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Show HN: A site for learning Java - bharal
http://35.165.5.118/about
======
c1yd3i
Yeah, I'm not logging in through Facebook or my LinkedIn, lol.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Car color&risk of car crash injury: population-based case control study (2003) - bookofjoe
https://www.bmj.com/content/327/7429/1455.full?hits=10&FIRSTINDEX=0&SEARCHID=1110070404449_14968&VOLUME=327&gca=bmj%253B327%252F7429%252F1455&FIRSTPAGE=1455
======
bookofjoe
[https://www.bookofjoe.com/2005/03/how_do_minimize.html](https://www.bookofjoe.com/2005/03/how_do_minimize.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What hourly rate should I charge as a freelancer? - Meshed
http://www.logicalbacon.com/what-hourly-rate-should-i-charge-as-a-freelancer/
======
eljayuu
What are you freelancing in?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A tiny Python exception oddity - luord
https://aroberge.blogspot.com/2019/12/a-tiny-python-exception-oddity.html?m=1
======
mherdeg
I'm impressed by the humility here from someone who (a) is writing a library
to replace core traceback behavior in pypi; (b) has doubtless read both
cpython and pypi code; (c) nevertheless writes "While I have some general idea
of how the CPython interpreter works, I absolutely do not understand well
enough to claim with absolute certainty how this situation arise".
Jeepers, who WOULD be qualified to explain for sure how this works?
~~~
jedberg
> Jeepers, who WOULD be qualified to explain for sure how this works?
Guido?
------
underdeserver
If 99.999% of Python programmers won't care about this, and there are
approximately 8.2M Python programmers in the world [1], then only 82 people
will care about this. Given the number of upvotes you've covered them all.
[1]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+python+programmers+...](https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+python+programmers+are+there+in+the+world)
~~~
aroberge
Thank you. I actually thought I was overestimated the interest. Then again, I
did not think that my blog post would attract the interest of the HackerNews
readers.
------
lilyball
I'm curious why this is reported as a SyntaxError. This doesn't seem like a
syntactical problem to me, but a semantical one.
~~~
lidHanteyk
Python's grammar is so very rich. Many programs are rejected for "syntactic"
reasons if they do not fit into the abstract syntax [0]; I suppose that this
could be some sort of "AbstractSyntaxError", if Python had such a thing.
For some examples:
x == not y
Rejected by the parser itself.
not x = y
Accepted by the parser and AST builder, and only rejected by the bytecode
compiler.
f(*xs,)
Rejected by the parser itself.
...
Rejected somewhere between the parser and the AST builder. Valid uses of
Ellipsis are actually special-cased; it is not a standard part of the abstract
syntax.
[0]
[https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/Parser/Python....](https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/master/Parser/Python.asdl)
~~~
kccqzy
Why is x == not x rejected by the parser? In many other languages this is
perfectly valid and, depending on the semantics, may allow the compiler that
into false. (Of course this can't generally be the case where operators are
user-overloadable.)
~~~
js2
Because that's how the grammar is defined:
[https://docs.python.org/3.8/reference/grammar.html](https://docs.python.org/3.8/reference/grammar.html)
The RHS of the == (comp_op) has to be an expr. You can force "not x" to be an
expr by parenthesizing it:
x == (not x)
~~~
kccqzy
That interesting. On the other hand,
not x == x
is totally valid.
------
bratao
I was impressed by the quality of PyPy errors!
------
Wheaties466
I seem like i'm alone in this but I think I would prefer the CPython handling
of this "Syntax Error".
I am not a "Programmer" so having feedback on the original problem line would
be more beneficial than returning the second.
------
_ZeD_
I'm wondering if this case will be handled differently by the new pegen
[https://github.com/gvanrossum/pegen](https://github.com/gvanrossum/pegen)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Quizé – WordPress Plugin That Triples Your Ad Revenue - Quize
http://quizeplugin.com
======
Quize
Quizé WordPress plugin is a tool for creating engaging Trivia and Personality
quizzes for your website as a way of generating additional revenue through
increasing page views, paid ad impressions, driving traffic, increasing time
on site, and eliminating bounce rate.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Use BERT to get sentence and tokens embedding in an easier way - garylai1990
https://github.com/imgarylai/bert-embedding
======
garylai1990
BERT was one of the most exciting NLP papers published in 2018. Instead of
using BERT to build an end-to-end model, using word representations from BERT
can help you improve your model performance a lot, but save a lot of computing
resources.
My idea has been implemented as a bert-embedding and published on Github.
check: [https://github.com/imgarylai/bert-
embedding](https://github.com/imgarylai/bert-embedding)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
After Oranges: Following John McPhee to Florida - Vigier
http://www.oxfordamerican.org/magazine/item/1233-after-oranges
======
sizzzzlerz
I went to the article hopefully expecting to read something new by McPhee
(after all, he's only 86) only to be disappointed that it's an excerpt of a
prior work. Even so, just about anything written by him is worth reading and
re-reading.
~~~
triplenineteen
It's not an excerpt, it's a new article (by someone else) that is partially
about McPhee.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Any evidence that iTunes Genius (incl. Mixes) does what it claims? - MikeCapone
By that I mean, is there any evidence that it actually picks "songs that go great together"?<p>I get the feeling that my mixes are mostly made up of random songs from the same genre (or closely related ones), probably with an emphasis on things I have rated highly.<p>Is there any indication that Genius looks at other variables, such as tempo, mood, instrumentation, upbeat/downbeat, etc (the way that Pandora does)?
======
tr4nslator
I'm pretty sure they're not using much metadata, but instead using
collaborative filtering based on the libraries other iTunes users.
"Apple's proprietary recommendation engine that uses collaborative filtering
and iTunes' built-in rating system to generate music recommendations"
from
[http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/24/apple_switches...](http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/24/apple_switches_on_itunes_genius_for_videos.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sleep Science: In the Era of Screens, Rest Is Crucial - gpresot
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2018/08/science-of-sleep/
======
quantum_state
The info design of the site is horrible .. playing video when there is no need
and makes the reading experience one of the worst ...
------
graeme
Does anyone know of studies on whether the _time_ of hours of sleep matters?
I.e. is sleeping eight hours from 2-10 in any way worse than eight hours from
11-7?
~~~
travmatt
Cant currently look for a study, but IIRC the more in tune with your normal
circadian rhythm the better - especially if you don’t need any alarm to wake
up naturally.
I do recall hearing overnight workers have higher incidences of cancers,
disorders, etc., and I’m curious to know if that holds true for people with
naturally aberrant circadian rhythms.
~~~
ss2003
Yes, what ever the cause of loss of sleep the effects are the same. You need
to sleep for lots of brain and body maintenance.
------
johnchristopher
Where does that title come from ? The article only has `While We Sleep, Our
Mind Goes on an Amazing Journey`.
~~~
privong
It's the html header <title></title> entry.
------
arez
I always remember my dreams when I did sports that day, shouldn't remembering
the dreams not be a good sign?
~~~
agumonkey
I can't say but I always feel happy when I have dreams, even weird ones. It
leaves a deep trail of calm and inspiration (makes me want to draw, or make a
story out of it).
------
throwaway180118
How do recent studies compare to computer use in the era of the CRT screen?
~~~
froh
Two things have substantially changed:
CRTs don't emit that daylight-like blue spectrum.
There is a diagram further down in the long article showing the different
impact of different light sources on sleep.
Additionally, not mentioned in the article, social network streams are
deliberately constructed to increase your online time, by being 'interesting'.
[https://www.ted.com/talks/nir_eyal_what_makes_technology_so_...](https://www.ted.com/talks/nir_eyal_what_makes_technology_so_habit_forming/up-
next)
~~~
irq
CRTs can quite capably emit daylight blue. People used to use them for
photography, video games, etc. Just not typically in bed.
------
wcoenen
This website re-layouted multiple times on chrome for android, sending me back
to the start of the article each time. I gave up on reading it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fedora 16 To Use "Btrfs" Filesystem By Default - dkd903
http://digitizor.com/2011/06/09/fedora-16-btrfs/
======
rwmj
This is not definite. The feature has to go through a bunch of hoops
first[1][2]. It was only conditionally approved in the meeting yesterday,
assuming everything works by the time F16 comes around. Previous big features
have been pulled at the last minute (notably systemd in F14 was pulled right
before release[3], and only made it into F15).
[1]
[http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Features/F16BtrfsDefaultF...](http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Talk:Features/F16BtrfsDefaultFs)
[2]
[https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=689509...](https://bugzilla.redhat.com/showdependencytree.cgi?id=689509&hide_resolved=1)
[3]
[http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.devel/139...](http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.redhat.fedora.devel/139851)
------
rlpb
brtfs doesn't have an fsck yet. I've been waiting for it before I try it. Is
it really safe to go ahead without this, or will it be ready by release?
[https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#When_will_Btrfs_...](https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#When_will_Btrfs_have_a_fsck_like_tool)
~~~
cycojesus
as someone with a btrfs partition containing a handful of broken inodes
(according to btrfsck), I'd say wait. btrfsck takes ages during each boot AND
cannot fix problems. I'll switch back to ext4 when I find the time (and a plug
compatible for my external drive.)
------
nodata
Last time I checked, btrfs had a read-only fsck implementation, i.e. it could
find errors but not fix them. I hope fsck is finished and stable now (the
project page still says fsck is not available).
Edit: this also means Fedora doesn't use LVM by default anymore
~~~
danssig
>this also means Fedora doesn't use LVM by default anymore
Uh, that's pretty big. How will I resize partitions on the fly?
~~~
danvet
It's the "by default" that's important. You can still use lvm to resize your
partitions. But resizing volumes within the btrfs partition will be done by
the btrfs tools.
------
pixelbeat
Cool we can have reflinks by default.
<http://www.pixelbeat.org/docs/unix_links.html>
Fedora changes seem to go in cycles. F11 and F14 were good stabilization
releases. F17 should be of the same ilk I think.
------
daedhel
The comments, so far, seem to perceive this change as negative. I, myself,
think it is something really good for the overall innovation int the FOSS
ecology to have a distro comited to testing new features.
~~~
evangineer
Good point. The flipside of that is that such a distro is less suitable for
production servers.
That said, a savvy sysadmin would be picky about the filesystem to use in
production anyway and could easily use a non-default filesystem.
~~~
daedhel
Well the thing is that Fedora is the testing platform for RedHat.
Fedora is for the desktop users, it is used to test new features, and what RH
finds interesting, they add it to their server oriented distro, Red Hat Linux.
So, the fact that Fedora is not server oriented is by design.
------
naner
Well I guess this is one way to speed up development and testing. I don't
think the disk format is even finalized yet.
------
sigzero
"It will probably not be known until August or September whether Fedora 16,
which is planned for the end of October, will actually use Btrfs as the
standard, because testers and developers need time to gain additional
experience with the upcoming alpha and beta versions."
------
Legion
I can't wait. Btrfs has been lingering in "almost ready" state for a while and
it seems like the only thing that will kick things to the next level is the
threat of it actually being used.
------
br1
Filesystems lose on a big opportunity by supporting hardlinks. If every file
had only one name, files on the same directory could be stored closely, much
improving locality.
~~~
derobert
That'd only really be true if a significant portion files were hardlinked. My
root filesystem (Debian GNU/Linux testing) has 393,410 files, of which 825
have more than one link. My /home has 0 out of 156,273 files hardlinked.
Having 0.2% (or less) of files hardlinked shouldn't prevent storing files in
the same directory near each other.
~~~
rcfox
The point is that just the possibility of having more than one link kills your
ability to assume that there is only one. It has nothing to do with whether or
not they actually have more than one link.
~~~
koenigdavidmj
Right, but this bumps into a spatial-locality analogue of Amdahl's law. If you
optimise case that shows up 1% of the time, then you can only get a total gain
of 1%.
~~~
archangel_one
No, the point is that you can't optimise the other 99% because that
optimisation only works if hardlinks aren't allowed.
~~~
viraptor
Why not? Choose parent at random and place the file near children of that
parent. In 99% of cases it's the only parent, so you get the result you aimed
for. Why would it be prevented by possible other names?
------
PaulHoule
ouch... i'm conservative when it comes to filesystems; i had to revert from
ext4 to ext3 on Amazon's EC2 because ext4 had more trouble with EBS... every
other time I've tried a new filesystem i've had trouble with wrecks and data
corruption... making a whizzy new filesystem the default will cause a lot of
pain
~~~
tytso
Hey, I'd really appreciate it if you could send a report of your experiences
to [email protected]. This is the first I've heard of issues with
ext4 with EBS, and I'd love to know more. (Also, please mention the kernel
version you are using; one possibility is that EC2 kernels tend to lag
upstream kernels, and ext4 has had a lot of bug fixes since a RHEL or SLES
kernel of 2.6.32/2.6.34 --- upstream is at 2.6.39, and we're about to release
version 3.0. :-)
------
cultureulterior
Does it support raid5/6 yet?
~~~
drdaeman
This is not a filesystem's job.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Meet the Firehose Seven Thousand Times Bigger Than Twitter's - coffee
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/meet_the_firehose_seven_thousand_times_bigger_than.php#
======
nostrademons
1000 tweets/second seems quite low. IIRC, when I was still doing financial
software (2007), the markets threw off about 50 GB/day, and a given trade was
about 80 bytes. That's perhaps 600 million trades per day, or an order of
magnitude higher than Twitter. And at the time, stock market volume had
quadrupled over the last two years or so, so it's probably much higher than
that.
I wonder how much, say, FaceBook's newsfeed volume is. Or how much data
Walmart or Fedex or Safeway process from their point-of-sale systems.
~~~
wallflower
> Or how much data Walmart or Fedex or Safeway process from their point-of-
> sale systems.
Walmart is in its own class. There was a rumor a while back that they were
trying to correlate their video feeds (of the POS/checkout) with their
transaction database. That would mean matching video of customers with their
transactions. All of them.
~~~
eru
What would you want to get out of that data? (I can see that it's useful, I
just want to hear what you can imagine.)
~~~
wallflower
In general, an isolated video is not interesting. It becomes more interesting
and potentially scary once you have a digital, searchable, analyzable history
of video customer transactions.
Reduce leakage/theft:
If a cashier has been already flagged and the customer matches up in the
network of cashier's friends (Facebook?), possibly in conjunction with another
theft deterrent system, be able for managers to watch in real time a potential
leakage event (where they don't scan certain items).
Hyper-targeted marketing:
(New) wedding ring detected. Commence deluge of in-kind marketing partnerships
with Home Depot, maybe even Crate & Barrel.
Customer over the past three months has been showing signs of possible
pregnancy relative to their baseline body mass index. Somehow, non creepily,
market to them via 3rd party mailing lists who had no idea how you learned she
was expecting or more subtly by changing the default landing homepage of
walmart.com to reflect more future mother when her cookie is detected.
Kids. If the kids seem hyperactive in the overhead view, email coupons for
toys that appeal to ADD-type kids.
Over the last year of transactions, customer's head has been exhibiting signs
of male pattern baldness. Send them targeted coupons for hats to see if they
think its something they need to cover up.
RFID:
If RFID ever really enters the picture, via Walmart customer RFID cards - then
you can get into real dystopian scenarios of following someone through the
entire store.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pakistan causes YouTube outage for two-thirds of world - denzil_correa
https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=4344105
======
x38iq84n
Deja vu February 2008.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Twitter Rocks the House - buckpost
http://www.markevanstech.com/2008/04/10/why-twitter-rocks-the-house/
======
hunterjrj
This article does not convince me that Twitter is useful... yet.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
DoX: DNS Queries over XMPP - moparisthebest
https://xmpp.org/extensions/xep-0418.html
======
Boulth
Cloudflare has a nice page for various fun ways to query DNS (via Twitter,
Google Sheets, email, etc.): [https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/fun-
stuff/](https://developers.cloudflare.com/1.1.1.1/fun-stuff/)
It seems DoX would fit in there perfectly!
~~~
moparisthebest
I wonder how one would go about contacting someone at cloudflare responsible
for that... :)
------
the_duke
I'd draw your attention to:
* the name of the protocol: DoX
* the name of the request: IQ-get
* lastly, the current date
edit: OK, this might not be a joke after all, but it sure has a few hints in
there.
~~~
moparisthebest
DoX is DNS-over-XMPP
DoH is DNS-over-HTTP
DoT is DNS-over-TLS
~~~
SamWhited
Yah, naming a DNS protocol DOX and then releasing it on the worst day of the
year on the internet might not have been a great idea… I suppose we should
have seen this coming :)
------
gariany
hmm... interesting, but why?
~~~
davecridland
There's an awful lot of "why not?" here. Remember, this is an Experimental
XEP. The XMPP Council saw no reason to actively block it, but that doesn't
mean we're all mad keen that everyone should rush out and do it.
There was an intense debate on whether it ought to be published as Standards
Track or Humorous...
~~~
moparisthebest
There are, however, already multiple independent implementations:
[https://github.com/wiktor-k/prosody-dox](https://github.com/wiktor-k/prosody-
dox)
[https://github.com/moparisthebest/jDnsProxy](https://github.com/moparisthebest/jDnsProxy)
------
mmastrac
[deleted]
~~~
SamWhited
This is a real protocol. It just got published yesterday and made its way onto
HN today.
~~~
ops4c0d3
Purely curious, what advantages does this give you in a corporate sort of
scenario where your login is probably authing against Active Directory? Does
this protocol offer any leverage for developers in a multi-forest setup via
API to programmatically choose domain controllers?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Snapchat Built a Business by Confusing Olds - peterkrieg
http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2016-how-snapchat-built-a-business/
======
yomly
For the non-believers of Snapchat, here is where I think its value lies:
For the past 50 years brand strategy has largely been (fairly) well
characterised. Conventional wisdom in the industry did well enough for brands
like McDonald's and Coca Cola to expand across the world and capture
generations of customers. This is in part due to an incremental pace of
innovation in how customers have consumed media in this time period.
Then came along the internet and a bringing a huge stepwise change, driving
not only unprecedented levels of fragmentation/segmentation/individualisation
of users but also changing how we interact with and consume media.
The generation of "millennials" and "digital natives" are people who now spend
more time on the internet than in front of a TV.
Facebook, with their 1Bn+ daily active users who are known to spend nearly 18
hours a week on the Facebook mobile app, saw the value in Snapchat - younger
users don't have a Facebook account. It's uncool, it's creepy with its privacy
policies. Snapchat has extremely strong market share on viewership for a
generation of users that are arguably the most impressionable/valuable. This
same generation don't really watch TV. Considering individual brands would
spend hundreds of millions on TV, if Snapchat can capture even a fraction of
this media budget, they'll be hugely profitable.
NB I chose McDonald's and Coke as brands as they are two good examples of
previously invincible global brands that are now showing significant decline.
They also had huge media budgets. For the purposes of my argument, I've chosen
to ignore other market trends such as growing health awareness but my point
still stands.
~~~
dinkumthinkum
Is there any real evidence that these kids don't watch any tv and only do
snapchat and watch makeup gurus on YouTube? I know it's fun to say but I mean
what about reality? ....
~~~
dboreham
Evidence in our house, yes. The TV delivery industry shot their feet off in
this area because they have a pricing model where they want to charge per
"screen" (we use Echostar, but I believe the other providers have similar
pricing). They also insist (or did until yesterday) that the data gets to the
screen by coax. My two kids have tv screens in their bedrooms but I was not
interested in paying an extra fee to have the signal delivered to them, nor
was I keen to crawl around under the floor pulling coax (they have perfectly
fine GigE connections already). They could in theory watch TV on a screen in
the family room but they'd need to fight someone else for control of the set
top box (and get out of bed). The result is they spend all day watching
YouTube and Snapchatting on their phones. The TVs are only used for Netflix.
~~~
dinkumthinkum
OK, but you know what they say about anecdotes, right? I'm sure there are many
people on HN that have never watched a show in their entire life; there is an
Onion article about "Area Man Constantly Telling People He doesn't Own a TV"
[1]. Also, there is a group of people in America I understand called the
Amish. That's fine but I'm not sure how to generalize from that .... My
response is to this kind of often repeated idea that I think lacks a lot of
merit or evidence in reality. For that view to be true, there better be a
statistically insignificant number of kids that have ever seen any of these
shows or any of their associated advertisments because they are too busy with
Snapchat.
One thing I am aware of is that kids have a lot of free time and they do a lot
of different things, is what I understand.
1\. [http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-constantly-
mentioni...](http://www.theonion.com/article/area-man-constantly-mentioning-
he-doesnt-own-a-tel-429)
------
dec0dedab0de
The best part about snapchat, vs sms/mms is when someone doesn't respond it
just goes away. So when you message each other later it's not hanging there as
a reminder building silent resentments.
~~~
xufi
"Hey did you see my.........hey where did you go?"
------
gcb0
case in point: everyone here comparing IM with TV or Facebook. at least say
telephone in you analogy.
------
macscam
what is 'olds'? old people? Why would any business grow by confusing them?
~~~
kmfrk
"Olds" is a coy term by "millennials" who wanted the older generations who
invented and keep using the term to get a taste of their own medicine.
As far as keeping out "olds", look at what Tinder did by demanding a premium
from 30+ users: [http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/tinder-charging-
people-30-t...](http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/tinder-charging-
people-30-tinder/story?id=29335809).
~~~
mgiannopoulos
I don't think Tinder wants to keep out 30-year olds. In fact they want to
monetise them as they know they have more available income and are more
willing to spend it in a dating service.
~~~
vuivugvuov
And perhaps most hilariously, there's almost no actual way to prevent people
from lying about their age on the internet.
------
hellbanner
Does anyone have a link where one of the Snapchat founder admits they created
the app to send photos of their penises to college girls?
~~~
gcb0
no link. but it was when his Stanford frat house. same place where he start
the app with the guy that coded the thing but then got outed, so probably a
good indication of who leaked.
~~~
hellbanner
Thanks. I bet ^parent downvoted because it sounds like slander but I did read
this on a few articles.. linked from HN IIRC.
[http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/28/confirmed-snapchats-evan-
sp...](http://techcrunch.com/2014/05/28/confirmed-snapchats-evan-spiegel-is-
kind-of-an-ass/)
Let's not forget that human sexuality plays a core component in business
motivations and the environment in which this XX billion $ company was formed.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Kickstarter for designs? - JCB_K
Is there some kind of website where you can upload a design (poster/t-shirt), and get people to pre-order, but it'll only go into production at X amount of orders?<p>Of course I could just get people to pay via Paypal and refund if I don't reach my goal, but that looks a bit sloppy.
======
dot
Threadless?
~~~
JCB_K
That's not really what I'm looking for. If I design a t-shirt, and I find 10
people who would buy it, then that's no guarantee it's going to be sold on
Threadless.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Forthcoming OpenSSL releases - okket
https://mta.openssl.org/pipermail/openssl-announce/2016-September/000076.html
======
Bino
I'm happy (odd response to security issues, but normal these days) to see
there are no critical issues this time.
Are there any leaked information?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sdk for realtime tracking the head, hands and body in software - assaflehr
http://techcrunch.com/2013/09/30/extreme-reality/
======
assaflehr
if you are a game developer (indie or not), it`s worth looking into this one.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
S.F. startup Aardvark personalizes searching - gibsonf1
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/03/13/BUG116DNLI.DTL
======
aristus
How can you write a 1,000-word article about a new search engine and _not
include the flipping URL_?
"Using an algorithm program..."
"Ventilla said the service is more personal and reliable..."
Never mind. The author hasn't used it, doesn't know his ass from his elbow and
is just parroting the CEO. Tech Journalism at its finest.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Testing and Tuning Market Trading Systems - netgate
https://itbook.store/books/9781484241721
======
masonic
Every submit for this site is just a daily ad for Amazon affiliate linked
books (tag=itbook.store-20).
There is no "store". Even the descriptions are ripped from the Amazon pages.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bug 1283585 – Fix Intel's AES-GCM code to not depend on AVX - yuhong
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1283585
======
protomyth
Can someone give a bit of the why on this one? Is there something wrong with
AVX or is this a run on other chips thing? I'm at a bit of a loss on the
history.
~~~
yuhong
AVX is normally 256-bit, but it also allows 128-bit instructions with a VEX
prefix. Benefits of that include three operands and unaligned access, as well
as higher performance when mixed with 256-bit instructions. Of course, you
need a AVX-capable CPU and an OS that support AVX XSAVE to be able to use
them.
~~~
creshal
Sooo… why move away from AVX? What CPUs support AESNI, but not AVX, and
actually matter?
~~~
pdw
According to Wikipedia, most Celerons and Pentiums lack AVX but have the AES
instructions.
------
ngneer
Why is this on HN?
~~~
mkj
You get automatic upvotes if you mention crypto and performance?
~~~
afsina
And Firefox.
------
sbose78
The bug report has way too less information for folks of other disciplines (
inside CS ) to understand.
Could someone please provide a context?
~~~
pdw
The x86 architecture has a large number of optional instruction sets. One of
these, AES-NI, provides accelerated AES instructions. Another one, AVX, is a
collection of general-purpose vector instructions. These were announced at the
same time, but it seems like a large number of Intel's low-end CPUs (Celerons
& Pentiums) only implement AES-NI.
Firefox's current implementation of the AES-GCM encryption mode uses AVX
instructions. The bug report is a submission of a modified implementation that
avoids them.
------
yuhong
I really should also submit this to OpenSSL at some point.
~~~
honkhonkpants
Benchmarks?
~~~
yuhong
None that I know of, but performance penalty should be minimal. The main
difference is extra movdqu instructions to deal with unaligned access.
------
dewyatt
It seems weird that mozilla doesn't have something like phabricator so I can
view a pretty diff of this easily.
~~~
cbhl
Mozilla set its stuff up before Facebook (2004) even existed, let alone
Phabricator.
Bugzilla (1998) predates Phabricator (2010) by about 12 years. It was written
in Perl, which was the popular language at the time (similar to PHP around
when Facebook happened, or JavaScript now). The first versions of Firefox
(2002) predate Phabricator by about 8 years.
~~~
dboreham
And Bugzilla is still the best bug management system decades later.
Fwiw I was using Bugzilla in 1996. Perhaps it was open sourced in 1998?
~~~
riffraff
If you think bugzilla is better than everything that came after (e.g. trac,
jira, redline, phabricator etc) it would be interesting to know why.
I feel it's functional but not great.
~~~
mschuster91
JIRA is not free, and its main appeals are geared towards enterprise bean
counters. Not to mention it is written in Java and as a result has quite heavy
requirements on the CPU and RAM.
Upside: it is _extremely_ flexible in ticket workflow design.
(Source: maintaining a 300-user JIRA/Confluence instance at work)
------
dogma1138
AVX is a standardized x86 ISE proposed by both Intel and AMD. Intel
implemented AVX support with Ivy Bridge, AMD has implemented it with Bulldozer
these 2 platforms are nearly 6 years old, is there an actual reason to drop
support for AVX?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Failure by WHO team to visit Wuhan sparks concerns over virus probe - abc-xyz
https://www.ft.com/content/f9dea077-66fb-4734-9d1d-076dc93568e1
======
rapjr9
So they think there is one specific animal path from bats to humans? It's
already been shown that several types of animals can become infected, so why
not multiple paths? I don't understand why they think it necessarily started
in the Wuhan area either; that's where it first started spreading rapidly and
was noticed, but as we've seen in the US sometimes it spreads fast and
sometimes it doesn't and even with testing there appear to be a lot of excess
deaths where no one realized the cause was COVID-19. Could have been around
long before Dec 2019 and then flared up in Wuhan. I'm not an expert though,
maybe they have other clues such as from gene sequencing.
------
disgruntledphd2
I normally like the FT, but this article smells very like the standard
Australian/US saber-rattling around China's responsibility for Covid-19.
It sortof smacks of looking for someone to blame, which is weird given that
China dealt with Covid-19 far far better than most Western countries.
~~~
marcusverus
Compare the 'Active Cases' graph in each of the links below. Does the Chinese
graph seem credible to you?
China:
[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/)
Japan:
[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Japan/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Japan/)
Italy:
[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Italy/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Italy/)
Denmark:
[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Denmark/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Denmark/)
Iran:
[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Iran/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Iran/)
Russia:
[https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Iran/](https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/Iran/)
~~~
disgruntledphd2
I completely agree that the data from China is not particularly reliable. In
fact, I remember noticing this in early March.
That being said, it's clear that they have dealt with Covid 19 much better
than much of the West.
Like, I guess I got sucked into geo-political flamebait here, but this FT
article is quite poor by their standards and it's a shame that it's getting
covered on HN.
~~~
kop316
Well yeah, the PRC can literaly weld people into their apartments to force
people to be quarantined:
[https://www.the-sun.com/news/378365/](https://www.the-sun.com/news/378365/)
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-
quarantine-i...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-health-quarantine-
idUSKCN20G0AY)
When a government has that sort of power, of course they can handle a forced
quarantine. That is, when they actually have to admit there is an issue, which
is this not the first pandemic they have attempted to cover up:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbrea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002%E2%80%932004_SARS_outbreak)
I am happy to live in a western society where they government doesn't have
that sort of power.
~~~
bobdole12345
Yeah, I love the fact that Karen can decide to kill my friends and family with
negligence.
Yay freedom.
~~~
kop316
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
I'd ask for you to post a reply comment that isn't snarky, per the guidelines.
I cannot have much of a productive conversation with your comment as it is.
~~~
bobdole12345
If you didn't want to be made fun of, you should have made a better argument.
It's not a black and white freedom vs authoritarianism, it turns out that
society works a lot better when people aren't needlessly contrary about things
they don't understand.
Which is why the American morons can't imagine that Chinas numbers are real,
because they can't imagine the Chinese people aren't festering shitbags
shouting "FEREEEDOMZ" at every opportunity.
Chinas numbers, and numbers in many other places show the AWESOME POWER OF
DOING WHAT NEEDS TO BE DONE AS A GROUP.
There is one freedom that is sorely lacking in America, it's the freedom to
act as a whole for the good of your countrymen. You literally can't do it.
It's illegal in half the country, and you risk being shot in an altercation
with an armed moron if you're conspicuously not being a festering cunt.
Why don't you fight for that freedom?
~~~
kop316
....what? I have read through your comment several times and it is non-
sensical.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Do you know of any software for the Mac for creating sounds from scratch? - amichail
This used to be a common thing to do in the days of the c64...
======
jibiki
Surely CSound runs on the mac?
------
yan
bloopsaphone? chuck? (google for them for urls)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Twilio SMS price halved to a penny per message - jonknee
http://www.twilio.com/pricing/
======
ccollins
First of all, I love Twilio, have used it in production apps, and will
continue to use it in production apps.
Just want to give a heads up about a very big limitation of Twilio SMS: It
only delivers to US and Canadian phone numbers
(<http://www.twilio.com/faq/international>). If you are building an app with
any sort of international user base, you will need to look elsewhere.
Clickatell has an API, delivers to almost every country, but their interface,
billing, and customer support are painfully terrible.
(<http://www.clickatell.com/products/gateway.php>).
So Twilio, do you plan to introduce International SMS support?
~~~
johns
We currently have it in beta. You can sign up for access here:
<http://www.twilio.com/international-sms> (Note that page says 2c/msg, but it
is 1c/msg in the beta as well)
~~~
chrislomax
I wish I had read the FAQs properly, didn't realise you couldn't send
international! I signed up for your beta though, I want to do SMS messaging
from the app but I have always found other services so expensive, I used to
use Esendex in the UK but the plans drain cash so quickly.
I just wanted to send despatch confirmations through an ecommerce application.
If you could do it for 3-4p GBP that would still be very cheap.
Signed up and ready to go on the beta though
~~~
jonknee
Their current international pricing matches domestic, so you'd be paying about
.6p GBP. Cheap cheap.
