Most of the help consists of telling the guy to find a cofounder or to quit the project.Not one programmer/engineer would say "hey you know what, you're crazy but I'll help you" or any other similar line. The truth is we do not own the world and we are not all-knowing. We can be all-star programmers and yet have crap ideas.Nothing is set in stone.Someone out there is always better than you.And history shows us that small things count. Unbelievable things come from unexpected places. I am not saying that every non-technical guy is a Steve Jobs because I had my own failures with these guys and yes, it's incredibly frustrating.But those were bad selections.A risk I was willing to take.I helped a non-technical guy with a startup 4 years ago.He had a weird idea and he asked me to help him in exchange for a fixed sum of 350K. He came to me with a damn paper and pen to talk about his idea. He had no money to hire a programmer only an ambition that could move mountains.And after 6 months I received the money in my account...the startup was a success...and that's when I changed my mentality. So in conclusion, if we want to see a Steve Jobs, we have to take risks.Otherwise let's continue flipping the coin and wait for it. ~~~ talmand I don't think the world is that much different today than it was yesterday. You perspective on it may be different and will continue to evolve over time, but for the most part the world we live in continues much the same as it always has. The problems you speak of is nothing new. Just look on the history of a different industry and you're likely to find much the same. But, during the early years Jobs was not selling his own crazy ideas, he was selling Woz's. Plus I wouldn't say that Jobs was a non-technical guy as he clearly knew tech, he just accepted his place in that field. The thing I don't get about your comment is that we see people risking things on non-technical people's ideas every day, so I don't understand your point. ~~~ Cardeck1 I have to disagree here.Even though my perspective has changed, times have changed too.How?Look around.If you do not see it than I will stop here. Steve Jobs was a non-technical guy.That's why there were so many debates about tech and non tech guys during these years.He acquired knowledge over time through various sources.He had everything on a plate.And you can be a complete outsider in a company.When you spend so much time in your industry, in your environment, you learn.But you couldn't say he was a programmer or engineer. Saying that people are risking things on non-tech people's ideas every day is like saying people are driving a car every day.Of course they are.In this world there is a little bit of everything.Rich people, poor people, low jobs, high jobs etc. We are talking about the majority or current situation. And for the moment the situation is just how I described it. If you think it is not true, post a project on HN as a non-technical guy and ask for someone to help you build your project.I am curious how many would help you. That is just my personal opinion based on my observations and experiences. ~~~ talmand If you do not see that your third paragraph contradicts your first then I cannot help you. Jobs was involved in numerous projects creating highly popular technical products in several different roles. Now did he dig in to create the circuit boards and code the programs himself? No, he did not. But that's like saying a team lead is not a technical person because he doesn't code himself. To help create technical products from the ground up there has to be some level technical knowledge involved. Maybe your standard of what constitutes technical knowledge is higher than mine or maybe we just think of being technical as different things. As I said before, your third paragraph agrees with my point. What you are complaining about has been around for quite a while and will most likely will exist for a time to come. Someone with no technical knowledge asking for help on a project and not getting it does not necessarily lead to your conclusion on the community in general. One could say the same if you have a crazy idea for a new type of house, when you've never built a house before, and no one in the construction industry steps forward to build your house on spec for no money down. That's simply how the world works and has always worked. What you want is the exception to be the rule. But then again, I'm sure the open source world has several examples of what you say doesn't happen. ~~~ Cardeck1 I don't see the contradiction but my point is, if we want to see more steves we should improve the relationship between us and them even if we have the hard part of the startup.Which is almost always the case. But hey, if you choose to be a programmer, you should do it because you really like it not because you make a lot of money. I can work 30h non stop on a project I like even if it's not mine, because I really like to build projects. I don't want the exception to be the rule.It would be impossible after all.What I want is tech guys to risk more when it comes to non-technical people. Btw, when you are smart and very talented you don't really need to get that technical.I already wrote about a non-technical guy I've worked with which had no technical background and no experience with startups that was able to build a product from his mind. I was shocked.I mean he didn't even know how to design it in photoshop.He was able to guide us through the building process almost perfectly.Now, of course he was reading a lot about everything but besides that he had no real technical background. Should I say that guy was technical or non-technical?We probably see things differently. We should return to our topic subject because we are entering the eternal debate and we will just ruin the topic. ~~~ talmand I agree since you keep contradicting yourself. ------ davidroberts I'm not sure Steve Jobs would be such a great employee anyway. He was born to lead, not follow. To innovate, not bend himself to someone else's vision. Invest in him? Yes. Hire him? Hmmmmm. Maybe not. ~~~ phaus A grown man that throws tantrums, belittles subordinates, and never admits when his company has made a mistake is not what I would call a born leader. ~~~ chongli That's exactly what I'd call a born leader. These types of people do not show any weakness and refuse to compromise on their vision. ~~~ phaus All three of the attributes I listed are weaknesses. Born leaders don't often lose their temper in front of subordinates. You should read "How to Make Friends and Influence People" It contains quite a few examples of what true leadership is. ~~~ chongli >All three of the attributes I listed are weaknesses. According to whom? >"How to Make Friends and Influence People" Leadership isn't about making friends; it's about getting people to obey. Hitler, Stalin and Steve Jobs all knew this well. ~~~ phaus >According to whom? Anyone with a brain. Steve Jobs wasn't successful because he found it appropriate to act like a 2 year old in a business environment. He was successful in spite of it. >Leadership isn't about making friend; It's about getting people to obey. I agree that leadership isn't about making friends, but the other half of the book's title is "and Influencing People," which is about getting people to do what you want them to, which is exactly what you said leadership is about. Hitler and Stalin were not good leaders. Sure, you can force people to do things if your commands are backed up by the promise of torture and death, but that's not leadership by any stretch of the imagination. You can be successful for a number of reasons. Most good leaders are successful, but success alone isn't an indicator of leadership ability. Good leaders are far too rare for every successful organization to have one. ~~~ chongli >Hitler and Stalin were not good leaders. Sure, you can force people to do things if your commands are backed up by the promise of torture and death, but that's not leadership by any stretch of the imagination. Hitler and Stalin weren't born with the ability to have anyone tortured or killed. They didn't inherit generals and secret police under their command. These power structures they built themselves over the course of their respective political careers. Their ability to rally people to their respective causes was formidable. For another example of belligerence and downright nastiness as a leadership quality: look no further than the military. Drill Instructors are legendary for the intimidating and degrading treatment of their subordinates and yet I find it very hard to argue with the results. By and large, they're able to produce unshakably loyal soldiers. ~~~ phaus I'm a 3rd generation Soldier that was in the Army for a decade, what you are describing is called toxic leadership, and it destroys organizations. Slowly, the military is starting to admit that its ineffective when your subordinates aren't a bunch of mouth breathing illiterates. Also, most Soldiers are loyal because most people who aren't already patriotic wouldn't have much of a reason to go through all the bullshit. Anyone who thinks that you can get brainwashed by 9 weeks of mild exercise and ass- chewings delivered by a group of regular people who are paid to pretend that they are mad at you must have had a pretty easy life. Basic training is the codecademy of military discipline. ~~~ chongli >I'm a 3rd generation Soldier that was in the Army for a decade, what you are describing is called toxic leadership, and it destroys organizations. Slowly, the military is starting to admit that its ineffective when your subordinates aren't a bunch of mouth breathing illiterates. Totally different situation. You're talking about maintaining high morale with career soldiers. I'm talking about rousing up a bunch of conscripts and packing them off to war. Historically, these types of people made up the bulk of the armies and didn't live long enough to cause trouble for the organization. ------ Hitchhiker Early stage investing provably cannot be as rational as most try and make it to be. When a group tips and looks like a good score is about to emerge.. the score-keepers have to increment the score ( i.e. give investment ) as that is about the only function they serve. " Finally, I'd like to once again talk about investment management. That is a funny business because on a net basis, the whole investment management business together gives no value added to all buyers combined. That's the way it has to work. " - Charlie Munger When people rejected or passed on .. at that point in time .. it would have been entirely rational to do so. I am not certain even Mr.Jobs knew how time would turn. ------ sgloutnikov I will never forget. The day Jobs died, Al Alcorn was giving a talk at San Jose State University for my Computer History course. He took about 15-20 minutes before the talk and shared many inside stories from the Atari days about Jobs. Truly remarkable stuff. As he put it, "I was the only boss he ever had". I am sad that his stories got cut out from the recorded lecture, maybe because he said a lot of colorful things :) Here is a short post talk interview: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odcXGIQuxAg> And, the talk itself (5th one in the list), plus many other interesting ones from computing legends if anyone wants to check them out: [http://www.sjsu.edu/at/atn/webcasting/archives/fall_2011/his...](http://www.sjsu.edu/at/atn/webcasting/archives/fall_2011/hist/Computing/) ------ JumpCrisscross " _Bushnell, now 70, could have reaped even more from his relationship with Jobs if he hadn't turned down an offer from his former employee to invest $50,000 in Apple during its formative stages._ " $50 000 in 1976, the year Apple was founded, had the purchasing power of over $200 000 today. Without the benefit of hindsight he probably made a sensible, if unlucky, decision. ~~~ Lerc He is 70 now, Probably hasn't gone hungry in that time and he has taken on a decent number of fascinating projects in his lifetime. Cash only makes a difference in the event of a tie-break, and I think he's ahead of most. ~~~ stuffihavemade Plus, who's to say he wouldn't have cashed out at some point during the downward spiral in the 90's? ------ rmrfrmrf It's really insulting to reduce a human being to some kind of archetype incapable of adapting to a situation. Steve was a bright guy -- I'm sure that if he ever found himself in a position where he needed to apply as an employee of a company, he would know how to 'play the game' and adapt to the situation. Also, I'm sick of hearing people downplay Jobs' role in Apple and giving Woz all of the credit (although I'm not surprised; I'm assuming that many introverted code monkeys here aspire to be the unsung hero co-founder of a company). It's the same shit I hear about how the Beatles would be nothing without George Martin or LSD. It should go without saying that these revolutionary things (i.e. Apple and the Beatles) are products of both serendipitous events AND the surrounding cultural context. Yes, if you remove one piece of the puzzle, OF COURSE the end-result will be different. But what makes it a moot point is that the converse is also true -- George Martin would be nothing without the Beatles, and Woz would be completely unheard of if it weren't for Steve Jobs. ~~~ talmand I agree except for your last comment where you do the very thing you complain others are doing with Jobs. You downplayed Woz's contributions by implying that he would have done nothing exceptional unless Jobs was there to hold his hand. Except that Woz is credited with developing the Apple I by himself but I suppose he would have just tossed the thing in the bin if not for Jobs. ------ weisser "Bushnell, now 70, could have reaped even more from his relationship with Jobs if he hadn't turned down an offer from his former employee to invest $50,000 in Apple during its formative stages. Had he seized that opportunity, Bushnell would have owned one-third of Apple, which is now worth about $425 billion -- more than any other company in the world." Surprised Jobs would have offered so much of Apple, even in the formative stages, for $50k (which surely translates to much more money than $50k is today). It is interesting to consider how that would have changed the control/direction of Apple. ~~~ Swannie But this is wrong. The $50k would have gone through many dilutions. He may have owned 1/3 of Apple. There is no way that today he would have 1/3rd. That said, it does raise the question: if he had gone in to Apple, would Jobs have ever left and started NeXT and Pixar??? ------ Alex_MJ Optimal Founder/CEO != Optimal Employee ------ sGrabber You might be the best as an individual but if you are not a team player, the probability of succeeding is minimal. Team members complement each other to make successful products/companies or any relationship ------ mathogre No one would hire him today. Companies are risk averse, given the current economic/political climate. If you can't produce and "fit in", don't bother submitting your resumé. ~~~ wyclif It's possible that nobody would hire an unknown Steve Jobs now, but it really doesn't matter. Jobs wasn't an employee, he was a founder. Founders don't have to concern themselves with getting hired. ~~~ mikecane >>>Founders don't have to concern themselves with getting hired. But they still have to do things like pay rent, buy food, buy clothes, buy tech. Those things take money. And money is usually gotten from a job. The point is, Jobs wouldn't have even been able to get a job to survive first. That old guy sweeping floors in McDonald's today? Did you ever stop to think what led him there? (For the Rand worshipers out there, how was Galt employed at Taggart Transcontinental?) ~~~ wyclif That's a nice way to strawman what I said, but I was talking about hiring, not buying stuff, income, or money. Here's the thing: Steve Jobs did not have to get hired, in the employee sense, because he founded his own company. ~~~ talmand I don't see it necessarily as a strawman since it is essentially true, as he did have jobs leading