------
relix
Exactly 30 days after competitor Tropo lowered their SMS prices to a penny per
message: [http://blog.tropo.com/2011/05/11/announcing-new-lower-sms-
pr...](http://blog.tropo.com/2011/05/11/announcing-new-lower-sms-pricing/)
The joys of competition :-)
~~~
dmor
Just to avoid any confusion for Twilio customers on this thread, we lowered
SMS pricing to $0.01/message on the evening of May 20th (yes, Tropo went
first), so that is what you'll see reflected in your Twilio account. The
reason there is so much buzz today is because we just announced the change
today in our newsletter/blog, along with the release of the new "Apps" feature
in the developer dashboard.
We're proud to keep reducing prices for SMS, first from the original $0.03
down to $0.02 back in September, and now this price cut. It's our customers
and their business that make this possible, through better economies of scale
that allow us to reduce SMS cost for developers while still making it
financially viable for us as a business. Affordable SMS is opening up
incredible use cases.
------
fuzzmeister
This is incredible. The lowest price advertised by Clickatell is $0.012/msg,
and that price can only be reached by paying for 500,000 messages or more -
that is, paying $6000 or more.
------
jonknee
This has to be welcome news for GroupMe and other Twilio SMS heavy startups.
------
gscott
I hate to be downbeat but I am using Twilio for my next service and I would
prefer to have Twilio stay in business for the next 10 years then to lower
prices to a cut rate amount.
~~~
johns
We'd prefer to stay in business too! We're growing and as we get bigger we get
better rates that we can pass on to you and the numbers still work. So you can
have both: lower prices and we'll still be around in 10 years (and hopefully
the next 50 years after that).
------
jmadnick
It is fascinating to see the market develop so fast. I have created
<http://www.longnumbers.com> as an industry portal. I need feedback. Please
tell me what y'all think.
------
jolan
Any hope of reducing the outbound calls to 1c/min as well?
It's cheaper for me to use <http://flowroute.com/> \+ Asterisk directly than
twilio.
~~~
johns
We've had 3 price drops on our services in the past year, so while I don't
have anything I can promise you for outbound calls, we're committed to giving
you the best price we are able to provide.
------
d135-1r43
Does anyone know an European service that is as great as Twilio? All provider
here in Germany suck more or less, offer a bad API and are totally overpriced.
~~~
relix
Check Tropo.com. It accepts customers from outside the US and international
SMS's are 2 cents a piece. Not all operators are supported, though. E.g. there
is one operator in Belgium Tropo doesn't send to. Your mileage may vary
(Germany will probably be better covered).
------
jrockway
Nice, now only $65 per megabyte. You could txt someone an entire Blu-Ray disk
for only $3.3 million!
~~~
stanleydrew
Yes, the prices carriers set are ridiculous. But we all still use and love SMS
for some reason.
------
daimyoyo
IDK if they are aimed at the same market, but HeyWire messages are free.
~~~
jonknee
Completely separate market. Twilio is targeted at business applications--
sending and receiving SMS via an API. It's not meant so you can text your
friend, it's meant so you can enable SMS in your app. The pricing has fallen
quite a bit, it was 3 cents per message when SMS functionality was introduced
in Feb 2010.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Nintendo says it doesn’t have plans for any additional Super Mario Run content - electic
https://9to5mac.com/2016/12/20/no-more-super-mario-run-content-coming/
======
dpcan
Nintendo comes out and offers a game with a few free levels, then pay-once,
and you get the whole game. Seems like exactly what everyone ALWAYS asks for.
We constantly see complaining about micro transactions, etc, and Nintendo goes
with the traditional pay-once model AND gives you the ability to try for free
and people freak out.
This industry is so incredibly frustrating. You can't please everyone, but it
seems like you can't please anyone, ever, anymore.
If you hype it, they will hate it. This seems to be the new world we live in.
You almost have to subtly release something, let crowds pass it around online
and feel like they are responsible for its success, put some of the
"ownership" behind those hyping it, and then they can't hate on it when it
comes out.
~~~
0x0
I think the bigger complaint is the (unprecedented for iOS) always-on internet
DRM requirement.
~~~
AlexandrB
I don't think it's unprecedented - I thought many F2P games have the same
requirement. Though I guess F2P games have a "good reason" for needing always-
on internet whereas Mario Run shouldn't need it but does.
------
newscracker
I was so overjoyed when I heard during the Apple event that this would be a
one time purchase game and not have annoying IAP like many other games do.
Nintendo definitely made the right choice in not annoying users with the "one-
time pay to play" model. But since the app store is used to cheap 99 cents
pricing for most apps and games, people are upset at something costing ten
times that. If I as a user see value, I'd rather have more games follow the
Super Mario Run model of a limited trial with a single IAP to unlock
everything than the prevailing in-game pseudo-currency based models that end
up making the gameplay experience worse as time passes. I hesitate to update
many games because they become worse over time as developers try new and
annoying ways to monetize them. Overall, the app store pricing structure is a
mess and creates a frustrating experience.
~~~
hedora
Yeah, the gameplay is usually compromised by virtual currencies.
Worse, if you look at the big spenders, you usually find people with mental
health issues, and money launderers using stolen credit cards to level up and
then sell accounts.
[source: anecdotes from acquaintances with experience with multiple sides of
these issues]
------
jly
Nintendo priced this game fairly and appropriately. The game is absolutely
packed with content and beautiful design and I'm glad they went for a
traditional one and done pricing scheme rather than what other mobile games
often use. It's the investors clamoring for more content to sell, not the
people actually playing the game.
IAP is an issue but it's not Nintendo's fault. They clearly wanted a way to
try before you buy to entice more people to download, and this is the standard
model that Apple has put together.
~~~
lostlogin
Beautiful design? It's redesign of stock OS UI is gross and annoying. The
spinner when it looks for a network connection and fails is not good. The
picker at the beginning - how is this good design. Paying some attention to
the platform and not requiring an internet connection would have resulted in a
better looking, better behaving game.
~~~
danso
Yeah, I immediately passed when I heard the game required an Internet
connection. Their stated reasons are ridiculous [0], or at least questionable
given the many number of high quality games that manage to have an offline
mode.
[0] [http://www.polygon.com/mobile/2016/12/9/13897536/super-
mario...](http://www.polygon.com/mobile/2016/12/9/13897536/super-mario-run-
internet-connection)
------
outericky
Does it need more content? As it is, we've become spoiled by endless content
and $0.99 cent games. Half the 1 star reviews for this game are that it's too
expensive or too easy. My only gripe is the lack of family sharing and the
constant internet / DRM problem. Otherwise, it's well worth $10, it's a very
polished game. IAP is one of the worst things to happen to gaming.
~~~
blktiger
Super Mario Run 2 could easily be just an in-app purchase where you just
choose which game to play once the game loads. That saves you from hunting
through a bunch of similar looking super mario run icons on your home screen
while also making it easy for people who like the game to find out about the
new one.
------
larrik
Only tangential, but I really hate the "free to download, IAP to unlock"
model. Why? Because IAPs don't "share" on family plans, so if I buy it, I need
to buy it again for each of my kids. No thanks.
~~~
cableshaft
It's annoying, but it has to do with how Apple bifurcates the free and paid
tiers. If you want to get the visibility, you almost have to stick with the
free tier. Why? Because people are much, much more likely to download
something that's free and try it out than even something for a nominal fee,
but if you have a separate 'free demo' app, then each app has a separate
download count, and suddenly you've got a lot less downloads you would have
gotten otherwise (some people would skip the free and download the paid, and a
lot less people will download the paid in general anyway).
Hardly anyone discovers apps outside the 'featured' and 'top paid' or 'top
free' lists on the app store, so any loss in downloads drops you down those
top lists, which can cost you a serious loss in potential revenue and is thus
unacceptable.
Also if you have a free and paid version you're forcing the user to download
your game all over again just to purchase it, which adds friction to the
purchase, which anyone in sales knows even a single extra click lowers the
odds of people buying something by a lot.
So the only thing that makes sense for most apps is to make your app free and
allow people to spend money in the app to either unlock or acquire something
in the game.
There are some apps that are better served on the paid tiers, but those are
usually apps that have enough visibility (or built-in audience, i.e. Cartoon
Network games) and possibly a high enough price on other platforms that people
would expect to pay something anyway (i.e. Minecraft Pocket, Square Enix
games), or serve a niche audience of people that don't mind paying (i.e. app
versions of board games whose prices are set at fraction of the price of
buying the physical board game).
~~~
AlexandrB
> It's annoying, but it has to do with how Apple bifurcates the free and paid
> tiers.
Indeed. I don't think Apple gets enough blame for how they've (mis)managed the
app store - especially in terms of available pricing models. The current
approach encourages lots of "free" apps and games loaded with IAP and micro-
transactions.
------
ianai
They say no more, now. Then after everyone flips out we'll have a version 2 or
added content later. On the merit of price, most Wii U games run in the $40-60
usd range. It feels like the free to play crowd wants to ruin a traditional
product model like they ruined the rest of mobile.
------
Mahn
According to Reuters[0] about 8% of all downloads converted to sales for the
full game. That's not that bad technically, but I guess expectations were high
after Pokemon GO.
[0] [http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nintendo-supermario-
idUSKB...](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-nintendo-supermario-
idUSKBN14A0U0?il=0)
------
ndrake
I'll gladly pay the $10 once they remove the constant internet connection
requirement.
------
newscracker
> A Nintendo spokesman said the company didn’t plan to release additional
> content, either free or paid.
I find the term "new content" a bit weird here. What does it mean? New levels?
New characters? New items in the shop? New challenges? New gameplay mode? Any
of these? If we assume that a new type of challenge or a game play mode would
count as new content, Super Mario Run just sent an in-game notification that a
Toad Rally type game could be played with friends as a friendly challenge,
without gaining or losing any coins or toads. How many times one can play this
everyday depends on the number of worlds conquered and the number of friends
one has on the game. Of course, this is free for the current players without
updating the game from the app store. This feature wasn't available before. So
Nintendo had already built this into the app and just flipped some switch
today. Who knows how many such hidden features exist that would be turned on
gradually to sustain player interest and keep them engaged?
I didn't purchase the full game because, compared to many others, I find these
games difficult to play and win. I have some other nitpicks as well - coins
are basically useless (except to build some decorations), Toad Rally tickets
are hard to win, getting the colored coins beyond the pink ones is quite tough
and sometimes even impossible without using the bubble to go backward. So it
didn't seem worth spending so much money to just play a few levels with
limited advancement.
I would've liked the game to have a range of difficulty levels on the plus and
minus side of what currently exists.
~~~
outericky
Agree that it's ambiguous. I fired it up and saw a new play mode available
today (rally free run).... so not new levels, but new gameplay option.
~~~
newscracker
I feel Nintendo probably didn't grasp that Toad Rally would be the gameplay
sequence more appreciated by people than the World Tour. Toad Rally is more
fun and gives more replay value. But it needs to be tweaked for better player
matching, easier ways to get Toad Rally tickets often (or remove the ticket
system altogether), allow to challenge friends for toads and coins (not a
"friendly run") and so on. Adding Game Center support for friends is a better
option than being tied to inviting friends through a different system or
creating a Nintendo account (though Game Center ties the relationships to iOS
alone).
If at all anyone from the Nintendo team that built Super Mario Run is reading
this, please focus on making Toad Rally more accessible and better.
------
brak1
Well i just got an iOS notification a few minutes ago saying "Super mario run
- new feature - friendly run is available". But I assume (given that the game
was only released a few days ago) that it was intended to slowly roll out
whatever this 'friendly run' mode is...
------
electic
I loved the game. The best part of the game is actually getting the colored
coins and Toad Rally. I tend to run out of tickets fast and would love to buy
more tickets. I think this could be a great way for Nintendo to make a
constant revenue stream in the game.
------
CM30
I don't get it. Didn't they just add some Christmas items for Kingdom Builder
a few days ago? And a 'friendly' mode for Toad Rush earlier today?
That sounds like additional Super Mario Run content for me. Just the free kind
people like.
~~~
gallerdude
No more additional paid content.
~~~
dpcan
It looks like the quote in the article also says "free content" so there is
definitely some confusion here. Yet the notification I received IN the game
today was titled "new feature added". So, maybe features aren't content, but
that seems like an update to me.
------
aczerepinski
As a shareholder, I don't think Nintendo is doing all they can to capitalize
on their IP and industry position. I played the first three levels and the
game seems fine. But why build a two-hour game and stop there? Once you've
built out the infrastructure, isn't the hard part done, and additional
art/level assets are comparatively less expensive? Wouldn't a 30 level
expansion be inexpensive to develop and well received by fans?
~~~
valarauca1
But why build a two-hour game and stop there?
Over saturation, artificially create more demand. Nobody goes back to an all
you can eat buffet because the steak was so well prepared.
Wouldn't a 30 level expansion be inexpensive to develop and well
received by fans?
Generally no. DLC doesn't typically sell at a high rate. Also a Nintendo
shareholder you should be aware they don't sell DLC's.
I don't even understand your support over this business model. ATVI supports
this model and is down ~$2 on the year. While NTDOY has avoided it and is up
~9 on the year. KING who heavily practiced this model is no longer trading.
Going out 5year there has been little difference in the per-share profit. So
the market really doesn't validate this business model. It is a model, it
works, but it isn't wildy successful... The only justification I can see for
it is chasing trends.
Once you've built out the infrastructure, isn't the hard part done,
and additional art/level assets are comparatively less expensive?
This is also true for releasing future games at a premium point.
Why sell 30 levels for $1. When you can sell 5 for $1 every 6 months? One is a
far steadier revenue stream.
~~~
AlexandrB
> Also a Nintendo shareholder you should be aware they don't sell DLC's.
This is completely false. There's plenty of DLC (new characters, maps[1]) for
Super Smash Bros. Wii U & 3DS.
[1] [http://www.smashbros.com/us/dlc/](http://www.smashbros.com/us/dlc/)
------
caconym_
Are any real numbers available? Has the game actually lost money? Maybe
investors have been riding a bit of a bubble, assuming that _Pokemon Go_ would
be the norm rather than the exception for mobile games based on venerable
Nintendo franchises.
Criticizing the payment model seems fair, though. However cynical and toxic
you might think the typical mobile game's monetization scheme is, when in
Rome...
~~~
electic
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13229607](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13229607)
~~~
caconym_
Combined with the 8% value from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13229499](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13229499),
that (according to my early morning math) comes in at something like (very
roughly) $25M "gross revenue" (apologies if that's not the right term). That's
just for whichever four days they set the records for.
A fair bit of money, but for a company like Nintendo I could see development
costs already getting up there, to say nothing of advertising, ongoing
maintenance, and so on. Maybe they really will lose money on it.
Mobile games are hard. For a game with this pricing model i.e. you pay up
front, you get a high quality game, you play it ( _Monument Valley_ might be a
similar example), even with really good market saturation (which is how I'd
describe what SMR has accomplished but, again, I'm not an expert), $25M is
_great_. To make a few comparisons based on probably-wrong numbers I found on
Google for some excellent games, _Tiny Wings_ made about $5M and the fairly
well-known _Monument Valley_ did about $15M.
Those developers doubtless kept costs down by limiting their staff and project
scope and relying on word-of-mouth/viral/whatever marketing. As I see it, any
other approach with the straight-up pricing model is simply not going to make
you any money 99% of the time. The people really making money on mobile games
have set up Skinner boxes where "whales" can drop thousands of dollars a year
in "micro"transactions.
Maybe this is all bullshit; I'm just fascinated by the idea that you can
release a relatively simple game, break download records on the app store with
8% of those downloads getting you $8-10 per (making some dumb assumptions
about Apple's cut), and still lose money.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What it's like to wait in line for new iPhone - taigeair
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/technology-science/technology/iphone-5s-5c-launch-recap-2284480
======
taigeair
this is really cool - i used to work above the apple store.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Verify JSON using minimal schema - yusufnb
https://github.com/yusufnb/verify-json
======
tylerchr
Very neat. I had a similar need recently which led to a similar solution[^1].
Notably, I used a syntax nearly identical to yours, albeit without the very
handy pluggable validators yours has. Nice job.
What led you to choose “!” as the “optional” modifier? My intuition would have
guessed that character to have the opposite meaning.
[1]: project:
[https://github.com/tylerchr/jstn/](https://github.com/tylerchr/jstn/) —
playground:
[https://tylerchr.github.io/jstn/](https://tylerchr.github.io/jstn/)
~~~
willvarfar
A long time ago, before MyPy, I did a python schema checker for JSON. It grew
into argument checking too:
[https://pypi.org/project/obiwan/](https://pypi.org/project/obiwan/)
Simple stuff like:
Person = { "name": str, "age": int }
The basic idea was to use a file full of obiwan types to document the rest
api. The schema was both human-readable and valid python. The api could then
trivially check the schema. Once the schema is checked, of course, its safe to
go walk the json knowing that things aren't going to crash on you etc.
It worked great. Still works great. I still prefer the syntax to that of MyPy.
No real adoption, of course :) But fun to remember what could have been :)
------
smoyer
Maybe I'm in the minority but I don't want light-weight at the expense of
compatible/standard. It's being recognized that validation is more important
than we'd expected - the recent ACM guidelines for moderation on Postel's Law
really resonated with my experiences with RESTful/JSON micro-services
([https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1999945](https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1999945)).
But if we're going to the effort of validating, let's do it in a
language/framework agnostic way ... jsonschema.org is mentioned in other
comments but I'm a fan of the OpenAPI initiative
([https://www.openapis.org/](https://www.openapis.org/)). Then we can all
share the validation rules!
~~~
yusufnb
I understand. In my experience, the usability of those standards is pretty
bad. Which in effect leads to projects not using anything at all.
One of the benefit of JSON over XML is that it is concise and fast to work
with. The standard should reflect that part as well.
With this lib, as a developer to verify a JSON for a simple REST request is as
simple as - `verify(json, "{a,b,c}")`
~~~
smoyer
> leads to projects not using anything at all
We're counting that against products when we're analyzing what services to
adopt/purchase. You doing nothing at all ... or something non-standard results
in everyone else having to attempt to do it for you with the resulting
inconsistencies. I'm not sure why you think OpenAPI is tailored for XML ...
Here's the specification for the sample application (petstore) with service
and model definitions in YAML - [https://github.com/OAI/OpenAPI-
Specification/blob/master/exa...](https://github.com/OAI/OpenAPI-
Specification/blob/master/examples/v3.0/petstore.yaml).
~~~
yusufnb
I think we are talking about different things here. I love OpenAPI and
wouldn't do a project without it. verify-json is a lightweight way to validate
JSON schema and does not intend to change/improve anything about OpenAPI.
This is more for client-server JSON schema validations, comes handy when
different teams are writing client and server side code. Especially in
startups where iterations are rapid.
~~~
smoyer
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Corba implemented ICDs as
"contracts" between parties. It seems like a client and server developed by
different teams is still a good use-case for "something" that specifies the
contract. In the 2000's, we wrote mil-spec style ICD documents that we
attempted to enforce when writing code that had to interact (via a message
bus). The benefit of a language/framework agnostic way of performing with
something executed in code is a great step forward from just having an ICD
document. Note that early Corba, XML-RPC and SOAP/XML could perform this
function but people did horrible things to the data (using an indexed array of
strings as parameters) that broke both typing and the ability to do type-
specific validation.
From the way you've phrased your comment, I'm going to assume that the
different teams are within the same start-up ... having a versioned,
executable is even better when iterations are rapid if there are breaking
changes. I've been in enough start-ups to know that things are skipped over to
get a product out the door. I also know that the marketing and sales guys will
say "we're already using a RESTful/JSON API for our back-end, let's open our
API to third-parties to accelerate adoption of our SaaS". Ouch! (but I've been
there)
I will admit that "back-filling" an OpenAPI specification for an existing
service can be pretty daunting ... it's quite a bit easier if you start with
the first MVP and iterate the ICD with each iteration of the client and
server. Admittedly, we (software developers) still have issues versioning
services. It's not so bad for incremental changes but breaking changes to a
service where you have to support both older and newer clients is painful.
------
catlifeonmars
This has already been said in the nested comments, but why not “?” for
optional? Coming from Typescript, Swift, etc “!” feels more like an assertion
of non-nullity (is that a word?). It’s also easy to read as “not <key>”.
~~~
yusufnb
Hmmm, true. ? might be better. Let me think it through. I will update the
package to support that.
~~~
yusufnb
you can track this issue for that change - [https://github.com/yusufnb/verify-
json/issues/2](https://github.com/yusufnb/verify-json/issues/2)
------
oefrha
Exclamation mark for optional is just weird. Question mark would be a lot more
intuitive, unless there’s an origin story here I’m not aware of.
~~~
angry_cactus
Not sure of the exact motivation, but Swift uses exclamation mark to unwrap
optionals.
~~~
oefrha
In Swift optional types are marked by a question mark (exactly as I
suggested). Unwrapping an optional makes it non-optional, so the exclamation
point has the opposite meaning.
------
Eikon
It's crazy the amount of work that is spent to essentially implement static
typing into dynamically / duck typed languages.
Projects like this, mypy and others makes the whole thing _bizarre_ to say the
least.
~~~
ken
What statically typed language lets me define a type as “number between -180
and +180”, or “string which contains only alphanumeric chars”?
I think that would be a great feature but from what I see static typing fails
here, too.
~~~
rraval
> What statically typed language lets me define a type as “number between -180
> and +180”, or “string which contains only alphanumeric chars”?
Pretty much all of them. Any simple predicate like this can be encoded with
witness types.
Here's an example in Java, which is hardly the paragon of static typing (i.e.
it's no Haskell/Idris/Agda/Rust/Typescript):
class AlphaNumericString {
private final String str;
// use a fallible factory with a `private` constructor if you're
// morally opposed to exceptions
public AlphaNumericString(String str) throws AlphaNumericException {
if (!str.matches("^[a-zA-Z0-9]*$")) {
throw new AlphaNumericException();
}
this.str = str;
}
private static class AlphaNumericException extends Exception {
}
}
Now code can freely use `AlphaNumericString` and be guaranteed that it has
been validated.
You may object and say that newtype wrapping is cumbersome but:
1\. That's an argument about sugar and ergonomics, not about the semantics
that the static type system enforces
2\. Some languages make it easier to generate forwarding methods to the
underlying type (a la
[https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/delegation.html](https://kotlinlang.org/docs/reference/delegation.html))
3\. The `AlphaNumericString` is describing a smaller set of values than
`String`. In general, you should be strongly considering the methods you allow
and make sure that all paths continue to enforce the semantics you intend.
------
gunn
Why are schemas strings?
It would seem much more natural to make them JSON structures since they're
almost that anyway.
~~~
ZenPsycho
then you might as well use jsonschema.
~~~
mikl
Indeed, there seems to be no reason to use this instead of JSON Schema.
------
tckr
JSON schema and ajv are my go to tools for this:
[https://github.com/epoberezkin/ajv](https://github.com/epoberezkin/ajv)
------
suref
I built something similar for my latest webapp to validate json-requests in
python, the syntax is like this:
{
"content": Required(str),
"username": Required(str, validate=username_is_ok, transform=lambda x: x.lower(),
fail_message="Username isn't valid"),
"message": Optional(str),
"some_list": Required({
"name": Required(str),
"date": Required(str)
}, is_list=True)
}
Then I can provide this in a hook to the request method.
~~~
1f97
can you tell me a bit more about this? i wanted something like this for a
small api i have but ended up using marshmallow to validate jsons against
defined schemas which i think is a bit overkill.
~~~
kingosticks
If you haven't seen, these alternatives might also be helpful:
* https://github.com/keleshev/schema
* https://github.com/alecthomas/voluptuous
* https://github.com/Pylons/colander
~~~
1f97
thanks, i will take a look!
------
ivanhoe
This is OK for simple structures, but in a deeply nested structures and larger
APIs you'd probably also need some equivalent of json-schema $refs and ability
to reuse blocks in your api schema.
------
Zinggi
You shouldn't validate json. You should parse it, e.g. transform it into your
desired data structure if it comes in in a valid shape.
[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/)
I really like Elms way of Json decoding for this.
~~~
guitarbill
I read the post. It seems to be mainly applicable to statically-typed
languages. Apparently, the core problem with validation is "shotgun parsing":
> Shotgun parsing is a programming antipattern whereby parsing and input-
> validating code is mixed with and spread across processing code—throwing a
> cloud of checks at the input [...]
> The problem is that validation-based approaches make it extremely difficult
> or impossible to determine if everything was actually validated up front
> [...]
Err, what? So validating against a well-defined schema won't necessarily cause
this. But okay, again, I can buy the benefits for statically typed languages.
There's more though:
> Don’t be afraid to parse data in multiple passes. Avoiding shotgun parsing
> just means you shouldn’t act on the input data before it’s fully parsed
> [...]
> Use abstract datatypes to make validators “look like” parsers. Sometimes,
> making an illegal state truly unrepresentable is just plain impractical
> given the tools Haskell provides, such as ensuring an integer is in a
> particular range.
I've experienced this in Java/Jackson (which btw, proves this is not exactly
new, sexy, or rare in the statically typed world).
What is the suggestion for a dynamic language? In e.g. Javascript, classes
will only get you so far, and seems needlessly heavyweight if you aren't going
to get other benefits of type-safety. I really don't see how this is helpful,
even after putting in the time to investigate this.
~~~
Zinggi
In JS, my preferred way of handling json is heavily inspired by the elm json
decoding way.
I want my decoders to essentially do 2 things:
1\. Transform received data into a data structure that is best suited for my
app. This might involve converting lists to objects, objects to sets, parse
dates etc.
2\. Only succeed on valid data
This way, my application never has to deal with bad data. Also, I get to
design the data structures I use, not the APIs I use. By only validating and
not transforming, you are pushing more advanced validation further away from
where the data was received (since you'll need to transform the data at some
point anyway).
As for libraries, I want composable parsers. For TS I'd probably use:
[https://github.com/paperhive/fefe/](https://github.com/paperhive/fefe/)
------
jacekm
Karate[1] has its own dsl for describing both json and xml. The output is
short, but not very readable. For people new to the project it's rather
cryptic. It is easy to maintain though once your team becomes fluent in
Karate.
[1] [https://github.com/intuit/karate](https://github.com/intuit/karate)
------
andrenarchy
You can also use fefe
([https://github.com/paperhive/fefe/](https://github.com/paperhive/fefe/)) to
validate _any_ data with its pure functional and minimalist approach. Bonus:
it's 100% type-safe automatically if you use Typescript.
------
crtlaltdel
i saw this and was thinking “hrm...this is the sorts thing i use lodash
for...if i even need it”.
and now i see lodash is a dependency.
~~~
ddoolin
It also exposes itself as a Lodash mixin, which I have never used nor seen, so
that's something learned.
------
verdverm
Enter [https://cuelang.org](https://cuelang.org)
------
philliphaydon
Wow this is very clean!
~~~
eventreduce
I do not think so. If you check the example schema, it is very hard to
understand it. What does ':lat' mean? is it a string or a number? What does
'!b' mean, can it only be false?
~~~
philliphaydon
If you read the whole example:
lat = custom validator
b = shorthand for boolean (as is s for string)
! = optional
So for me reading the whole example its very easy to understand and digest.
~~~
eventreduce
Yes, reading the docs explains what these keywords mean. But by just looking
at the schema it is impossible to understand what that is. And if you check
the definition of clean code which is something like "intuitive
understandable" then it comes clear that this is not clean.
~~~
philliphaydon
Ah I see where you’re coming from. Good point.
------
therufa
There has been a schema specification for json already. it's called
conveniently `json-schema` [https://json-schema.org/](https://json-
schema.org/)
~~~
eventreduce
I think the author knew this but wanted a more minimal type of validation.
~~~
arethuza
Json schema does scale down pretty well (indeed as the link above shows the
simplest possible Json schema is just "{}") - it also has pretty good tool
support (e.g. VS Code) - there is a Json schema for Json schemas which helps a
lot.
The main advantage of the approach in the article appears to be that its easy
to extend validation with code - which is a nice touch. Pretty much any
complex Json validation I have written has to combine both schema based
validation _and_ code based checks - usually done completely separately.
~~~
eventreduce
Json-schema itself scales down pretty well. But the libraries for validating
it do not. Even if your schema is only {}, the build size increment because of
pulling in a jsonschema validator is enormous because of all these supported
features.
~~~
arethuza
Fair enough I guess - don't think I've ever had a need to do client side JSON
validation against a 'schema' so I've never had that concern.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Startup Takes a Risk on RISC-V Custom Silicon - spullara
http://www.nextplatform.com/2016/07/11/startup-takes-risk-risc-v-custom-silicon/
======
bedros
the main reason ARM CPUs are so popular is not only their low power usuage,
but also the eco system around the AXI bus. AXI bus is used inside the SOC to
connect third party modules to ARM CPUs, you can easily build a custom SOC by
plugging bunch of AXI capable modules together with an ARM CPU.
unless RISC-V builds a similar bus on a chip to AXI with a bridge to connect
to legacy AXI modules, the RISC-V platform will go no where
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The US Army is developing AI missiles that find their own targets - jonbaer
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2212982-the-us-army-is-developing-ai-missiles-that-find-their-own-targets/
======
ziddoap
How can we look at the error rates of current AI (especially the ones dealing
with human aspects) and subsequently think that this is the right time to make
an AI-controlled weapon?
Absolutely stunning. I guess it doesn't matter what the error rate is when you
think everyone else on the planet is your enemy.
~~~
luckylion
"We didn't reject your credit application, it was the AI" becomes "We didn't
blow up that hospital, it was the AI".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Trying New Things Is So Hard to Do - x43b
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/01/business/why-trying-new-things-is-so-hard.html?
======
wccrawford
I can't say I've ever had a problem trying something so easy as a new soda. In
fact, I've switched sodas a lot for various reasons including taste, often
trying new ones when they come out.
I thought this article would be about learning new skills like art or
programming, which I actually _do_ find hard to get into.
For those, I know why it's so hard: I'm so good at the things I do daily that
new things are quite painful to see how much I fail at them. I end up just
going back to the stuff I'm good at instead.
~~~
duopixel
What about things that you've never tried, and that you might not even know
that you like? You've already climbed the difficulty curve of programming in
X, so you don't want to put so much effort in getting to the same level with
Y. You're putting in a lot of effort to reach the same spot.
The author (as an economist, I suspect) equates new experience with
consumption, but there is a huge range of new experience available if you do
away with the frustration of trying to find something better than you
currently do. Say, experimenting a range of sports (rock climbing, hiking,
weight lifting, skateboarding) as act of knowledge rather than attaching to
the results it gives.
It seems rational that there is more benefit in new experience, good or bad
than repeating pleasant experience. Going to a new travel destination will
give you more memories and anecdotes than going to your favorite vacation
spot. And yet we're all a little bit coward and tend to stay in our comfort
zone.
~~~
wccrawford
That's a good question. I find them especially taxing because I tend to be a
thorough person, so I tend to look for tutorials and watch them first. If it's
something that doesn't really lend itself to a technical explanation (art!)
then it really just mystifies me and I have trouble even starting.
For example, my wife and her sister went to one of those wine-and-painting
things and produced what I think are actually pretty good paintings with no
real practice beforehand.
It horrifies me because I know I'll want it to be better than it is. (And my
wife felt that way about hers, despite how I felt about hers.) So I haven't
done it.
I did, however, buy a book and art supplies and do 3 of the 50 projects before
wandering off to something else. I really do intend to go back to it, but
haven't.
------
leggomylibro
"Like most people, I conduct relatively few experiments in my personal life,
in both small and big things."