up to Apple. Keep in mind that he founded his company with funding, it's not as if he founded the company and was instantly making enough money to survive with. One could make the argument that even a founder is "hired" when he requires somebody else's money to make it happen. ------ Vinnix As much as I appreciate the opinion, I just don't think it is valid. Outliers shouldn't reflect everyone... ------ mikecane NewsFlash: The older Steve Jobs would not have hired the younger Steve Jobs today. ~~~ lifeisstillgood We are all good at recognising our younger selves. We might not _like_ them, but we can recognise them ~~~ mikecane Yes. And our older selves are more likely to "contain" our younger selves because we know how bad we once were. ------ michaelochurch The problem is that no one would hire Steve Jobs _as a subordinate_ , but he was an evident great hire for a decision-making role, even then. People like him usually get filtered out before they get high enough to use their talents, though. In fact, Jobs is the opposite of what corporations promote, which explains a lot about them. ~~~ pjungwir Sort of OT: Michael, have you read Managing the Professional Service Firm by David Maister? He writes powerfully about economics, incentives, and culture as they relate to management. I think his book would give you a lot to think about, and you'd find plenty both to learn and to argue against. His focus is a "firm" structured on the partner/associate model. I'd love to see more people thinking about and experimenting with that model for software developers. I think it offers many similarities to what you admire about Github and Valve. And perhaps it is a model where Steve Jobs could find a place. ~~~ michaelochurch I haven't read it. I don't like the partner/associate model as it works in law firms, because (at least in 2013) it becomes a two-class system as toxic as the tenured/not distinction in academia. Also, law firm bonuses aren't direct profit-sharing. What I proposed in my recent essay ( [http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/gervais- macle...](http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2013/03/26/gervais- macleod-17-building-the-future-and-financing-lifestyle-businesses/) ) is real, motivationally significant profit-sharing extended to all employees. In biglaw, they are hosed if they work hard for 7 years and don't make partner; in VC-istan, engineers in a 50-person company get ~0.04% equity instead of the ~0.45% profit sharing they'd get under my system. The idea that I have in mind is one where profit sharing's open to all employees and substantial but very few people end up holding equity, because the thing's not built to be sold and equity is only for people expected to be long-term (10+ years) contributors. ------ michaell2 IMHO it's strange that we are discussing hiring Mr reality distortion field for a technical position here. If he were reincarnated and looking for a job now, he would probably go into sales. What do they care more about in sales, team playing or closing contracts for new leads? Then there is the "motivational speaking", another fruitful and remunerative area of endeavor for this sort of people :) ~~~ talmand I would have said he was in sales from the beginning and he focused on tech, of which he had a background. ------ kami8845 In other news: Grey-haired dude from long-ago bigs himself up for hiring someone who is seen as a bad employee. "I was smarter back then than all y'all are today." Also missed the chance to buy 33% of Apple for 5k, with Apple now being valued at 425 billion USD.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Machine Translates Thoughts into Speech in Real Time - dhbradshaw http://www.physorg.com/news180620740.html ====== dubcomesaveme wow. ~~~ anigbrowl x2. This is some really impressive work. I wonder which platform they will use for the synthesis? This (regrettably discontinued) device yields the most impressive results that I'm aware of without using pre-programmed phonemes: [http://music.yamaha.com/products/features.html?productId=624...](http://music.yamaha.com/products/features.html?productId=624855&hierarchy_id=16392_16244)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Emails prove traffic shutdown was political payback from office of NJ governor - ck2 http://www.northjersey.com/news/christie_kelly_bridge_lane_closures_emails.html ====== ck2 What's interesting about this is apparently you can get anything back from Google gmail via a warrant. Also, without the press, this would have been completely buried. Note how it was done to another mayor and no-one believed him until now.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Linux Needs Open Multimedia on the Web - linuxmag http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7483 ====== loup-vaillant > Overall, the situation isn’t great. Flash works well under 32bit Linux but > only when using closed source, bug ridden proprietary software. There is a funny little contradiction: If Flash works well, how can you accuse the software to be "bug ridden"? (Disclaimer: I don't like Flash, for political reasons). ------ ZeroGravitas Anyone got any more info on the conspiracy theory in the comments by "jdas"? I've heard others saying that On2 was picked up by Google at a price that cheated the shareholders. ~~~ wmf [http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUS...](http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssTechMediaTelecomNews/idUSN1213117420090812) This looks like the acquisition equivalent of the exploding term sheet.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Elon Musk Had a Deal to Sell Tesla to Google in 2013 - r0h1n http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-20/elon-musk-had-a-deal-to-sell-tesla-to-google-in-2013 ====== nakedrobot2 In an alternate universe, Google sold to Yahoo for $1M in 1998; Tesla sold to Yahoo in 2013. ~~~ higherpurpose Except it's more likely the Google acquisition wouldn't have gone anywhere under Yahoo, and Yahoo wouldn't be in the position to buy Tesla today anyway. ~~~ tripzilch I wonder in what way the web would look different today, if Google had been acquired and became a mere footnote in Yahoo's long list of sunset acquisitions... ------ mikeash Thank goodness that didn't happen. Tesla is doing amazing things and is on track to seriously shake up the automotive industry. I can't imagine that would be true under Google. ~~~ stevoo I disagree here. It made me wonder how much more Tesla could have been with Googles power. As the article states, Elon Musk would keep on working on his project for 8 years with extra funding to create the same cars he is now. If that was the case and with Googles money and power, they might had a better chance of creating a better car as well as adding self driving in the car much faster if we look at google car. ( offcourse that is still years away ) ~~~ seanp2k2 Well, considering Google would have done the Model S release with 500 units (as part of an "EV explorers" program), then stopped updating the software, waited 9 months with no news whole competitors built competitive products, then wrote it off as a loss and announced that they're deprecating the product in favor of their new line of RC cars, I think it's good that they haven't sold. TL;DR name one company Google acquired where they didn't kill that company's awesome product within a couple years, regardless of how awesome / market- leading / profitable it was. ~~~ magicalist Just going off the ones I recognize from this list[1], older than "a couple years" but since, say, 2009: On2, reCAPTCHA, AdMob, ITA, Widevine, Motorola (though arguably it had no awesome product to maintain), Waze. But more than half the companies in that range I don't recognize, so maybe their product is still around (or is fully functional, but only within Google Docs or something). You're also ignoring the fact that many acquisitions wouldn't have survived without being acquired and their products would have shut down (or "pivoted" until they were unrecognizable). Tesla obviously wasn't in that category, but that actually makes it harder to compare to historical data, as few companies really parallel it well. [1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisition...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mergers_and_acquisitions_by_Google) ~~~ mikeash Waze is a great example. They've basically gone full-on vampire on that one, sucking out all the delicious (user-generated!) data and presumably headed for leaving Waze itself as a desiccated husk. ~~~ magicalist A great example of what? It hasn't been quite two years (June 11, 2013), but it's still around. Presumably you mean if it's shut down it will be a great example, but right now it's actually a great example of the opposite: improving the products of the acquiring company while keeping the acquired product going. You could put up more walls between the two, but at some point that becomes just investing, not acquisition. ~~~ mikeash I think it's a great example right now. I don't see any benefits from the Google acquisition, and the product is slowly stagnating. The iOS app doesn't even have native iPhone 6+ support yet! Meanwhile Google is making great use of Waze data in Google Maps. The current state of things is great if you're a Maps user, less great if you're a Waze user, and I don't see any indication that's going to change. Put the Waze acquisition onto Tesla. Google buys Tesla just as the Model S is coming out, and starts using the technology to benefit their own products. Which products it would benefit I'm not sure, but maybe they improve the batteries for Android phones, or start using the Model S as the testbed for their self-driving cars, or something. Meanwhile the Model S stays as it was in 2013, with some minor improvements. This would be a terrible outcome! ~~~ magicalist Waze does need to update for the iPhone 6 even (not just the plus), but there are many non-Google apps that need to do the same, and it does still get updates. Supposedly they're working on a UI refresh[1], but that's what everyone who hasn't updated yet says. I'm not arguing that a Tesla acquisition would have been better than the outcome we got, there's almost no way it would have been, but I would argue that that would be true for any company doing the acquiring. Acquisitions are just really tough for the identity of a product by their very nature. [1] [https://twitter.com/waze/status/584435142040690688](https://twitter.com/waze/status/584435142040690688) ~~~ mikeash "I would argue that that would be true for any company doing the acquiring." Well then, we agree. I'm not saying, "Thank goodness _Google_ didn't acquire them." I'm saying, "Thank goodness they weren't acquired" and it just happens to be in the context of a story about Google doing the acquiring. I can't think of any company that could have acquired Tesla where the outcome would have been favorable for the things I personally want. There were rumors going around a while ago about Apple buying them, and my reaction was the same there. ------ lyime I had a friend who had a brief stint at Tesla, now she is in grad school. She used to tell me stories of how she was constantly asked to work on different teams, doing totally unrelated tasks. She started as a project coordinator but one day she was asked to make sales calls. She also worked on delivering cars as well as give tours to the Tesla factory. ~~~ mathattack Sounds like the chaos of a startup. It's why some people choose to work at GM. It's also why GM floundered - I can't imagine them having any flexibility in work rules. I hope they pull it off - I will buy one of their mainstream cars. ~~~ drzaiusapelord Tesla is a 12 year old company that has burned hundreds of millions of dollars and shipped tens of thousands of cars. How is it remotely a startup? If you can't get staffing and other admin stuff right at age 12, then that says a lot about how poor management is. If you have engineers making sales calls or giving tours, then you're paying engineering salaries for non-engineering work. ------ tuna-piano Could someone explain what Google believes its core competency is? Do they really think that over the long term they can be a software company and a car company? ~~~ mitchell_h They're sorta turning into a commercially viable DARPA. They take some really hard, large scale, problems; get the right people in a room and find solutions. Also, cars are basically software at this point. Especially tesla. ~~~ treelovinhippie > They're sorta turning into a commercially viable DARPA. This. Google and other companies at its scale don't need to worry too much about focus. They can just use the excessive amount of revenues made via software to throw resources at solving global problems and turning scifi into reality. ~~~ ocdtrekkie Scifi into reality: Terminator and Minority Report are great visions for our future. -_- ~~~ TeMPOraL Said someone who has Star Trek referenced in their nickname... Not every sci- fi vision is a dystopia. ~~~ personlurking Isn't Star Trek about everyone basically working for the government (ie, in the military)? ~~~ TeMPOraL No; Star Trek focuses on the "military" branch (Starfleet), but the majority of the population of United Federation of Planets are civilians. ~~~ personlurking I stand corrected. Picard's home comes to mind. There has never been an attempt at a television series depicting Star Trek outisde Starfleet, correct? I mean, something created by the makers of Star Trek. ~~~ TeMPOraL I don't know of any. Deep Space Nine came the closest, especially before the Dominion War arc. While the station itself was commanded by a Starfleet officer, it was still a sovereign Bajoran territory and most of the inhabitants were civilians. ------ mfringel Warning: Autoplaying video. ~~~ flinty flashblock. ~~~ mfringel Your superior knowledge has been noted by the Ministry of Statistics. Thank you for supplying the data point. ~~~ kurotetsuka That made me laugh, thanks XD. ------ higherpurpose I think it's too early for Tesla to sell. Maybe in 10 years. First allow it to get big enough to get a strong culture that _can 't_ be changed by another company. What do you think would happen if say GM bought Tesla now? Do you think Tesla would be able to convert GM to their way of doing things, or the other way around? (especially if Elon Musk leaves to focus on Space X) ~~~ ohitsdom Why would they sell in 10 years? A sale then would only make sense if they were struggling, in which case I wouldn't count on a failing "Tesla culture" to remain. It looks like they have a very bright future, with classic automakers playing catchup. No need or benefit to sell. ------ astazangasta I've started referring to it as Google-Yutani. ------ jpmattia I'm not sure, but it sounds like the lesson is: Anyone can be a decent salesperson if you have a decent product. ------ ocdtrekkie Very glad we dodged this bullet. ------ acheron Wow, dodged a bullet there. "Please log into Google+ in order to unlock your car." ~~~ knocknock I'm getting really tired of seeing this comment in every submission about Google. This and the annoying "Google support sucks!!" ignorant BS. ~~~ motoboi Indeed, fast food comedy is not well received here. I think because it ruins the forum quality in the long run. I am yet to find another high level forum like this. So, to me, those community guidelines are working pretty well. So, although I sometimes laugh a little with those comments, I prefer them to be downvoted to oblivion so we continue to keep having amazing and informative comments from others. ~~~ visakanv Yep, the problem with "fast food comedy" is that once you reward it, everybody wants to do it– and then it drives out all the more invested, technical conversations. We can do the G+ jokes on Reddit. Getting to substance requires a certain rigor and discipline that can seem a little draconian, but makes all the difference. ~~~ benihana > _Yep, the problem with "fast food comedy" is that once you reward it, > everybody wants to do it_ Anyone who has been on reddit for more than five or six years has seen this. It used to be on par with hacker news for discussion. I'm not sure if it has been happening since day one, or if the site reached a critical mass and started going downhill from there. But I definitely saw it happening before the Digg migration. ------ onezeno An deal in negotiation is not a deal. ~~~ onezeno Anyone care to leave a comment as to why they're downvoting? ~~~ gedrap Didn't downvote myself but one-liners often are not popular in this community. ------ dataker I'm sorry Google people, but I find such company to be disguting. Inspite of the fact its main business relies on advertisement, Google believes it is entitled to be a monopoly in technology(any sector). One could use Thiel's argument of 'monopolies are good' until they are not. Being a monopoly in tech means being the god of tomorrow. In the end, what in the future will not be an outcome of current technology? ~~~ dba7dba Google's like a magazine publisher, TV station, phone directory publisher. Can you imagine if such publications decide to hire their own doctors/travel- agent/etc to resell their service and push their products over others? That is essentially what's happening.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Ask YC: WoW items commodity exchange, why wouldn't it work? - andreyf http://andreyf.tumblr.com/post/61389798/wow-stock-exchange ====== ram1024 because unlike a standard material commodity, a playing card's value can be dramatically affected by whatever the publishing company decides to do to the game. whether it be printing more of the card, releasing a new version of the card that's more powerful, making that one obsolete, or even discontinuing the game altogether. i'm sure you COULD make something like this, but really with the value of the item being intangible and largely based on emotional/prospective value, it'd be hard to get traction with the idea... <disclosure: i know nothing about WoW cards>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Fed Aims to Hasten Payments - prostoalex http://www.wsj.com/articles/fed-aims-to-hasten-payments-1422313936 ====== na85 Please stop submitting sites with paywalls. ~~~ prostoalex WSJ.com provides no visual indication of whether or not the article is behind one. Sometimes it's the full view of the article on the original load, but paywall on refresh; other times it's full view on both loads, but it's off the reader's cookie, so everybody else gets a paywall; other times it's full view for everybody.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Apple's 2013 Acquisitions - jason_slack http://m.tuaw.com/2013/10/29/a-look-back-at-apples-2013-acquisitions/ ====== jason_slack A better version: [http://www.tuaw.com/2013/10/29/a-look-back-at- apples-2013-ac...](http://www.tuaw.com/2013/10/29/a-look-back-at- apples-2013-acquisitions/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Let's Dial Down our Enthusiasm over the Billionare Giving Pledge - dcaldwell http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-dorfman/the-giving-pledge_b_796159.html ====== nlwhittemore There are a bunch of fine reasons to be low-to-medium excited about the Giving Pledge instead of totally amped, but Dorfman's argument - that they might not spend it that well- is a pretty stupid one. First, Gates and Buffett are, in two very different ways, reinventing the rules of how to spend it: Gates by going all in and running his foundation full time, Buffett by saying "forget having my name on things" and giving it to the person he thinks can spend it best. Zuckerberg is already in this category of smarter giving with his $100mm Newark gift. And there's lots of good reasons to think that the era of the $billion ballet gift is over. Second, Dorfman runs a center that works to make philanthropy better, but for some reason, instead of being a leading voice in the best strategies for spending it effectively, he's become the leading voice in shitting all over the commitments. Smart. Not. @dcaldwell's points about the significantly higher amount of annual philanthropy that comes from individuals of average means than from the ultra wealthy is a much better reason to have tempered excitement. For my money, the most exciting part of this is the precedent that Moskovitz and Zuckerberg are setting to start this incredibly early in their lives. That means we get not only hundreds of millions and billions of dollars, but at least part of their time and attention for decades and decades. ------ dcaldwell Here are a couple other reasons why I don't think the Giving Pledge will have an enormous impact on philanthropy or nonprofits in general. First, not every billionaire is going to make the pledge. I double that it will be more than a third of them. So, instead of the $15 billion given annually as the article suggest, it will probably be more like $5 billion. Secondly, since 1957 giving to non-profits has increased all but about 3 years (2 of those being the last.) Some estimates say that in the next 5-10 years, annual giving will be at around $400 billion instead of the current $300 billion. So, the $5 billion in giving from the Giving Pledge will be a much smaller percentage of total giving than it currently would be. I certainly applaud the generosity of these individuals and families but we need to maintain perspective. If we could get the average American to increase their giving by 1%, we would probably have a greater impact on total giving. ------ torme I'd say that having _anyone_ pledge to donate _anything_ is something to be immensely enthusiastic about. ------ kirinkalia Having recently worked in the nonprofit world (and for one that received Gates Foundation money), it's important to note that Gates shook up the philanthropy world when he started his foundation and again when Buffett committed to giving his billions to the Gates Foundation. Lots of smaller foundations began asking themselves why they were working in certain areas and if they could be as effective as Gates with Gates in that same space (e.g., malaria prevention). Gates is not asking billionaires to do what he did, but he should have -- really get involved with the issues you care about and spend that money smartly to make a lasting impact. ------ lionhearted I'll say it - This guy is a fucking jerk. When confronted with something that conflicts with his worldview that the rich are bad, he cooks up a bunch of caveats and concerns so he can keep his current worldview. Many of his arguments aren't even right - > Wealthy donors don't tend to prioritize lower-income communities, > communities of color or other marginalized groups as beneficiaries of their > giving. You mean, like, eradicating Malaria in Africa [1] or funding the USA's worst performing school districts [2]? Jerks like this have been beating the "the rich are evil and don't care about poor people drum" for so long that they can't adapt now. What's this? In addition to building world changing companies, they're also giving the wealth they got personally to charity? Well, it's still not so good, because you know the rich are evil and don't care about poor people. I'll say it - he's a jerk. When confronted with effective pragmatic people moving into his backwards-poorly-managed idealistic space, he complains and slings mud and adds doubt. Screw him. We need less people doing stuff that he's doing, and more people doing entrepreneurship, taking strong pragmatic action to fix problems, and giving voluntarily. [1] <http://www.gatesfoundation.org/topics/Pages/malaria.aspx> [2] [http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/24/techcrunch-interview- with-m...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/24/techcrunch-interview-with-mark- zuckerberg-on-100-million-education-donation/) ~~~ lubos Let me play devil's advocate. Let's say you are bill gates. You own assets worth of 50 billion dollars. Assuming there is no capital gain or loss and that your return on investment is 5%, you should be making 2.5 billion USD annually. Half of that would normally need to be paid as income tax to government. That's around 1 billion dollars every year. So what you do? You get the best financial advisors and they'll tell you... "move your assets into your own private foundation". this way you won't need to pay tax on your income although to retain tax exempt status, you will need to give away every year at least 5% of your assets. so you will end up paying your "taxes" anyway but it will make you look awesome because now you are doing _charity_ instead of just paying federal income tax like the rest of us. And this is exactly what bill gates has been doing all these years. His foundation is worth 35 billion dollars and he is giving away exactly 5% every year. Up until now they gave away 24 billion dollars (around 1.5 billion a year). I think it makes sense to avoid paying income tax and decide to spend your money elsewhere at your discretion. so let's not pretend these billionaires are better than rest of us. ~~~ gnaritas > Assuming that there is no capital gain or loss and that your return on > investment is 5% That doesn't seem to make sense, as a return on an investment is a capital gain. > Half of that would normally need to be paid as income tax to government. How exactly do you figure that? You don't pay income taxes on investments, you pay a flat 15% capital gains tax on investment income. I don't see how you think he'd lose half to taxes, it'd be far far less than half. Beyond that, giving away 5% of 35 billion (total wealth) costs a lot more than paying 15% of 2.5 billion (investment income that year), so it's not saving him money on taxes which would only be in the range of 350 million a year given your example. Choosing to spend a billion and a half a year on charity to avoid paying 350 million in taxes doesn't make much sense as a motivation. So I highly doubt that's why he's doing it. ~~~ lubos income from dividends or when your money sits in the bank earning interest is not capital gain. capital gain is when you buy shares, real-estate etc and market price of these assets increases while they are on your balance sheet. then it's unrealized capital gain and you don't pay any tax on it until you sell it and make it realized capital gain. for simplicity reasons to explain my point, I didn't want to overcomplicate it with capital gains and losses. ~~~ gnaritas Yes, but dividends are basically taxed at the same rate or slightly higher 20% as capital gains; they aren't taxed as earned income using the progressive bracket system. So while they aren't technically capital gains, my point stands. ~~~ lubos In 1994 when Bill Gates started his private foundation, income from dividends was taxed like regular income. You're right it's 15% right now but don't forget there is new tax law coming into effect pretty much in two weeks that will tax dividends again like regular income. ~~~ gnaritas I wasn't aware the new law did that, but I'm pleased to hear it. Now if only they'd do the same with capital gains. ------ grandalf The cotton gin ended slavery. Any Billionaire who chooses to give money to charity is opting out of the quest for new innovations that will let people willingly free others from the bonds that hold them in poverty. Imagine if Whitney had instead donated the capital he used to invent the cotton gin to the local orphanage. I think it's an interesting commentary on the perception of capitalism that the world's richest view themselves as having been one-hit-wonders unlikely ever to eclipse their initial accomplishment with their own sweat and insight... Instead, I'd prefer that these people follow in the steps of Gates himself, who has delved into asking the question of what the big problems are and how they're most effectively solved. His TED talk about power generation was incredibly inspiring, and assuming his wealth is $50B, he's not rich enough to self-fund it beyond the second stage. ~~~ notahacker Whitney _should_ have donated the capital he used to invent the cotton gin unsuccessfully defend his IP to the local orphanage. Attributed to the Eli Whitney Museum site by Wikipedia: _"Whitney (who died in 1825) could not have foreseen the ways in which his invention would change society for the worse. The most significant of these was the growth of slavery. While it was true that the cotton gin reduced the labor of removing seeds, it did not reduce the need for slaves to grow and pick the cotton. In fact, the opposite occurred. Cotton growing became so profitable for the planters that it greatly increased their demand for both land and slave labor. In 1790 there were six slave states; in 1860 there were 15. From 1790 until Congress banned the importation of slaves from Africa in 1808, Southerners imported 80,000 Africans. By 1860 approximately one in three Southerners was a slave"_ So whilst there are many inventions driven by capitalist investment that have had a far more benign or positive impact on society than your unfortunate choice of example, I think it's fair to say that profit-driven innovation by the already wealthy is far from certain to liberate people from the bonds that hold them in poverty _even if it succeeds_. I also think it's absurd to suggest that charitable giving can't foster innovation. Imagine if the local orphanage had given some smart, self-sufficient kids a good education focused on entrepreneurial values... ------ masterponomo Um...you're welcome?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
The Burden of iOS - mthwl http://thew.me/writing/the-burden-of-ios ====== frogpelt With no offense intended to the author, this post is 500 words of unsubstantiated generalities. Not that it's terribly written. It's just looks more like a preface to an article that contains the actual substance. The author makes this statement: "...that focus on instruction...has become something of a burden. iOS is pinned down by its early interface decisions..." and doesn't offer one example to back up the claim. We've heard the 'Apple design is too skeuomorphic' for years now and I just don't see how writing another generic article about it is noteworthy enough to make it the top of HN. Yet, here I am commenting on it. _EDIT:_ And another thing! If Apple changed their design philosophy to a less skeuomorphic, more trendy, metro, flat style they would simply be accused of copying Google and Microsoft. Lose, lose. ~~~ MatthewPhillips You're witnessing the evolution of a group-think! It starts off innocently enough, with people stating their opinion on various things, then a couple of opinions become common and coalesce into one, until it is "reality". Then others build off of that truth and the process repeats itself until we have a complete narrative about something that is built upon nothing more than a series of speculative opinions. The internet and social networking in particular are big drivers of group-think; how can you possibly have an opposing opinion when the most retweeted bloggers have established a narrative that contradicts your own? Here's a speculative opinion of my own that goes against well-established facts as presented in this article: Apple does skeumorphic because Steve Jobs liked it. And when given a choice between designs, he favored the more skeumorphic ones. Designers noticed this and went into that direction. The design community, being overwhelmingly Apple fans, but also liking the flat trend, needed to create a narrative for when Apple was behind the times in design, hence this article. ~~~ yardie I truly believe there is some sort of industrial designer's cabal that decides what color schemes will be used that year. Just by looking at the devices in my home I know which year they were designed based on the bezel alone. 