...
"Habits are powerful. We persist with many of them because we tend to give
undue emphasis to the present. Trying something new can be painful: I might
not like what I get and must forgo something I already enjoy."
I'm drawn to a quote written by Sir Terry Pratchett every time I read this
sort of article. So tl;dr,
>"They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is
it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal
and tomorrow is pretty much like today."
~~~
barrkel
_They think they want good government and justice for all, Vimes, yet what is
it they really crave, deep in their hearts? Only that things go on as normal
and tomorrow is pretty much like today._
These two statements are not contradictory, of course; the primary reason we
have government is to avoid unpleasant surprises, whether they be crime,
fraud, war, unemployment, sickness or natural disaster. If things go on as
normal with tomorrow like today, government is working well enough - unless
today is unendurable, in which case it's broken.
~~~
leggomylibro
Yeah, I think the point is that it's a characteristic which makes it very easy
for bad actors to manipulate concepts of governance and justice.
People might balk at negative changes at first, even very sharp and sudden
ones, but they probably won't continue to fight them over the scale of years
or decades as the 'new normal' sets in.
------
baxtr
My feeling: The author does not understand the human psyche well enough.
People don’t buy coke because of the taste only. They buy coke because the way
they feel, whenever they drink coke. A branded coke gives a whole different
feeling than a generic one, which depends on several factors like brand image,
price, peers, etc. Works even with pain drugs.
See “Predictably Irrational” by Dan Ariely for several examples of this
effect.
~~~
fizixer
> People don’t buy coke because of the taste only.
Despite agreeing with you, I never get why people do this. I'm a big diet coke
addict. But my local store has a generic clone which tastes exactly the same.
I always buy the clone.
~~~
baxtr
Because it’s a lie people tell themselves to get a good feeling, at least 2-3x
a day (the author 6x).
You are immune to the lie :-) you gotta have a different lie to feel good.
BTW: I didn’t come up with the stuff. A splendid book about that topic is “All
marketers are liars” by Seth Godin
------
csnewb
I love trying new things, it's the easiest thing to do. The hardest part is
developing the habit to continuously do that thing.
~~~
jschwartzi
It's easier when the new thing is more enjoyable than the old thing. Then you
naturally gravitate toward it.
It's harder when the new thing is less enjoyable but will eventually pay off.
------
leepowers
> Yet I’m clearly making an error, one that reveals a deeper decision-making
> bias whose cumulative cost is sizable: Like most people, I conduct
> relatively few experiments in my personal life, in both small and big
> things.
I think this is related to learning. Once you've learned a particular task
(say, writing a unit test) you don't "relearn" it every time you want to
execute the task again. Instead you "reenact" it - it's more automatic and can
be done more quickly and with less focus and concentration. Each unit test is
unique - but the tooling and concepts that surround it are already there.
Reenacting vs. learning may be one reason behind brand loyalty and habit. It
simply takes more mental effort to re-evaluate and re-learn than to coast off
a previous decision. It's more work, even if it's something minor like trying
a different brand of soda. We can only "spend" so much attention and care
during our waking hours.
The value of a habit is that you make a decision once and project it into the
future as an automatic response. The notion that these automatic responses are
somehow flawed or need to be optimized away, or optimized to produce some
economic advantage, is suspect.
What _is_ valuable is understanding that these automatic responses are as much
a part of human cognition as our deliberative attention. We should be re-
evaluate them periodically and try to understand the effect they have on the
trajectory of our lives.
------
EGreg
To try new things and experience success in new areas, here is step 1:
MAKE IT SAFE TO FAIL
That's right. Spend time and energy thinking about opportunities to practice
and fail over and over while minimizing the fallout.
For example, are you afraid to launch that app on the store until you've done
all your beta testing and your metrics show high engagement?
Don't be afraid. Launch it and simply DON'T PUBLICIZE IT. Who knows, Apple
might approve it and you may get 5-10 organic new beta testers a day. You lose
nothing for trying.
That's the mindset that will get you far :)
~~~
kbutler
The "MAKE IT SAFE TO FAIL" was contradicted by the article.
"This is a pity because experimentation can produce outsize rewards. For
example, I wouldn’t be risking much by trying a generic soda, and if I liked
it enough to switch, the payout could be big: All my future sodas would be
cheaper."
You don't get much safer to fail than trying one soda.
The article was about trying new behaviors different from habits, rather than
trying big new things, and was disappointing overall.
------
MaxBarraclough
Yet another clickbait headline. From a Harvard professor, no less, assuming
the title is the author's.
The article explores the consequences of our reluctance to break from habit,
rather than explaining _why_ we find this hard to do.
More accurately, it explores why we so rarely do it. If we were discussing it
being truly 'hard to do', we'd need to first establish that we consciously
want to break from habit, but then fail to follow through with action. The
article doesn't take this route.
The closest it gets to delivering on the title is _Yet the fact that many
people needed a strike to force them to experiment reveals the deep roots of a
common reluctance to experiment._ This is not then expanded upon.
~~~
Lewton
> From a Harvard professor, no less, assuming the title is the author's.
The probability that the author got to choose the title is very slim
~~~
ghaff
Also newsflash. Headlines have been clickbait to a greater or lesser degree
since before there were clicks. Yes, they exist in part to tell you what the
article is about but their main function is to intrigue you about the
contents.
~~~
MaxBarraclough
So I should be ok with being lied to to get clicks?
This journalistic blight may indeed have been happening for a long time, but
it still discredits the source and should disqualify it from HN.
Some titles are actually honest. Who would've thunk?
------
account0099099
I like how the article starts off with:
"I make bad life choices, now listen to be for advice on...."
------
HaoZeke
Trying is easy.. Sticking to something new is what's really hard.
------
pb060
I’ve never really done it but I’ve always thought that adding some randomness
to my choices would make my life much more balanced. In a way, also
experiments can be biased.
------
baxtr
I cannot access the article. Has anybody an alternative link? Or a summary?
Thx
~~~
frgtpsswrdlame
[https://outline.com/L2ESsK](https://outline.com/L2ESsK)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple and Amazon cut a deal that upended the Mac resale market - ProAm
https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/21/18624846/amazon-marketplace-apple-deal-iphones-mac-third-party-sellers-john-bumstead
======
crispinb
Wow this is nasty stuff.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Spotify Introduces Video Clips, Podcasts, and Activity-Based Playlists - areski
http://techcrunch.com/2015/05/20/spotify-introduces-video-clips-podcasts-and-activity-based-playlists/
======
disposition2
I feel like Spotify is regressing in terms of music discovery and usefulness
in general. It's still nice to be able to stream (almost) any album but the
radio and shuffle have _always_ been terrible and the removal of useful music
discovery (which is also terrible on Spotify...Rdio & LastFM both destroy
Spotify in this realm) applications in a recent past updates only made it
worse. Now, they are adding these 'features' that have little to do with music
and more to do with marketing and corporate relationships.
I'll most likely continue to be a subscriber because as I mentioned the
ability to stream (almost) any album is great but it would be nice to see some
progress related to music or music discovery rather than these gimmicks. Stop
trying to be a universal storefront for everyone's media consumption (video
clips from ABC, who wants that in a music app) and do one thing right...
In the meantime, I'll continue to subsidize Spotify with useful music
discovery services (and self made hacks) and just use Spotify as my "I know
exactly what album I want to hear and don't need shuffle" music application.
~~~
mjs7231
I feel the opposite. I subscribe to Spotify specifically for music discovery
in the form of listening to playlists other people (not algorithms) created.
IMO these tend to be much better than anything I've seen a computer come up
with.
I'm also pretty excited about podcasts and news. Podcasts, because it may
eliminate another app on my Phone that I always felt Spotify should have been
able to do all along. News is exciting because I really don't know any other
way to stream on-demand audio news into my phone (and car). Maybe there is
already an app for that? I looked around lightly and never found anything.
I feel the direction they are taking isn't 100% music albums, but more the
audio-everything on the go. I listen to Spotify 99% of the time on my commute,
and love the focus on audio-only.
~~~
lepht
>News is exciting because I really don't know any other way to stream on-
demand audio news into my phone (and car). Maybe there is already an app for
that? I looked around lightly and never found anything.
I agree with pretty much everything you said, but thought I'd point out NPR
One is great for this purpose: [http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-
one/](http://www.npr.org/about/products/npr-one/)
------
afandian
Great to hear there's something shiny for the developers to work on, but as a
paying user, there are some massive regressions they have introduced and
apparently won't fix. Their twitter customer service is particularly glib.
Want to find a track in your a playlist? Or go to an artist page and find a
track within that? They removed the filter functionality ages ago and are very
opaque about communicating updates.
[https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Desktop-Bring-
ba...](https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Desktop-Bring-back-search-
inside-Playlists-amp-Songs-tab/idi-p/1039674)
By co-incidence, it looks like they announced something on this ticket today.
But it doesn't excuse their past attitude.
~~~
sgloutnikov
Finally, at least they listened. The decision to take out searching within a
playlist baffled me (or I guess it was more of a oops we forgot it).
~~~
afandian
No, I think they implemented a whole new view, probably more extensible, to
allow future features (IIRC the look changed a bit). They just didn't
prioritise fixing the regressions they introduced.
------
hyperbovine
Surprise this article makes no mention of the elephant in the room, namely
Apple's imminent "Spotify killer" ([http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-
beats-spotify-killer-wh...](http://www.businessinsider.com/apple-beats-
spotify-killer-what-we-know-2015-3)). Spotify have evidently concluded that
they need to be more like iTunes, which is unfortunate.
~~~
mkr-hn
Apple is not going to kill anything unless they suddenly learned how to make
competent software for non-Apple devices.
~~~
kaolinite
They've been hiring Android developers recently to work on the Beats music
app, which is likely to become the Apple streaming service, so there's a good
chance it'll be on Android too. No idea whether it'll be any good, of course.
I suspect the main thing that will limit Apple's streaming service is
availability: iTunes Radio is only available in the US and Australia. I think
they're being punished a bit by the record labels, after Apple took over the
digital downloads market, much to their displeasure.
That said, if Apple's streaming service comes to the UK, I know I'll drop
Spotify in a heartbeat. I couldn't be more disloyal to Spotify: I only use
them because they're the only service with the exact combination of features I
need (besides Rdio, who I don't use because their desktop app is - incredibly
- even worse than Spotify's).
------
collias
This is Spotify trying to differentiate themselves from other music streaming
services ahead of Apple's announcement, I think.
As it stands now, most music services are basically at feature parity with
each other: Spotify, Rdio, Slacker, etc. They all offer listening to whatever
album or song you want on-demand for a price, as well as algorithmically-
generated radio stations based on artists or whatever for free.
The only thing any of them can compete on anymore is how well their app works
and how they can exploit their given niche (on-demand for Spotify and Rdio,
curated radio for Slacker, market share for Pandora).
------
eatonphil
It's hard to care about anything new they are adding when their existing
software is so inadequate. I mean, I love the desktop client. But Linux has no
desktop client so km forced to use the web client. The web client is months if
not years behind the desktop client. It is missing folders, drag and drop just
to name a few. The web experience is just so awful compared to the desktop. I
wish they would focus on what they have deployed instead of half baking this
crap. /rant
But as a subscriber, I do still really love the desktop client when I have the
option to be on a Mac or PC.
~~~
blfr
There is a Linux client and there has been one since I remember. They even
have a proper .deb repo.
[https://www.spotify.com/en/download/previews/](https://www.spotify.com/en/download/previews/)
~~~
GeorgeHahn
Sadly practically unusable on high DPI screens
------
ende
How about they bring back third party apps?
~~~
ToastyMallows
For the life of me I don't understand why they removed 3rd party apps. I used
Classify, SoundDrop, SongKick and others all the time, they were so useful.
I understand that they wanted people to use their Web API and SDK, but it was
so nice and convenient to have them embedded inside of the Spotify desktop
client.
------
wehadfun
The running feature is interesting. It detects how fast you are running and
delivers songs that match your pace.
------
Splendor
I'm excited for this. Discovery is an area that can definitely stand some more
work.
------
clemsen
Did anybody find out how podcasts are integrated into Spotify? What interests
me is if there will be a dynamic playlist of unlistened episodes. This would
be great, as I don't know any good podcast applications for Windows.
EDIT: Spelling.
~~~
monty5811
It isn't quite a Windows application, but PocketCasts' web app works well for
me (and syncs with my phone):
[https://play.pocketcasts.com](https://play.pocketcasts.com)
------
corobo
I've not yet been able to find: Anyone know if they're hosting the podcasts
(or even caching them) or are they just streaming them as any other podcasting
app?
Will this break the already minimal podcast statistic tracking?
------
Dewie3
> For example, in the morning, a user might see playlists like “Wake Up Happy”
> or “Sunrise Run”
I don't know what the Hell names like that are supposed to tell me. I guess
there is some specific kind of music associated with 'wake up happy' and
'sunrise run'...
| {
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Stimulus Checks To Have Trump's Name printed on Them - downshun
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/coming-to-your-1200-relief-check-donald-j-trumps-name/2020/04/14/071016c2-7e82-11ea-8013-1b6da0e4a2b7_story.html
======
A4ET8a8uTh0
Whatever you say about him, he sees it as part of his personal branding. And
he loves putting his name everywhere he can ( especially if it can be
associated with something perceived as a positive ).
edit: I genuinely do not get down votes here. Everything I put is factual.
Trump Towers. Trump Organization. Trump University.
| {
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Locals reportedly frustrated with Alphabet's Waymo self-driving cars - gok
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/locals-reportedly-frustrated-with-alphabets-waymo-self-driving-cars.html
======
russellbeattie
My son is 16 and just got his driver's permit. We live in Mountain View, and
so driving with Waymo vehicles is basically part of life here - I pass by at
least 2 or 3 on a daily basis. They also cruise by the front of my house quite
often, as I assume it's on some sort of route.
Trying to teach your kid how to drive, while behind an autonomous vehicle is a
_great_ way to see how erratic and unpredictable they really are. They don't
act like humans at all. As an experienced driver, I just sort of adjusted as
if Waymo vehicles were bad drivers. But to a novice driver trying to keep a
safe distance, predict what it's going to do next, and adjust accordingly -
it's a challenge.
What's worse is that they almost always drive too slow (read: the speed
limit), which creates chaos as impatient drivers (read: everyone else) tries
to maneuver around the vehicles. Imagine you're just learning how to drive, a
vehicle in front of you is driving at an abnormal pace, slowing for stoplights
way before necessary, wandering around the lane (especially before turning),
and doing other odd things. Meanwhile, all the other drivers around you are
passing quickly, cutting that vehicle off, and generally acting like morons.
The worst situation is being at a 4-way stop with Waymo vehicles. I taught my
son that it's pretty normal to make brief eye contact with other drivers - or
at least turn his head to face the driver that he thinks should be the next to
go - which helps ensure that there aren't any weird stop/start problems. Guess
what you can't do to an autonomous vehicle? No driver means that there's no
real way to gauge what they're going to do. (The person behind the "wheel"
usually has a blank yet terrified expression of, 'please don't kill me',
rather than any real information.)
So, yeah, Waymo vehicles are weird. It's the future, though, so my son is
learning how to deal with these cars the way I learned how to deal with icy
roads growing up in New Hampshire. I don't really appreciate being a living
beta-tester though... Happily, Waymo's record is much better than Tesla's and
Uber's as they haven't killed anyone yet. Yet.
~~~
cromwellian
Is this a satire? You're teaching your son to drive but you think driving the
speed limit, slowing for stop lights and signalling according to the DMV
Handbook is 'erratic'?
The real problem is teaching people to be reckless and impatient drivers.
~~~
russellbeattie
Wow, your reading comprehension skills need serious work.
First, Waymo cars have trouble making turns. They also wander between lanes.
This is well documented by the article you obviously didn't read.
In my comment, I was complaining about _other_ reckless and impatient drivers
overreacting to Waymo cars and how that causes dangerous traffic that my kid
has to navigate through. I've personally witnessed Waymo cars causing stackups
behind them, and near miss accidents as drivers try to get by.
You've apparently never taught anyone how to drive. Staying with the flow of
traffic (within reason, Mr. Pedantic) is the safest way to stay out of an
accident.
| {
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Design, and why I don't do it - codeoclock
http://hughrawlinson.me/post/49636781678/design-and-why-i-dont-do-it
======
demian
In my opinion, we are having some serious problems with the words we are
using.
We are mixing aesthetics and stylizing with things like ui flows and product
design. Just becasue it's called "Design" it doesn't mean it can only be done
by people with "Designer" on their titles. It seems that the only reason we
are separating "Development" as another dicipline incapable of doing some of
the things we call "Design" it's because we don't call it "Code Design".
A visual designer is as capable of developing a useful and functional ui
design as a developer. Even if one is called "designer" and the other is not.
Stylizing is another matter.
PS: My point is that some of the activities we are calling "Design" are VERY
different to some of the other activities we are calling "Design". We lump
them together because, well, they are called "Design". But they are not
equivalent, not even related really, or at least not more related that some of
those "Design" activities and "Programming".
As a metaphor, Architecture is not Interior Design, nor is Structural
Engineering. An Interior Designer, by definition, is as prepared to do
architecture as a Structural Engineer... and even less so in some cases. But
with the right training, both can become Architects. Or for an example closer
to software, Game Designers come from a lot of backgrounds, from art to
writing to technology. Their backgrounds affect the type of design they do and
their focus (Jon Blow, for example, prioritizes the "mechanical" design of the
game, while Edmund McMillen works mainly from an stylistic point of view), but
all of them are doing great game design.
~~~
codeoclock
I was talking about web design and web development. I have no desire to be any
other kind of designer.
~~~
k-mcgrady
I think he means there are different aspects to web design. You mention in
your post that when you tried to design a site well you "ended up with a
totally hideous website, using jarring colors, and too many fonts, with really
thick borders and dense type." That's not all there is to design.
For example I find I'm not very good at designing something that looks nice
but I can design a site/app to work well for the user. The UX is good. Steve
Jobs famously said "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like.
Design is how it works." You and I may not be good at the aesthetic part of
software design but that doesn't mean we should dismiss it all together.
Software developers can still be good at 'how it works' and it's possible they
might be better positioned than a UI designer to do this.
------
jongold
I really loved Mark Otto's sentiment here — design and development aren't
separate jobs like, say, deep-sea oil drilling and copyright lawyering are.
We're all working on the same spectrum with an increasing amount of overlap.
<http://markdotto.com/2013/04/22/designer-developer-spectrum/>
There's definitely room for specialisation but our work is so much richer when
we learn about the full stack. If you want to know more about design — just
ask a designer :). We don't bite, we've just been a bit lazy with learning
resources recently. HackDesign is a great start but the design community are
well aware that learning to design at the moment is a mix of formal education,
figuring shit out over years of making mistakes and a sprinkling of black
magic. There's no Railscast to grok typography, and that sucks. We're working
on it though :)
------
wells-riley
I don't mean to self-promote, but <http://hackdesign.org> may be what the
author is looking for. You can move at your own pace, and the lessons are
curated by some of the most thoughtful designers I know of.
We're pushing out a lesson on Color Theory on Monday, then David Kadavy
(author of Design for Hackers) is up the week after. We've already got 4
months of great content so far, and 8 more to go.
Let me know if you try it out - @wr on twitter.
~~~
misiti3780
im gonna try this out for sure - why is it free?
~~~
kenbellows
There's already all kinds of resources to purchase on design (including Design
for Hackers, which Wells mentioned). And if you're willing to pay for it,
that's awesome. But the thing is, most of us developers aren't, because we
don't think we'll be good at it, we don't think we need to be good at it, we
don't think it's worth the investment, we aren't "designers" and therefore
don't want to spend the cash on it, etc.
But we really need everyone to understand good design theory, at least at a
basic level. It streamlines the development process, and it may even prompt a
few developers who hadn't really thought about it to do a little more with
design.
What I love about Hack Design is that it is free and very casual, which means
I can look into it in my spare time because of my own interest and motivation,
without any investment and without any risk.
Also it should be noted that the course is largely comprised of a curated set
of already-out-there blog posts, articles, tools, and other materials. Curated
is the active word there; it's like a guided tour of the design community. The
toughest thing about getting started with any new area of learning is knowing
where to start, especially with something so vast and foreign to many of us as
design. Having someone to point you in the right direction, let alone guide
you step by step through the entire foundational process, is a huge leg up.
Okay, I'll stop gushing now. I just really enjoy and appreciate this course.
------
calinet6
This is a very self-aware article, and very astute. I would add that
developers should not be afraid of design: in many ways, it is no different
from programming, in that it follows some logic and rules, and that you can
learn it, with time and the gumption to do so. Learn by copying the greats,
learn who the greats are by watching who others watch, and just study what
makes things look good.
Design is not some scary magical quality you're either born with or not—I am
convinced you can develop an eye, and you can learn by imitation and
attention.
But by all means, don't overstep the boundaries of your expertise. Good advice
for any work.
------
vinceguidry
Design is different enough from programming that if you're trying to learn
both at the same time, you'll eventually give up. I believe that if you want
to be effective, you have to get to a point where you can express yourself
fluently in code, without any hiccups _at all_ , before you can give design a
shot.
Because basically, design (at the beginner's level) is a whole bunch of little
tweaks until something looks _just right_. If you are designing in the same
environment you code in, say by making your tweaks directly to the HTML/CSS,
you're just going to get frustrated if your tweaks take any longer than a
second or so to make and reload your page. To use a car analogy, it's taking
your mechanical know-how and suddenly jumping into a NASCAR pit crew. You're
not just fixing the car, you're doing it lightening-fast and super-accurate.
If you're not already shit-hot, you're just going to burn out.
~~~
adrianhoward
_Because basically, design (at the beginner's level) is a whole bunch of
little tweaks until something looks just right. If you are designing in the
same environment you code in, say by making your tweaks directly to the
HTML/CSS, you're just going to get frustrated if your tweaks take any longer
than a second or so to make and reload your page_
That's actually a moderately good analogy - even though I disagree with your
conclusion.
Approaching design like that is like the developers who approach learning
development by writing crap and then randomly tweaking and tweaking and
tweaking until it sort of runs and does what they want.
Neither is a particularly good approach to learning design or development.
------
endlessvoid94
I can recommend The Non-designers design book by Robin Williams (if you can
find it). It's excellent.
------
terolacu
I, as a self-taught programmer, would learn design if I knew _how_. I just
couldn't find any good material on this. I'm wondering if it is because
designers are bad teachers or what. I subscribed to one of those courses that
popped up here in hacker news. It was terrible. All it did was send me weekly
emails with videos about how cool apple products are, or tasks that were way
too far away from the actual work. I'm sorry don't remember its name.
Does anyone know of a good book/tutorial/course to learn the very basics? How
the hell do I choose a good colour combination? I've read about the colour
theory. Now what?
~~~
quahada
This reminds me of the time I taught myself photography through online
resources. All of the 'photo' tutorials taught how to use the camera, which a)
doesn't teach you fundamentals on what makes a good picture and b) is not
necessary with modern cameras.
What I found much more useful was tutorials on how to paint, because they
started off by teaching artistic fundamentals, such as composition, colors,
etc.
------
kailuowang
Design for Hackers is a good book. I learned a lot from it, one of them is
that design isn't that hard, there are some tricks, but they are not that hard
to learn, and they do help a lot.
IMO, a hacker should learn every aspects of software making, design included.
PS, I am not saying that this book is what you can used to learn how to become
a designer, it's a good one for a developer to reasonably understand how
design works. "Design for Hackers" is exactly what this book trying to
achieve.
------
virtualwhys
More often than not you'll either be strong in design/art, OR strong in
programming.
There are of course amazing artists that are brilliant coders, but this would
be far more rare than the norm, which is one or the other.
Saying that, I'm a bit of a hybrid, not a great designer, and not a great
programmer ;-)
I suspect hybrid types are born of necessity; i.e. when one knows neither how
to design a website, nor how to program. BA/MA graduates building websites for
a living likely occupy much of this space.
I suspect pure programmers are those with a CS degree who found work right out
of college, diving directly into Java/C-family projects for Big Co., what need
for design/art?
~~~
adrianhoward
_More often than not you'll either be strong in design/art, OR strong in
programming._
The question is though whether that's a natural law, or an artefact of the
culture of those communities of practice. Personally I lean towards the
latter.
I'm seeing a lot more dev folk get more than competent on the design side (and
a few UX folk getting competent on the dev side).
------
willholloway
I am in the same boat as the author. You can get a lot better at design by
starting to look with a curious and critical eye at well designed web sites
and things like movie posters.
I'm still not very good, but I'm able to put together nice sites with the help
of Twitter Bootstrap and wrapbootstrap.com templates.
Here is an example of what a non-designer hacker can put together in a couple
hours with a wrapbootstrap theme, icon finder and images from around the web:
<http://willholloway.net>
------
guptaneil
_Hopefully, this will be my first step into acquiring an ability to make
things [...] that people see and say “wow!”_
Overall, great article, but keep in mind that the goal of good design isn't to
make people go "wow," it's to be invisible. The best interfaces are the one
people don't even notice. Remember that you're designing for your users, not
for other designers. It's surprisingly easy to forgot that.
Also, I recommend checking out "Design of Everyday Things" by Donald Norman.
It's an excellent introduction into usability design.
~~~
adrianhoward
_Overall, great article, but keep in mind that the goal of good design isn't
to make people go "wow," it's to be invisible_
Or rather - it's only to make people go "wow" if making that happen is part of
what the goal of the design is. Designs being invisible that should "wow" are
just as bad as "wow" designs when they should be invisible.
------
ams6110
I am a developer and I also prefer to leave the design to the designers. I
learned long ago that I have no sense for it, and moreover I find it tedious,
so my energies are best directed elsewhere.
~~~
StavrosK
Eh, I have no sense for writing programs in Go, and I find it tedious. I spent
three days at it, and now it comes much more easily. The same goes with
learning Spanish, or playing the guitar, or learning anything for the first
time.
If you find the process enjoyable, you'll be good at it soon enough. If not,
well, there are plenty of other things you can do, but it's not because you
"can't".
------
tomasien
The point of this really shouldn't be "I leave it to designers because they're
better at aesthetic design" it should be "I leave it to designers because I'm
already a good coder, and my time is more valuable".
Designing a really great product beyond choosing fonts, colors, and shapes
(which is extremely hard, but you can Google good font pairings and color
palettes) just takes time and lot of thought. Experience counts, but you have
it. If you spent 2 weeks working on a UX, you'd do great work, I promise you.
~~~
tomasien
I think my choice of the word "great" in the second paragraph was off, but
I'll stand by the rest. I have a legitimate learning disability when it comes
to aesthetics, going as far as not being able to recall what shape almost
anything was 5 seconds after seeing it. I'm also excellent at web design,
because it's really a logical, emotional, and time/test driven process more
than aesthetic.
~~~
adrianhoward
_I'm also excellent at web design, because it's really a logical, emotional,
and time/test driven process more than aesthetic._
Once you dig into some design theory - you'll find that visual design (and
other elements of design) are a lot more "logical, emotional and time/test
driven" than you think ;-) There are lots of rules of thumb and heuristics.
Lots of applied knowledge rather than just judging things from an aesthetic
POV.
Indeed the process of becoming a good designer is basically building up that
aesthetic POV from the ground up. In a similar way that experienced developers
see "ugly" code much more directly than beginners do.
Obviously I don't know you - but I've worked with folk who have said very
similar things to what you've said about having no eye for aesthetics who have
ended up with some fairly good basic design chops.
------
muraiki
I've been going through the free book Designing for the Web, and while it has
some older material in terms of code examples about CSS, it contains a great
amount of useful information about and theory behind design. A section of the
book that was very helpful to me is about how to research and gather ideas for
the design process. <http://designingfortheweb.co.uk/>
------
BenSS
I had similar thoughts. However, in the last year I've made a big effort to at
least understand what makes design tick. I don't expect to ever become a guru
designer, but there are benefits. A little knowledge goes a long way towards
working better with designers, and much more useable prototypes.
------
bbbhn
Great design is art. You can master the principles, techniques, and skills,
but in the end great design comes down to vision and imagination.
However that doesn't mean developers can't be really good designers. Anybody
can learn how to emulate the good design of the present and create products
which fulfill the design demands of consumers.
------
EliRivers
This would be better titled "UI colour schemes and layout, and why I don't do
it".
~~~
codeoclock
I should've specified web design and found an actual definition of it before I
posted. Ah well, next time :)
------
Aeiper
Tell me how the "Design for Hackers" book goes along @[email protected]
------
droopyEyelids
"Now, I leave design to the designers. I recognise that design and user
interaction is a really insanely important part of a project, and that it
should not be left to people who do not know how to do it. This includes
developers, bosses, and even clients."
I'd rephrase that to "...bosses, clients, and around 65% of those who call
themselves designers"
------
kijin
Your blog looks strange in Firefox 20.0.1 (latest stable as of today) on
Windows 7.
<http://i.imgur.com/XwBytbO.png>
~~~
codeoclock
That is bizarre, I have no idea why that would've happened.
~~~
kijin
Sorry, false alarm. It seems to have been caused by a possibly corrupt
Baskerville font on my computer, which caused certain character combinations
like "er", "te", and "is" to have ridiculously wide spaces in between. Still,
I have no idea why only Firefox was affected and not Chrome and IE.
Suggestion: Use web fonts. "Baskerville, Times New Roman, Times, serif" ain't
a web-safe combination.
| {
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Bowie's Blackstar Artwork Open Repository - bubuanabelas
https://github.com/BubuAnabelas/BlackstarArtwork
======
brudgers
Related: _David Bowie 's 'Blackstar' Art Free For Fans to Use_
[http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/david-bowies-
blacksta...](http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/david-bowies-blackstar-
art-free-for-fans-to-use-20160128)
| {
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Chrome 69: “www.” subdomain missing from URL - gouggoug
https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=881410
======
parliament32
Considering a subdomain "trivial" is ridiculous... there's a difference
between "www.example.com" and "example.com". Not only can they serve different
sites, they can even have different DNS records!
It seems that "m." is also considered a trivial subdomain. So when a user
clicks a link to a "m.facebook.com" uri, they'll be confused why FB looks
different when the browser reports it's on "facebook.com".
I sincerely hope Firefox doesn't follow suit.
~~~
trocadero
>there's a difference between "www.example.com" and "example.com"
Can you link to a site where these two are different?
~~~
ddebernardy
From one of the comments there:
[http://www.pool.ntp.org](http://www.pool.ntp.org) vs
[http://pool.ntp.org](http://pool.ntp.org)
One takes you to the website about the project, the other goes to a random ntp
server.
~~~
trocadero
Those go to the same place for me
~~~
dsl
Some small subset of pool servers run an HTTP server that redirects you to
www. Not all of them. You just got lucky.
~~~
Volundr
That's exactly right. www.pool.ntp.org is the project site. pool.ntp.org is
for getting an NTP server. Which one you get will depend on your location and
random chance. That server will run NTP, but what it happens to run on port
80, if anything, is up to the operator of the server.
------
CmdrKrool
Lots of people saying this is for the benefit of non-technical users.
For me, this is a minor inconvenience, precisely because I'm technically
capable/interested enough to handle the inconsistency.
But this kind of stuff (and I am speaking somewhat generally here) tends to
frustrate me, precisely when I'm trying to educate or deal with a non-
technical user in some capacity where it happens to matter. I can't just tell
them, " _that_ is the address of the page, and that will _always_ lead to the
exact same place if you type it fully and correctly, and that's that". Instead
I have to get my head around what if they're using browser X or operating
system Y, I have to ask on the phone first, "hang on, tell me what you see on
your screen", I have to say to the lady who's eagerly sat in front of me with
pen hovered above paper waiting for me to dictate how to do a thing in
straightforward steps, "well it depends, first you have to check this thing,
and if it's like this then you can do this but it might also be like that in
which case it's a bit different, let me explain" \- and this is usually the
point at which the non-technical user gets tired and throws the book at me.