2002: white, 2005: gunmetal, 2006-7: piano black, 2009: flat black. Even in computer GUI design we from the early OSX, XP Luna, candyland overdose to the extremely understated ICS and Windows 8 2D rectangles. I'm not a far of the flat trend but I'm not that hung up on skeumorphisms either. And I still don't understand how Mathias Duarte went from the truly, awesome interface in WebOS to this bland design in Holo. Put them next to each other and you wonder if he was just phoning it in when he got to Google. ------ thomholwerda The author has clearly never seen a PalmOS device. Outdated now, sure, but they were a massive hit, and everyone - still - knows the platform. Put in its correct perspective - i.e., computers were less ubiquitous during its heyday - the Palm Pilot and its successors were a massive hit. It's a clear case of revisionist history to say that the iPhone is the "first comprehensively successful attempt to create a mass-market, consumer-friendly, always-on, pocketable touch screen computer". ~~~ dpark > _Put in its correct perspective - i.e., computers were less ubiquitous > during its heyday_ Now this is some historical revisionism. Palm's "heyday" was the late 1990s through the early 2000s. Computers were already extremely ubiquitous at that time. Laptops weren't quite as common, but the dream of "a computer on every desk and in every home" had long-since been achieved in developed nations. > _the Palm Pilot and its successors were a massive hit._ Relative to what came before it, but not what came after. Palm's PDAs were very much still a niche market when smartphones came along and made them irrelevant. In 2003-2004, PDAs (across all brands) sold about 2.6 million units[1]. This was probably the peak, but I can't confirm that. Three years later the iPhone launched and Apple sold 6.1 million units of the 1st generation[2]. Just last _quarter_ they sold 47.8 million iPhones[3]. > _It's a clear case of revisionist history to say that the iPhone is the > "first comprehensively successful attempt to create a mass-market, consumer- > friendly, always-on, pocketable touch screen computer"._ No, it's clear that the iPhone's sales absolutely dwarf those of Palm. Relatively speaking, Palm was not a "successful attempt to create a mass- market ... touch screen computer". Even current BlackBerry sales absolutely dwarf Palm's best-ever sales rates[4]. [1] <http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9004592> [2] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone_(original)> [3] [http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/01/23Apple-Reports- Reco...](http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2013/01/23Apple-Reports-Record- Results.html) [4] [http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/research-in- motion-r...](http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/research-in-motion- reports-year-end-and-fourth-quarter-results-for-fiscal-2012-nasdaq- rimm-1638090.htm) ------ saturdaysaint I really hope this is the year we realize that debating about skeutomorphism is a waste of time. Whatever its merits, I'd like to hear about a single case where an anti-skeutomorphic design was elemental in disrupting a market leader. I've been using a prime example, Ableton Live, for the better part of a decade, and while it's done well, it hasn't exactly left highly skeutomorphic competitors like Reason in the dust or enabled stunning usability breakthroughs. If skeutomorphism is not actually that important in the market, then let's just acknowledge that we're talking about personal taste more than anything. ~~~ malandrew Relevant: [http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=506636+517178+/...](http://docs.freebsd.org/cgi/getmsg.cgi?fetch=506636+517178+/usr/local/www/db/text/1999/freebsd- hackers/19991003.freebsd-hackers) ------ blueprint It would be great if this article provided some examples of outdated UI elements so that we can have a discussion of alternatives. The camera UI, for example, has been updated in iOS 6. Holdovers from years ago might include the UINavigationBars and the status bar but they've also been subtly updated and themselves don't seem too outdated. Any good examples? ------ mthwl Author here. Thanks for the feedback. I didn't intend this to be a comprehensive argument, just wanted to draw some connection between the environment that iOS launched into and (what feels like) a lot of recent criticism of its design and behavior. Not specifically skuemorphism (which I realize isn't really worth debating in a vacuum, maybe I shouldn't even have used that word), but just instructive design in general (single-screen apps, limits on configurability, etc). Anything that can be seen as prioritizing teaching the user through interface decisions. And, I completely agree that the market for new smartphone users is still huge. Point being that iOS now has to manage that market alongside the market for existing smartphones users (which it help create/grow). That said, probably should have included some specific examples of what I was talking about. Thanks again. ------ gdubs My dad is a baby boomer, and hasn't touched a computer for over fifteen years. I just sent my parents my old iPhone and he hasn't put it down. Within an hour of unboxing it, he was facetiming, looking stuff up online, listening to podcasts... There are still a _lot_ of new users out there. ------ cvursache It's an interesting claim to say that iOS has aged poorly. I tend to agree that the use of skeumorphic design does make the standard apps look a bit out- of-date, but is that really a problem? How many powerusers are really bothered by this? If you don't like the Podcast app, just get Downcast. If you don't like Calendar, just get Fantastical. And using your claim that skeumorphism helps smartphone newcomers adopt the platform more easily, isn't the current situation a sort of a win-win for the iOS ecosystem? Newcomers get an easy entry and more versatile users can enjoy the great results of third-party developers. ~~~ lucian1900 It would be much less of a problem if iOS allowed one to actually replace stock apps with new ones. There's no way to make GMail my default mail app, Chrome my default browser, etc. Lack of intents is also a serious problem, apps have to specifically support sharing to each source. A related issue is the lack of system accounts. One has to log in to each app separately, even if many of them use the same account. ~~~ richardwhiuk On the other hand Android allows nonsensical sharing options - there's no way to launch the email app, you have launch a ACTION_SEND_MULTIPLE which will launch Skype, or GMail or Mail or various IM apps. ~~~ ConstantineXVI And why should the developer have to care if I want to send something via Gmail, Skype, or carrier pigeon? As long as Android abstracts the data properly within the Intent, the target app should be irrelevant. ~~~ jsight That's true, but the Android approach for accomplishing it is kind of horrible. For one, far too many apps respond to message types that don't really make sense to me. I don't know that this problem is avoidable with freedom, but the lists of available apps for any particular action are often long and very confusing. I have witnessed this confusion with users, and it really hurts the platform in a lot of cases, IMO. I can select one to be the default "always", but this doesn't work well either. If there are five applications that can receive a particular intent, my selection of "always" will be lost every single time that ANY of those five applications are updated. So, in practice, my "Always" selection typically only lasts a couple of weeks. There HAS to be a better way. ------ auggierose There are two arguments in this article: 1) skeumorphic design, 2) does teach the user how to use the hardware Both 1) and 2) are pretty OK in my opinion. ------ austinl This blog post should be titled "Skeumorphism is Holding Back iOS UI". At least that way readers could see the clear lack of evidence. There may be a growing anti-skeumorphic trend on the Internet, but I could reasonably imagine most iPhone users either being okay with skeumorphism, or frankly, not caring at all. ~~~ dean Agree. Most iPhone users don't care at all. This non-issue sounds to me like a designer who has gotten tired of the look of iOS. Which is fine, but don't make it sound like a technical issue with the platform. ------ roc The author's big miss, IMO, is discarding the number of design choices that may appear to be aimed at helping new users, but also simplify mobile use- cases (big tap targets, one clear way to get from A to B) and prevent the accumulation of detritus and the effects user self-sabotage, that tend to accumulate on PCs and Android devices. iOS remaining large problems (no 'services', no way to change defaults, awkward inter-app workflows) are unrelated to 'teachability' of the core interface, as they're almost all concerns that only crop up for power-users or normal users who are months or years into their new device. And they're solvable even if Apple clings to the big candy-like buttons, no widgets, skeumorphic app design, etc. So that bit is neither here nor there. ------ fleitz There's nothing wrong with skeuomorphism when it informs the user, the problem is when the skeuomorphism imposes limitations and lack of clarity. For example, on iOS the dialer is fine, the podcast app sucks. ------ nextstep How is iOS less modern than it's competitors? This article lacked examples.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Twitter begins rolling out audio tweets on iOS - themantra514 https://techcrunch.com/2020/06/17/twitter-begins-rolling-out-audio-tweets-on-ios/ ====== themantra514 Will Clubhouse offer 139 character slugs?	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Life With Arsenic: Who'd Have Thought? - barredo http://pipeline.corante.com/archives/2010/12/02/life_with_arsenic_whod_have_thought.php ====== kragen This is the highest-quality discussion of the issue I've seen anywhere: both the blog post and the comment thread. ------ hartror Another HN discussion on this news: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1962846> And more HN discussion and a excellent write up by PZ here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1963990> Also a write up by Bad Astronomy [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/12/02/na...](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2010/12/02/nasas- real-news-bacterium-on-earth-that-lives-off-arsenic/) And the related XKCD: <http://xkcd.com/829/>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
European Interoperability Framework: Promoting seamless services and data flows [pdf] - fghtr https://ec.europa.eu/isa2/sites/isa/files/eif_brochure_final.pdf ====== fghtr Recommendation 1: Ensure that national interoperability frameworks and interoperability strategies are aligned with the EIF and, if needed, tailor and extend them to address the national context and needs. Recommendation 2: Publish the data you own as open data unless certain restrictions apply. Recommendation 3: Ensure a level playing field for open source software and demonstrate active and fair consideration of using open source software, taking into account the total cost of ownership of the solution. ...and so on.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Former NSA chief warns of cyber-terror attacks if Snowden apprehended - Cbasedlifeform http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/aug/06/nsa-director-cyber-terrorism-snowden ====== Cbasedlifeform How to make friend and influence people: _" If and when our government grabs Edward Snowden, and brings him back here to the United States for trial, what does this group do?" said retired air force general Michael Hayden, who from 1999 to 2009 ran the NSA and then the CIA, referring to "nihilists, anarchists, activists, Lulzsec, Anonymous, twentysomethings who haven't talked to the opposite sex in five or six years"._ ------ forgotAgain Making Snowden the story to take the light off of the NSA and FBI spying on _everyone_. ------ squozzer Well said Reichsminister Goebbels. ------ mtgx Oh great, we've already moved from the already awful "cyberwar" expression, to "cyber-terrorism" now? I predict they'll be talking about the "cyber- apocalypse" or "cyber-armageddon" a year from now. The scarier the words the beter. ~~~ diminoten What would you call it? An attack on Google, or Microsoft, or Apple, or Sony, or Verizon as "retaliation" for cooperating with the US government, designed to punish the corporation for performing their legal duty and to "scare" other corporations into not cooperating. Okay so no one's going to die, which makes it significantly different in scope, but if it's an attack on a company with the goal of inciting fear... ~~~ pampa it is an insurrection	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Links were always supposed to go both ways. It just took decades to get there - awwstn https://capiche.com/e/roam-research-worldwideweb-xanadu ====== 8bitsrule Here's another article on Roam Research (I did appreciate the history in that link) that more clearly explains what it is they're up to. [https://nesslabs.com/roam-research](https://nesslabs.com/roam-research) Also noted, Roam wants a request for access to their site: [https://roamresearch.com/](https://roamresearch.com/)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Problems with TypeScript - BarelyLit https://blog.logrocket.com/is-typescript-worth-it/ ====== sethc2 IMO, Yes (usually). Let me elaborate. If you are starting a new project, yes use typescript over JS. And configure it with all strict options. This doesn't magically give you well architected and well-tested code, it still takes a good engineer to do that. But what it does allow is for the engineer to refactor the code to support new functionality with more speed and confidence, rather than shoehorning it in in fear of breaking something or it taking too long. Furthermore, as people join your team, it will be a lot easier for them to figure out where some piece of data is coming from and how the code flows from one spot to the next. If you have a massive JS project and you want to convert it to typescript. The answer _might_ be no. Oftentimes when people port a JS project to TS, they end up using non strict typescript, and you get the syntactic overhead of writing TS, without really any benefit because nearly everything is any typed. If your only concern is a better codebase, and it doesn't matter how long it takes, then sure it is worth it, but we all know that is never our only concern. It still might be worth it, but I can almost guarantee you from experience, you will still end up with TypeErrors in your console at some point, because people will have just any typed things. Also if you're writing a tiny node script in a single file, to do some simple operation, then no it is probably not worth setting up a command to compile it and a tsconfig to configure it. Unless it is doing multiple things, and/or someone else in the future will have to use it, then it is probably still worth it. ~~~ sethc2 Oh one other potential drawback. Typescripts inferred types, can do some crazy things, and can be very powerful. This to me is really fun, but has definitely caused me when I first started using it to get lost in having fun doing crazy things, to ensure my strings were exactly some set of values depending on what some other value was, when a simple unit test and a simple "string" type, would've been a lot quicker and less confusing. ~~~ samhh If the strings are static you can define a type that's a union of string literals, create a tuple containing them all, and then a type guard function that simply checks the argument against the array. If the strings are dynamic then you're better off looking at a library like newtype-ts, but it's not very ergonomic compared to the likes of Haskell/PureScript so use sparingly. ~~~ no_wizard Why not just use an Enum? It will only accept the values of that enum. [https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/enums.html#enum...](https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/enums.html#enums) [https://www.typescriptlang.org/play/index.html?useDefineForC...](https://www.typescriptlang.org/play/index.html?useDefineForClassFields=true&preserveConstEnums=true#code/KYOwrgtgBAsgngZQC4CcCWIDmBnKBvAWACgpSoAxAeUqgF4oAiAIwEMUGAaYsqAIQEEASnUYAzAPbjO3MlUoDh9BhPGt2xAL7FiosCADGSNOJBQTAGzgBRcBH4pMACgBuLcwC5YiVBhwBKfBlSfRNscXNgADpzcScGJAALNFwAdzRzczMQSygkFgBrYCyi8VFchKLCuFxRFHFoeGR0LGwGPwBuIKgQkDCI6NiXNzpaekafFsiFDs1tIgtrW3s4xOSoNIyoJiKWU2AUOvYZ+ezFyGXHceacKaEAgHpHqAAVJNw1kHEkKF2ofcOgA) ~~~ untog Just my personal preference but using these string union types means that you don’t have to import the enum. Plus it’s less verbose and translates back to JS better than an enum does. Really just a matter of preference though. ------ sli TypeScript feels worth it until you use something like Elm, then you realize just how lacking and TypeScript's type system truly is. I have grown rather weary of type systems that don't require you to be exhaustive and, for my money, types like `Omit` and `Pick` are nasty hacks that just let you pretend like you aren't doing dynamic types, something TypeScript does a lot. The TypeScript pattern of `someFunc<typeof someInput>` is just dynamic types with extra steps. Using `any` wouldn't really lose you much of anything, the "type" is just "whatever this input is". That's not a real type, that's a dolled-up dynamic type. But hey, it typechecks! TypeScript's major weakness is that it doesn't want to break away from Javascript. That strict dedication to being a superset means the type system explodes into ten thousand builtin types the come, seemingly at times, from nowhere, simply to control for the wildness of Javascript. It feels like a joke sometimes, and like I need to have encyclopedic knowledge of all these highly-specialized types that are included in the language and are often being used in the background. This leads to nearly impenetrable error messages regarding types, especially if you have a stack trace involving more than one object/record type (whatever you want to call it), it will expand all of them and just, no. It's unreadable. It can be read, but it cannot simply be _grokked._ TypeScript just doesn't impress me. I get far better results from other languages for a whole lot less work. TypeScript claims to want a balance between correctness and productivity but the language gives me neither of those things. My typical experience is that I wrote almost the same amount of actual code, but now also with types. Elm lets me write _far less total code._ Less code means less bugs and more productivity, and better types and better correctness is what gives you those things. ~~~ preommr A big problem is that elm has questionable stability as a project. It's mainly one person, and not a lot of mainstream usage. The biggest projects mentioning elm are ones related to the main programmer. Typescript on the other hand has had massive growth and has been adopted by a large amount of libraries. Now, web ts/js libraries usually suck but it still speaks to the overall health of the language in a community. Even then, typescript still only has a very small percentage of usage. Elm is basically a rounding error on some of the surveys I've seen. Long term support, tooling, etc are often much more important for languages past a threshold. Typescript as a language may not be super exciting. Typescript as a technology is wonderful. ~~~ salimmadjd I was an early enthusiast of Elm. Sadly, Elm was never able to build a true core development team outside of Evan. Or at lest it didn’t do it fast enough. Evan is a smart programmer but not a strategic organizer or a communicator. As a result, one of the most exciting and promising approaches to front end development was relegated to a nice-toy project status. If you want to take the risk of building something using Elm’s approach, you’ll do it with Reason. Maybe not 100% as nice as Elm, but you’ll feel confident you’re not risking your code base and company on the whims of one person. I still think Elm is a nice educational language for getting people (and kids) into FP. ------ valand Guaranteed almost 100% type soundness!!! Non TypeScript user will hate this. Config it to maximum strictness! Add in runtime type checks Parse, don't validate [https://lexi- lambda.github.io/blog/2019/11/05/parse-don-t-va...](https://lexi- lambda.github.io/blog/2019/11/05/parse-don-t-validate/) Bring type to business logic, e.g. RegisteredUser { userId: number, email: string } AnonymousUser { userId: number, email: null } User = RegisteredUser \| AnonymousUser Handle errors ala Rust, Return errors/errortype rather than throws Utilize structure to determine result, e.g. Failure { error: Error, value: null } Success<T> { error: null, value: T } It is worth it. My experience with TypeScript is a whole lot different. Conspiracy theory inducing facts: \- LogRocket's main use is monitoring bugs in browser application \- Airbnb is LogRocket's customer ~~~ dkdbejwi383 I'm interested in the way you describe handling errors here. Do you have any real world examples you can point me to? Thanks ~~~ valand I would have gladly shown it to you, but almost all my code is proprietary Here's a small example: ``` function fetchCurrentWeather(){ return fetch(...) .catch(() => ({ error: new NetworkError(), value: null}) .then(res => res.json()) .then(maybeWeather => Weather.is(maybeWeather) ? { value: maybeWeather, error: null} : { error: new DecodeError(), value: null}) .catch(() => ({ error: new DecodeError(), value: null})) } // And then you use it somewhere in you react app async initialFetch(){ try { if (this.state.isLoading) return; this.setState({ isLoading: true, weather: null, error: null }); this.setState({ weather: await fetchCurrentWeather().then(reault => { if (result.error) throw result.error; return result.value; }) }); } catch (error) { this.setState({ error }) } finally { this.setState({ isLoading: false }); } } render(){ return ( <div> {this.state.isLoading && ...} {this.state.weather && ...} {this.state.error && ...} </div> ) } ``` ~~~ pdyck Why is this better than throwing errors or using Promise.resolve()? I know it is inefficient because creating a new error with a stack trace each time is bad for performance. However, you can also throw errors which do not extend Error to avoid this. Destructuring the output and explicitly checking for errors every time seems to be quite the hassle. ~~~ JamesSwift Because the error/success is encoded in the type, you are forced to handle the error case. If you aren't also wrapping throwable functions in `try/catch` then you have a lot of unhandled error cases. If you know that something truly isn't going to error then you can just force cast it as `foo as Success<T>`. That will still blow up at runtime if its not a `Success`. Alternatively, you could introduce a monadic chaining that is able to pipe `Result<T>` objects through many functions then handle at the end. ------ adrusi Mentioned as an afterthought at the end: IDE support for typescript, the best part about using the language. Not mentioned: type annotations serve as a form of documentation that gets statically verified. The verification strategy has some cracks, and there's a (fairly small) chance that the documentation will end up misleading. But API documentation for javascript projects generally sucks, and typescript helps to fill a lot of the common gaps. ~~~ nocommentx i'm tired of devs that claim that TS and GraphQL are "self-documenting" and don't need to write any documentation. it doesn't fill in the common gaps, it's just an excuse to not have to think about or talk to users. ~~~ paulcowan1970 I'm the author and the claims that Graphql and typescript replace documentation is madness ~~~ LaGrange ...good thing that there's pretty much no one making them, then. There's plenty of people saying that it effectively augments documentation, and provides a form of it that's quite useful. ------ nikolasburk While TypeScript isn't perfect, it surely is a major step forward compared to plain JS! Newer features like conditional types and mapped types open up new possibilities. My colleague actually recently gave a fantastic talk about these advanced features at the TS Berlin Meetup, highly recommended watch if you want to see what it's like pushing the boundaries of TypeScript: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJjeHzvi_VQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJjeHzvi_VQ) ~~~ vorticalbox Still compiles Down to js where you lose all type checking. Have you ever looked at a compiled js file? Things like spreading objects I to each other {...a,...b} End up being a nest object assign which is actually slower than spreading. ~~~ mixedCase Checks don't need to be in the JS, they just need to be there at compile time. No differently than a binary generated by Haskell; and you have source maps to replace debugging symbols too. And as mentioned by another user, you can choose your compile target to a specific version of JS which does support object spreading. ~~~ hopia Actually, Haskell compilation produces more type information available at runtime than Typescript's compiler does. For example, algebraic data types turn into tagged unions at runtime on Haskell, allowing pattern matching to operate on them. Whereas on Typescript the compilation process erases all this information, making it impossible to evaluate many such expressions. There are multiple 3rd party solutions to this, such as: [https://github.com/pelotom/runtypes](https://github.com/pelotom/runtypes) ~~~ mixedCase > algebraic data types turn into tagged unions at runtime on Haskell How does that work? I know next to nothing about the GHC, but in Haskell I would assume some tag is associated with each constructor (probably an integer) for the ADT and that the actual pattern matching gets compiled down to simple comparisons to either that integer or the right function for the more complex cases (pattern matching strings and other values). TypeScript essentially does that, except that the tags are not going to be optimized by the compiler (they will remain strings if the dev uses them), and the "pattern matching" is just regular conditional checks (if, ternary or switch) with even the exhaustiveness check being done as a manual hack introduced by the dev and checked at compile-time (the else or default case assigning the value to the never type). As for runtime values, Haskell also needs to validate types when deserializing, although that will be done by the deserialization libraries such as Aeson instead of deserializing and _then_ optionally validating like in TS. ~~~ hopia Yes, you're right, it should be an integer comparison check ultimately. > TypeScript essentially does that, except that the tags are not going to be > optimized by the compiler What do you mean by this? Typescript erases type information during compilation. So you would not be able to emulate pattern matching against types on TS. Or you could if you manually added some common tag to every single data type like interface. Or are you talking about just compile-time type checking on TS? ~~~ mixedCase > Or you could if you manually added some common tag to every single data type > like interface. This is how you emulate them, I took it for granted and neglected to explicitly mention this is a moderately popular convention in TypeScript (those are the tags I referred to). fp-ts for example uses it all over the place. With this the end result is essentially the same with compile-time type-safety for everything, and compiled down to an untyped binary or an untyped JS blob. ------ Androider The type of problem that TypeScript solves is not the type of problem that I have. In my 15 years of engineering, exceedingly rare is the case where the underlying cause is due to using wrong types. I could count the number of times types has been problem on one hand. Instead, almost all issues are due to logic errors and missing or poorly understood business requirements. For me, the time spent resolving TypeScript specific issues (missing type definitions, lack of support in third party libraries, general finickiness etc.) does not make it a worthwhile investment. I also did Scala for several years professionally, and while it instils rigor, I feel much the same that the price you pay isn't remotely worth the benefit you get. Conversely, I think one of the best investments you can possible make into tooling is to reduce the edit-compile-view cycle time, and you should aim for seconds at the most if not instantaneous updates. That speed of iteration will pay dividends. ~~~ Rapzid It's a charmed life where one hasn't had to spend countless hours helping other people track down "undefined is not a function" errors :\| ~~~ jammygit I did that a lot at my last job and found that the debugging was pretty quick. There’s always some race condition from some asynchronous function somebody called without waiting for the callback. Does TS help with that? ~~~ amatecha if something can be returned as undefined instead of a function, then yes, you are forced to either write code to handle the undefined value, or modify your logic so the returned value can only be a function :) ------ why-oh-why Instead of focusing on what TS does not, focus on what it does. TypeScript is not sound; JavaScript isn’t either. The first one will catch some type errors, the second will catch none. Syntax highlighting, linting, testing, and now type checking: every step can make you more confident about the code you ship, before it even hits the browser. You can forgo using any help and probably you’ll code faster, but, again, you lose confidence. ~~~ lucisferre Tests are the only thing that give me confidence about any code I write, Javascript or otherwise. ~~~ jsight And compilers are effectively a rudimentary form of test. They are not sufficient, nor necessary but they do validate some basic assumptions about the code. ~~~ thrower123 If for no other reason, I would like Typescript for flagging when you typo some property - e.g. foo.FooID vs foo.FooId. I've lost a stupid amount of time in regular JS because of things like this that make me want to pick up the computer and throw it out the window. ~~~ valand Decent editor does that now. I'm using atom on daily basis and it's helping me with that. VScode and intellij does the same ~~~ dragonwriter Doesn't the functionality for that in most editors leverage typescript typings, so that it's not really independent of typescript? ~~~ valand Ah I misread the parent comment. I thought it was more like "I wish typescript has this anti-typo functionality" You're right that it's not independent from TS. ------ alkonaut Doesn't typescript enable things like renaming an identifier and all it's usages, without doing it as a global text replace, or worrying that you might have renamed something you shoudldn't? Or is the type checking so "leaky" in a typical project that that kind of luxury (That would be done every day by Java or C# developers etc) isn't really available anyway? Unless it's a massive overhead to use typescript, autocomplete, renaming etc seems like they would make it worth it on their own. ~~~ scrollaway I use what you describe on a regular basis in typescript without issues indeed. ------ gandalfgeek There has been some research done on how programmers interpret gradual typing systems, and it turns out that it breaks many expectations and ends up being confusing. Explainer video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRf9l3Bz7nA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRf9l3Bz7nA) Original paper: [https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/tgpk-...](https://cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Papers/Published/tgpk- beh-grad-types-user-study/paper.pdf) ~~~ mcbits Note that the paper is concerned with run-time type checking and glosses over the fact that most/all of those code samples in the survey would be rejected at compile time by a static type checker (or at least by TypeScript). Their conclusion that "erasure" is disliked and unexpected is effectively saying the underlying dynamic language's behavior is disliked and unexpected. Of course it's possible to deliberately or accidentally coerce TypeScript into violating its type constraints and behaving in JavaScript's disliked and unexpected ways, but the survey questions would have to be substantially different, and likely the responses as well. ------ proc0 The soundness