In short, I think _consistency_ of information and process is usually much
more understandable and useful to users of any level, than the dumb
'simplification' of this half-baked information-hiding.
~~~
euske
I wholeheartedly agree with this. There are two sides of the debate now. One
side says that the machines should be clever enough to guess the user's
intention and go around of their mistakes, while the other side says that the
machines should stay as dumb and square. The question is about who is handling
the complexity of this world, and in my opinion it should be often left to the
human, not to the machines.
~~~
masswerk
The worse outcome may be, if there's an ambiguity involved and the smart
system takes precedent, but occasionally happens to take the wrong route – and
suppresses any feedback for the user to intervene or even notice. Which is
much, where we have arrived by this. I guess, collateral damage has become a
matter of everyday life.
------
sam_goody
Most comments assume that this is for solving user confusion, or security, or
building a better URL scheme, et al.
It's not, that is all smokescreen.
As ivs wrote[1] They are going to hide amp subdomain, so you don't know if
you're looking at AMP or the actual destination. And then suddenly the whole
world funnels through AMP.
And for that reason, it won't be reversed until people call them for what they
are actually trying to do.
[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17928939](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17928939)
~~~
untog
AMP pages are served through google.com, though? It's one of the big problems
with them.
~~~
Seirdy
Not always. Sometimes Google results have taken me to websites like
"amp.reddit.com" on mobile.
------
ozfive
This and many other changes over a course of a short period of time have
caused me to go to Firefox exclusively now. I heard Firefox is going to stop
third party cookie tracking altogether. Why not give Google the big finger and
use a different browser? Vote with your cold hard actions if you feel so
strongly about something.
~~~
rckclmbr
I switched to firefox a year ago. Its a little slower, but im a lot happier.
Ive been trying to degoogle as much as reasonable. I moved to fastmail as
well. Still using an android, but would switch if a reasonable alternative
that wasnt iphone came up. Im not paranoid or a privacy nut, just think google
is too involved in my life.
~~~
saintPirelli
Same here. Have you found any viable alternative to the Google Calendar? I'm
at the point where I'm thinking about hosting a calendar project from GitHub
myself.
~~~
kwk1
Nextcloud, whether self-hosted or otherwise, works great! It's just WebDAV.
You can get calendar, contacts, task, and note syncing, and it can even host
your documents for reference management software like Zotero.
------
crazygringo
Safari already hides "www.". In fact it hides everything except the root-level
domain, e.g. "[https://www.google.com/about/"](https://www.google.com/about/")
shows just "[lock] google.com".
Firefox and Opera show the full domain but gray out everything in the entire
URL except the root-level domain, so "www." is gray.
Just saying, de-emphasizing and hiding parts of the URL is clearly a trend.
This isn't just a Google thing.
~~~
nichochar
this is actually the main reason I cannot use Safari. It always boggled my
mind that they made this decision.
For power users, they never look at the url unless they want information from
it, in which case the `www` is valuable.
For low tech users, it can lead to straight up incomprehensible issues, like
sites not rendering properly (think of a `m.*`).
The UI gains are so small, that part of the screen is never really looked at,
but needs to be there, and typically has tons of horizontal room... I don't
get it
~~~
floatingatoll
Low-tech users don’t often understand that a difference could possibly exist
between “m.” and “www.” at all.
However, if it shows the TLD, they can confirm it says “google.com”. Imagine
they’re visiting a Paypal phishing link, to the domain:
www.paypal.com.www.com
The most important thing to show the user is “www.com”, because they’re
expecting “paypal.com”. All the rest is nonessential for protecting users from
bad actor sites.
~~~
boomlinde
Looking at the bug report, Chrome would actually show "www.paypal.com.www.com"
as "paypal.com.com". At least Safari does the wrong thing the right way.
Personally, I always want to see the full URL. It's fine if part of the
domain, the scheme etc. are grayed out to emphasize the second and top level
domains, but don't omit elements that are necessary to fully identify the
resource because the lowest common denominator may think that
fishing.com/paypal.com is paypal.
~~~
floatingatoll
Yep, I verified that bug as well, apparently they never planned for "www"
being somewhere other than at the front of the domain name. Sounds like they
already know, woot!
------
Already__Taken
The UX of moving what I'm looking at instantly under click is very unpleasant
too, www. and http and even the "secure" "not secure" banners is like 200px
shifts.
Lots of google's UI is getting (or has) things shifting instantly under the
pointer it's quite annoying. The new gmail design quick-tools are often in the
way, unknown until you actually click. Hell calling on my phone shifts the
speaker and keypad buttons over instantly when someone picks up. Often placing
the person I just called on hold if they answer too fast.
Wasn't this a pretty well covered UX rule to not move shit around on users. Up
there with don't use modes and the like.
~~~
NathanCH
> The UX of moving what I'm looking at instantly under click is very
> unpleasant too,
Could you expand on this? What are you referring to?
~~~
rhizome
I don't know if it's the same thing, but I'll bite: it's absolutely maddening
to edit or select part of a URL.
Click in the address bar and the entire address is selected, then you click on
any part of it to either select a part or to place your cursor in order to add
to it, after which Chrome appears to first shift the entire URL to the right
in order to show the protocol, then it places the cursor within the shifted
URL under your pointer. This causes (attempted) selections to be established
from some other place in the URL than the user intended.
~~~
Exuma
chrome://flags/#omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-scheme-and-subdomains
~~~
rhizome
This is about Google having a fundamental weakness in product management and
UX, giving me the equivalent of a Windows Registry setting to change is not
helping, practical as it may be.
------
userbinator
Those who are saying this change is to make things "easier" for certain non-
literate users may be correct, but they should consider whether such a
justification is desirable at all from a moral perspective.
No doubt all of us have at some point been forced to learn things that we did
not find particularly useful or pleasant to learn at the time, but then later
experienced a great "satisfaction of knowledge" when faced with a situation in
which that knowledge became advantageous or even essential, and then proceeded
to use it to better ourselves.
Imagine a world in which none of that learning took place; one in which you
never have to think, everything you see and do automatically satisifies you
and keeps you in a blissful state of ignorance. Who makes the decisions in
that world; or rather, who _can_ make those decisions? Who is in charge of
your life? Not you.
Gradually reducing the motivation to learn, by making things "easy" and
hiding/obfuscating anything that could be used as a starting point for more
learning, makes for a population that won't think, won't learn, won't question
or rebel. It makes them docile and easy to control.
Making statements like "ordinary users will never learn" is one thing, but
explicitly making decisions to ensure that status quo is a horrible trend.
It's quite a genius plan, and certainly used by organisations other than
Google, but thoroughly disturbing.
I've said a few times before in the past: "knowledge is power --- they don't
want you to have too much."
~~~
pdkl95
Some of my comments from 4 years ago when Chrome hiding URLs was just an
"experiment":
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7694919](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7694919)
------
fireattack
I'm ok with hiding "www.", but it also hides "m." which is sometimes very
confusing (I once opened a m.facebook.com link and was very puzzled why it
uses the mobile site when the URl bar just shows "facebook.com").
~~~
idbehold
What you may be surprised to learn is that Chrome isn't just stripping "www."
from the beginning of the subdomain. "subdomain.www.domain.com" displays as
"subdomain.domain.com"
~~~
Klathmon
I just downloaded canary and tried it and you are absolutely right.
about.www.github.io shows as about.github.io
I'm on board with this change in general, but this is absolutely something
that needs to be fixed.
Not only is that just annoying and wrong, but it could be dangerous in some
situations.
Also, it doesn't just stop at one removal.
http://www.www.about.www.www.stuff.www.www.example.com
shows as
about.stuff.example.com
Interestingly though it doesn't remove it if it's the TLD, or the actual
domain (so stuff.www.whatever shows as stuff.www.whatever).
~~~
mrunkel
I'm guessing this is implemented as s/www\\.//
~~~
evozer
Here is the implementation:
[https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/master/components/...](https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/master/components/url_formatter/url_formatter.cc#L71)
------
austincummings
Looks like this is intentional. To change it back go to
chrome://flags/#omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-scheme-and-subdomains and
disable the setting.
~~~
chch
Additionally, if this flag ever goes away, the
"kFormatUrlOmitTrivialSubdomains" is the internal flag for this, it seems[1],
though its description says it's "Not in kFormatUrlOmitDefaults"[2].
Back when they removed the "http:" off of URLs, I used to use a hex editor to
turn the kFormatUrlOmitHTTP bit flag off every time I got a new build, so I'd
get the URL formatting I wanted, but eventually lost the mental wherewithal to
continue the hack every week.
[1]
[https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/3d41e77125f3de8d72...](https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/3d41e77125f3de8d722b6d8303599abaf2a91667/components/url_formatter/url_formatter.cc#L454)
[2]
[https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/78aae16be65e409075...](https://github.com/chromium/chromium/blob/78aae16be65e409075816860e948d1536a548234/components/url_formatter/url_formatter.h#L82)
~~~
exikyut
I have wanted to figure out for ages how to compute the location of these
types of flags/vars in binary files.
Incidentally I want to figure out how to do this on Linux.
I presume I need debug symbol files, which I can download easily.
How would I do this?
------
wolco
I hope people start moving from chrome to firefox. The standards they pushing
are harming the web in ways.
~~~
fastball
If only Firefox's JS handling didn't melt my laptop.
~~~
inetknght
Then turn it off.
~~~
fastball
I actually like to use websites that were made in the last decade, so instead
of doing that I just use Chrome.
------
theandrewbailey
It begins. I saw this this morning, and thought it was something that was
coming in the next few versions, not _right now_.
[https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-
url/](https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/)
WTF? People get angry when you just move their cheese without notice.
~~~
komali2
>People get angry when you just move their cheese without notice.
Sorry, unrelated, but ahah, what is this saying? I love it and have never
heard it before. I guess it's from some sort of book?
[https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/cheese-moving-effecting-change-
ra...](https://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/cheese-moving-effecting-change-rather-than-
accepting-it)
~~~
theandrewbailey
It's an idiom.
[https://www.quora.com/What-exactly-does-who-moved-my-
cheese-...](https://www.quora.com/What-exactly-does-who-moved-my-cheese-mean)
------
lucideer
Even if you believe this is in theory a good idea, in practice it's clear that
Chrome has implemented this extremely badly.
As Comment 5 on that issue points out:
> _This does appear to be inconsistent /improperly implemented. Why is www
> hidden twice if the domain is "www.www.2ld.tld"? [...] If the root zone is a
> 301 to the "www" version, removing "www" from the omnibox would be
> acceptable since the server indicated the root zone isn't intended for use.
> This isn't the behavior, though._
> _If example.com returns a 403 status, and www.example.com returns a 404
> status, the www version is still hidden from the user. The www and the root
> are very obviously different pages and serve different purposes, so I
> believe the should be some logic regarding whether or not www should be
> hidden._
It's not very difficult to come up with a simple algorithm that checks HTTP
standard responses and implements this in a sensible way: it seems Chrome's
developers haven't even stopped to think about how this should be done
properly though.
This is not so much a new policy issue as a buggy implementation issue.
~~~
snsr
Even dumber, from another comment-
> Another case I ran into:
> "subdomain.www.domain.com" displays as "subdomain.domain.com".
~~~
Avamander
And people like github.com/m can now host something and it'll look as
`github.io` hosted it.
------
bopbop
This is the third story today about a Google's handling/intentions towards web
addresses and general webpages. The theme is Google wants/may want to push a
new set of Google orientated web standards. This seems the least likely of the
three to be strategically related,however.
The other two: Google may/may not be pushing the open web standard towards
their own AMP pages, instead:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17920720](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17920720)
Google wants to get rid of URLs but doesn't know what to replace it with:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17925761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17925761)
------
ValentineC
I stumbled upon this bug too, and here's why this is not okay to me:
For a couple of hours, I thought Citibank Singapore's website was down.
If one tries accessing citibank.com.sg, there's no redirect to the www.
subdomain. (That's still the case, if anyone wants to try.)
If Chrome didn't hide the www., I would have been able to tell from Chrome's
search/address bar that the various banking services that I've been accessing
were all on the www. subdomain.
While that is shoddy implementation on Citibank's part, hiding the www. most
definitely didn't help with the troubleshooting process.
~~~
crispyporkbites
It's not a shoddy implementation on Citibank's part. Google are just fucking
the web over so we all have to fit their structure.
This is standard incumbent behaviour, they are drawing up the moat bridge,
inch by inch.
~~~
lvs
I think the downvotes here are uncalled-for. This is correct. Google is
leveraging a dominant market position to make seemingly frivolous changes that
will ultimately benefit them commercially.
Come on, you know where this is going: They are going to hide amp subdomain,
so you don't know if you're looking at AMP or the actual destination. And then
suddenly the whole world funnels through AMP.
~~~
_pmf_
> Come on, you know where this is going: They are going to hide amp subdomain,
> so you don't know if you're looking at AMP or the actual destination. And
> then suddenly the whole world funnels through AMP.
That's probably the reason for this utterly bizarre change.
~~~
kmlx
isn't it because urls are Number 1 for phishing thou? wouldn't removing urls
altogether and move towards full identity checks be better for the web? and
relying on citibank singapore to hire the right people to fix their website...
never going to happen.
~~~
sherman_google
> wouldn't removing urls altogether and move towards full identity checks be
> better for the web?
Hey we'd be open to it, but we'd really prefer to have an RFC to read...
Instead, we got a quiet auto-update, without patch notes.
Good bye, open web. It was fun while it lasted.
------
jwr
This is idiotic and harmful. We already lost information about the protocol,
because somebody believed it is "too complex" for users. Now we're losing
other parts of the URL. It's making a joke of the SSL/TLS padlock, too — what
exactly is the padlock supposed to tell me? It used to signify that a "known
authority" certified that I'm connected to whatever I see in the URL bar. But
now that browsers take liberties with modifying the URL bar as they see fit,
it becomes increasingly meaningless.
~~~
soared
99.9% of users have no idea what any of the words you just said mean. The
change was made for them, not for you (the .1%)
~~~
wpietri
You're missing jwr's point. He's arguing that this is harmful for users,
especially the ones who don't know what the words mean.
If I were solving this, I'd instead push to eliminate "www" altogether, not
sweep it under the rug. It was useful circa 1996, when users might plausibly
be using something other than the WWW with a browser. But it has become
entirely vestigial.
~~~
uberman
Why not drop .com then as well? Most sites are on .com domains after all.
It is exactly the same issue.
A domain is a domain. Google is arbitrarily dictating your CNAME from the
user's perspective.
What if you don't serve your site off of mysite.com is google going to
automatically try again at www.mysite.com?
What if you have distinct content at both domains?
This decision is stupid.
~~~
wpietri
It's not the same issue at all, in that domains with different suffixes are
controlled by different people while foo.com and www.foo.com are controlled by
the same people.
If you have an example of somebody who needs to serve different web content
for foo.com and www.foo.com, I look forward to seeing it. But I've never seen
one, and when I've seen it happen accidentally it's due to idiocy.
~~~
subway
> while foo.com and www.foo.com are controlled by the same people
Sometimes. Far from always.
In some environments, `www` may be under an entirely different administrative
domain, with lesser authority than the top level domain which is delegating
web services to the `www` group by way of creating a dns record and/or adding
an http(s) redirect to the parent domain.
Having some string values arbitrarily considered trivial is dangerous.
See: lbl.gov has address 128.3.41.146 vs www.lbl.gov has address
35.196.135.136
The root domain points to hosts at the lab. The subdomain has been delegated
off to Google.
~~~
slg
Isn't that simply due to internal politics? Whoever owns foo.com might
delegate www.foo.com to someone else, but they ultimately control both.
~~~
subway
It's due to different groups controlling different parts of the
infrastructure, allowing for separation of privilege -- and is the whole
reason www even existed to begin with.
Often these separate groups _aren 't_ part of the same organization. They're a
different organization or contractor paid to maintain a web presence.
~~~
slg
Yes, but those are decisions made by whoever controls foo.com. This may not be
a good decision by Google, but I don't think they should be held responsible
for a decision that was made by whoever controls foo.com.
~~~
muraiki
This is completely backwards, because Google just made this decision _now_!
------
Klonoar
Yo, this is... going too far, c'mon now.
While sure, www seems odd now, it's still a subdomain and we're inching into
territory of obscuring things that matter for small gains in end-user
perception that aren't _that_ impactful.
~~~
asimpletune
Yeah this is weird. Which users are bothered enough by the leading www enough
to justify messing with semantics?
~~~
_wmd
My bet is this decision is driven somewhere by marketing morons who want
'www.google' (presumably a domain that will at some point exist, the TLD
already does) to render as simply 'google'
~~~
parliament32
Technically there's no reason why a TLD can't have an A record. If they own
"google." they can point it to whatever address and serve whatever they want.
~~~
ucarion
Until recently, [http://ai](http://ai) did exactly this. They also had MX
records, so n@ai was a valid email address.
~~~
hunter2_
That link works fine for me. It doesn't for you?
------
DamnInteresting
If the browser uses some technique to detect that www.domain.com is
functionally identical to domain.com for a given domain, then I don't see a
serious problem with this. But if they are short of that certainty, they're
obscuring a critical part of the URL, and harming usability (e.g., if I want
to jot down a site's URL for later use, I might get something unexpected).
~~~
teilo
That's not the case. I run a server that does not respond to "www." If I enter
"www.myserver.com" into the address bar, I get a DNS lookup failure, but the
address bar is now showing "myserver.com." That's damn confusing, and this is
an idiotic default on Chrome's part.
~~~
lozenge
That seems like an edge case worth submitting a separate bug for.
~~~
king_phil
Think public suffixes! It is long, so definitely not an edge case.
You can write a small script to look up all PSL domains and check if the www
and APEX domain has the same dns records.
Our implementation (we control 15 or so) does not, have a www-subdomain for
the domains. Anybody can register the www-subdomains.
------
CGamesPlay
Lest anyone think that Chrome is being innovative here, this is Safari's
default behavior for when the URL bar isn't focused. When you click on the URL
bar, the subdomain, protocol, and path all appear.
~~~
stronglikedan
Which drives me crazy, because my users send me screenshots in support
requests. Now I have to spend even more time explaining to them how to
click/copy/paste the URL. It was a terrible UX choice when Safari did it, and
it's a terrible UX choice now that Chrome has done it.
~~~
qubitcoder
Fortunately, it's trivial to toggle this setting in the Safari preferences--
and then the full URL will appear by default.
------
normo12
Suddenly "www.com"'s value has skyrocketed in the eyes of scammers. How about:
* login.<target_site>.www.com -> login.<target_site>.com
* members.<target_site>.www.com -> members.<target_site>.com
Even some carefully chosen <target_site>.www.com's will now be valuable:
* login.www.<target_site>.www.com -> login.<target_site>.com
What a stupid idea...
~~~
Ajedi32
That's just a bug which I'm sure will be fixed in the next release.
For this to actually help scammers (after the bug is fixed) they'd need to own
www.example.com but not example.com, which is unlikely to say the least.
~~~
normo12
Yes, it is a bug, but until it's fixed it's a potential attack vector.
------
combatentropy
Dear Google, just do syntax highlighting. Make the subdomain gray. You can
even color https: green and http: red. But don't hide them. I really think
syntax highlighting will accomplish the same thing for less technical users.
~~~
theyinwhy
Grey is usually understood as greyed out: not selectable, non-functional and
therefore counter-intuitive as well.
------
soared
Why does this matter? Users don't care and its easier to remember/understand
that all websites are just "x.com" rather than sometimes being "www.x.com". If
you have some server/troubleshooting/network/dev problem with it, the missing
info should be moved to developer tools.
This is just removing data that is useless and confusing to 99.9% of users -
whats the problem?
~~~
crispyporkbites
Because they are on www. and not *.
What happens when you copy and paste that URL?
Now every single website that wants to support Chrome needs to ensure that
[https://foo.com](https://foo.com) is always redirected to
[https://www.foo.com](https://www.foo.com), or at least works as if it's www.
It doesn't matter that most websites already do this, it's not standard, and
represents Google breaking standards because they are big enough to do their
own thing.
It's just one of the 1000s of papercuts that google is inflicting to keep
users from switching web browser.
~~~
eclipxe
When you copy and paste, it has the whole URL - just like when you copy and
paste now it will include http(s)://
~~~
pishpash
What if you visually copy and paste? Parent is right.
~~~
kowdermeister
One more reason to set up a redirect from or to www. _
~~~
lwansbrough
Many MANY legacy sites serve different information at those two domains.
~~~
baby
And this is wrong.
~~~
tazard
Maybe you have a niche target and not looking for mass adoption. It's not
"wrong" it's just not normally the way things are done.
------
bguillet
This reminds me of Windows hiding file extensions by default. So annoying...
now you don't know what your dealing with, it's harder to modify etc
------
1zael
Seriously? This is such a bad change, I hope they revert this patch in the
next update. There's a world of difference between the two and this is going
to cause an ecosystem nightmare.
------
ronilan
That took just 8 years....
[http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2010-09-17-n17.html](http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2010-09-17-n17.html)
------
abalone
_> This is a dumb change. No part of a domain should be considered "trivial".
As an ISP, we often have to go to great lengths to teach users that
"www.domain.com" and "domain.com" are two different domains..._
What ISPs teach their users anymore these days? Why the heck do we want to go
back to that?
Time for a modicum of historical perspective.
If you care about usability this is clearly an improvement. This is part of a
long-running industry trend -- Safari does this too -- to improve the
usability of the Internet and technology in general.
At EVERY STEP in that journey there has whining and griping from the more
technically advanced folks (like all of us on this forum). They zero in on the
negatives, the tradeoffs that come with simplification. They don't see the
positives because they're technically advanced enough and don't benefit from
simplification (or so they think).
Then after the griping whines (sic) down and they realize the world didn't end
and the downsides really weren't that bad and we move forward towards a
better, simpler, more usable web.
Like, who actually runs separate HTTP servers on example.com and
www.example.com anyway? Everyone is hyperventilating over contrived "the
principle of it all" examples. Bottom line, Apple & Google are putting
usability above technical pedantry. That's the right priority for mass market
technology products.
~~~
slenk
Two prominent examples noted in the bug:
[https://citibank.com.sg](https://citibank.com.sg) and
[https://www.citibank.com.sg](https://www.citibank.com.sg) are different,
[http://www.pool.ntp.org](http://www.pool.ntp.org) and
[http://pool.ntp.org](http://pool.ntp.org) are different.
Like, big companies run separate servers on the two domains.
That's besides the fact where if you have www.example.www.example.com, it
rewrites to example.example.com.
~~~
DougBTX
The first citibank url doesn’t load for me, so it is site vs not site rather
than two different sites, and both those ntp urls are redirecting me to
[https://www.ntppool.org/en/](https://www.ntppool.org/en/) \- perhaps there’s
less substance than meets the eye to those complaints.
~~~
hrez
user1 - [https://citibank.com.sg](https://citibank.com.sg) doesn't work for me
user2 - it's fine, here is a screenshot of it working (while showing
"beautified" [https://www.citibank.com.sg](https://www.citibank.com.sg))
how is that not confusing?
~~~
wingworks
I think it's more on the website owners to fix their sites, users expect
domain.com to be the same/auto-redirected to www.domain.com or vice versa. I
think it's a good thing what Chrome is doing, it will push website owners to
correctly set up their domain redirects and in the end, lessen end-user
confusion.
~~~
NathanCH
I think this is a fair comment but Chrome has been doing this a lot lately.
They'll make a change and developers must scramble to fix their websites.
It's the same with autocomplete earlier this year. One day Google decides to
ignore autocomplete="off" and all hell breaks lose.
Interesting to note, they have reverted this change. Google now respects
autocomplete="off" in some scenarios (i.e. when autofill is not triggered via
name attribute).
Note: autocomplete !== autofill
------
ihuman
Is this really a big deal? Don't many websites either redirect the www to the
non-www, or the other way around?
~~~
theprotocol
It's about the principle. www is a valid subdomain.
Browsers are supposed to be as unopinionated as possible since they are
_browsers_ , not mediators, and their job is to implement the standards of the
web.
~~~
eli
You want your browser to show unlimited popup windows too?
~~~
aarongray
No, but I want my browser to notify me that its blocking popups rather than
just hiding them from me entirely and assuming I never wanted to see them
anyway.
------
darth_mastah
To be honest, I want to see the actual domain I'm on in the location bar, and
not some obscured version of it. In what universe is hiding part of the domain
an usability improvement? What does it improve? Confusion? Misinformation?
Lack of trust in the location showed by the browser? It's so stupid I had to
check the calendar to make sure it's not the 1st of April today. I didn't
check it in Chrome though, for fear that some days might have been hidden away
as they have been considered trivial.
------
jklinger410
You know, as much as I'm all for considering www a trivial subdomain, this
should have had much more public discussion before implementing it into the
most used browser in the world.
------
teilo
To be clear, the "www" is only missing from the URL that is displayed in the
address bar, while the browser is still attempting to resolve and fetch the
URL with the "www." So instead of something that would completely break many
websites, this is just something that is as confusing as hell for no good
reason.
When a website requires "www" to resolve and respond, who in their right mind
would want it hidden in the displayed URL?
------
tenebrisalietum
URLs can be complex and sometimes not intended for human consumption.
So fine, don't display the URL. Define a full-on standard that lets a user
agent show a "friendly but not unwieldy" name to the user. You have that funky
Graph API or whatever Facebook started to allow URL posts in Facebook to
expand to include site info. Why not just use that at the top of browse? Then
design the browser to allow access and editing of the URL somehow if desired
(an old browser called 'OB1' didn't display the URL unless you pressed Ctrl-W,
for example), but don't display it by default.
The truth is probably not many technical people directly enter URLs in
browsers any more.
Honestly maybe it wasn't a good idea to allow query strings in URLs. Perhaps
deprecate them and keep URLs looking like hierarchical filenames. Which
honestly, is still something difficult to understand for non-technical people.
But this crap of hiding parts of it is dumb.
------
pdeuchler
I, for one, cannot wait until this is exploited somehow by phishers
------
nbrempel
Safari has been doing this for some time.
The "trivial subdomain" will show when you click the url bar, however.
~~~
firloop
I'm much more okay with Safari's implementation, because it's significantly
more discoverable. Safari also makes it much simpler to disable this behavior
altogether, with it earning a place in the settings ... rather than being
behind some "flag" that may disappear in some future release.
------
tankenmate
Google has signed a contract with ICANN as it is a registry and a registrar.
In that contract it has agreed to limit behaviour that affects the security
and stability of the name system. This behaviour of chromium is in
contravention of that contract.
------
type0
I like how hugues.a. summarized it there:
This is Google making subdomain usage decisions for other entities outside of
Google. My domains and how subdomains are assigned and delegated are not
Google's business to decide.
------
akerro
We allowed this to happen, we allowed Google to claim Internet and web, they
make rules now, give up to and embrace hiding www. and to AMP before it's too
late and you're out of the loop.
------
adrianmonk
I can somewhat understand the urge to de-clutter the URL and emphasize which
parts are most important.
But I'd prefer they did it in another way which doesn't involve hiding
anything. For example, render the most important parts of the URL in bold
type, a color that contrasts more, or a slightly larger point size.
That way, you still make it easier for the eye to pick up the parts that the
browser believes probably matter most, but you don't make it impossible to see
the parts that might also matter.
------
JTbane
This makes me glad I use Firefox and have dropped chrome entirely.
------
tripzilch
Google doesn't want you to use URLSs.
It must be this. They haven't given a single positive reason, except "users
need not concern them with this information", which is so vague it's not even
a reason.
Google is still (partly) a search engine, and people interacting with the
address bar is pretty much the opposite of using a search engine. So Google
wants to discourage that. They will never teach users how URLs work, how to
read them and definitely not how to construct them, because it makes people
less dependent on their search engine.
Think about it. Even the security part. Google wants to be the arbiter of what
is secure and what is trustworthy. Anything that lets users figure this out
for themselves, or that can be mediated without Google coming in between,
takes away from this power.
They don't show http/https any more, just a coloured lock icon. The meaning of
that lock icon is for Google to decide, unlike the meaning of http/https.
Now they take away information from the address bar, claiming it is irrelevant
and none of our concern. They just want you to click on the links in their
search engine, or some app or assistant thing.
One thing it is NOT about though, is distraction. If anyone knows that users
can tune out irrelevant information perfectly fine, it's Google. They are an
advertising network, after all.
------
Groxx
> _Why is www hidden twice if the domain is "www.www.2ld.tld"?_
plus
> _" subdomain.www.domain.com" displays as "subdomain.domain.com"._
and
> _[http://m.tumblr.com/](http://m.tumblr.com/) _[1]
Hoo boy. Can we officially call this a "shit-storm"? It seems extremely poorly
thought through.[2]
[1] seriously, visit that right now. utterly brilliant username, I wish them
all the best.
[2] unless you want to sell invisible AMP URLs. but then I want you to lose
your job.
------
ryenus
The issue has only 46 comments at this moment because they have restricted the
permission to comment, very nice. I thought there would be hundreds of,
otherwise.
BTW, it sucks that existing comments cannot be voted or reacted with emojis,
they should know this:
[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/monorail/issues/detail?id=4248](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/monorail/issues/detail?id=4248)
------
webXL
This should have been an opt-in feature. And if enough people opted in, only
then do you make it the default, and _when_ you do that, alert all users to
that change.
Hiding the protocol was understandable. For web pages it was 99% http or
https, and they could convey which with an icon. (iOS Chrome still shows it
for some strange reason). Then mobile Safari dropped everything but the domain
name and everyone freaked out. But you can get everything back in Safari by
clicking on it, but not on Chrome. Such a simple thing to implement.
If anything they could have just hid the query string, unless it's fairly
simple like HN comments pages (item?id=17927972). But with pushstate, you
could just hide the ugly bits (tracking, language, etc.) from the user. Take
this Chrome promo URL:
https://www.google.com/chrome/whatsnew/?hl=en&brand=CHZQ&utm_source=google.com&utm_medium=homepagepromo&utm_campaign=m69-whatsnew
Using JavaScript, before anything is displayed, simplify it to:
www.google.com/chrome/whatsnew
And if you don't like _www._ , don't host at or link to that subdomain!
------
blitmap
Not in favor of Google deciding yet again how I want to browse/view the web.
I've been extricating myself from Google services slowly, and I think it's
time for Firefox again. Kind of arrogant to decide something like this for
more than a billion users, and a step backward for those of us in IT who have
a hard time getting the user to understand a visual difference in the address
bar.
------
jgowdy
If only we had something other than the subdomain to indicate what protocol we
want to use to access the host in question. Like maybe some kind of... port
number and/or protocol prefix.
"www." is useless. Eliminating it wouldn't be a bad thing.
"m." for mobile sites is extremely archaic. Sites should work on mobile
without special subdomains.
If you issue subdomains to strangers on your root domain, the URL bar showing
the subdomain shouldn't be your "security model."
The root domain is the root authority behind the site in question. Chrome
showing users that information in a clear and concise way isn't "subverting
the domain name system".
Safari has been doing this for a long time, and Chrome/Chromium have
settings/flags that allow you to turn this behavior off. The amount of crying
over this change is ridiculous in my opinion. As long as they keep this
configurable (in fact, they should add a UI config for it) I see no problem
here.
~~~
furi
"www." is useless until you have multiple servers. Say you run a game server
and a website on a web server for that game server as well. You need to give
them separate domains so that they can resolve to separate IP addresses i.e.
"www.example.com" might resolve to <web server IP> and "example.com" might
resolve to <game server IP>. This is far more robust, faster and simpler (and
how the system was intended to be used) than trying to set up some kind of
proxying system on one of the servers to handle traffic really intended for
the other one. In real world usage of course you'd probably put the game
server at "game.example.com" and the web server at "example.com" but either
way you end up with a subdomain, the arrangement with "www." as the subdomain
instead of "game." is not really any more useless. I believe this can possibly
be worked around with SRV records but then you have to rely on whatever your
client might be handling SRV records.
> If you issue subdomains to strangers on your root domain, the URL bar
> showing the subdomain shouldn't be your "security model."
What do you propose instead? Azure gives me custom subdomains for my servers
that are immensely useful, being much more regular and memorable than IP
addresses. I only see two solutions here: stop doing that or let anybody with
access to subdomain creation pretend to be "azure.com". One of them is
comically dangerous and the other is throwing out a perfectly good feature to
save a handful of characters in the URL bar.
------
Yizahi
The point of this change is not to mess with www. or m. any other subdomain.
The real reason for this change is obviously from latest google moves is to
hide one and only one subdomain from users - amp. They really don't want you
to know when you are not on independent website but actually inside google
silo, playing by google rules.
------
xg15
Is this supposed to be the first step of this? :
[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/google-wants-to-
get-...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/09/google-wants-to-get-rid-of-
urls-but-doesnt-know-what-to-use-instead/)
------
tripzilch
This is such bullshit. They call it a "trade off", but a trade off between
what exactly? On the one side there's a non-trivial number of negative
consequences to this change, and on the other hand, the maintainer person
literally is unable to give _any_ other reason besides, "this isn't
information that most users need to concern themselves with in most cases".
No other reason given besides that _very_ vague assumption about .. I'm not
even sure, say if most users _need_ not concern themselves with information
that isn't there, does that mean they would otherwise be concerned about it?
And what does that mean? And how is it bad? And why don't you just say so?
I'm calling bullshit. If there is a reason why they decided this, it is not
that. My bet it's something political.
------
miguelmota
Surprised to see not a single mention of Brave [1] in this large thread of
comments as an alternative browser. It's not the best for development, but for
casual browsing it's great. Brave blocks all ads and trackers.
[1] [https://brave.com](https://brave.com)
------
adamgravitis
I would just point out that HN does this in the title of every link posted,
and has been doing this for years.
~~~
skykooler
HN removes all subdomains, not just "trivial" ones. That's a separate issue.
------
westoque
As a developer on multi-tenant applications that are mounted on different
subdomains, considering `site.com` same with `www.site.com` should be outright
illegal! There is nothing trivial about the domains above and are considered
separate unless configured to be pointing to the same record.
------
noypi
[http://www3.www.audi.ch/](http://www3.www.audi.ch/)
------
philo23
This is only visually what's displayed in the address bar, similar to how they
started dropping http/https from the start of URLs a while back.
While I'd personally disagree with these kind of changes, and I would always
prefer it to show the http/https and the www dot, it doesn't actually break
things like copy and pasting the URL from the address bar. You still go to
www.google.com when you type in www.google.com, it's just trimming away the
www dot displayed in the address bar.
I think for the vast majority of non-technical people it's not really going to
make even a little bit of difference. If anything it'll make it easier to spot
what domain they're on, assuming they're even checking to begin with.
------
c0nsumer
Have any of you with corporate-type proxies been seeing authentication issues?
Since moving to Chrome 69 a number of our users are reporting repeated proxy
auth prompts when this should normally be handled transparently by Kerberos.
~~~
noinsight
Yes, Chrome 69 has a bug with Kerberos:
[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=872665](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=872665)
~~~
c0nsumer
PS: This becomes REALLY fun if you use cnames to load balance proxies. Which
use Kerberos. <sigh>
------
trjordan
It's technically correct that www.example.com and example.com are different
domains and can serve different stuff.
So are [https://example.com](https://example.com) and
[http://example.com](http://example.com).
If you serve materially different content based on small differences, that's
user-hostile, and common tools have no obligation to support you. Chrome
shouldn't cater to sites that change behavior based on a www prefix, because
the vast majority of users expect those sites to be the same. Hiding the
prefix won't change their mind.
~~~
muraiki
Small differences? A subdomain or an entire protocol is a small difference?
And what about any web site that uses a "m." subdomain that doesn't intend it
for mobile? I don't think that calling these things "small differences" is
reasonable. And really, it makes perfect sense to not serve the same content
over an insecure connection than over a secure one, but thankfully that change
hasn't happened!
------
Multicomp
So now they've added "Restrict-AddIssueComment-EditIssue" to the bug. [Edit:
This means that only users with EditIssue permissions may comment on it]
Apparently we've complained too loudly for their liking.
------
manigandham
Most people don't notice or care, so this change makes no difference for them.
For the few that do care, this change makes things worse.
So basically a dumb design-by-committee change that just wasted effort for
negative progress.
------
CoachRufus87
Thank you to whomever submitted this. My main annoyance is that when I want to
go to a subdomain, I'll typically start typing foo.domain.com, but now the
browser sets it to www.foo.domain.com. Annoying.
~~~
michaelmrose
What browser auto inserts www? It's neither firefox or chrome.
~~~
CoachRufus87
Let me clarify: since the subdomain is hidden, I now have to munge with the
URL input field to just get the full url to show up so that I can then modify
the subdomain.
------
stevewilhelm
If I was designing the user experience for accessing content from a global
information, entertainment, and commerce network that would be used by a
large, global, non-technical user base, I would not use the current URL
format.
I would wager the twelve character prefix
"[https://www."would](https://www."would) make no sense to 99.9% of the users
and should be the default for over 99.9% of requests they would be making any
given day.
I am guessing Google has evidence that this is the case.
------
cc-d
Between this and AMP it looks like google's abusing their market dominance to
seize control over the open internet.
We were able to somewhat break up microsoft's attempt at something similar in
the 90s through anti-trust legislation, perhaps it's time to look at google?
On a side note, it seems like the openness of the internet has come under
attack more and more often in the past few years, from a combination of
corporate and government entities. It's absolutely essential that we keep the
internet open, transparent, and free.
------
Ajedi32
This isn't entirely without precedent. Firefox does something similar by
greying out the `www` in the UI, Chrome just decided to take things a step
further by hiding it entirely.
~~~
gsnedders
Firefox's behaviour is that is makes everything except the eTLD+1 grey,
because that's what's normally useful for evaluating authenticity. There's no
distinction made between `www` and any other subdomain.
~~~
tinus_hn
These are all in the same origin so they can read cookies and manipulate
pages.
~~~
Sohcahtoa82
This is not true unless the cookie is specifically marked to be domain-wide.
There was a time when IE misbehaved. Not sure if this fixed in Edge:
[https://www.mxsasha.eu/blog/2014/03/04/definitive-guide-
to-c...](https://www.mxsasha.eu/blog/2014/03/04/definitive-guide-to-cookie-
domains/)
~~~
gsnedders
> There was a time when IE misbehaved. Not sure if this fixed in Edge:
> [https://www.mxsasha.eu/blog/2014/03/04/definitive-guide-
> to-c...](https://www.mxsasha.eu/blog/2014/03/04/definitive-guide-to-c..).
Pretty sure that was fixed in Edge _and_ IE (as a security issue).
~~~
Sohcahtoa82
While that certainly may be the case, it's been shown time and time again how
many users (and even sys admins!) are bad at installing patches.
------
makecheck
I don’t understand the war on URLs. I can’t even _edit the link a bookmark
uses_ in some browsers now, which is infuriating for SharePoint or other sites
where “currently displayed URL” is not a clean and canonical URL (even though
one exists). And when the terrible random URL jumble currently in the address
bar won’t even reproduce the page correctly later, this ceases to be a
bookmark.
URLs may be _weird_ but they are _not_ so complex that we need these games.
------
russellbeattie
This is a classic example of techies, marketers and MBAs deciding what is "too
confusing" for "normal" people to understand.
This is why the History channel shows reality TV instead of programs about,
you know, history. It was decided that "history" that doesn't involve
celebrities, aliens or Nazis is just too boring for normal people.
Google has decided that the 50% of population who are confused about the
basics of URLs are more important than the rest of us who have been using them
for over 25 years without problems. This will in theory allow Google to target
a larger swath of the population. In practice, it simply takes something
useful away from the rest of us.
It's "digital ochlocracy": The targeting of the least common denominator to
the detriment of those with greater knowledge or expertise.
~~~
type0
It's more sinister than that, they are devaluing the importance of URL so that
you would have to search for it; the worst is yet to come.
------
xd1936
...I'm okay with this, I think. Has www (http over tcp/ip) not become the
default protocol for "the internet" in the average person's mind?
~~~
QasimK
I think websites should just stop using "www." entirely and host directly on
their domain rather than a subdomain.
~~~
peterwwillis
This causes browser security problems, it creates load balancing issues, it
makes failover harder, etc. Only works for small sites that don't need to be
highly available.
~~~
QasimK
Why does it make loadbalancing and fail-overs harder?
------
mvpu
Spirited discussion! I think for the average Joe, this change does not matter
(i.e neither good, nor bad). Two better changes: a) highlight https / secure
connections even more prominently, and b) detect and highlight misspelled
domain names (a major cause of phishing attacks). Rationale is that for the
average Joe, a clear warning that they are about to go to a bad site is more
valuable than looking at the accurate domain name.
------
hughes
Anyone know if this checks for a DNS record that supports equivalency between
the www/empty subdomains? It's possible for them to have different values.
~~~
fpoling
Even if DNS is the same, the host receives full host name in http and/or TLS
headers and can trivially serve different content.
------
ezequiel-garzon
Whether "we" like it or not, URLs are increasingly becoming a rare techy term.
It is no wonder the average user has a problem with URLs with the advent of
omnibars. I for one can't sometimes "force" Chrome to go to domain.com instead
of searching that expression. Oh, and try to view the full URL you're
accessing on your iPhone, particularly if you're GETting something other than
/.
------
throwawaymath
I like the implementation bug mentioned that shortens
subdomain.www.example.com to subdomain.example.com. That's just actively
dangerous for users.
------
JoshMnem
Looking at everything that Google is doing at the moment, it looks like a
shameful power grab for the entire WWW.
I suspect that Google wants to gradually get rid of URLs, because if users
can't identify websites by their addresses, they will be more dependent on
Google Search. Landing on search pages means that users will click on more of
their well-concealed ads.
I think it's also the reason why Google Chrome's URL bar has such terrible
auto-completion functionality. It appears designed to send users to Google
Search to click on ads instead of taking them directly to their destinations.
Firefox's old address bar didn't do that. (The newer address bar in Firefox
appears to be following Chrome's time-wasting functionality, and its auto-
completion no longer works well.)
Without URLs, users won't know whether they are really on your site, viewing
your content on google.com (via AMP), or in some kind of app or PWA. To get to
an item of content, most people will end up clicking on an ad in Google Search
or land on an AMP page that eliminates most monetization options that don't
involve passing the money through Google's systems.
URLs shouldn't be trimmed at all. When you're on the URL,
[http://example.com/](http://example.com/), (note the trailing slash), Chrome
will only display "[http://example.com"](http://example.com"), even if you
copy it onto the clipboard. (It's still possible to fix it in Firefox with
about:config.)
Technology shouldn't be made more restrictive and stupid -- users should be
taught how to use technology correctly, and they will adjust. I've even met
professional programmers who don't really understand URLs because their
browsers mask the real URLs. The WWW isn't only about consumption -- it's
about creating as well. People need to know how it works in order to create
things.
------
jrnichols
When people say they're sick of Google deciding what's good for the whole
internet and leveraging their massive marketshare.. it's stuff like this
they're talking about. Other little things too like their own non-standard
implementation of IMAP/POP stuff. Invisible to most average users, who
continue to merrily click away on Google $EVERYTHING and Gmail.
------
pluma
Isn't this the same logic that still results in Windows users running malware
because someone sent them _sexy_nudes.jpeg.exe_?
------
nofunsir
I'm going to assume there will be no convincing The Team of people whose
Wonderful Idea this was. [https://www.wired.com/2016/11/googles-chrome-
hackers-flip-we...](https://www.wired.com/2016/11/googles-chrome-hackers-flip-
webs-security-model/)
No more red purses? Give me a break.
------
lwansbrough
Surely Google of all companies has the resources to see exactly how much
disruption this will actually cause. And I don't believe they get to make the
decision based on that, but they should share the numbers. Any domain that
returns different content between "m." and "www." vs. the apex domain are
affected.
------
lvs
Does it hide AMP subdomain? If so, I think we all know what this is about, and
it's dirty and should be stopped.
------
Domesist
Google shouldn't be the authority to decide whether one Domains' part or
another is "trivial".
------
PinselPanther
This is kind of what happened to the KeeFox addon for Firefox. The developer
one day decided to have a new default for URL matching. Instead of matching
the hostname, i.e. old.reddit.com, it would then match the 'domain' i.e
*reddit.com. Back then it was as stupid as this is now...
------
vinceguidry
I am in favor of the change. I do not think hiding technical information from
non-technical users is a bad thing. Making it impossible for technical users
to work it out is the bad thing.
If technical users want their own browser mode, where all these things are
readily available, then I'd be all for that.
Clicking on the browser location bar should reveal the full URL. But the noise
of the protocol, the www. prefix, and the param string is all irrelevant to
the experience of the casual user of web browsers and should indeed be hidden.
We're already hiding a ton of stuff from them already, if you want to go see
it, you can always "view source".
One argument in the thread was that 'www.pool.ntp.org' and 'pool.ntp.org' go
to a website and a nameserver respectively. Nontechnical users will never want
to use a web browser to access a nameserver, so there's no UX benefit to
distinguishing them. From a URL entry standpoint, it should go to the URL that
was typed into the location bar. There isn't a conflict.
~~~
shiado
It breaks how the web is supposed to function. There is no consensus on the
utilization of subdomains and which ones are considered to be trivial. I could
write an app which maps usernames to subdomains and Chrome would break this if
a user had a username which was in the trivial list. I think Tumblr is a site
which does this. It really isn't about technical or non-technical, it is about
what subdomains can be used for.
Edit: well I was right, this breaks in the new Chrome,
[http://m.tumblr.com/](http://m.tumblr.com/) , tumblr usernames on the
'trivial' list are broken.
~~~
vinceguidry
There's no such thing as "how the web is supposed to function." There is an
ideal that the plurality of the early web once sought to chase. There are more
ideals that the more commerce-friendly users and creators of the web started
to chase.
The norm is always shifting. It's our job as technologists to accommodate how
people want to use technology, not to tell them that the way they want to use
it is wrong. Because if we try to tell them no, then they're going to use the
freedoms we labored so hard to give them to stop listening to us.
~~~
type0
> There are more ideals that the more commerce-friendly users and creators of
> the web started to chase.
What are those?
> It's our job as technologists to accommodate how people want to use
> technology, not to tell them that the way they want to use it is wrong.
If some kids wish to use the technology to do DDos attacks it doesn't mean we
should build it into the browser, the same is true here.
> Because if we try to tell them no,
Just say No to this crap, that's all.
------
nkkollaw
For web developers it's a pain, but I can see how it might help everyone else
(which is I assume the vast majority).
At least they haven't been as idiotic as Apple and didn't remove everything
but the domain name like Apple did, and they did it incrementally.
------
gondo
From the chrome flags [1] page: "On Mac, this enables MacViews, which uses
toolkit-views for native browser dialogs." What is MacViews and how do I check
if it is enabled?
[1] chrome://flags/#omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-scheme-and-subdomains
------
cwkoss
Wow, if this actually gets released, might be the final straw to get me to
switch off Chrome.
------
ezoe
I switched to the Firefox some time ago when Chromium always eat precious
whole one CPU core time for stupid field trials.
Now I know Chromium is developed by bunch of idiots who don't understand the
practical consequence of omitting the part of domain name.
------
sakisv
It's 2018 ffs and internet is everywhere. People should be expected to have
better understanding of the internet and of what they see on their address
bars.
Maybe instead of masking users from the "complexity" we should be teaching
them instead.
------
jancsika
This is AWESOME! Thank you Chrome!
On a completely unrelated topic, there is a bug I'm noticing: ICANN doesn't
allow emojis in TLDs.
What? That's ridiculous-- I can put them in the _main_ part of the domain name
along with an enormous number of cute homoglyphs. So why not smileys and
homoglyphs in TLDs? If users can deal with smileys in the main domain that
tells where the site is, surely they can deal with them in the little extra
part that comes at the end. Everything's just .com underneath anyway so what
would problem be?
Google has done the work to remove the unsafe part of domains. Now our domains
can really shine. So give us more bling to put in there, ICANN! C'mon.
Also-- why not www as tld? I love "biz" and "pizza" as much as anyone, but
excuse me they got nuthin on the world wide web. C'mon ICANN give us "www" in
the Trailing Little Domain! We're ready for it now! :)
Best, Your Userbase
------
ourcat
Just noticed: When clicking the main 'home' logo on facebook in Chrome 68,
it's taking me to [https://www.facebook.com](https://www.facebook.com)
I'm sure it never used to do this. Did it?
------
infinity0
This is about as ridiculous as javascript making == not homomorphic for the
reason of "making it easy for newcomers".
Please, _predictability_ and _consistency_ is what helps newcomers, not
pandering to prejudiced intuitions.
------
SllX
So apparently when Google said they would like to "fix" URLs, what they
actually meant was that they would like to break them, whine about how broken
they are in the future, and then come up with something worse.
------
everydaypanos
Although a firm NO-WWW believer this is hilarious because it is not the same
as hiding http(s):// this is technically speaking an alternation of the url.
Still..with Google's horrible AMP efforts this seems nice :)
------
chris_wot
Has anyone tried www.www.com? what's the bet that domain will display oddly...
And what if I setup a domain with a subdomain of the www? I'm sure also
someone clever could find a way of using this for phishing.
------
euyyn
Isn't this on purpose?
------
cyberpanther
I would love to get rid of www but this going to confuse the heck out of
people. We could get rid of www if more DNS providers supported ANAME. And
Google Domains does not. How bout start there.
------
ForHackernews
[https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-
url/](https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/)
------
nodesocket
Curious, why did www.foo.com become the standard instead of using the
apex/root foo.com domain? Was this because of the DNS limitations of using
CNAME records at the apex/root?
~~~
detaro
Because HTTP was one service among many, not the primary one, and failed to
use a different DNS record than A to look up the target, unlike other
protocols which manage this redirection to the "$protocol server" that way
instead of through a subdomain name. (E.g. mail has MX records to find the
mail server, many other protocols use SRV records to discover their specific
targets)
------
pathartl
Instead, what they ought to do is go through the top 10,000 domains and test
to make sure that:
1\. www.* doesn't end up as a 404 or DNS resolution error
2\. www.example.com matches the content from example.com
3\. www.example.com -> example.com is a valid permanent redirect
and then finally
4\. Publicly shame them. Don't hide it from people because you run into all
sorts of UX issues.
I really hate www. for a multitude of reasons, but the biggest one is just
thinking about the amount of time spent saying it out loud. Nothing aggrivates
me more than turning on the radio and hearing "go to our website DOUBLE YEW
DOUBLE YEW DOUBLE YEW DOT <some long name like nelsonfurnishingandrepair dot
com>". That's like two seconds of air time they could recover.
------
brod
relevant quotes from a recent Wired article "Google Wants to Kill the URL"
> "People have a really hard time understanding URLs" \- Adrienne Porter Felt,
> Chrome's engineering manager.
> "But I do know that whatever we propose is going to be controversial." \-
> Parisa Tabriz, director of engineering at Chrome.
[https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-
url/](https://www.wired.com/story/google-wants-to-kill-the-url/)
------
mmilano
Firefox is my primary browser, so it doesn't affect me, however this has
already caused confusion within the web agency world I work in, both with
technical staff and clients.
------
iveqy
Many not tech-savvy users I know, never use URL's. They use the address bar
for doing a google search and then they click on the correct site in the
search results.
URL's is already dead.
------
frazras
Look at this
[http://www.this.www.is.www.not.www.really.www.google.com](http://www.this.www.is.www.not.www.really.www.google.com)
:-D
------
alasdair_
The worst case of this that I've seen is with Safari on mac. The domain gets
completely hidden if it's an HTTPS site that is "verified" (i.e. the entity
shows up in Dunn and Broadstreet)
Visit "www.apple.com" in Safari and you will get "Apple, Inc" in the URL bar
after a moment.
This seems like a potentially reasonable choice until you realize that someone
could register, say "Apple, Inc" in another state and get a HTTPS cert to
match it. One phishing email later and the Safari user is convinced they are
logging in to the correct domain.
I can see lots of new phishing attacks made possible because of this. :(
------
nyxtom
Between this and other recent changes they sure have been making some pretty
terrible decisions lately. Hopefully this change is reverted.
------
acid303
Pressing alt+d selects the address in the address bar but does not expand it,
the expanded one is copied when you press ctrl+c. Hilarious.
------
ourcat
Crikey. Looking at the various tests done by people on that thread highlights
some pretty amateur string logic by whoever implemented it.
------
snissn
as a developer i can already forsee the pain of debugging an issue with
cookies and realizing that it comes down to the subdomain
------
LeoNatan25
Chrome 69 has been a joke so far, in UX, design and bugs (on Mac). It's good,
because it will push more people to Firefox.
------
sathackr
Goodbye Chrome.
I dumped Microsoft when they tried to shove Windows 10 down my throat. I use
them only when I have to now.
It's now Firefox for me.
------
dhruvrrp
It’s wierd how everyone seems to be so against to this change. hasn’t safari
been doing this since forever?
------
sodosopa
What a stupid bug and yes it's a purposely developed bug. Will cause a lot of
problems as noted.
------
madisfun
Embrace, extend, and extinguish. The story of Google and the Web. Don't
AMPlify the issue.
------
keymone
it's true that this change is going to break some stuff for some people, but i
welcome it. www has to go. it provides no meaning (as opposed to
john.example.com) and it serves no purpose, we have schema in URLs to figure
out the protocol and port.
------
amenghra
Lol at "subdomain.www.domain.com" displays as "subdomain.domain.com".
------
znpy
the amount of assumptions that browsers make nowadays is really getting out of
hand.
Chrome on my work laptop doesn't even bother resolving a name that certainly
does not look like an url but exists in the network.
Instead it will look it up on (guess what?) Google.
~~~
jazoom
There's a particular 8-letter, simple subdomain for my domain (.com) where
Chrome treats it as a Google search. Doesn't do it for any other subdomains.
It makes no sense.
------
sjs382
Where's the list for which subdomains Google considers "trivial"?
------
microcolonel
Is this a Mac-only bug? I'm running Chrome OS and it looks just fine to me.
~~~
rkeene2
Chrome 69 has not be rolled out to ChromeOS yet, at-least on the stable
channel.
------
tschellenbach
Just updated to see it in action. Seems like a nice improvement for end users.
Don't think there is any reason not to do this, other than a nostalgic desire
for things to stay the same. Most sites already have a www. to . redirect in
place and if you don't its a trivial change.
~~~
uberman
Why not drop the .com then as well? Most sites are on .com domains after all.
~~~
CydeWeys
The obvious difference is that that's higher up in the hierarchy rather than
lower in it. www.example.com and example.com are controlled by the same
entity; example.com and example.foo may well not be.
------
SquareWheel
How immature to submit this as a bug. It was obviously an intended feature.
~~~
ng-user
However it was intended by the developers is irrelevant to the average user
using the product. To many many people this is a glaring bug.
~~~
SquareWheel
Bugtrackers are not an appropriate place to post feedback on products. They
are for listing bugs.
------
NathanCH
This is worse than the time Google ruined autocomplete and autofill:
[https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=587466](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=587466)
------
nogbit
Same response as yesterday, stop using Chrome, now, there are alternatives.
------
download13
This seems fine.
I'm assuming you can always click to expand and show the full URL.
For a lot of people (devs especially) it would be nice to be able to change an
option to see the whole URL at a glance, but for most people it's just a
confusing mess they have to look through for the domain name.
------
rawoke083600
Ja this is terrible idea !
------
phillipseamore
It's been like this on mobiles for a couple of years right?
------
damm
Doesn't this make it easier to phish? Seems like it to me.
------
tigrezno
Fellow HN's, why the hell are you still using chrome?
------
tuxone
Who cares will switch the flag. Who doesn’t, just doesn’t.
------
megous
Presumably chromium doesn't do this. I can see www.
------
homero
Subdomains are very important, stop hiding where I am.
------
Svoka
Chrome is a new IE.
------
bluejay2387
Is anyone else starting to see parallels between Google's attitude toward
"progressing" Chrome and Microsoft's attitude towards IE in the 3-8 version
days?
------
Venipa
chrome://flags/#omnibox-ui-hide-steady-state-url-scheme-and-subdomains
disables this new "feature"
------
DewWisp
"trivial", yeah okay sure...
------
sigzero
Just leave it alone Google. Sheesh.
------
bradezone
Man, I hate authoritarians.
------
vincentmarle
Next up: “.com” is trivial too, let’s remove that too.
------
joeyyang
Nice
------
ajfabb
epic bikeshed
------
shawn
Since everyone is wondering why, and since I happened to stumble across a
reason during my time as a pentester, here you go:
Spearphishing is still one of the most common ways of breaching a corporate
network. If I target you, you will likely fall for one of my attempts. If you
are a company rather than a person, my odds go way up, because I have N
chances to trick someone rather than 1 (where N is roughly the number of
people at the company with email access).
This is one of those things that everyone says "Ha, I'm smart. _I 'd_ notice.
You can't trick me."
And maybe you are. But you're also distracted. And that's my greatest
advantage against you. All I need is to sneak in an unexpected Github prompt
that looks completely authentic, and now I have your Github password. Wanna
bet you don't have 2FA turned on, even though you know you really ought to?
And even if you do, it's getting easier to social engineer your way past
AT&T's lovely customer support:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caVEiitI2vg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caVEiitI2vg)
Ok, what's the point?
This: _Every character in the URL bar unrelated to the apex name is a deadly
distraction._
Right now, how do you know you're actually on HN instead of some knockoff?
"ycombinator.com".
How many characters do you have to read unrelated to that?
"[https://news](https://news). /item?id=17927972"
The most _vital_ part of a URL for vetting identity is also, usually, the
hardest to see.
Now, I don't know whether google made this change in order to assist with
this. But it's one possible justification, and a step in a good direction.
We may not like it, just like we didn't like when Google removed the clickable
"cached" links from search results, but in this case consumer protection
outweighs our urges as a power user.
~~~
fmpwizard
if the idea is to protect users so that you don't end up clicking on
[https://news.ycombinator.com.myhackerdomain.com](https://news.ycombinator.com.myhackerdomain.com)
, you then open the attack of a platform where they offer custom subdomains,
and you have
[https://original.blogger.com](https://original.blogger.com)
and then
[https://fake-original.blogger.com](https://fake-original.blogger.com)
if I make them look the same, and the address will hide the subdomain, it
looks like a step backwards in securing the web
now, imagine the actual platform has a payment section, and I create a fake
subdomain that looks pretty similar, email you, boom, I get your cc info
because I tricked you into entering new cc info (assuming your scenario of
someone being distracted)
~~~
Sohcahtoa82
Only supposed " _trivial_ " subdomains are hidden, such as www. and m.
Anything else is still shown. fake-original.blogger.com will still show up as
fake-original.blogger.com because fake-original. isn't a trivial subdomain.
I still think it's a stupid move, though. It's a simplification that is
incredibly unnecessary and may be harmful when dealing with the rare site that
doesn't treat www.domain.com and domain.com as the same.
------
HyperTalk2
Once you get as big as Google or Apple, you're too big to fail and there is no
longer any pressure to make good decisions because there are no actual
consequences for making moronic decisions.
------
yAnonymous
A bunch of monkeys would have caught most of these bugs during testing - and
have done a better job with the coding in the first place.
>[http://www.example.www.example.com](http://www.example.www.example.com) ->
example.example.com
What the fuck. I don't even.
------
rhacker
The fix is to change your subdomain from "www" to "amp". You can read more
about it at the IETF website located here:
[https://www.ampproject.org/](https://www.ampproject.org/)
Please submit any complaints you have as a video on YouTube.
~~~
test6554
Please tell me this is a joke...
~~~
ihuman
The "Please submit any complaints you have as a video on YouTube." part really
makes it look like a joke
~~~
progval
That line was added as an edit
------
another-cuppa
Glad I don't use Chrome. Hope this doesn't happen too Firefox or that'll be
another entry in my /etc/portage/patches
------
sureaboutthis
I would guess this makes Chrome and non-standards compliant browser.
------
peterwwillis
Google attempted a more extreme version of this four years ago:
[https://www.extremetech.com/computing/181657-google-moves-
to...](https://www.extremetech.com/computing/181657-google-moves-to-kill-off-
the-url-entirely-in-new-version-of-chrome)
So they're doing it again, just slower:
[https://www.extremetech.com/computing/276454-google-wants-
to...](https://www.extremetech.com/computing/276454-google-wants-to-kill-the-
url)
I'm pretty sure the eventual plan is to force everyone to browse the web using
a version of the App Store, which we all know is incredibly secure, and never
difficult to use.
~~~
rkeene2
I don't think your conclusion is correct, but the assertion that they want to
get rid of the URL was posted on Hacker News a couple of days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17911009](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17911009)
------
therealmarv
Cool, the internet is changing is to my personal preference. Don't like www.
------
drivingmenuts
Stupid crap like that is one of the reasons why Chrome isn't my primary
browser.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why did I wake up before my alarm clock went off? (2015) - gloftus
https://joearms.github.io/published/2015-03-02-Waking-Up.html
======
JoeAltmaier
Nope. I slept in a common room with 3 brothers. If my alarm went off (half an
hour before they needed to get up) I got a whopping. So I would wake up
moments before the alarm, scramble from bed to my desk and slap the snooze
button sometimes just as the buzzer started to sound.
This guy is over-thinking it. And underestimating the human brain.
~~~
madaxe_again
Yup. I grew up in dorms at boarding school. The art was to wake up five
minutes before the bell, so you could be first in line for the showers and get
hot water, and then to breakfast before they ran out of the good choice. You
couldn’t have an audible alarm, as you’d wake others and then you’d have
competition.
So, you just trained yourself to wake on time, at 0657 or whatever time
shortly before 0700 you thought wise - after all, you didn’t want to be early,
as then you’d just stand in a freezing corridor, and you’d have wasted
precious minutes of sleep. Eighth was the perfect place in line, as that was
how many shower heads there were. I digress...
To this day, I have zero need for an alarm clock - I just pick the time I want
to wake at, and I do, within a minute. I can decide to have a 15 minute nap
and it’s exactly that. If I don’t set a constraint, I sleep on until I
“naturally” wake up.
I have absolutely no idea how this unconscious dead reckoning of time works,
but it does. I’m not as good at it awake as I am asleep - I only manage ten
minute accuracy.
Another plus is that you don’t get sleep inertia like you do when woken by
something suddenly, and instead wake up, well, awake.
~~~
rconti
The book Why We Sleep discusses the phase of our sleep that has extremely
accurate timekeeping. I've forgotten the details, of course. But I think it's
quite clear our brains know precisely what time it is.