of the type system is not a valid criticism given that it's aiming at improving a language that had almost no type system at all. If you need more from your types then perhaps TS or JS is not the right choice here. ------ no_wizard My take away from this: If you don't have the discipline on your team to enforce good structural standards for your code, TypeScript may not help as much as you think. In my very much opinionated opinion, all the issues highlighted in this article, are avoidable with: 1\. Don't use the `any` type (I'm actually pretty shocked this article doesn't talk about using `unknown` instead of `any`. I have found `unknown` can be used where `any` tends to be used, most of the time, if not all the time, and it comes with the benefits of things like assertion control & tsc's type interference (it acts almost as a marker, in some ways, basically, for the type that gets fed through. It also forces you to think about validating the input) 2\. Enforcement of strict options for the compiler A non-goal to me is using TypeScript to avoid writing tests. This should never be someone's idea in adopting any typed language. I think this is a smell of a bigger problem. Types or no types, it does not influence why or how many tests I write, as testing is about validating your programs ability to handle its inputs & the correctness of its outputs (your testing algorithms, at the end of the day), so I do not see how this factors testing at all. Types also do not negate the fact you need to do validation (beyond perhaps, trivial validation of arguments at the call site, if your codebase is actually following good structural patterns) Is TypeScript perfect? No. Should you use it? I think you should probably make that decision after a careful reading of the documentation & discussing it with your team. Do I personally think this article has a strong case against TypeScript? No, as its (to me) very trivial to avoid any of these problems. You know what would likely be more effective with most code bases I've seen though? Good documentation & comments, with explanations of what things do if it isn't obvious enough to pick up in a second or less glance. Preferably following the JSDoc standard. ~~~ frenchyatwork > Don't use the `any` type The problem here is two-fold: 1\. Culture and existing code. Popular libraries use any when they should be using unknown or just not de-serializing stuff and making you explicity parse it yourself. The reason why these are popular is because culture and because of #2. 2\. Creating type guards is a pain, especially if you're trying to go from unknown to something with a complex structure. If types were something you could reflect on in run time, like most other interpreted languages, this would be a lot easier. ~~~ no_wizard To address culture, someone has to start doing it better, no reason it can't be those who know there is a better way, so I treat that as a red herring myself. You could always make a strongly typed wrapper around a library, for instance. Creating type guards might be a pain, sure. I think assertion functions will go a long way in this regard [https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/release- notes/t...](https://www.typescriptlang.org/docs/handbook/release- notes/typescript-3-7.html#assertion-functions) I also think that its an overestimated pain. If you are using interfaces to type your objects (commonly, this seems to be the pain point) then I don't think its terribly difficult to construct type guards around that. There is also the reflect-metadata polyfill (that I think TC39 is eventually going to make a standard) for run time type information. Using decorators could be valuable combined with `emitDecoratorMetadata` option [https://rbuckton.github.io/reflect- metadata/](https://rbuckton.github.io/reflect-metadata/) ------ swyx the title completely doesnt match the content, this is pure clickbait and logrocket is so shameless about it. i grit my teeth and click but am completely unsurprised at yet another low quality list of arguments that have been rehashed over and over. here's a less well known, more rigorous study: [http://earlbarr.com/publications/typestudy.pdf](http://earlbarr.com/publications/typestudy.pdf) \- To Type or Not to Type: Quantifying Detectable Bugs in JavaScript ~~~ nocommentx they mention a time tax of 262 seconds median for TS annotations for their set of 400 bugs. almost 4.5 minutes. so idk, there seems to be some math missing in this paper about the actual trade offs. so maybe you get a 15% improvement in "detectable" bugs found, at a 13.3% time cost (60 minutes /4.5 minutes) per hour of work. worth it...? are your devs expensive? more expensive than QA. ~~~ eyelidlessness Types are easier to read, reason about and maintain than tests, particularly if it's QA writing the tests instead of engineers. ------ erokar Thing is you can now have many of the benefits of TS without using it in your own code. Most popular libraries come with type definitions now and an editor like VS Code will take advantage of this and give you the same autocompletions TS would. TS introduces some friction for setting things up, it slows you down in initial development, increases LoC, etc. I do like the type documentation in function signatures, the autocompletion and the refactor support, but I think the project needs to be of a certain size for the cost/benefit trade off favors TS, typically a project that goes on for 6+ months and with 2 team members or more. Anything smaller than that and I wouldn't choose it myself. ------ _bxg1 > ...there is an argument that states that the adoption of TypeScript would > not have been as high if a sound type system is 100% guaranteed. This is > disproved as the dart language is finally gaining popularity as Flutter is > now widely used. In my experience TypeScript's unsoundness is a feature, not a bug. You cannot compare it to languages that were designed from the ground up to be sound. JavaScript was fundamentally not designed to be used in a 100% sound way, and trying to do so introduces an _enormous_ developer burden in terms of idioms and language features that you can't use, and syntactic hoops you have to jump through. You find yourself constantly fighting against the language. I know this because at my company we started with Flow, which is (very proudly) sound. It was impossible to be productive. For a small example, every reference to document.body had to have a null-check, even though we could guarantee by where we placed our <script> tags that the body would never ever be undefined. The experience was rife with situations like this, which created tons of cruft and made code harder to read. "any" is nearly always bad. But the other escape hatches, like casting, have proven essential to building a reasonable codebase that doesn't try to ignore the reality of JavaScript. > Runtime type checking would be beneficial when dealing with JSON payloads > returned from API calls, for example. This I agree with, but I don't think it belongs in the core TypeScript project. We used Flow Runtime with Flow ([https://gajus.github.io/flow- runtime/](https://gajus.github.io/flow-runtime/)) which creates runtime assertions automatically based on your static types, on a file-by-file basis. It was wonderful, and is the only thing I miss about Flow, although it was a third-party project and there's no reason something similar couldn't be made for TypeScript. I would be giddy to hear that someone was building one. ------ hanneswidrig These kind of articles seem to be commonplace and I frankly do not think they provide any productive value. "any" is supposed to be the escape hatch as TypeScript is designed to be incremental. Anyone with a semblance of understanding knows that TypeScript transpiles into regular JavaScript, you don't run TypeScript code in the browser. ~~~ valand Friendly tips: you can replace any with unknown. Other friendly tips: runtime type checks are available [https://github.com/gcanti/io- ts](https://github.com/gcanti/io-ts) [https://github.com/pelotom/runtypes](https://github.com/pelotom/runtypes) ~~~ sadlion Can you please provide more detail when it's best to use runtime type checks? For webapps with strict TS config, I'm failing to see the advantage. Runtime errors can occur when crossing boundaries from server API to UI but when you discover the exceptions, you go fix your contract. ~~~ valand 1st it's easier to identify which contract is inaccurate, or even whether the contract is inaccurate or not in the first place 2nd it's more convenient for both the end-user and the developers that errors are handled this way ------ lets-surf This example from the article looks like an argument for immutability to me. interface A { x: number; } let a: A = {x: 3} let b: {x: number \| string} = a; b.x = "unsound"; let x: number = a.x; // unsound a.x.toFixed(0); // WTF is it? ~~~ SpaceNugget Kind of, you can't have your cake and eat it too. When it comes to typing systems you have to pick 2: Depth, Mutability, Soundness ------ snek Whenever that thing about Airbnb comes up I feel compelled to remind that it was a study of _eight_ bugs, three of which ts would've prevented. ~~~ swyx 8 bugs? are you sure? did you watch the talk? [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-J9Eg7hJwE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-J9Eg7hJwE) ------ luord "Is Typescript worth it?" No, but not because the tired diatribe on typing, but because JavaScript nowadays is mostly good enough... As long as we remember what its goal is and we don't use it for anything more than its intended purpose. That aside, everything in that post re soundness vs unsoundness was what I used to know (and was taught in college) as "strong" and "weak" typing, is the redefinition recent? Was I taught incorrectly? That aside, C is weakly typed (and there are long, long discussions on it) but I'll say that, if it's good enough for C, then being for or against it becomes pretty much subjective (obligatory IMO, my saying that at all is _also_ subjective). After all, it's a flamewar that's been going on for decades. Typescript certainly isn't going to solve it. ~~~ archon-99 The definitions are: Static: Statically checked by a compiler. Dynamic: Not Statically checked by a compiler Strong: Types enforced by the runtime Weak: Types not enforced by the runtime Of these, JavaScript: Dynamic, Weak TypeScript: Static, Weak C#: Static, Strong As to if you think TypeScript is worth it, of course its worth it. Whether or not you're writing JavaScript or TypeScript, you're still thinking in types, function signatures and data structures. TypeScript allows you to encode that information so you don't need to hold it in your head (or have other programmers figure it from usage, as would be the case for JavaScript). But that aside, TypeScript's tooling alone makes it worth it. As for this flame war, i strongly suspect that most type system advocates have mostly likely used BOTH dynamic and static languages (C#, Java programmers have had to deal with JavaScript for decades), while I expect the majority of dynamic advocates (say Python, PHP, JavaScript) have primarily stuck with dynamic. Those with the wider perspective have the better insight imo. ~~~ luord I am aware of those definitions. It was "sound" and "unsound" what threw me off. > Whether or not you're writing JavaScript or TypeScript, you're still > thinking in types, function signatures and data structures. TypeScript > allows you to encode that information so you don't need to hold it in your > head Static vs dynamic, a flamewar that's _over sixty years old_ to which I am _not_ going to contribute. > But that aside, TypeScript's tooling alone makes it worth it. JavaScript has pretty good tooling too. > As for this flame war, i strongly suspect that most type system advocates > have mostly likely used BOTH dynamic and static languages (C#, Java > programmers have had to deal with JavaScript for decades), while I expect > the majority of dynamic advocates (say Python, PHP, JavaScript) have > primarily stuck with dynamic. Should we ask LISP developers? How about its derivates like Clojure or Scheme? There are many of them here in HN (in fact, I've dabbled on Clojure a little bit myself), though that would probably lead to a different flamewar entirely (functional vs oo). In any case, I don't follow what point you were trying to make writing this suspicion, it was clear that you were going to get counterexamples and you didn't provide sources that at least gave support to having such a suspicion. I would appreciate if you elaborated what was your implication. By the by, I worked in java during 2013 and 2014, and I've been working with Go exclusively for nearly a year now. I still don't really care about what type system any given language I've worked on has, there's good and garbage code everywhere. Though, since all this can _only_ be opinion until someone conclusively demonstrates a given type system's superiority, I still prefer writing python code. > Those with the wider perspective have the better insight imo. Maybe we should ask Guido van Rossum's perspective. ~~~ archon-99 > JavaScript has pretty good tooling too. I believe most of the best in class tooling for JavaScript borrows on leveraging TypeScript compiler for inference. And its still below the bar offered by TypeScript. > Should we ask LISP developers? How about its derivates like Clojure or > Scheme? There are many of them here in HN (in fact, I've dabbled on Clojure > a little bit myself), though that would probably lead to a different > flamewar entirely (functional vs oo). OOP is not at odds with FP. They are different things entirely and can be leveraged in equal measure within a codebase. Consider C# and LINQ (with LINQ derived from lazy expressions in Haskell). As for LISP, TypeScript services as a good test case for layering dynamic languages with type systems, so why not TypeLISP? Anyway, the point im trying to make is, irrespective of if the programmer is working with a type system or not, the programmer is still reasoning about software with types. The dynamic language programmer is still thinking about function signatures (arguments, return types), they are still thinking about 'the properties of some object' and they still think about generic abstractions (as in .map()). I don't understand why JavaScript programmers are adverse to encoding that information in a type system when it solidifies and communicates their intent. (both to other programmers as well as the compiler) JavaScript on its own requires the programmer to infer the original developers rationale from usage, and assertions of 'correctness' can only truly be inferred by running a software (by test or otherwise). Obviously, both TS and JS need tests, but in the TS case, you've removed a whole class of issues around types and call signatures, where as in JS, one might be compelled to test both 'types' and 'logic'. A type system can at least narrow huge classes of problems, allowing a programmer to focus on testing logic, not the inadequacies of their (or others) brains to hold mountains of implied type information in their heads. If you want one practical example..... refactoring. While JavaScript is dynamic, just change the name of a function, or move functionality elsewhere...what assertions can JavaScript or its tooling provide that all dependent code is appropriately updated as a result of that refactor? Honestly, choosing to leverage of a type system, imo, is an open admission of the complexities of software, and the fallibilities of the human brain. Rejecting the benefits of a type system to me demonstrate a dangerous over- estimation of one own abilities, or a lack of personal introspection with respect to reasoning. While this debate seems to continue, I don't think my views on it ever will. ~~~ lispm > As for LISP, TypeScript services as a good test case for layering dynamic > languages with type systems, so why not TypeLISP? Lisp users think that a 'dynamical' and a 'dynamically typed' language are two different things. Lisp is both. Being 'dynamically typed' supports or