~~~
kranner
A book on sleep (and more) that deserves to be much more widely known is The
Head Trip by Jeff Warren:
[https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2168851.Head_Trip](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2168851.Head_Trip)
------
AdmiralAsshat
Personally, I rarely wake up before my regular alarm goes off. However, if I
have to wake up earlier than I normally do for something (dr's appt, scheduled
flight, etc), my body seems to wake itself up every couple of hours out of
fear that I will sleep through the alarm. So I normally wake up at 8 and sleep
soundly through the night, but if I've gotta be up at 7 for some reason, even
if I _have_ an alarm set, I seem to wake up in a panic at about 4 AM, 6 AM,
6:30 AM, etc.
~~~
stingraycharles
Very recognizable. What I found interesting is that, even though apparently my
brain can time the alarm really well, but I cannot actively rely on it: if I
choose not to set an alarm, I will wake up a dozen times before, like you
describe. It’s easy to explain why, but still a pity.
------
throwaway_tech
I think even more interesting is when I wake up before my alarm and actually
get up/out of bed I feel like I had proper sleep. However, if I decide to go
back to sleep for the short period of time before my alarm, I usually wake up
by the alarm and feel like I got terrible sleep.
~~~
krick
Yes! Basically, every time I wake up _because of_ alarm I feel disgusting.
But the most bizarre thing for me is that I pretty much always get up before
the alarm (and hence feeling perfectly fine) if I drastically changed my
regimen recently (which normally is pretty much non-existent), even if it
leaves me with 5 hours of sleep. But once I get comfortable with it, I start
sleeping longer, waking up after the alarm (even if I set it purposefully
late, making place for, like, 9-10 hours of sleep), waking up tired and hating
my life.
------
Cerium
I regularly wake up about 5 to 10 minutes before the alarm goes off. I think
it has a lot to do with light levels. I tend to set my alarm to go off about
7:00 in the winter and earlier in the summer, so there is some light outside
to wake up to.
~~~
iamatworknow
I'm also one to wake up 5 to 10 minutes before the alarm, but my alarm often
varies. Some days it's 5:30 AM. Others it's 8 AM. So the ambient light level
theory is out for me. But probably 6/7 days per week I find myself waking up a
few minutes before it goes off.
------
AgentME
Besides the overlooked possibility that people are just better at waking up at
specific times than is generally expected (which I think is true and probably
explains most cases, but maybe not all), there's another explanation the
author didn't consider: it's possible that people frequently half-wake-up, and
then fall back asleep and forget the experience. However, if you half-wake-up
right before the alarm, then the alarm interrupts you before you get the
chance to fall back asleep and forget the experience. You just think that you
unusually woke up right before the alarm, without remembering the many other
times you woke up in the morning not immediately before the alarm.
I used to have an alarm clock very close to my bed, and I would be able to
turn it off or hit the snooze button very quickly after it went off without
getting up. I believe I could hit the button in my sleep, or wake up just
enough to hit it and then fall back asleep fast enough to forget the
experience. I remember many times waking up at my alarm starting to go off at
9:30am (or some other round ten minute interval time after 9am) even though I
scheduled it at 9am; I must have snoozed it several times and fell back to
sleep quickly enough to forget the experience.
I even switched to a phone alarm clock app where I had to solve simple
arithmetic problems in order to snooze or disable the alarm, and I had the
same experience. I'm not sure it if it makes sense to say that I was solving
the math problems in my sleep; I think it's more correct to say I woke up,
solved it, and then fell back asleep and forgot the experience because I fell
asleep quickly enough.
~~~
Izkata
> I believe I could hit the button in my sleep, or wake up just enough to hit
> it and then fall back asleep fast enough to forget the experience. I
> remember many times waking up at my alarm starting to go off at 9:30am (or
> some other round ten minute interval time after 9am) even though I scheduled
> it at 9am; I must have snoozed it several times and fell back to sleep
> quickly enough to forget the experience.
That happened to me quite a lot during college, and due to a quirk of my alarm
I know for certain I wasn't just sleeping through it: The snooze button was
between the two arrow buttons for setting stuff, and if I hit an arrow by
accident while the alarm was going off, the set alarm time would change. It
pretty regularly ended up several minutes off of where it was supposed to be.
------
downerending
I discovered at an early age that I could "will" myself to wake up at a
desired time. It's certainly not perfect, but my accuracy is _way_ better than
chance.
Living things have all sorts of biological clocks, so this isn't really magic.
Rather, it might be a bit surprising that we have some conscious control over
it.
~~~
krick
Yeah, I'm pretty much sure OP is unnecessarily complicating things. It I am
getting up like 5 minutes before the alarm every time I know I really need to
get up at that specific time (because I know something more important than
just dragging my ass to the fucking office needs to happen this time), well,
that means I somehow know subconsciously really well what's the time is.
Because either I'm living in my sleep ever since, or I actually got up, turned
off the alarm clock so it won't bother me, got dressed and went on with my
day. Not just lied there fooling myself I'm awake before I actually got awake.
~~~
Dylan16807
Yeah but 5 minutes is much much easier than 3 seconds.
~~~
Talanes
But even if your brain is measuring time operating at a precision of "around
five minutes before," the variance will sometimes cause that to be 3 seconds
before.
~~~
Dylan16807
The premise is "I often think that I wake up just before my alarm goes off."
If 90% of the time you wake up well before the alarm, the clock saying fifty-
something, and can shut it off before it starts,
9% of the time you wake up noticably past the alarm,
and 1% of the time you appear to have woken up just before it goes off,
then that's not very confusing, and isn't going to prompt something like this
article.
The article is about being _much_ more precise on a regular basis. Or the
illusion of it.
------
kempbellt
An alarm going off if a _very_ disruptive disturbance to your sleep cycle,
_and_ it is predictable.
Your subconscious mind perceives it as a predictable negative event and wakes
you up in an attempt to prevent the disturbance.
Goes to show how cool our brains are.
~~~
thedanbob
After I got an Apple Watch I started wearing it to bed and using it as my
alarm. I can't remember ever waking up just before it goes off although that
would happen a lot with my old alarm. Perhaps because a vibration on my wrist,
while still effective at waking me up, is not nearly as disruptive and
negative as an alarm.
~~~
kempbellt
>is not nearly as disruptive and negative as an alarm
My personal experience says this is likely the cause as well. A vibration on
your arm is a lot less disruptive as "EENENENNNG..... ENENENENNG....ENENNENN"
right in the middle of a dream.
------
coding123
100 years from now the conversation will be about how back in the day we
didn't know all of the ways time, space and quantum mechanics worked and we
thought it was just a coincidence or some psychological brain function that
has a highly tuned timer.
~~~
AgentME
If there was some kind of backwards-time effect going on, then you would
expect the experience of waking up just before unexpected interruptions to be
just as common as waking up before scheduled interruptions (alarms).
Personally I have a lot of experiences of waking up right before an alarm that
was scheduled at a time I knew and not as many experiences of waking up right
before something unscheduled.
------
syntheticnature
I've definitely had the experience, mentioned else-thread, of waking minutes
before the alarm, and learned through experience not to roll back over if I
wanted to feel awake that morning.
I'm also old enough to have had an alarm clock with an internal relay for the
alarm, whose click was sufficient to wake me before the alarm proper sounded.
------
paxpelus
I almost never use an alarm to wake up. Whenever I use an alarm I wake up 5-10
minutes earlier and I wonder if the alarm went off or not. I consider this
some kind of anxiety because usually I use an alarm to e.g. catch a flight
------
md_
The famous experiments from Benjamin Libet seem relevant here:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_of...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Libet#Implications_of_Libet's_experiments).
In particular, see Daniel Dennett's response (the relevant aspects of which
are quoted on the Wikipedia article linked above).
I will say, I don't think this is a terribly interesting _example_; as others
have noted, it's not uncommon to actually wake up minutes before the alarm
goes off. (I commonly wake up 20 or 30 minutes before my alarm goes off; I can
be reasonably sure my subjective experience is accurate because I look at the
clock!)
But what the author hits upon (apparently naively, but it's nonetheless a
useful insight) is that cognition (if one is a materialist) is not a monolith
and that, as a result, various timing issues can confuse observers (as with
Libet).
~~~
3pt14159
During high school I had an alarm. I would wake up within about 1 to 3 seconds
of it going off, stand up, walk to the alarm that was in my washroom and turn
it off just as it was starting. Every school day for years.
I became convinced that the precision of the brain at a task is partially a
function of its reliability long before learning anything about machine
learning.
------
Vysero
The real question:
Why is it that if you don't set your alarm you won't wake up before it would
normally go off, had you set it.
~~~
oyebenny
Come again? English is such a funny language.
~~~
kaybe
They wonder why this natural waking up before the alarm only works if you
actually set the alarm and does not work if you do not set it.
------
dctoedt
Our two dogs seem to do this. They sleep in our bedroom. We get up at 0500 to
walk them before going to the gym. Usually we're up before the alarm goes off,
but not always. If we sleep until the alarm goes off, typically around 0458
the dogs will be up and standing next to our bed; they shake their heads
around so that the sound of their ears flapping will get us up.
------
art4ur
I often wake up two to three minutes before the alarm. It happens often. I
just think my internal clock is just getting in habit.
------
dang
Small threads from back then:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9365150](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9365150)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9134541](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9134541)
------
maxk42
In order to prevent this I bevel my week. M, T, Th I set my alarm for an hour
earlier. W and F I set my alarm for the latest I can reasonably wake up and
still make it to work on time if there is a minor hiccup. It prevents me from
getting used to a particular schedule and waking up ahead of my alarm. When I
wake up ahead of my alarm I tend to turn it off, thinking I'm awake, and
subsequently fall back asleep, making myself late.
Sleeping in on Wednesdays gives me a burst of energy just as everyone else is
experiencing the mid-week "hump." And doing the same on Friday keeps me from
checking-out an hour before the week is done. It's a good system.
------
magicroot75
I thought this was going to be an article about how this guy had a microphone
in his room recording constantly, and analyzed the sounds around him that
corresponded to times he woke up earlier than he wanted to. That would have
been cool.
------
glangdale
I see a general chorus of disagreement in the comments, and have to agree - I
wake up before my alarm and the clock is reading 6:42 or something when the
alarm is for 6:45. It's not some exotic Lamport clock phenomena or some quote
out of Nietzsche's "Human, All too Human" ("Everyone knows from experience how
fast the dreamer can incorporate into his dream a loud sound he hears, bell
ringing, for example, or cannon fire, how he can explain it after the fact
from his dream, so that he believes he is experiencing first the occasioning
factors, and then that sound"). We just get good at anticipating our alarms.
------
gattr
I also often wake up before the alarm, and the delta is on the order of tens
of seconds. I'd say I definitely get to become fully awake and start thinking
about the upcoming day before it rings. Apparently, just a matter of quite a
precise internal clock.
Another situation when it can trigger is when I brew tea. I like a
"reproducible" brew, so I'm used to setting the timer to 3:30 minutes after
filling the cup with water. When I then go do something else and become
engrossed in it, I'll often suddenly realize "Oh no, what about the tea?" I
then look at the timer and see there are 5-10 s left.
------
sharkmerry
>> A couple of days ago I lay in bed thinking “the alarm is just about to go
off” and then a second later it did go off and I thought “how come I woke up
just before the alarm went off?”
What is the alarm like? A beep every 10 seconds? I dont follow how a
consistent sounds would not be recognized.
This seems to posit. Alarm is recognized by the brain, he then has enough time
to have a conscious thought but then the ears arent passing the signal they've
already received, (which triggered the wake up), to the brain to "hear" it?
Does this happen to anyone else? I've never heard of it before
~~~
gowld
It's more that the conscious brain incorrectly orders events when building
memory. Deja Vu is a common phenomenon of falsely feeling a memory of
something that was just learned.
------
spacenick88
Maybe I'm missing something but e.g. on the Android clock you can dismiss an
upcoming alarm. So now if you wake up, dismiss it and it never rings that kind
of proofs you really woke up before, right?
------
yellowapple
There's a simpler explanation: your brain is associating other environmental
(internal or external) conditions with the alarm going off, and reacting to
those instead of (or in addition to) the actual alarm.
This seems to happen to me pretty often, given that I'll wake up in "the
middle of the night" (usually because I need to use the bathroom, or because I
want a glass of water), then check the clock, realize that the alarm goes off
in 3 minutes, and grumble about the lost sleep time.
------
jFriedensreich
I can't believe no one here seems to know who joe armstrong is / was and that
he passed away, isn't this hackernews? This is a post from 2015. Joe was a
wonderful person and this post shows a random funny/quirky thought he had.
Writing things like "...by all means, keep doubting yourself and over-
analyzing your own body..." is pretty inappropriate
------
abacate
I don't see how this reasoning makes any sense: you just need to look at the
actual clock time to find out if the alarm went off or not.
For instance: alarm set for 8 AM.
You wake up, look at the clock: if it says 7:59AM or earlier, you woke up
before it had a chance to ring. If it says 8:00AM or anything past that, it
already went off.
Unless, of course, you have an alarm that does not show you the current time.
Otherwise, it's pretty easy to figure out what's happening.
------
veeenu
I have a visual alert on my computer to remind me of drinking water every half
hour. After a couple of weeks, I regularly noticed myself feeling thirsty and
reaching for the bottle a mere handful of seconds before the alert went off. I
think our bodies are more capable than we believe to adapt to habits and
tracking time, with or without environmental cues.
------
_ph_
It is not uncommon for me to wake up 2-3 minutes before the alarm goes off. As
I switch off the alarm clock then, the alarm never goes off. So no funny brain
things going on, the internal timer can be very precise.
Of course it also happens, that I sleep like a log until the alarm warkes me.
The waking up in time usually happens when there is an urgency to be on time.
------
pajtai
Can't you just verify this by hitting a timer at the time you are thinking
"this is just before the alarm will go off".... then you can verify if this is
really just minutes before the alarms was going to go off.
My guess is sometimes it's an hour before the alarm, but it just feels like a
minute before, since you actually doze off again...
------
yoz-y
This would be actually quite an easy theory to put to test. You could film
yourself waking up, then you would know.
And I would bet that they are actually waking up before the alarm clock, most
of the time because of the regular schedule, the other times due to
confirmation bias.
------
perl4ever
I always thought that my alarm clock probably made some very soft sound
shortly before the alarm. But maybe not.
These days I seem to be waking up before my alarm, but several hours, not
moments before.
------
cameronfraser
People attune themselves to repetition. They wake up before it goes off
because they wake up around the same time almost every day. People are not
imagining no alarm for 5 to 10 minutes.
------
ryanwinchester
I had an alarm clock for a long time. My alarm set for 6:00am and I would wake
up and look at the clock at 5:59. So, I would actually just wake up just
before the alarm.
------
bwi4
Not a biologist, but circadian rhythms are attributed to light. Could the
light level in the room be the trigger for waking before the alarm goes off?
~~~
projektfu
Light mediates them, but there are a lot of clock-based behaviors in animals
and they usually anticipate events. They can occur in complete darkness.
Searching PubMed for "time sleep anticipation" produced interesting results.
------
Trowter
This may be the case for some but for me my alarm pretty much never goes off
It's set for 6am everyday and I usually turn if off around 5:55
------
Stierlitz
You didn't wake up before the alarm went off. What happens is your mind is
dreaming about a minutes worth of some random scenario. At the moment the
alarm sounds, this scenario undergoes an alternation to incorporate the alarm
into the dream and is then stored in your short-term memory. When you fully
wake-up, your mind replays the dream, the last bit of which contains the
sequence of you waking-up just before the alarm going off.
~~~
perl4ever
I used to dream I was waking up, dream I was doing stuff more or less
normally, and then things would get really weird and I would semi-lucidly
conclude I must be still dreaming, and force my eyes open to wake up _again_.
On occasion it happened repeatedly. And in retrospect, it was obvious that
when I was dreaming, my ability to tell I was dreaming was impaired. But then
I worried, what if I think I'm dreaming and I'm not?
------
aaron695
What about you woke up 10 times before the alarm and forgot them until the
last time?
------
jonplackett
Am I colourblind or is booting orange not pink?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Thanks Apple, You ruined my day - nanoERA
For those who don't know what happened today .. please read this subject:<p>http://www.graphitas.co.uk/blog/2013/10/ios-7-activation-required-error-on-iphone-and-ipad/<p>Apple did it again, they destroyed my iPhone with their stupid decisions.<p>Apple suddenly decided to disable the iOS 7 on their developer devices. And they did not give us the option to upgrade to the latest public release.<p>They are asking us to activate our phones, but they are bringing down their activation server.<p>They are asking us to restore through iTunes, but the worst software ever made (aka : iTunes) is crashing during the restore.<p>They are asking us to make a recovery mode, and BOOOM ! The device has been formatted and it returned to the factory setting, every thing is flushed !<p>Thanks Apple .. You ruined my day.<p>BTW, I am going Android. At least I can deal with my mobile as a USB drive where I can do simple "Drag & Drop" away from the stupid iTunes !
======
eonil
You're talking "I have serious issues on BETA software!".
Wow that really proves who you are. I think Android is just the device for
you. It really fits to people like you. Because it's from Google, so you will
never see the _end of beta_ stuffs.
I always see scary warning messages for each time when I download beta
software from Apple website. I still don't understand what kind of people are
using beta OS for their private device, not for test device.
~~~
nanoERA
Who said "I have serious issues on BETA software!" ?? Did you read that
anywhere in the thread?
Please read carefully and read the attached link before you comment!
~~~
eonil
I read the article before I comment, and actually there's only two sentences
about the problem.
Apple BETA devices around the world have been receiving the error “Activation
Required”. Apple has placed an expiry date on their BETA versions, this forces
users who are still running BETAs of iOS 7 to update to the current version.
WTF? You said it was BETA.
Still, you're blaming other people for your fault. You're developer. You were
recognizing what will be happen with BETA OS in worst case, and you just
didn't prepared for it. Dedicated testing machine is _required equipment_ for
BETA OS. You didn't bought it because you treated it _optional equipment_.
That's right for regular development, but not for BETA OS. So you thrown your
primary phone into the risk of the test machine.
If you're work for a company, blame your boss who forced you to use your
personal device. If you work for yourself, then blame yourself.
And welcome to Android. You don't need to worry about Apple's parenting, but
instead, you need plenty of different devices for test. Good luck.
------
daenney
I had zero issues upgrading, not even restoring, from the iOS 7 developer
builds to the final release. Just download it from Dev Center, option/shift-
click on Update in iTunes and feed it the IPSW.
Granted Apple's way of forcing the upgrade here is painful but it's more than
possible to upgrade without issues and without bricking your device.
~~~
nanoERA
The problem is that Apple did not give us the ability to do OTA update, then
they suddenly with no prior notification they decided to deactivate the
developers devices, then the forced us to put the device in the recovery mode
to restore it!
------
elias12
Is it so hard to deactivate auto updating for a beta version? It's not fun to
have a brick in the pocket when you are traveling. Not everyone has 3 iPhones
for testing purposes only. We are talking about hundertthousands of beta
users? That's not "Apple Thinking" about details, come on, that's
embarrassing.
~~~
nanoERA
That is what I mean, I am a developer and I own one iPhone device because it
is costly to own an iPhone! So Apple should respect their developer and simply
email them that they have to manually update their iOS 7 to the latest through
the IPSW file (Although it should be updated automatically through OTA)
------
morkfromork
You are supposed to backup the device before installing a Beta. You can easily
restore from the backup.
------
aniruddh
Welcome to the beautiful open world of Android!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Sorry, Blue Apron. The Joys of Cooking Can’t Fit in a Box. (2015) - edward
https://newrepublic.com/article/122959/sorry-blue-apron-joys-cooking-cant-fit-box
======
nlawalker
Blue Apron is the cooking version of a LEGO kit or a coloring book, the former
of which has been popular for decades and the latter of which is apparently
experiencing a moment as people look for ways to combat the lack of direction
and clear goals in their careers and lives.
A lot of people aren't creative, or don't have the energy or confidence to be
creative, or cooking just isn't "their thing" but they want to try it (or
maybe they just need a gentle introduction). Following clear directions
towards a well-specified goal when you have all the tools and ingredients you
need right in front of you can be fun, relaxing, satisfying and confidence-
boosting. See just about every video game ever made.
Of course someone who loves cooking isn't going to see the appeal of Blue
Apron. For a lot of other people, cooking looks like this:
[http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cook_home](http://theoatmeal.com/comics/cook_home).
------
noir_lord
I can see the appeal of these services though I don't use them (don't even
know if we have them in the UK).
I'm actually fortunate since my office is about a third of a mile from an old
fashioned style in-door covered market that has a lovely sandwich place, so I
go pick up my lunch and all the ingredients I need to cook (there is a
butchers, fishmongers, veg stall) that night, it's _hugely_ cheaper than the
supermarkets, the food is generally better as well.
I tend to cook simple meals during the week (lots of steamed veg and fish or
stews) since they are fast, easily cooked and in the case of stews eaten the
next day or frozen.
The above was a huge part of my losing 60lbs last year, no fancy diets or
anything I just stopped eating _anything_ I hadn't cooked or prepared.
It's actually quite hard to eat 2500 calories of fish and veg :)
------
bdcravens
We subscribe to both Blue Apron and Home Chef. I've always fancied getting
into "cooking", but never knew where to start. With these services I've
explored new techniques, equipment, and ingredients that I probably never
would have otherwise. The recycling problem is improving, as Blue Apron will
let you send back packing and refrigeration materials postage paid.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IPhone 5 Scorns Standards Promise To European Commission - neya
http://apple.slashdot.org/story/12/09/14/2053241/iphone-5-scorns-standards-promise-to-european-commission?utm_source=slashdot&utm_medium=facebook
======
mtgx
I'm not an Apple user, so I might not fully understand how Apple's connectors
work, but it seems to be a dick move from Apple that even though they are
going to use a completely new connector, they _still_ not going to adopt the
microUSB standard.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ed Felten: Finding and Fixing Errors in Google's Book Catalog - billswift
http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/blog/felten/finding-and-fixing-errors-googles-book-catalog
======
billswift
The best part, I think, is Jon Orwant's response
(<http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1701#comment-41758> , link is from
the 3rd paragraph of Felten's post) to Nunberg's rant (the errors are real and
widespread, but the tone of Nunberg's original post was excessive).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Poker Pro Ivey Asks U.K. Court to Decide What Is Cheating - anonu
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-13/poker-pro-ivey-asks-u-k-appeal-court-to-decide-what-is-cheating
======
Falcon9
I have to say I agree with the casino's lawyer:
"Baccarat is a game of pure chance," Christopher Pymont, Genting’s lawyer said
in court. "It is not a game of skill, it is not a game of mixed skill and
chance."
"You are not supposed to know what is coming out of the shoe," he said. "Those
are the rules."
That said, the court doesn't seem to agree that it's quite so cut and dried,
essentially saying that if Ivey didn't have the croupier rotate certain cards
for him (manipulating the cards via the croupier) and instead had some other
method of identifying high and low cards then it would not have been cheating.
Of course, as Daniel Negreanu puts it (bluntly): "Big fish sets all the rules,
okays all the rules, they need to eat it when they get beat and not be whiny
biatches about it."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Good design critiquing sites? - jmduke
Besides /r/design_critiques, Google hasn't revealed any that seemed respectable/functional: anyone with experience in this area have a few links to offer? I'm looking for feedback on my redesigned personal blog.
======
diggan
Behance is a portfolio/showcase-site where you can show your work and other
people can comment on the things you post
[http://www.behance.net/](http://www.behance.net/)
------
revorad
Try [https://news.layervault.com/](https://news.layervault.com/)
------
7beersonthewall
[http://www.awwwards.com/](http://www.awwwards.com/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A system that pours a glass of wine without opening the bottle - appplemac
http://www.coravin.com
======
tacostakohashi
Drinking the whole bottle seems like a much better solution to this problem.
~~~
jnks
Way more fun, at least.
------
wvl
The Sweethome likes it, but it's expensive:
> "We tested the $300 Coravin system against Private Preserve, comparing
> bottles of wine that’d been saved for five days against a fresh bottle.
> While the Coravin-preserved bottle tasted more like the brand-new one, its
> price makes it impractical for many wine drinkers; it’s better suited for
> restaurant use, or serious oenophiles. For everyone else, Private Preserve
> is still the way to go."
[http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-way-to-keep-open-
wine-f...](http://thesweethome.com/reviews/best-way-to-keep-open-wine-fresh/)
~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _It’s better suited for restaurant use,_
I'm a wine enthusiast with a restless palette. Even if I adored the last
glass, I'll want something different next. This makes me a bad fit for bottles
(in small groups).
Consider the restauranteur offering wine by the glass. On the upside, glasses
(should) deliver a larger margin than whole bottles. On the downside, unsold
product is thrown out. This is why high-volume low- and moderately-priced
wines sell by the glass. Lower-volume wines would be thrown out too often. The
higher price point would make that wastage more painful.
In New York, the Coravin system has saved me from having to choose between
often mediocre wines and locking down to a bottle. It makes volume less
critical, to the wine bar, in choosing which wines to offer by the glass. The
palette thus broadens.
------
_Adam
$11 per proprietary argon capsule. Each capsule can pour 75oz, or about 3
standard wine bottles. Not too bad, if you're serving high end wines.
~~~
appplemac
I wonder if there will be a grey / black market for non-original capsules.
Seems promising since, as far as I know, argon is not _that_ expensive to buy.
~~~
mattmaroon
I've used the Pek Preservino system for years. Their argon comes in the same
little cartridges as N2O or CO2 for siphons. In fact, I just started using N2O
since it works well enough for just a couple days.
~~~
huhtenberg
Looked it up. $12 for 4 cartridges, or $80 for 30 cartridges. That's pretty
humane.
But given that Coravin has a separate page for their board of directors, each
with a full bio and a mugshot, I think it's safe to assume that their
cartridges are non-standard.
------
ytjohn
Seems like a great way of injecting poison into an unopened bottle of wine.
I'll have to look into this for my next job.
~~~
danmaz74
I remember a very old episode of Columbo where an air capsule system to open
wine bottles was used for poisoning...
~~~
usefulcat
I remember that episode, it was quite good. Saw it on netflix a while back.
------
sz4kerto
I've used this a couple of times. It's good to test whether you want to drink
the wine at a certain; they had some problems with breaking bottles but
according to them it was a problem with the bottle.
I lost my faith in >$100/bottle wines though, so I don't care of this any
more.
------
GhotiFish
>Coravin’s proprietary argon gas capsule
good lord. Why must every product do this? Why? Whyyyy? Just make something
good. Make something that works and is practical. I don't want to be taken for
a ride. I don't want to be on a treadmill. I want something that doesn't make
me dependent on a company that could go under at any time.
Every time I see stuff like this, the more cynical I become.
------
fredophile
Has anyone tried any of these systems for anything other than wine? I like
scotch but it also reacts with air after the bottle is opened. Obviously this
system wouldn't work because the cork on a bottle of scotch has a plastic cap
attached at the top. At $100+ for a good bottle of scotch I'd be willing to
invest this kind of money for something that worked.
~~~
steveax
The high levels of ethanol in spirits slow the oxidation down tremendously.
Unless you're taking over a year to go through a bottle I wouldn't sweat it.
If you're worried about it, you could always transfer the spirits to smaller
bottles after opening to minimize the air space.
~~~
fredophile
I would say taking over a year to go through an expensive scotch isn't
unreasonable if you have multiple bottles open.
------
shalbert
If you're not a wine enthusiast, this simply doesn't seem like a product worth
anybody's time of day. However, it must be noted that this is an excellent
idea for wine preservation. Just think about how great it must be to save an
expensive bottle from needing quick consumption before it experience's the
perils of too much oxygen.
------
FigBug
Looks pretty cool, but isn't cork on the way out? Will it work with a screw
top as well?
~~~
mattmaroon
The cork should be on its way out, but if it is, it will be really slow. The
better technologies (screw tops, bag in a box) are associated with cheap
wines. It will be a long time before any substantial number of $20+ wines use
them as a result. The wine makers would quite rather 10% of their product go
bad and have to be refunded than have it be thought of as Franzia. (I have
seen a lot more synthetic corks popping up, and this product might work with
those.)
It's the same with beer and cans.
~~~
sjtrny
Depends where you live. Here in Australia twist top is king. Most bottles you
buy that are <$40 from 2011 onwards are twist tops (excluding carbonated,
people like to pop the cork even if it's a synthetic one). In recent trips to
the US I've noticed that it isn't as popular. People there seem to think twist
top is cheap or tacky.
------
kghose
For the person who has no time to put the cork back in the bottle ...
~~~
jsprogrammer
And who wants vendor lock-in with "proprietary argon gas capsules".
~~~
pat2man
I assume they have a patent on it so it's unlikely that we will see any
generic equivalent for a while.
~~~
gyardley
Maybe, but I doubt it - machines using inert gas to preserve and pour wine
have been around since Enomatic in the '70s. The only thing new here is the
cheap price point.
------
JonnieCache
The real innovation here is they've invented an even more irritating and
powerful way of breaking the back button.
~~~
deeviant
Well, to be honest, they also managed to pull off another feat: They
overcosted initial price PLUS insanely costed consumables.
Truly, a gadget fit for a king(or people that don't like money).
------
xg15
I'm looking forward to the face of the guy who uses this to open the $2500
wine bottle and then gets the needle stuck in it...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Intel’s 6th Generation Skylake Processors Scheduled for 2H 2015 - nkurz
http://wccftech.com/intels-6th-generation-skylake-processors-scheduled-2h-2015-5th-generation-broadwell-spring-15-updates-2015-2016-mobility-roadmap/
======
femto
Some interesting numbers:
In 1971, the 4004 microprocessor had 2300 transistors fabricated with a 10um
process. If the 4004 was fabricated with the same 14nm process as the Skylake,
over two hundred 4004s would fit in the area that a single transistor occupied
in the original 4004.
"Breakeven" occurred with the 68000:
In 1979, the 68000 microprocessor had 68000 transistors fabricated with a
3.5um process. If the 68000 was fabricated with the same 14nm process as the
Skylake, an entire 68000 would fit in the area that a single transistor
occupied in the original 68000.
Today's transistors are _really_ small compared to what they used to be! The
mind boggles at how many simple processor cores could be crammed into a
current die.
The numbers came from:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_count)
~~~
swalsh
What blows my mind is that Intel continues to do it with what seems like
really only one real competitor.
~~~
higherpurpose
ARM chip makers _are_ competitors to Intel now. Whether you believe it or not,
is less important. Intel, however, does believe it. Their entire chip strategy
over the past few years has been a _response_ to ARM - with each new
generation they barely increase the performance of _mainstream_ chips or even
_drop_ it, like they did with Core-M, as they try to lower their power
consumption, to put them closer to ARM's range. I'm not talking about IPC
here, but about the overall performance of the mainstream chips they're
pushing in the market.
First it was -M chips in laptops (30W-level performance), then it was -U chips
(15W-level performance), and now it's -Y chips (5W - or so they say - level
performance). Yes, a good chunk of that difference is from moving to new nodes
and optimization, but not all of it. Another big part comes from lowering the
performance and/or throttling their chips a lot more aggressively than before
in order to achieve that drastic drop in power consumption.
They don't care what AMD is doing these days, but they do care what ARM chip
makers are doing. They even bought a 4G modem company, so they can integrate
modems into chips the way Qualcomm does it. Speaking of Qualcomm, I believe it
has just announced it's going into server chips now.
Intel feels so threatened by ARM now, that it's losing _$1 billion per
quarter_ , to essentially give away its Atom chips for free to no-name tablet
makers, or less important OEMs (who are the only ones desperate enough to take
Intel's deal, because others know that as soon as Intel becomes a big player,
they'll charge a much higher rate even than other ARM competition - Intel
likes big profits on its chips and it's the only way for them to sustain the
company).
They even went into the business of IP licensing for crying out loud, just
like ARM (they're licensing Atom IP to Rockchip and Spreadtrum). Intel has
essentially admitted that it can't be competitive _building its own mobile
chips_. They have to license the IP to others so other companies can build
them - on TSMC's foundry, on an old process node, even by current ARM
standards.
~~~
gsnedders
Intel's big problem is the fact that they invest so heavily in fabs (which is
how they're basically constantly a process ahead of everyone else!) that their
costs are so much higher than most other manufacturers — and that's why they
charge so much more for their chips than most of the generic ARM SoCs. Yes,
some of it is profit margin, but they've been pushing the development so much
that much of it is just recouping their massive investments that give them
their competitive advantage.
------
vardump
Warning: link auto-plays video with sound.
Edit/addition:
AVX-512 in Skylake is pretty exciting. 32 FLOPS per clock cycle per core is
amazing. Also good to see 64 or 128 MB of eDRAM being included in more
configurations. It should also somewhat help with algorithms with larger
working sets, not just with graphics. Integration is also interesting, latency
between GPU and CPU should be low. This may open chances for better
integration and sharing of work between those units.
1 Gbps ethernet starts to be a limitation, it's barely enough for current
internet connections in some parts of the world. Nearly any SSD can do
sustained 5 Gbps, most new mechanical disks push 2 Gbps. It's time for
10GBASE-T to be a standard, with power saving option to function at lower
speeds. Nowadays even low end hardware such as $80 Asus etc. wifi-router with
USB 3.0 can push 500 Mbps+ at file serving.
~~~
bhouston
It is hard to get mainstream usage of CPU extensions until they are on the
large majority of chips because creating multiple code paths is a pain. Thus
while AVX-512 is nice, I do not expect to see usage of it outside video codecs
until at least 3 years from now, and it likely won't be widely used until 5-7
years from now. This problem is compounded by the slow upgrade cycles of PCs
now that their performance doesn't drastically increase per generation.
~~~
vardump
It's worse than that. It's still problematic to even assume SSE4.2, not to
mention AVX2, which would help significantly. Virtualization is making the
problem worse, because hypervisors set CPUID bits to lowest common denominator
within a vMotion / teleportation domain.
I think (specialized) JITting is the answer for that. Generate code on the
fly. I've been lately playing around with JITted [de]serializers, etc. I think
it might be possible to have an order of magnitude gains in JSON, XML,
msgpack, etc. processing.
Even *printf can be much, much faster. If the format specifier is static,
first run just generates code just for that specifier. Subsequent invocations
can be about 10-20x faster versus normal style format string scanner.
Edit: When I say JIT, I'm not talking about JVM or any other mainstream
implementation specifically, but the concept in general. Which means just-in-
time generation of (optimal) machine specific code.
~~~
tormeh
JIT and AOT on-device is the future, I agree. How good are the JVMs at taking
advantage of new instructions?
~~~
bhouston
My understanding is that JVMs do not generate any advanced instructions from
standard Java code. The only time they use these instructions is if they link
in hand coded C++ libraries that make use of them.
Edit: Stackoverflow answer says that in rare cases the JVM can vectorize
simple loops: [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10784951/do-any-jvms-
jit-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10784951/do-any-jvms-jit-
compilers-generate-code-that-uses-vectorized-floating-point-ins)
~~~
vardump
Just take a look at the code they generate, it's easy. In short, they do
generate SIMD code, but very rarely take advantage of vectorized execution.
~~~
tormeh
Why aren't the processor manufacturers making their own JITs and AOT
compilers? Surely that would be a competitive advantage.
~~~
vardump
Intel makes a famous AOT compiler, ICC. [https://software.intel.com/en-
us/intel-compilers](https://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-compilers)
~~~
tormeh
Yes, but it's for developer-compiled languages. It's not like I switch from an
AMD to an Intel processor and suddenly all C code on my machine has new
instructions in them. Compiled code remains the way it is.
This is not what I want. What I want is either JIT or AOT-on-end-device.
~~~
vardump
Binary (compiled code) JIT compilation could very well be faster than direct
execution.
I'm not aware of anyone currently using these techniques for running native
code faster. Yet.
You can also call these techniques binary translation if you like.
At simplest level, one could for example dynamically replace relevant static
library calls with higher performance versions. Perform function signature
based optimization - when a certain known common function is found, simply
replace it with a faster version.
More advanced ones could for example inline functions, even those pointed by
function pointers given a guard condition. It could also vectorize suitable
serial code.
Superoptimization techniques could also be applied to the instruction stream.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superoptimization](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superoptimization)
Even complex optimizations are possible. Like memory access pattern
translation. The JIT compiler could perform cache simulation and find a
mapping between memory accesses that would increase true hardware level
locality of reference. Performance could be improved by generating access
transformation code when target binary tries to access memory. Like map image
processing memory access code from row major to Z-order curve to increase
cache hit probability. Unless memory mapped (either to other processes or
physical hardware) the buffer resides the data would need to be translated
back row-major only for system calls. A lazy page fault mechanism could also
work in some cases.
------
bhouston
It is hard to get excited about this update if the core count stays the same
(2/4) in the low end chips.
The CPU throughput per core does not change that much per generation now:
2010-era Intel Core i7 980X (6 cores with HT) has a performance rating of
~9000:
[https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+X+980...](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7+X+980+%40+3.33GHz&id=866)
2014-era Intel Core i7 5930K (6 cores with HT) has a performance rating of
~13500:
[https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5930K...](https://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Core+i7-5930K+%40+3.50GHz&id=2336)
That works out to an CPU performance increase of ~1000/10% per
year/generation. I guess that is impressive given no clock speed increase, and
reduced power consumption, but that doesn't turn into more powerful results
for consumers in terms of raw performance. If Intel does not increase the
general core count available to consumers, we are basically stuck at the same
level of performance we were 4 years ago -- this isn't the case with GPUs nor
with mobile CPUs, which are increasing rapidly.
~~~
phaemon
Isn't the 2010-era Intel Core i7 980X about twice the price of the 2014-era
Intel Core i7 5930K?
In other words, aren't you comparing a high end CPU from 2010 to a medium
range CPU from 2014?
~~~
bhouston
The Intel Core i7 5930K is the fastest 6 core Intel Core i7 5xxx CPU. It is
the second faster Intel Core i7 5xxx CPU available. To call that mid-range is
not correct.
~~~
phaemon
Fair enough, but the 5960X is still a better comparison, surely?
~~~
bhouston
I was trying to make the point that per core speed hasn't increased. Both the
980X and the 5960K are the top of the line 6 core consumer grade CPUs.
This ties in with my point that the consumer grade CPUs from Skylake are all 2
and 4 core CPUs, which isn't that different from low-end consumer grade CPUs
from 2010/2011, because per core performance hasn't increased significantly.
My solution was for Intel to increase core count for consumer grade CPUs.
Because you can get real performance increases this way, as you proved by
comparing a 6 core CPU with an 8 core CPU.
~~~
Sanddancer
At the high end, per-core performance hasn't increased significantly. However,
at the 2-4 core level, it has. For example, the i3-4360t is 72% faster than
the i3 550, even though the 4360t uses half the power of the 550. Plus, you
need to keep in mind other things that will affect perceptions of performance,
like the pci-e lanes being on-die with the most recent generations of chips.
While the high end has plateaued to some extent with recent generations,
Intel's pumped a significant amount of work making their other lines
considerably more performant.
~~~
vardump
> At the high end, per-core performance hasn't increased significantly.
When comparing aforementioned CPUs (Intel Core i7 980X and Intel Core i7
5930K), I'd call 4->16 FLOPS per clock and 25.6 GB/s -> 68 GB/s memory
bandwidth significant. I think integer rate has also at least quadrupled.
Of course, because of high latencies, when running pointer chasing or branchy
code, there's little improvement. The software just can't take advantage of
hardware capabilities.
What kind of software are you considering when making that statement?
------
higherpurpose
Just like Broadwell was scheduled for the first half of 2014?
~~~
sandGorgon
I dont know why you are being downvoted, but it is a valid questions.
Broadwell was delayed for half a year and is still not widely available.
Macbooks (which are a pretty important predictor of demand) are not going to
have Broadwells till 2015 [1], so the question is if Intel is going to have
Broadwell at all or skip directly to SkyLake.
Plus, Broadwell was delayed because of manufacturing yield issues... so unless
that is cleared up, SkyLake will be similarly affected.
[1] [http://www.macrumors.com/2014/07/09/broadwell-early-to-
mid-2...](http://www.macrumors.com/2014/07/09/broadwell-early-to-mid-2015/)
~~~
gsnedders
As I understand it, the issues are fundamental to the 14nm process — and one
might expect once they can manufacture 14nm Broadwell parts with reasonable
yields, they will be able to manufacture 14nm Skylake parts with reasonable
yields. Last I heard the plan was for Broadwell to be available for something
like six months only.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kevin Mitnick Can Steal an Identity in Three Minutes - heyadayo
http://www.forbes.com/sites/ehrlichfu/2014/08/15/renowned-security-expert-kevin-mitnick-can-steal-your-identity-in-3-minutes/
======
HarryHirsch
You can't steal someone's identity, but you can go and impersonate someone.
The reason why it's so easy to impersonate someone for the purpose of bank
fraud is left as an exercise to the reader.
~~~
jackweirdy
I always hated reading that phrase in my textbooks
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you follow people's submissions / comments on here? - merrick33
Increasingly finding myself wanting to "follow" certain people on here. I don't see it built into the system I am guessing you use RSS to do this?
======
hs
<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=merrick33>
------
qhoxie
I use <http://ycfeeds.com/> for this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
College Kids Are Living Like Kings in Vancouver’s Empty Mansions - petethomas
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2019-04-16/college-kids-are-living-like-kings-in-vancouver-s-empty-mansions
======
forkLding
I saw a similar article like this last month or so.
This is a more realistic article on the subject:
[https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/2019/03/11/renting-
luxury...](https://www.vancouverisawesome.com/2019/03/11/renting-luxury-
mansion-vancouver-bc/)
Note that I've tried figuring out where to rent these rooms and reaching out
but so far have remained fruitless.
~~~
avip
When I was renting in Van, 90% of landlords hanged-up immediately after asking
how many kids I have. The idea they would lease to a bunch of random doped
teens is utterly ridiculous.
[E: that was before EHT]
~~~
ravenstine
I dunno, it seems that these days the accepted way to make money is by nickel
and dimeing poor people. How are they supposed to make bank on a family w/
kids that won't constantly owe extra due to delinquent payments? Just a
theory, seeing as how the poor and the financially-irresponsible seem to be
the best customers of banks and creditors. Might as well be the same for
renters.
~~~
ralusek
Nickel and dimeing poor people and collecting delinquent payments is
definitely not something that most landlords want to pursue as a business
model. Morality aside, that is a very labor intensive business to be in, and
relies on economies of scale to balance out those without the ability to
follow through on payments.
------
thorwasdfasdf
On the one hand, it looks like the policy is working and having the desired
effect of reducing rent prices and sale prices. But, this is just a short term
effect that brings prices closer to their underlying cost.
But, one of the bigger problems we're facing is the underlying cost of
building homes. Humanity hasn't made much progress in this regard for the last
100 years: inflation adjust, homes per sq foot still sell for about the same
amount. if we're going to make progress on this, we really need to look at
those underlying costs and start addressing them. Jumping from one band-aid to
another isn't going change things significantly in the long term.
~~~
powera
First, 80% of the cost of housing in the Bay Area is location. Second, many
houses from 100 years ago didn't have features like electricity and indoor
plumbing. Third, we're not going to invent magical 3D printers that make
houses out of thin-air.
~~~
closeparen
Watch a planning meeting sometime. One of the typical community demands is to
use onsite union carpenters vs. brining in prefab components from assembly
lines elsewhere. Like so many things about Bay Area housing, we actually do
have the capabilities, we’re just throwing up legal roadblocks to their use.
------
Tiktaalik
Realtors and condo marketers were for years spreading misinformation and
downplaying the role that foreign capital was playing in rising land values,
in hopes of keeping the good times rolling.
No one can credibly discount those impacts now.
~~~
moltar
Well they do have stats and the stats say that foreign buyers account for
about 3%.
~~~
dgudkov
I suspect it's only those who are explicitly foreign. Many real estate deals
are made through Canada-registered corporations behind which there can be
anybody - Canada doesn't track real beneficiaries. The situation has become so
dire, that the federal government will spend C$200mln in the next 5 years to
fight money laundering in the country, and first of all - in real estate.
~~~
dblohm7
BC is going to start tracking this. It was just unveiled last week.
------
DINKDINK
ITT, people who think
\- economic free lunches exist
\- any capital after their capital came to an area is illegitimate
\- markets don't price in risk or volatility
\- policy doesn't affect the agent on the margin, decreases costs to his
marginal 'neighbors': before a 3% vacancy tax, low consumer surplus buyers
could barely afford a house, after the vacancy tax there are some low-
consumer-surplus buyers who can no longer afford housing, the two groups who
can absorb that depressed purchasing are high-consumer-surplus buyers (read
premium buyers) and buyers who had negative consumer surplus who are now low
surplus buyers. The majority of that supply gets absorbed by high-consumer-
surplus buyers. This is the result of pretty much every economic
interventionist policy in so called progressive cities. It's the reason why
those cities gentrify: only high-consumer-surplus buyers can survive the
policy changes.
Play a game: a casino offers you entry but only returns 97% of your original
capital. The only people who can profitably play games in the casino are the
most intense and wealthy speculators (in the non pejorative).
~~~
sonnyblarney
Your description of buyers fails to reflect the fact that the high-surplus
types are foreign, the rest are local.
There is an easy solution: tax foreign ownership at a significant rate.
This is even justifiable: why do foreign land-owners have the privilege to own
land in Canada? We have to maintain laws, secure it, pay for externalized
maintenance (the road out front to start), the water, provide the possibility
for electricity even if it's not used and all the civic infrastructure.
Non-resident land ownership should be taxed at 3% of the value of the land per
year, or banned outright.
There's almost no advantage in a nation selling of it's land as an export.
Another alternative would be only to allow residential 'surplus' to be sold.
One trick to implement this might be to allow foreigners to buy flats, but not
homes. Not a very perfect trick but it would 'kind of work': it's possible to
build a lot of empty buildings in the middle of nowhere as investments.
Allowing only a % of homes in an are to be foreign owned would be another
opportunity.
~~~
DINKDINK
>tax foreign ownership at a significant rate
If these "foreigners" should be taxed now, why shouldn't you be taxed also?
because at some point in the past you were a "foreigner" relative to where you
are now.
>We have to maintain laws, secure it, pay for externalized maintenance (the
road out front to start), the water, provide ....
You're describing....property taxes, which still exist. If anything, lower
population density reduces demand for those services, so their property taxes
should be lower.
Listen if you hate foreigners, think there's an Asian "plague", and get behind
the trope that 'foreigners are ruining my neighborhood, country, city' just
say it. But before you do, you might do well to read some history such as the
Chinese Exclusion Act [1] and it's racist legacy despite being legitimized at
the time by "protecting American labor"
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Exclusion_Act)
------
ricardobeat
This is the 5th or 6th time this story pops up here, and it always features
"The Castle".
To me that doesn't even look like a mansion, more like a pastiche, the
exterior / materials look very cheap.
------
ible
As far as I can tell most mansions are being rented out to high income locals,
not to groups of college kids.
I toured a few of these in the last couple months and the nice ones had a
parade of high income couples going through who would be perfectly happy to
rent a $6,000,000 house for $5000 per month.
All the ones I saw explicitly disallowed subletting/group tenancies in the
rental agreements.
~~~
charlesdm
If you can rent a $6m mansion for $5,000 per month, you're getting a steal. In
that case (and especially since this tax policy is pushing prices down
further) it makes zero sense to buy.
~~~
ible
I'm still not sure I made the right decision turning them down. On the one
hand spending $5000 per month on rent feels crazy in Vancouver. On the other
hand it is an incredible deal.
In the end what kept me from renting it is the likelihood of needing to move
in a year or so. I prefer a bit more stability for my kids.
------
everyone
$1000 is still a helluva-lot for a room imo.. Also sharing with 13 other
people, sounds like a nightmare.
~~~
barkingcat
In Vancouver $1000 gets you a studio basement den. A duplex 1 bedroom is like
$1800
From the article:
"nine-bedroom home, dubbed “The Castle” by the 14 students who share the
property, is apparently owned by an Afghani pop artist, according to Boodhoo."
A 9 bedroom house - just imagine the size of that. Not a nightmare, but
something like Tony Stark lifestyle.
Edit
Oh I misread - a room is $1000. In that case it's not that much of a great
deal. At first I thought it was $1000 for the whole building which would put
it in "super cheap pricing" territory
~~~
msie
At least with your own apartment you don't share the kitchen or bathroom.
~~~
barkingcat
for a 9 room, there's probably at least 2 kitchens and 4-6 bathrooms.
From the way the picture looks, it's a whole house.
In Toronto, we have these rooming houses that are teeny tiny 24 people
rooming, about 50-100 square foot each, in a space that has 1 shared kitchen
and half a bathroom (a washroom with toilet + a separate unconnected closet
that serves as a shower, so you can't go potty and take a shower in one space)
and they charge $800-1000 per person.
~~~
msie
Despite that you know there will always be some conflict.
------
droithomme
> apparently owned by an Afghani pop artist
Afghani pop artists who own mansions in Vancouver is a really small category.
~~~
pesfandiar
Interesting tangent: the correct demonyms are either Afghan or Afghanistani.
Afghani is their currency.
------
kyleblarson
God those houses are hideous.
~~~
anitil
They remind me of the 'McMansion Hell' page -
[http://mcmansionhell.com/](http://mcmansionhell.com/)
------
wpdev_63
Now they just need to implement this tax in every city.
------
s09dfhks
>Sun doesn’t think Vancouver’s market is going to come back to its highs,
especially at the top end. “Why would they come here and pay all that tax and
feel like a criminal?”
Please let this happen in the SF Bay area
------
msie
Oh Bloomberg you make it sound like everyone is doing it. Not.
------
PunksATawnyFill
Those taxes are obscene.
------
yarrel
I doubt it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Losing Music - bdr
http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/losing-music/
======
varunsrin
"But what I’ve lost isn’t just a set of structured sounds, but the world those
sounds create, a world you can live inside: Bach on a snowy afternoon, hard
blues on a long night’s drive, the background mood in a restaurant or at a
party (or, increasingly, any public space not yet colonized by ESPN on
flatscreen TVs). Music is color. When you’re young you’re the hero of a movie,
and the Heifetz you play in your car or the Velvet Underground you first try
out sex to isn’t just background, it’s location and weather. You feel it on
your skin."
This was one of the most heart-wrenching things I've read, and makes me really
thankful for what I have, and if I'm honest, fearful for what I will
eventually lose.
Music is woven into the happiest and saddest moments of my life, and my most
important memories have sounds attached to them - from dancing barefoot on a
remote beach in Goa with people I've since come to think of as family,
watching the sun rise to the growls of a Roland TB-303, to coping with the
loss of someone dear by listening to Radiohead's 'Everything in its Right
Place' on repeat for hours on end, curled up on my bedroom floor.
I keep a diary - not of places I've visited or things I've eaten, but of
moments like these where I've had a powerful connection with people and music.
It's an incredibly emotional experience to go back and read through it all -
I'm glad I have it, because otherwise I'd start losing bits and pieces of
these memories, and with it, my past.
I'm incredibly fortunate in that I've been given the opportunity to work on
solving this problem, a problem that I'll undoubtedly face as my tinnitus gets
worse and a problem that my co-founder has faced for almost two decades. The
next time we're having a shitty day at work, we'll only have to read this to
keep on going.
~~~
_mulder_
Music is like your own personal life-diary that you don't even have to write.
Music is such an important trigger for memories (along with smell which is
even more powerful but less controllable) but the majority of people seem to
take it for granted and make no effort to preserve these memories. It's
staggering how hearing a song you haven't heard for 20+ years can immediately
put you right back to being a kid, or some other nostalgic memory, even if
only fleetingly.
Perhaps I'm overly sensitive to having my music memories overwritten; I've
been known to leave clubs or bars or turn off the radio if a particularly
personal song is playing because I don't want my original memory to be
overwritten. My friends don't understand, to them music is just music and
something to dance or shout along to. A handful of songs provoke extremely
potent memories in my mind of when I was a kid. Hearing these songs is the
only channel I have to experiencing that time of my life. The problem, and
half of the beauty of it, is that I don't actually know what the songs are
until I hear them. I keep intending to compile a list of which songs trigger
these memories.
Infact I, along with most people I imagine, have a whole library of songs that
read as mile-posts dotting throughout their life. Perhaps a particular song
triggers a memory of a summer holiday, or high school party, or road-trips as
a kid, or even just what you listened to whilst coding your first successful
project.
The single worst thing that can happen to music is for it to be used for
advertising. What may be a catch song to a marketer could be someone's last
memory of a dead parent or friend. I commend artists, especially Radiohead,
who vehemently forbid their music to be used for anything after it's been
released. Thom Yorke (I think) did a great interview on the subject but I
can't find it, annoyingly.
~~~
Kronopath
_I 've heard that song too many times,_
_I 'll admit it._
_It 's not that I'm sick of it,_
_I just fear for its life._
_The tunes get a little bit stronger_
_Every time they are sung,_
_Or a little more threadbare._
_Slowly undone._
— The Fugitives, _Slowly Undone_
[https://soundcloud.com/light-organ/the-fugitives-slowly-
undo...](https://soundcloud.com/light-organ/the-fugitives-slowly-undone)
------
grownseed
This is a very touching article and it reminds me all too well that I most
likely don't have that long before I go full-on deaf again.
Now, ironically enough, being deaf played a huge role in my appreciation for
music. My condition led me to being completely deaf by the age of five, and a
few years and a bunch of surgeries later, I had recovered a good part of my
hearing (which I'll always be thankful for).
Coming from a family where music had little to no presence, it really
surprised my parents that I would develop a strong sense for music. I picked
up piano as a kid and numerous other instruments in more recent years.
I couldn't live without music, and I'm not saying this lightly, but being deaf
is not the end of it.
I would dare say that there's a dimension to music, or more generally speaking
sound, that cannot be heard but can very much be felt. I've spent a great deal
of time (and still do) feeling music/sound through my skin and my body, and
maybe because losing a sense sharpens others, or maybe simply thanks to focus,
I discovered and appreciated a completely different quality to sound.
It might be easier to say because I've already gone through it, but I'm not
particularly worried about losing my ears again. Sure it can be limiting at
times, but being deaf comes with an interesting world of its own, one which I
find myself longing for on occasions, as curious as it might sound.
------
yourad_io
Very powerful text. Makes me contemplate everything I have, everything I am
sure to lose :')
~~~
rosser
I came here to say something very much along those lines: treasure the moments
and the things you have while you have them, but don't cling, because you will
lose them. All of them. Everything.
------
wazoox
"We’d be driving along and yukking it up and I’d pop in Congolese rhumba icon
Papa Wembe’s “Awa Y’okeyi” and everyone would be patient for a couple of
beats. Then somebody would break in with “Alright, what the hell is this?” and
derision would ensue. The CD would come out and some indie thing slid into its
place."
Hum, so his friends are extremely limited in their ability to understand
anything not desperately mainstream. That's more or less the definition of
limited cultural openness and poor taste for me.
~~~
jrkatz
In dismissing his friends' taste he is guilty of the same. It's never fun to
be the only person in a group who likes some music, but it happens and it
doesn't make the minority any better or more open than the majority. It's just
different preferences.
~~~
Dylan16807
He doesn't really dismiss their tastes as much as provide an idea of why they
were rejecting the disc he put in.
It's not like he put in something musically strange; it's a piano and a guy
singing. A reaction of "what the hell is this, make it stop" is not very
reasonable.
------
iceron
This is wonderfully written. It reminds me of a condition called visual snow
[1] where sufferers develop continuous TV-static-like tiny flickering dots in
their entire visual field. Makes you appreciate the things you have.
[1]
[http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/head.12378/full](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/head.12378/full)
------
gtani
This was a touching post. I've thought a lot about this in the context of my
own musical practice and through an acquaintance who's been going through
rounds of neurologists, MRIs and what not to get at those symptoms.
Part of musical practice is playing digital piano with the sound off, or
playing a solidbody guitar unplugged and with earplugs in so i can't hear
anything. The point being you have to extrapolate what sounds would be
produced and later resolve what you expected and what you actually perceive.
Also, this reminds me of musicians like David N. Baker (jazz trombone), Evelyn
Glennie (percussion) and Leon Fleisher (classical piano), who had different
challenges but learned new instruments or kept playing when they were
essentially unable to play their primary instruments. There's others: Django
Reinhardt is famous, of course, but Michel Petrucciani not so much
------
cratermoon
I wonder why his doctors haven't recommended surgery. "surgical procedures are
performed on the endolymphatic sac to decompress it."
[http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/balance/pages/meniere.aspx#5](http://www.nidcd.nih.gov/health/balance/pages/meniere.aspx#5)
~~~
Elisa
Surgery can be used (as mentioned above) as a last resort to relieve
persistent vertigo and dizziness, but it's very risky in terms of preserving
remaining hearing, can cause total deafness.
~~~
cratermoon
Yes indeed. I happen to only know about the surgery because the first American
to go to space in the Mercury program, Alan Shepard, was diagnosed with
Ménière's in 1964, after his historic first flight, and was grounded. He opted
for what was then _very_ experimental surgery. For him it was successful and
he went on to command Apollo 14, the 3rd moon landing.
------
johnsteve
Music is a very important part of human life. But in recent times, you rarely
get to listen to good music, which is sad!
~~~
robotresearcher
The good music didn't go away. We just keep adding to it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Covid Underdogs: Mongolia - viburnum
https://medium.com/@indica/covid-underdogs-mongolia-3b0c162427c2
======
throwaway888abc
"On January 22nd, the Mongolian Health Ministry held a press briefing with the
WHO to announce that shit was real."
On January 22nd (!!!)
Mind blowing, they listened and took action based on science.
------
longnguyen
Another good example would be Vietnam. We took this virus very seriously and
the government announced a mandatory lock down pretty early.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Vietnam](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Vietnam)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GE Fridge DRM Workaround - crmrc114
https://gefiltergate.com/
======
beloch
We're used to the idea of this happening when companies sell printers, game
consoles, etc. at the slimmest of margins and rely on the sale of associated
consumables (e.g. ink) to make a profit.
We're starting to see this kind of practice on an increasing number of big-
ticket items where the consumables (filters in this case) represent a tiny
fraction of the overall cost. GE isn't making the majority of their money off
of selling you replacement filters, yet they've gone and done this to make a
few extra bucks. I have a Samsung TV that tries to show me postage stamp sized
ads when I'm in it's interface. I spent thousands on the thing and Samsung
will be lucky to get pennies from those ads. I add filters to block the
domains those ads are coming from to my router periodically, but Samsung keeps
coming up with new ones.
The next TV I buy will not be a Samsung, and I suspect the author of this
article has bought his last GE appliance. Why are companies driving away
people who make multi-thousand dollar purchases with scummy behaviour that
nets them spare change? Do the vast majority of people just not care? That's
the only way the math makes sense.
~~~
tiernano
easy way to solve the problem: disconnect the TV From the internet... do you
really need a smart TV? i got my samsung a few months back, and when setting
it up, never connected it to the wifi or ethernet. I have an AppleTV, XBox One
and NVidia Shield all plugged in and they are the smarts... The TV is JUST A
SCREEN. It shouldnt be any more. It also means that 3 years down the road,
Netflix changes something and your "Smart TV" looses access, your not "forced"
to buy a new one... Apple change something and the AppleTV needs replacing?
its $150 quid. Your TV is $1000+...
~~~
fsflover
Except that I _paid_ not just for the screen, but also for the additional
advertised "smart" features.
~~~
beervirus
Smart TVs are cheaper, not more expensive. You didn’t pay for those
features—you saved money by having them foisted on you.
~~~
fsflover
Even if true, maybe I liked those features (not advertising) and wanted to
have them?
~~~
beervirus
Then the advertising and the spying/telemetry are part of the bargain that you
struck.
~~~
fsflover
According to the GDPR, they cannot be.
------
bronco21016
This is one of those ‘features’ you’ll never discover on the showroom floor,
only after 6 months when it decides to rear its ugly head and the return
policy is long expired. It’s among the most disgusting money grabs I’ve ever
seen in a product.
I ran into this when I bought a set of GE appliances and was furious. I was
happy to find the bypass method after some googling but I’m still holding out
hope that someone hacks the board and just disables the check all together.
When my friend bought his house he was lucky enough to have a refrigerator
with the same ‘feature’. Luckily I was able to warn him right away so he could
gather supplies for the bypass.
Never again will I ever consider GE Appliances and I’m always sure to warn
people.
------
rrmm
Wow this is timely for me. Just ran into this issue a few weeks ago when my
mother's refrigerator needed a filter. I bought the bypass kit and figured I'd
switch the RFID chips in eventually, but I haven't had a chance to due to
everything going on at the moment.
Stuff like this is trash. So often you only find out you have this technology
after it's too late and own an appliance with it.
I am not a fan of more regulations, but if large companies are going to insist
on acting like unprincipled jerk-ass immature children about things, more
regulation is exactly what they're going to get. And I'll gladly vote for
them. If companies show again and again they can not act responsibly without
regulation, I don't have time to listen to them whine about it any longer.
~~~
wu_187
The worst part is often people don't buy their refrigerator, it comes with
their house/apartment as a package deal. So you would literally have no clue
that this is a thing until it happens. And in the case of an apartment, you
literally have no choice in the matter (cant use your own refrigerator) if the
apartment maintenance wont replace the filter.
~~~
greggman3
Where is this? I've been in > 25 apartments. Only once did it come with a
fridge. It was easily 20yrs old, still worked, but 100% sure the landlord
would have let me replace it with my own
~~~
qppo
The only place I've lived where refrigerators weren't the norm in a unit was
Los Angeles.
~~~
vertis
Very rare in Australia for the fridge to be in a rental property unless it's
furnished.
------
fsflover
As the author suggests, please support anti-DRM [0] and right-to-repair [1]
movements!
[0] [https://www.defectivebydesign.org/](https://www.defectivebydesign.org/)
[1] [https://www.ifixit.com/Right-to-
Repair/Intro](https://www.ifixit.com/Right-to-Repair/Intro)
------
kwhitefoot
Just refuse to buy anything from GE and make sure you tell everyone why. Sony
lost me as a customer when they tried to install a rootkit on my computer. Now
that I know about this sort of thing happening at GE I can cross them off my
list of potential suppliers too (not a big deal of course because GE don't
sell much, perhaps nothing at all, here in Norway).
~~~
kls
I will throw my hat in with you, I have never, ever, ever bought a Sony
product after that incident. Had you or I done the same thing (hacking and
exploiting that many computers) we would probably just be seeing the light of
day now from our stint in prison. They got what amounted to a slap on the
wrist and no one was criminally prosecuted. Therefore I will never purchase
another of their products so long as I live.
As far as the main point of the thread, honestly, the older I get, the more of
a Luddite I become when it comes to home electronics and appliances. I
purchased and restored an older model Viking range due to it being mostly
straight electronics, mechanics and pneumatic. I was able to rebuild the whole
thing in 2 days. Anymore the appliance repair guys don't want to deal with
repairs, unless the appliance is throwing a code and all they have to do is
replace a logic board. Usually they just come out and tell you to buy a new
one from them. So I have gotten to the point where, I just want simple stuff
that I can repair myself. I have a commercial refrigerator and a commercial
stand up freezer for this reason, they are built with repair in mind and
generally use stock interchangeable parts that are simple and durable. If a
person really wants to opt out of this appliance DRM game, buy used commercial
equipment or boutique semi-pro home appliances. They really are better quality
and most are built to be repaired and last a lifetime.