simplifies a lot of dynamical features. There are a bunch of languages which implement a subset of Lisp features and which were adding type systems. Historically much of typed FP was developed out of Lisp tradition. Common Lisp for example has CLOS definitions like: (defclass person (living-thing) ((name :type string))) So the definition makes clear that are a class/type which inherits from the class/type living-thing. It also defines that contents of the slot name are of type string. A CLOS method then is: (defmethod say ((from person) (to person) (m message)) ...) Which means that an object of class person sends to another object of class person an object of class message. Multi-methods in CLOS allow us to define and dispatch on the class of several arguments. Common Lisp then also has type declarations: (defun collide (a b) (declare (type moving-object a b)) ... ) This allows programs to document types, compilers to use types for optimization purposes and some compilers to do type checking. What Common Lisp lacks is a more extensive/expressive type system which would be competitive with what Haskell/or similar would offer. ------ brenden2 I've found TypeScript and React with VSCode to be incredibly productive for web development. If you're on the fence, give it a shot. TypeScript is a superset of JavaScript, so it brings a lot of baggage along with it, but if you're writing frontend code it's a real pleasure to work with compared to JS. ------ solomonb Why do these sorts of articles always give vague definitions of Soundness and act like it exists on a spectrum? Soundness = Progress & Preservation. From Pierce's Types And Programming Languages: "Progress: A well typed term is not stuck (either it is a value or it can take a step according to the evaluation rules). Preservation: If a well typed term takes a step of evaluation, then the resulting term is well typed." There are not degrees to Soundness and it is a well defined term. ~~~ gjm11 You've shown that _one can give a black-and-white definition of soundness and have it be useful_. That doesn't mean that there's no way to give useful meaning to "more sound" or "less sound". Consider the following family of languages: L has a sound type system. LD (D for "dynamic") is L _plus_ the ability to escape from it, in specially marked "unsafe" sections of code, into a dynamically typed system. (So evaluation can produce runtime errors, but they can be handled safely.) LC (C for "crash") is L _plus_ the ability to escape in "unsafe" sections into a system like Ld's except that now type errors aren't checked for and caught at runtime, they just produce memory-stomping and buffer overflows and the like. D is just LD's "unsafe" language. C is just LD's "unsafe" language. (Any resemblance to actual real-world languages named C, living or dead, is purely coincidental.) The only one of these languages that is sound is L, of course. But there is some quality closely related to soundness by which there's an obvious partial ordering where L > LD > D, L > LC > C, LD > LC, and D > C, and if someone describes this situation by saying that LD is "sounder" than C then I don't see any reason why we should stop them. Similarly: a federal state is either a "perfect union" or not, for any reasonable definition of "perfect", but it's reasonable for the US constitution to aim at a "more perfect union". A thing is either "unique" or not, but despite the cries of pedants it's reasonable to describe a limited- edition Ferrari of which only two were ever made as "almost unique" and as "more unique" than a standard-issue Ford Fiesta. A given region of space is either "vacuum" or not, but most of the things we describe as "vacuum" actually contain some very rarefied gas and it's common to use terms like "high vacuum" to quantify how vacuum-like a "vacuum" is. ------ stared There is quite a lot missing in TypeScript types (e.g. integer or uint types would help a lot in typical tasks such as accessing an array or iterating a loop; even if they are stored as floats, I want to make sure someone won't take 2.5 element of a list to get undefined). Still, for me, TS is a day and night difference with JavaScript. While it does not solve everything, at least I know what is code about. E.g. when I see `volume` in plain JS the first question I ask myself is: is it a number, plain object, instance of a class, a simple boolean, or what? It is not only about tests. It is also about readability. ------ crooked-v Typescript from the ground up is absolutely worth it, starting with how it gives you full IDE inference for all those "big blob of options" objects that a lot of JS methods use. ~~~ tantalor Any IDE could do that for JavaScript; it has nothing to do with TypeScript. ~~~ Rychard How could this be done for JavaScript without any mechanism for signifying the _type_ of object that is expected? ~~~ jamil7 If you're using a third party dependency that has type definitions tsserver / VSCode will pick it up regardless of whether you're writing js or ts. ~~~ Rapzid I don't believe many understand how much tsserver is doing behind the scenes in Vscode for JS code bases.. Of course any IDE can do that, because they can use tsserver via the language server protocol haha. ~~~ jamil7 Yeah I use it with CoC in nvim and find it works as well as VSCode. ------ deckard1 Ignoring the tech side for a minute, my major problem with TypeScript is that TS proponents assume that the static vs. dynamic debate has been settled. That the future is static typing, and that people have to be crazy for wanting to do dynamic typing in a dynamically typed language. A great many developers have found themselves having to write JavaScript because that's where they got pigeonholed. Then, because they'd rather be doing Haskell, Java, or whatever, they bring that crap to JS and enforce it on developers that possibly liked doing regular JS. Type inference is older than I am. Yet you would think this is some new technology. When in reality, we could have had it on Ruby. On Python. On Perl. And on Lisp. Decades ago. It's not new and it's not special. But it certainly has a lot of undeserved hype at the moment. There is no conclusive proof static typing reduces bugs. This is some weird myth that keeps circulating. The trend pendulum will continue swinging though. TS won't be immune. ~~~ thawaway1837 I don’t see how you can claim that TS believes the static vs dynamic debate is settled when TS already includes, and continues to add features that enable and make it easier to dynamically type stuff (for example, unknown is a fairly recent addition). In reality, the reason TS has been so successful, and likely will continue to be so successful (until they screw up the execution, or forget what made the language so successful) is thst TS is an entirely pragmatic language. It uses theory not to decide its roadmap, but rather, uses actual problems and needs faced by JS developers to decide the roadmap, and then uses type theory and other CS concepts to solve those problems. For example, the reason TS uses Types is not because a group in MS decided that static typing is better than dynamic typing, and what JS really needs is a layer of types above it (that was coffeescript...). Typescript was created because MS wanted to make better IDEs and tooling for JS (specifically, they wanted to bring Intellisense which is a huge VS selling and marketing point, to JS) and they realised they couldn’t do that without adding type information to JS. Hence, a practical need drove the decision to create TS. ~~~ jammygit IDEs aren’t that necessary if you have strong command line skills. The only ide feature I really miss is autocomplete because it’s a pain to remember method names ~~~ addicted My IDE is Vim/i3/bash. So the IDE stuff isn’t extremely advantageous for me. But that’s the reason Typescript was created. A convenient side effect of that for me is that I can manually use the same clues an IDE used to understand the code base I’m working on easier, faster and with more confidence than I would be able to in a vanilla JS project. ------ 0xff00ffee Typescript users: LOVE IT! Non-typescript users: ANOTHER layer? /sigh/ Cynical, yes, but that's because I haven't had a smooth onramping experience the times I thought about switching. Would love a recommendation. ~~~ AgloeDreams Using TS since ~2017. Moving an existing codebase to it is a giant pain, otherwise it's not bad. It fits you into better practices, but don't treat it as types are always true. When debugging issues I'll commonly assume Typescript's types do not exist or how it would act if they are wrong. This is notably true of consuming API responses with mixed data types. Generally, what I really like about typescript is that you normally blend it with linting, minifying, and strong IDE integrations. These things, when combined, really help code readability and adherence to TS conventions and eventually save you from massive bugs that might not have been caught prior. Obviously, at the end of the day, how you use it really defines how helpful it is. All that said, I haven't ever really had major issues with the tools around TS. ------ leshow > the adoption of TypeScript would not have been as high if a sound type > system is 100% guaranteed. This is disproved as the dart language is finally > gaining popularity as Flutter is now widely used. Soundness is a goal of the > dart language which is discussed here. Look, I wish TS type system was sound too, but that's not a "proof", it's just a data point. TS doesn't have the same goals as Dart, there are lots of variables which aren't the same, so you can't just take Dart's approach and say "look I proved it". There are lots of popular languages with unsound type systems; Java for example. I don't know how you could have a criticism of TS without mentioning the lack of sum types. Yes, you can fake it by having an object with the same field name differentiated by a string constant, it's still not as nice as having first class support for sum types. ------ chaostheory Another Typescript fan here. The title didn’t match the post content but I agree with everything he wrote concerning type “soundness”. From my POV it’s a downside of typescript but it makes sense since it’s just a superset of JavaScript ~~~ heisenbit Yep, it ain't perfect but it is so much better than not having it. Anyone being concerned about TS adding overhead please take a look at how generics in Java work - both struggle with erasure of type information at compile time. Java may be sound but doing anything non trivial with generic types gets complex quickly. Compared to Java generics doing TS advanced types is almost a joy. ------ jefflombardjr Eric Elliot does a great analysis on this: [https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-typescript- tax-132ff...](https://medium.com/javascript-scene/the-typescript- tax-132ff4cb175b) ~~~ preommr side note: but what the hell is hashicorp configuration language (HCL)? It's apparently the second fastest growing language based on whatever metric the chart is using and I've never heard of it. ~~~ mmorris It's used with Terraform, amongst other things. So you might not have heard of it if you're not doing devops/infrastructure work. ------ mattwad I might get downvoted, but I believe that using "strict" mode is not worth it precisely for the reasons this article talks about. You get at least 90% of the benefit of Typescript (IDE support, typos, refactoring, etc) without --noImplicitAny and other flags that induce a lot of boilerplate and wasted time. After all, how confident can anyone be that DefinitelyTyped types are correct? I use types when I find them useful. I also enjoy being able to not use types when I don't need them, which is why I choose to use Javascript. ------ acemarke I'd say it's definitely worth it. I wrote a blog post recently about my experiences learning and using TypeScript as both an app dev and a library maintainer for Redux: [https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2019/11/blogged-answers- le...](https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2019/11/blogged-answers-learning-and- using-typescript/) As part of that, I listed some of the tradeoffs and takeaways. In particular, I strongly recommend a "pragmatic 80%" approach to tackling TS. ------ dynamite-ready I won't lie. I read the title, and thought "At last, objectivity". It's like CoffeeScript all over again. Except this time, this particular assault on ECMAScript is much better funded. Don't get me wrong, I think there's a place for strong typing in web based UIs. But for one, WASM is a better idea for the choices and flexibility it offers, and more importantly to me, I think the bigger challenges in UI programming are not solved by strict typing. ------ city41 Most npm modules are written in JavaScript and when it comes to types they are handwritten (if they exist at all). The very nature of this makes TS unsound, as you have to count on the types being written correctly. I've encountered incorrect types many times. Even worse, when the types ship inside the module and are incorrect, it's difficult to correct them. I prefer JS modules to have a separate @types module. ------ aecorredor If you’re writing JS, then adding TS will give you a lot more reassurance when writing new code or refactoring old one. Even if it’s not perfect, I don’t see a reason why you’d choose JS over TS today other than maybe you don’t want to go through the first month of getting used to. Once you’re out of that, you’ll end up with code that’s much easier to reason about and also debug, in my humble opinion. ------ jillesvangurp I've done some programming with typescript. IMHO the reason for around 50% of the javascript world now using it is that it provides substantial improvements over javascript that are real. Personally, I insist on typescript on any node.js or frontend javascript codebase these days. Yes, it's not perfect. And, yes the inherent problems of javascript still leak through in many places. But with a little configuration, you can make the static code analyzer and compiler help you avoid most of that. IMHO the amount of verbosity it adds is negligible. I actually measured a slight decrease in LOC when I was converting code. You add some type annotations (which IMHO also help human code readers) but then you also get access to syntactic sugar to offset that. It's a fair compromise considering that most tools trying to help the developer have more to go on and basically work much better. Ballpark your number of LOC is not going to grow when switching to typescript. But IMHO it's just a gateway drug for developers to find their way to more capable languages. Personally, I'm interested in the direction that Jetbrains is taking with Kotlin-js, which with the next version will have some nice tooling around it to leverage typescript type definitions for integrating npms and hides most of the build tool madness behind gradle. The kotlin compiler has a much more sound/strict typesystem than typescript and also the language has quite a few language features that the typescript developers have not gotten around to supporting yet (they've been making progress catching up with recent releases though). They are also addressing size of the minified code. With the recent improvements, hello world is now a lot more reasonable than it used to be (<80kb instead of ~1MB). It eliminated unused code more effectively. If you feel brave, you can get started with this on a modern react project right away. Most of the dependencies you'd use for that should just work fine with kotlin-js. But realistically it's probably going to take another few years to stabilize. IMHO Kotlin is interesting because it is already widely used by frontend developers on Android and has a lively ecosystem of frameworks that might also make sense in a browser. Also co-routines are nicer than async await in typescript. And of course WASM is opening up this space further to just about any language. So for people finding themselves a taste for more/better typing, there will be plenty of alternatives for typescript. ------ tabtab In general it seems hard to be in-between dynamic typing and static typing (compiling). As the article implies, one typically has to do more testing if dynamicness can allow "bad data" in. The trade-off for dynamicness is more productivity and (potentially) easier- to-read code because less code is needed on average to express an idea since type-related code isn't needed as often. But if TypeScript is not type-safe enough to reduce the need for fine-grained testing, then you get the worse of both worlds: the verbosity of types and the busy-work of micro-testing. That being said, I wish JavaScript would add a feature to allow _optional_ parameter checking such as: function foo(a:intReq, b:datetime, c:datetimeReq, d) {...} Here, the "Req" ("required") suffix means the field can't be null or white- space. Parameter "d" has no type indicator. It's still "soft" type checking, but would catch a lot of problems earlier. ------ typescriptfan1 It's interesting that someone who is primarily using JavaScript in the backend is criticizing TypeScript's type system. There is a simple reason why TypeScript's type system is how it is... TypeScript is additive which works well in practice. ------ ptcampbell LogRocket deserve some praise for doing the company blog right. Good, self hosted content (no Medium) and well written pieces on technology from a practical everyday perspective. I am not a customer, by the way. ------ vemv I don't think pointing out deliberate design decisions is a valid criticism. It's like criticising a chair for not being a beachball. Folks seeking a Haskell-like type system in javascript certainly have options. ------ craftoman This article is wrong from many aspects. There are things that many developers can't get with Typescript and it's flexibility...just always keep in mind what makes Typescript so special compared to any other languages. You can't achieve both flexibility and typed solid programming in the same place, you must sacrifice the things you just mentioned and few others. Typescript was supposed to be flexible and developer friendly, it's not a hardcore language and never will be. ------ akdor1154 A bunch of the issues here are due to the author actually casting instead of letting inference do its job. // unsound, val.toFixed(0) compiles let val: number = ("string" as string \| number) vs. // sound, val.toFixed(0) does not compile let val = ("string" as string \| number) // sound In general, it's unnecessary (and as demonstrated, potentially harmful) to annotate assignments like these. ~~~ TheDong Their example without `: number` still exhibits the exact same behaviour. The `: number` isn't a cast either, it's declaring the type of the variable. You can't help but explicitly name the type of a variable in many cases. What if they were passing val to a function as an argument? You can't have 'function foo(x)', you have to have 'function foo(x: number)' and name the type. So yes, their example is contrived, but no, what you said is not sound. It has the same problem as the one the author mentions. The typescript compiler intentionally does not catch their issue. If I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to demonstrate, please make a typescript playground of it. ------ trixie_ The author's example is a trivial corner case that can be easily avoided. It is nowhere close to important enough to fuel the question of 'Is TypeScript Worth It?' ------ jammygit I think I’m alone in this, but JavaScript is a neat language that is incredibly powerful and expressive (minus a few warts). Most of the problems that arise from it seem to come from undisciplined work habits and a lack of code review. As long as your team is smart enough to not call all your function arguments “args” or “data” or “params”, the asynchronous flows are really nice. IMO at least ------ wildpeaks It's worth it because it catches a lot of low-hanging bugs at a small cost, and it's well maintained and has great tools support. Plus you can even use it like a simple linter if you want to continue writing vanilla Javascript (it catches less, but still catches a lot). ------ jiofih I don’t know how these people are using TS, but I’ve been part of a major project for over a year and we’ve had zero runtime issues, using all kinds of libraries in both nodejs and the browser. But for our standards, that object assignment in the example is a big no-no, TS or no TS. ------ dynamite-ready I've got a tangential question, and I think it's worth asking here. With the precision ML requires, why aren't data scientists rushing from Python, to a language with a stronger type system? ~~~ mattnewton Most machine learning doesn't work the first time and required rapid iteration outside of your production system in my experience. Then, when you finally get a model, you can put those weights into your stable production system that has all the automated testing and is written in a typed language. ------ agumonkey I had this question since I tried rewriting some big-todo app in TS. Do people try to write a core in simple (sound) types and then have an outer shell of IO/frail typechecks around ? ------ techsin101 Change my mind but if you are using VScode you're getting 90% of the benefits without having to take the cost of writing types. ------ donpark Worth it at component level. Hassle at application level. I use TS to write components and JS to write the app using those components. ------ Rapzid Interesting.. The biggest drawback I've experienced with TypeScript has been the complaining. ------ vanusa The main problem with TypeScript is that at the end of the day -- you're still using JS. Which outside of its natural realm of application (i.e. the browser) is a highly questionable value proposition. "A bandaid over a machine-gun wound" is what we might call it. ------ nocommentx nope - the loss in velocity is not worth using it unless you're a massive team. TS is for Java programmers who are mad at Javascript for existing and don't know how it works well enough to grok overloading etc. plus you get a lot of the benefits of TS in an IDE like VSCode without actually having to use types at all. if you're a javascript native, typescript is constricting and eliminates one of the best parts of javascript - no types!! ~~~ jimbob45 [https://www.tutorialsteacher.com/typescript/function- overloa...](https://www.tutorialsteacher.com/typescript/function-overloading) TS/JS don't allow for overloading the way that other languages do - it does not allow you to differentiate between functions via number of parameters, only types of parameters. If you try to differentiate based on number of parameters, it will simply use whichever definition of that function name it finds first. ~~~ 52-6F-62 That's not [entirely] my experience. Here's a quick example: Declaration file style: \--- // add.d.ts export declare function add(a: number, b: number): number; export declare function add(a: number, b: number, c: number): number; export declare function add(a: number, b: number, c: number, d: number): number; \--- // add.js function add() { switch (arguments.length) { case 2: return arguments[0] + arguments[1]; case 3: return arguments[0] + arguments[1] + arguments[2]; case 4: return arguments[0] + arguments[1] + arguments[2] + arguments[3]; default: throw new Error("Too few or too many arguments. Number of arguments: " + arguments.length); } } module.exports = { add }; \--- // adding.ts import { add } from "./add"; console.log("4 + 4 =", add(4,4)); console.log("4 + 4 + 4 =", add(4,4,4)); console.log("4 + 4 + 4 + 4 =", add(4,4,4,4)); \--- (Gist: [https://gist.github.com/Robert- Fairley/98a2da3f0361e524f4e05...](https://gist.github.com/Robert- Fairley/98a2da3f0361e524f4e056d947a6172a)) It will default to the first function name, but it definitely allows for overloading the number of parameters. It's not perfect as you do still have to implement the function as it would need to be implemented for JS ------ achou In type systems there's a tension between expressiveness, soundness, and comprehensibility. A sound type system must exclude _all_ programs that have runtime issues, and, holding that constant, try its best to maximize expressiveness and comprehensibility of the programs that can be written. But what about programs that can run fine but are excluded by the type system? They are _censored_. This is what's less visible until you actually try to build something substantial, pushing the boundaries of expression, performance, or scale. Then you'll find that a sound type system can become more and more of a straight-jacket. One that forces you to write code in ways that are limited by what its type designers could envision expressing (or could prove that was safe to express). The trouble is that it's hard to know when you might reach the point where the type system begins to limit you. It might never happen, as you frolick happily within the walled garden. Or it might happen when you write your first line of code. In a large system that must deal with external requirements, it's something that in my experience becomes inevitable. That's not even touching upon comprehensibility, which becomes an increasing challenge for purely sound type systems as they attempt to increase expressiveness. The biggest innovation of TypeScript is JavaScript. That is, TypeScript started with a huge established corpus of JavaScript that showed what developers wanted to express and how they wanted to express it. And, crucially, how popular various kinds of expression actually were in the developer community. This forced TypeScript to take practical expressiveness of millions of lines of JS seriously, that ordinarily would have been censored by type system design before the first line of code was written. That's why it's entirely unfair to harp on TypeScript's unsoundness, without also exploring the corresponding gain in expressiveness and comprehensibility relative to other type systems. BTW, this line of reasoning is the reason so many "sound" type systems also have their equivalent of "any": Rust has unsafe[1]. C# has unsafe[2]. Flow has any[3]. And all practical languages have strings, which are kind of a lowest common denominator when it comes to dealing with a type system that simply can't express what you need. [1]: [https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch19-01-unsafe- rust.html](https://doc.rust-lang.org/book/ch19-01-unsafe-rust.html) [2]: [https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language- refe...](https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/language- reference/keywords/unsafe) [3]: [https://flow.org/en/docs/types/any/](https://flow.org/en/docs/types/any/) ------ bigodines yes ~~~ __s Was working an application written in JS Converted it to TS. In the process of fixing up types, it found bugs for us. Value demonstrated ------ VyperCard I stopped reading after the first sentence. ------ unjte I don't like TypeScript at all. I used to write c# and javascript all day. Every time I had to write javascript, it was much more enjoyable than writing the c#. I would often have to create classes purely because the language required them. All of these classes all over the place with no methods in them at all. A whole bunch of typing all over the place that I could tell I was never even mentally parsing, but still having to type and see on the screen. Then I started working on my own and decided to use Node a lot in the situations where I would have to use c# at my previous job. There were no more bugs, no problems with refactoring, and it was much more enjoyable than writing c#. Now this TypeScript is infecting javascript, and all the jobs and so on require "typescript" instead of javascript. It puts all the things I didn't like about c# back into javascript. People will make all kinds of ridiculous claims that it is irresponsible not to use TypeScript, and that it improves productivity and so on. None of these claims are true and don't get to the real reason that TypeScript exists. Most well-structured programs aren't one giant function that is hard to refactor. They are usually a series of isolated, small functions. There is even a trend towards "microservices" and function as a service and so on. These are things that reduce the claimed reasons for TypeScript, rather than increase it. Many times I see the reason for using TypeScript being "it is good for large teams". Yet still, I see it used in teams of 3 people all the time. The real reason TypeScript is used is because there are a very large number of programmers now, which means the quality of the average programmers is much lower than it has ever been. Many people who program often just copy and paste code from stack overflow. Many of these people were the same people who looked in fear at JavaScript, and couldn't even understand it because it wasn't the one language that they knew. TypeScript gives these people more safety, feedback, and familiarity to be able to do their job. That is fine, but lets not pretend it is anything else.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
TechStars in Boulder - dawie http://dondodge.typepad.com/the_next_big_thing/2007/07/techstars-in-bo.html ====== pg _Brainchild?_ <https://www.gtldna.net/> ~~~ brett Ha. Do you have a take on the "let's have all the startups work in one big room" decision? ~~~ pg I think that's a mistake. It's hard for programmers to work in such an environment, and it makes the founders start to feel like employees. One of my rules of thumb for dealing with startups is to use Viaweb as a test case. And even if I'd have been willing to do it myself, there is no way I could ever have gotten Robert to dutifully show up and work in our investors' offices. ------ jsjenkins168 Don't know if I would like being required to work in a big room around a desk with a bunch of other people.. Good solid brainstorming is useful, but not when I'm actually coding. For that I like to be in my own world with the headphones on. Sounds like TechStars is more like an incubator setup in this regard. ------ budu3 I think they should leave each team to figure out their dev. process. Not all teams work well under a conference room type setup. The should allow teams to choose if they want to work under that setup or not. ------ dawie Their Company ideas don't seem great. Its interesting how they focus on stuff like office space etc. instead of focusing on the product as close to 100% of the time as possible. ------ vegashacker Dupe: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34269>	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
AWS Session Manager: SSH tunnels with less user management - jon918 https://blog.symops.io/2020/03/23/aws-session-manager-ssh-tunnels-with-less-user-management.html ====== jon918 This is a follow up to last week's post on session manager, a bunch of people had questions on SSH tunneling. Last week's post: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22592875](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22592875) ------ shurco We offer a simple solution - [https://werbot.com](https://werbot.com)	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
You are only cool if you own a brand - myearwood http://brands.tk ====== yakto Spaces after periods are cool, too. ------ mikerhoads Yeah....I'd rather be a billionaire.	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }
Tell HN: Scroogle's back - percept Good news, Scrooglers!<p>http://www.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/scraper.htm<p>Unadorned:<p>http://scroogle.org/scraper.html ====== pierrefar How are you doing it this time around? ------ MikeCapone If you want to use the encrypted version in Chrome, add this to your search engine list: <https://ssl.scroogle.org/cgi-bin/nbbwssl.cgi?Gw=%s> ------ misterbwong FYI - do NOT go to _scroogle.com_ as I just did. It is definitely NSFW. ------ philk Awesome news. Thanks guys! ------ ddemchuk I don't particularly understand what the issue was with Google dropping the other version...scraping the SERPS is not that hard	{ "pile_set_name": "HackerNews" }

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