~~~
grogenaut
So sony lost 2 customers. And won the recent console generation.
If you play games are you now boycotting pubg (battleye), riot (valorant
denuvo), Bethesda (doom denuvo), blizzard (warden), or many many other rootkit
anticheats/antipiracy?
~~~
snuxoll
These anticheat systems are not root kits, they do not attempt to conceal
their presence from you nor attempt to prevent their removal.
Are they potential security and stability headaches? Yes, as with anything you
load into your OS kernel. But rootkits they are not.
Valorant’s Vanguard sucks because the thing insists on running 24/7 and
requires a reboot to disable or re-enable. During operation it causes a whole
host of issues from blocking programs to causing BSODs - but it sits there in
plain sight.
Denuvo anti-cheat’s major issue is for whatever godforsaken reason they
decided to bypass ntdll to make some syscalls breaking WINE. Presumably they
did this because ntdll can be hooked like anything else, but this speaks of
poor design more than anything as the kernel-mode driver should be more than
capable of detecting this.
Battleye is...fine. As is Easy Anti-Cheat.
Blizzard’s warden has been a privacy mess over the years with it scanning
window titles and reporting them back. But AFAIK it does all of its work
usermode.
I’m not a huge fan of the level of access modern anticheat packages have on my
system - but with the widely open platform that is PC gaming it’s no surprise
that gamers and developers alike want cheaters to be dealt with. Valorant can
kiss my ass right now though, at least everything else has the decency to only
run when I’m playing a game.
------
gandalfian
I wonder if it is actually made by GE or just rebranded? It's a shame they
could have been the USA Miele but they didn't think it was worth it I guess.
Do you think they ever go to bid for a nucleur power station and the guy goes
"nah, not after that fridge you sold me"?
~~~
nickt
GE Appliances is no longer part of General Electric Company. It’s 90% owned by
the Chinese company Haier and 10% owned by the US-based PE company KKR.
According to Wikipedia [1], they have the right to use the GE branding until
2056.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Appliances](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GE_Appliances)
[Edit: typo]
~~~
nybble41
You think that should make a difference? You sell someone the right to use
your name on their products, _you_ suffer the reputation damage when they
misuse it. If they wanted to preserve the value of their brand then they
should have insisted that the buyer use their own name on all future products.
~~~
nickt
Yes, I agree. My response was more of a response to "they could have been the
USA Miele", which I assume was based on the thought that GE Appliances is an
American company.
------
otterpop
Absolutely losing my shit at "General Electric's Integrated Führer Board(IFB)"
------
Reelin
I make it a point to always expand DRM as digital restrictions management. The
world hardly needs more doublespeak.
> This website is best viewed with proper web browsers such as Lynx or Elinks.
I love it!
~~~
dingaling
One of the few achievements of which I am proud from my time with ${BIGCORP}
was getting 'digital restrictions management' into a C-level deck.
------
TwoBit
Does Consumer Reports not shame them and reject their refrigerators for this?
------
thr0w__4w4y
Serious question: does anyone here know specifically what data is transmitted
such that the filter authenticates correctly to the refrigerator? Guessing it
can't some kind of challenge-response (no processing element on filter)?
I know a little bit about RFID and know a decent amount about DRM in general,
but I'm specifically wondering what type of cryptography (presumably?) is used
here.
I've got to imagine the RFID tag provides some kind of signed data (e.g.
serial number) that can be verified by the fridge's "Führer board" (poster's
term, not mine).
BTW this kind of stuff is everywhere, not just water filters and Keurig
coffee. IMO sometimes perhaps it's justified for safety reasons (consumable
parts of medical devices, laptop batteries[fires], etc.). Not so much maybe
for inkjet/laser printer cartridges, coffee refills, etc.
Side note: I consulted with a printer company maybe 5-6 years ago, and they
pretty much convinced me (brainwashed me?) that their big concern wasn't
revenue stream, but customer experience / damage to the printer. The one and
only time I've owned an inkjet, I bought a cheap ink refill and it printed
like shit and eventually ruptured and damaged the printer, so perhaps I was
pre-disposed to believing the printer company.
------
baybal2
Product as a Service at its finest
You buy a thing, but still don't own it after the purchase.
Think of having to pay rent to live in your own house.
~~~
bb123
> Think of having to pay rent to live in your own house.
So land taxes?
~~~
lordofgibbons
I hope you enjoy roads leading up to your house, and schooling for your
children because that's what your land tax is paying for.
This is more like "protection" racket
~~~
bb123
I'm in the UK, which doesn't have land taxes. Stamp duty is one time payment.
~~~
daveoc64
So you pay Council Tax then, which is pretty much the equivalent.
------
jotm
Haha, the Swap-a-roo method used to work with some old HP inkjets. You needed
3 old cartridges iirc, install one, power on, install the second, install the
third.
That's it, the next one you install would be considered "new" and would work.
Apparently the printers kept track of the cartridge IDs but had a short
memory.
Refill all of them and use until they start leaking (so, years of constant
refills). Simpler times.
------
wil421
Love the low tech method of taping the RFID to the sensor.
My whirlpool fridge just makes an annoying high pitched beep when the filter’s
been there for ~3 months. I get used it the noise but my wife hates it. It’s
been beeping for 3 months now.
~~~
xtracto
Cant you like disconnect the buzzer?
------
cosmodisk
This kind of stuff is really FU to customer's face. Phones with apps you can't
delete even if you just paid $1K for it. laptops with soldiered RAM so you
won't buy more. TVs with some useless preinstalled junk nobody needs.
I could understand when they do it on so called loss leaders,where money comes
from support or refills ( e.g printer), but when you pay a premium for what
you think would be a high quality product and you get some weird crap,it just
makes you hate brands.
------
dotCOMmie
How long before the fridge will "protect" us from "choice of milk".
I'm sorry Dave, I cannot refrigerate unauthorized milk for you.
~~~
jpindar
See Cory Doctorow's story "Unauthorized Bread".
------
rkagerer
_Only our water filters are made to xyz magical standards with pure unicorn
piss and rainbows._
------
ed25519FUUU
Cheeky post. We decided to bypass our fridge filter entirely, and instead run
water from our under-sink 3M filtrate filter directly to the filters output.
We just change that every six months or so and it’s used for tap water.
------
yellowbuilding
>From the patents it looks like I can thank inventors Mr. Krause and Mr.
Chernov for their freedom sucking, major appliance disabling, communist,
1984-esque idea.
GE is, historically, among the most anti-communist of all American companies.
Its role in breaking and/or corrupting major unions and collective bargaining
rights in the post-war era had few equivalents. GE, as well as the US patent
system, exists in absolute service of the capitalist system.
~~~
netsharc
The author throwing all sorts of names (Hitler was mentioned too) made me
think he's quite childish and immature..
------
TwoBit
I thought you could avoid having a filter by using the bypass plug you get
with the fridge. "If you do not want to use a water filter in the
refrigerator, the filter can be replaced by the filter bypass plug that came
with the refrigerator."
~~~
seszett
It's the solution mentioned in the article, lifting the RFID from the bypass
cartridge to install it directly on the receiver circuit board. It allows you
to keep using an "expired" filter rather than no filter at all.
~~~
Reelin
But why would I filter potable tap water?
If it really tastes that bad in a particular region, central filters that you
install where the pipe enters the house are cheap. Just make sure to get one
that you can use generic filter media with (ie it's basically just a tube of
some standard size).
~~~
cesarb
We're taught since childhood that one should only drink filtered or boiled
water. It's not a matter of taste, it's a matter of pathogenic microorganisms.
I would feel very uncomfortable drinking water directly from the plumbing
without it going through a filter.
~~~
seszett
Most people in western countries drink straight tap water without filtering
and certainly not boiling it.
Those things are absolutely not needed in countries with a modern water
distribution network, they just bring added comfort.
~~~
cesarb
I live in a large city in a major western country (Brazil), and I don't know
anybody who drinks straight tap water without filtering. Every house or
workplace has one or more water filters, normally connected to the plumbing
(that is, there's a separate filtered tap for you to drink from), though there
are also standalone filters (which are filled manually). Water for cooking is
usually boiled (as a normal part of the cooking). We certainly learn in school
that, to prevent diseases, water must be filtered or boiled (or bottled
mineral water).
~~~
jameshilliard
Brazil doesn't have effectively universally safe to drink tap water like the
US and most western countries have.
------
jhallenworld
This must be the new way to make fridges go obsolete. The old way is to have
some part burried in your fridge which is guaranteed to wear out.
I'm in the middle of fixing my old GE fridge. Buried in it is a condensation
trough made out of galvanized steel sheet metal. Eventually it rusts away and
fridge will make a puddle. Replacement part is $60. Of all the things that
could be made of plastic, this should be it..
------
protomyth
At this point lobbying for a set of laws like the car part and repair laws for
appliances and electronics probably would be the best. Its a older generation
in Congress so they understand those laws. You can also make some damn
embarrassing commercials if you frame it that they want to make Jiffy Lube
illegal then relate that to your appliances.
------
xrd
This is so funny, the author has a great voice.
It would be even funnier if there was a note at the top that said: "Note: this
article was published posthumously by his wife. He died of contaminated water.
The fridge tried to warn him."
------
mwexler
No dates on the post. Anyone know date range this applies to? Is it still
happening today?
And does this happen to other fridges (I see Samsungs in a few stores, for
example, are they similarly crippled)?
~~~
bronco21016
My GE refrigerator is 2 years old. I’m fairly certain this is still happening
as I see it mentioned on various forums related to DIY, home repair, etc
pretty frequently.
------
pojntfx
Imagine posting this article and claiming this is communism.
Another gem from this site:
This website is best viewed with proper web browsers such as Lynx or Elinks.
C'mon. Don't make us Anti-DRM people look like utter lunatics.
------
milindss
The chip on the Filter-bypass simply pops out. You can mark where the filter
chip aligns on the refrigerator wall and stick it there with a tape, no need
to get to the circuit board.
------
forgingahead
"Fridge DRM" was never something I thought I would see
------
driverdan
Is there a site with a list of hardware that uses DRM like this?
------
carlyfan
> From the patents it looks like I can thank inventors Mr. Krause and Mr.
> Chernov for their freedom sucking, major appliance disabling, communist,
> 1984-esque idea.
I know it’s just a figure of speech. But having DRM on a fucking fridge filter
is the most capitalistic idea that I have ever seen. Communists don’t do this.
~~~
dfox
From my childhood memories, appliances requiring payment to work is literally
the first example of why capitalism is bad in somewhat propagandist children's
book Dunno on the Moon.
~~~
specialist
Great tip, thanks.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunno_on_the_Moon#Lunar_capita...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunno_on_the_Moon#Lunar_capitalism)
I read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as a teenager. Part of the techno-anarchy-
libertarian (or whatever we call it) corpus for us nerds.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Moon_Is_a_Harsh_Mistress)
Now I want to read both, compare and contrast, against each other, and against
the real world.
------
davexunit
This is good info, I have a GE fridge with DRM filters, but the author's anti-
communist interjections are really strange.
~~~
kortex
Right? DRM water filters is about one of the most neoliberal ideas out there.
------
ertemplin
It looks like GE sells a bypass kit for $20 now:
[https://www.amazon.com/GENERAL-ELECTRIC-Plug-Bypass-
WR17X236...](https://www.amazon.com/GENERAL-ELECTRIC-Plug-Bypass-
WR17X23645/dp/B072DX2MQ2)
~~~
rtkwe
That bypass kit is a critical part of the work around the whole page is about.
------
watertom
John Deere
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fatal Tesla crash in China may have involved Autopilot - the-dude
http://www.autoblog.com/2016/09/14/fatal-tesla-crash-china-autopilot-lawsuit/
======
6nf
This is the kind of accident that should not happen in a car with all those
sensors. Even without engaging autopilot the car should slow down and stop
instead of ramming full speed into a stationery object on the road.
------
josh-wrale
I just skimmed the video, but seems like there should have been a lot of
photos/videos in such a segment showing the aftermath. Hmm..Maybe I just
missed them in my quick skimming. Edit: okay.. See around 3 minutes.
~~~
Gustomaximus
@ 4m it shows the actual crash footage.
------
the-dude
Video includes dash-cam recording of the actual crash.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Open-source forums for 2015 - 10dpd
I'm looking for an open source forum to integrate with my community site that is built using Wordpress.<p>The forum must work well on mobile and either be usable/visually appealing out of the box or be customisable. Ideally it would be a wp plugin but willing to look at other options.<p>Any suggestions for 2015?
======
pki
Discourse
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What new wearable sensors can reveal from perspiration - Lind5
http://news.berkeley.edu/2016/01/27/wearable-sweat-sensors/
======
jcr
The mentioned Nature paper: "Fully-integrated wearable sensor arrays for
multiplexed in-situ perspiration analysis", Nature, 529, 509-514, 2016.
[http://nano.eecs.berkeley.edu/publications/Nature_2016_Sweat...](http://nano.eecs.berkeley.edu/publications/Nature_2016_Sweat.pdf)
And there is more related research from Berkeley Javey Research Group on their
publications page:
[http://nano.eecs.berkeley.edu/publications/](http://nano.eecs.berkeley.edu/publications/)
------
dmritard96
seems like the most interesting thing here is the sensor itself as the rest of
the setup is more or less standard components. I would love to know how the
sensors work across different chemicals without losing accuracy over time.
~~~
Naritai
That's more or less true for sensor projects. The transducer is the area of
research, with an Arduino or other simple backend to allow them to focus on
the transducer. This is not necessarily the way a commercial product would be
done, but it's great for researchers who want to focus on their area of
academic focus.
------
joelthelion
So what kind of pathologies can it detect?
------
sixhobbits
Are we using words like "thru" in titles now?
~~~
dang
Thru's a good old word. But this submission had no need to change the original
title, since it isn't misleading or linkbait.
(Submitted title was 'Wearable Sensors That Detect Health Thru Sweat'.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
'Google's Chrome Has My Dead Grandpa's Data and He Never Used the Internet' - rahuldottech
https://slashdot.org/story/360610
======
kinkrtyavimoodh
chrome://settings/addresses page is literally where addresses that Chrome
saves for Autofill are saved and can be deleted if necessary. He or someone on
his account account probably entered it some time (people routinely forget
that they entered some data in their browser despite swearing to god they did
not). Maybe for sending a gift, or helping them out with some internet work
(likely if he claims they have never used the internet themselves).
Likewise the "Never Saved" list on
chrome://settings/passwords?search=credentials is for sites where you click
"Never Save" when Chrome offers to save your password. How else do you expect
the browser to know not to prompt you? The reason the list is published is so
that you can choose to undo a website that got inserted into this list by
mistake.
Jesus, why must everything be so tinfoil-hatty.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Devuan jessie beta released - nextime
https://beta.devuan.org/
======
jhkaghjkga
I'm looking forward to Devuan going stable in 2020.
But seriously, Devuan had some success with its core mission (drawing away the
trolls and conspiracy theorists from Debian). They are now well integrated and
discover most fascinating things (like that the vfat filesystem can be mounted
in a way that non-root can write there! Wow! How did you discover this without
reading the documentation?)
[https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20160426.180427.4d4815...](https://lists.dyne.org/lurker/message/20160426.180427.4d4815e1.en.html)
------
mindcrash
In case anyone (with a healthy dislike for things like systemd) is wondering:
it seems it is possible (and pretty easy) to switch from Debian to Devuan as
documented here: [https://talk.devuan.org/t/migrating-from-debian-to-a-
minimal...](https://talk.devuan.org/t/migrating-from-debian-to-a-minimalist-
devuan/181)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook suppressed right wing stories - chris_wot
http://finance.ninemsn.com.au/careers/careersnews/9117323/facebook-suppressed-right-wing-news-stories
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659565](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11659565)
~~~
chris_wot
Thank you :-) sorry about that, I posted because my friend John Dickson was
mentioned, and then realised I hadn't read carefully enough and the better
link is the Gizmodo article, which wasn't linked to...
------
ManlyBread
How come that the bigger the service becomes the more prone it is to
manipulations like that? It's always the same story: the service is relatively
new, it becomes big, then it starts introducing algorithms that mess with the
natural order of the submissions (time added, votes etc.) and then it comes to
light that someone was manipulating this system in order to push their agenda.
The same applies to reddit and (I think?) twitter.
~~~
nailer
> (I think?) twitter
Twitter definitely: they removed Milo Yiannopolis' identity verification tick
without citing a specific reason. You might not like what he has to say (I
frequently don't) but there have been much worse things Twitter doesn't seem
to care about at all (someone threatening to murder Donald Trump). I don't
want Twitter or any other media to become an echo chamber.
------
dantillberg
Regardless of whether _this_ story is true or not, how do we know whether
and/or to what extent new media backhandedly affects political outcomes?
Facebook (if/when it wants to) could wield tremendous power in swaying
politics throughout the world by adjusting which stories/posts people see and
which they tend not to. How are people to know that they're not being
intentionally manipulated?
(and if that seems like Conspiracy Theory talk, perhaps first consider that
Old Media -- TV, newspapers, radio, etc -- throughout the world very often do
exactly this.)
~~~
meira
Brazil is the biggest facebook lab. It's happening right now.
~~~
meira
And it's ugly.
------
f_allwein
Good example of what happens as the (formerly open) Internet becomes closed. I
guess many people already equate "Facebook" to "the Internet", unaware of the
processes running there. What if a future president bans left wing stories/
stories about Islam etc?
Sadly, it looks like we will continue to move away from the open Internet.
"In the near future - _corporate_ networks reach out to the stars." (Ghost in
the Shell)
------
yAnonymous
Very much related:
I noticed that an increasing amount of people apparently automatically "like"
left- and rightwing Facebook pages, depending on other pages they follow and
news they like.
This could possibly have legal consequences for the users and I'm looking for
a way to legally pursue Facebook's auto-liking bullshit. They knowingly
misrepresent people to increase their profits.
------
MatekCopatek
_" It was absolutely bias, we were doing it subjectively,"_
I think it would be equally interesting to discuss the biases of algorithmic
solutions. It's a bit naive to think people selecting news is subjective while
a computer selecting news (based on an algorithm written by people that relies
on data created by measuring people) is somehow objective.
------
tomp
Facebook has already denied this.
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/10/facebook-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/10/facebook-
denies-censoring-conservative-trending-news)
Although I don't see any signal in this, it seems like the obvious course of
action both if they are and if they aren't supressing conservative articles.
~~~
awqrre
Facebook was also denying that it was trying to influence election results, a
few weeks ago: [http://thehill.com/policy/technology/276503-facebook-
employe...](http://thehill.com/policy/technology/276503-facebook-employee-
said-to-pose-question-about-stopping-trump-to-ceo) ...
------
gormann2
I would bet my left ball that the republicans employ astroturfing businesses
to spam the social networks with their stories and form a narrative.
They get people to control multiple personas on the same computer and post the
same story from the point of view of those personas.
If a person encounters the same story a couple of times, they tend to believe
it.
------
1337biz
Very loaded wording. Since when became "conservative" a synonym for "right
wing".
~~~
cabalamat
Probably since 1834, when the Conservative Party was founded.
------
meira
Here in Brazil their "algorithms" do the opposite: suppress left-wing news.
And that is, my friends, why you all are seeing the mess happening in my
country.
------
manicdee
… based on one statement by one person.
~~~
chris_wot
I probably should have linked to this story:
[http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-
supp...](http://gizmodo.com/former-facebook-workers-we-routinely-suppressed-
conser-1775461006)
But not just one person - Facebook had to apologise to John Dickson for
deleting his post. So I ask you - what were they doing fooling around with his
posts?
~~~
jasonlotito
Read the story you linked to. Still only one person.
"This individual says that workers prevented stories about the right-wing CPAC
gathering, Mitt Romney, Rand Paul..."
You're confusing the multiple people who claimed they were asked to inject
stories that weren't trending.
In fact, you have multiple sources who contradict the opinion of your source:
"Other former curators interviewed by Gizmodo denied consciously suppressing
conservative news, and we were unable to determine if left-wing news topics or
sources were similarly suppressed."
Finally, underlying contention, that Facebook was at fault, is even denied by
that same individual.
"there is no evidence that Facebook management mandated or was even aware of
any political bias at work."
And finally, this is Gizmodo, so unless you have something from a trustworthy
source, I would treat them as suspect at best.
~~~
chris_wot
Curious, then, that John Dicksons post was specifically removed. Why was
someone reviewing it at all? Sure, they accidentally deleted it - they
admitted as much when they officially apologised to John. But then again, why
was a staffer looking at Dicksons post at all?
------
meira
Here in Brazil their "algorithms" do the opposite: suppress left-wing news.
And that is, my friends, why you all are seeing the mess happening in my
country.
------
jlangenauer
What's this? Conservatives complaining that a business wants to pick and
choose who it does business with? I thought they were in favour of that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook Dating: This Site Rounds Up Single Friends of Friends - rafikech
http://mashable.com/2012/07/05/thedatable-facebook-dating/
======
spitfire
Isn't this was friendster and orkut were for? I remember one of those two, at
first, was all about dating your friends friends.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hawaii Bans Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in High-Tech Employment - lutesfuentes
https://casetext.com/posts/hawaii-bans-non-compete-and-non-solicit-clauses-in-high-tech-employment
======
jacobheller
A really good book to read on the subject is AnnaLee Saxenian's Regional
Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128
([http://www.amazon.com/Regional-Advantage-Culture-
Competition...](http://www.amazon.com/Regional-Advantage-Culture-Competition-
Silicon/dp/0674753402)). It discusses why Route 128 failed while Silicon
Valley flourished. A major part is that under California law, non-competes are
not enforceable in California. As people moved freely between competing
companies, their ideas, information, and best practices traveled with them.
The diffusion of good ideas gave the region as a whole a competitive edge.
~~~
mathattack
Yes - this is an instance where a law can help an ecosystem at the expense of
individual players. In aggregate though, it's net neutral for most companies,
since they benefit from being able to hire from competitors. The companies
doing interesting things probably benefit, while the ones doing boring things
get a little hurt.
The (largely untrained) economist in me says that mobility of labor is very
important for growth and economic efficiency, as systems work best when the
best people flock to the most important well funded ideas.
~~~
srean
Thanks. You touch upon one of my pet peeves. A huge amount of legislative
energy is spent to ensure that capital can move around unfettered. On the
contrary, movement of skill and intellectual property seems purposefully
hindered. Implicitly it says that capital is much more important than the
others, I simply disagree.
~~~
dredmorbius
It's less that capital is _more important_ and more that it's inherently _more
concentrated_ , and hence, _more capable of expressing its political will_.
A dynamic pointed out quite explicitly by Adam Smith in _Wealth of Nations_.
~~~
mathattack
There's an economics term for this, though I'm spacing on the name. It's the
same reason the taxi lobby is so strong - it's a subset of 1 issue voters with
concentrated financial support of key issues. It's also behind why tax
loopholes are so hard to close - a small subset cares a lot, but the masses
less so.
~~~
dredmorbius
There are several. Smith noted Hobbes's truism: wealth is power. You might be
thinking of the logic of collective action, Mancur Olsen.
~~~
mathattack
Yes - Mancur Olson it is. Thanks! It's more subtle than just Wealth is Power,
as it also explains some counterintuitive results.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action)
~~~
dredmorbius
Quite. A personal fave.
------
josefdlange
Excellent.
If you want your employees to stay, and to contribute their ideas to you
instead of running off to your competitors or starting their own companies,
it's so so so much better to just treat your employees better than the bind
them legally.
~~~
themartorana
I always found it weird when employers wanted to start a relationship entirely
adversarially. I also found it weird when businesses identified employees as a
significant and therefore negative cost center.
Employees are life blood. If they aren't, get rid of them and get new life
blood - but being so standoffish and adversarial is the antithesis of what an
employer/employee relationship should be.
~~~
sillygeese
> _I also found it weird when businesses identified employees as a significant
> and therefore negative cost center_
But they _are_ pretty much the biggest cost center for any employer? I'm not
saying employees should not be valued and treated well, but salaries add up to
a lot of money.
~~~
mcv
Yes, employees are expensive, but they're also the companies biggest assets.
It's worth treating them well. Without them, you're nothing.
If a company wants loyalty from their employees, they have to demonstrate
their own loyalty towards their employees first.
Edit: maybe calling employees assets is wrong, because you don't own or
control them. The _relationships_ with your employees (and those with your
customers) are your biggest assets. Ruin those relationships, and you squander
your biggest sources of expertise and revenue.
~~~
sillygeese
> _It 's worth treating them well._
Again, I agree.
> _Without them, you 're nothing._
Plenty of lifestyle business owners would beg to differ.
> _If a company wants loyalty from their employees, they have to demonstrate
> their own loyalty towards their employees first._
How? What's loyalty in this context anyway? Working your ass off for your
employer? Or perhaps not firing someone even though he's holding your business
back? I would recommend neither.
~~~
mcv
You seem to have a very limited view of employer-employee relationships. Work
is a big part of our life, but not all of it. We don't live to work, but work
to live. Just acknowledging that would go a long way. Give employees the room
they need to get their lives in order if they need it. Don't work them til
they drop, but give them a healthy amount of vacation time, and only ask them
to work overtime in extreme cases. Make sure they're happy. Invest in their
training. Don't screw them over. Don't treat them as expendable resources. And
when someone is holding your business back, maybe figure out why that is,
before you blindly fire him.
~~~
sillygeese
What exactly prompted you to give me that advice?
I'm planning to treat my employees very well, if I ever have some.
~~~
mcv
Did you miss that I responded to you? You asked, I answered the question. That
prompted me.
It's great that you intend to treat your employees well. I hope every company
does that.
~~~
sillygeese
Nope, I just didn't see how you reached the conclusion that I needed to be
told to treat my employees well.
I still don't :p
But nevermind.
~~~
mcv
You asked: "What's loyalty in this context anyway? Working your ass off for
your employer? Or perhaps not firing someone even though he's holding your
business back? I would recommend neither."
I consider those very short-sighted interpretations of loyalty, so I gave some
better examples. If you don't want them, then don't ask for them.
I'm completely baffled by your reaction to receiving an answer to your
question.
------
gtrubetskoy
As I understand it, non-competes are very hard to enforce and are more of an
intimidation tactic than anything else. You cannot be prevented from earning a
living the only way you know how given the demand for your skills. If you're
bound by a non-compete and the only (or the best) job available is with the
competition, you shouldn't be afraid to take it, and the courts will side with
you if someone goes after you (well, unless you're in Hawaii according to the
article!).
An agreement is not enforceable if it is unreasonable, and denying someone the
opportunity to make a living is pretty much unreasonable out of the box. Of
course it's not true in every case, but it is mostly true for "techie jobs".
(I am not a laywer, the above is not legal advice).
~~~
sib
Washington and Massachusetts (states with significant high-tech employee
bases) are also very friendly to employers in enforcing non-competes. (IANAL)
~~~
robot22
I can't speak for Massachussetts, but in Washington state non-competes have to
be narrowly tailored resulting in them being relatively hard to enforce.
~~~
muP
Didn't Microsoft choose to sue Google in Washington, when Google hired Kai-Fu
Lee? [http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/20/technology/microsoft-
sues-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/20/technology/microsoft-sues-over-
googles-hiring-of-a-former-executive.html?_r=0)
------
benjohnson
As an employer, I'm quite fine with this - as the law still allows for an
agreement to be made about soliciting clients.
If relationship with an employee and my company sours, all I really care about
is that poor relationship not transferring to the relationship between my
company and my clients.
Artificially locking ourselves into to a bad employer/employee relationship
does nobody any good.
~~~
crimsonalucard
Your problem is when someone you have a good relationship with is seduced by
something hotter and sexier.
~~~
benjohnson
I can see why's that would be frustrating, but my employees are not "mine" \-
so they are free to go at any time and hence, I need to treat them well.
If an employee is seduced by an offer that doesn't work out - they can (and
have) come back and can bring back what they learned.
One of the thing that I learned from such exits an re-entryies is that money
is not always the best motivator - I used to run really lean to have a high
payroll. Now I run lean to provide a good work environment - I can now fire
bad companies that don't respect my employees.
~~~
rodgerd
> I can see why's that would be frustrating, but my employees are not "mine"
> \- so they are free to go at any time and hence, I need to treat them well.
It's great to hear someone articulating that point on HN. There is too often a
constant stream of suggestions to the effect employees are a form of chattel.
------
tibbon
A company I worked for recently had non-competes and non-solicit clauses. A
new employees was negotiating their contract, and I told them to push back
against the NC/CS clauses.
I spoke with the management and asked why they needed them, "to prevent
problems" they said. I pointed out that they didn't have the non-competes for
their employees in California and asked if they had problems there. They
weren't aware of any problems in California, yet they thought it perfectly
logical and needed to ask for them elsewhere.
~~~
vinhboy
because lawyers...
~~~
lordnacho
Not just funny, but true. When you invite a lawyer into a discussion, what is
most straightforward way for them to show they are contributing? More clauses.
My firm's done negotiations with banks, and they all do the same vanilla
business. Some have lawyers very close to the process, and some keep them at a
distance. Of course there's always more back-and-forth when the lawyers are
there, even though the business is the same for everyone. They try to sneak in
ridiculous clauses and fight you on everything.
~~~
yourapostasy
In my personal experience, that "wtf clause" embedding is because lawyers are
at the coalface of dealing with the assholes of the business world. When it
comes to rules-based systems like law, the assholes of the world are the ones
that drive fractal-like complexity in the rulesets, with their continuous
seeking of edge cases to externalize costs upon everyone else they can
possibly unload to while profiting from finding said edge cases, and the
subsequent response by the body of law or by a law instrument to counter that
behavior. In other words, the assholes work the contract instead of the actual
relationship.
We need something like Iain Banks' envisioned "slap drone" for the assholes,
but in the meantime, I'll settle for discreetly negotiated relationships that
create exceptions for my company. Law also needs to evolve more formalisms
around invocation of privacy and other personal space / personal resource
(time, especially) concepts that are currently not well defined at the moment,
but are rife with predation by the assholes.
I have found company counsel to always be willing to strike clauses for me if
I negotiate with them amicably and agreeably, and preemptively provide them a
"trust but verify" action they can perform that absolutely cannot be faked by
an asshole participant. Clauses ranging from "all your bases are belong to us"
IP seizures, sky-high insurance requirements, invasive financial reporting,
you name it I've probably seen it, have all be negotiated away in this manner.
------
wheaties
Wish NY did the same. In NY they get to own all your ideas both at work and
"off the clock."
~~~
tracker1
I cross/line out any portion of employment agreements that say such things...
I've never had any push back about it.
~~~
throwaway91231
I did cross out a bunch of non-compete and some ridiculous post-employment IP
claim provisions and refused to take an offer from a midsize NYC hedge fund
which constantly self-proclaims as "technology company applying talents to the
domain of finance". Their contract was pure evil by California (and reasonable
people) standards and I realized I wouldn't be able to negotiate my way out of
those clauses (even though they seemed to have liked me enough in negotiating
the salary). I made it clear to them that this is not a tech company's
behavior. It was a hard decision for me to make considering my situation at
the time and the offer's $$$ compared to SV big cos, but I eventually realized
that _someone_ should take a stance against this form of slavery and we are
responsible for not letting this crap perpetuate. If more people pay the cost
of saying no, they'll have to cave eventually.
(throwaway because I don't like admitting I interviewed at a hedgefund
publicly on the internet.)
------
skarap
This is good development!
I'm not sure how effective the law will be though. As others mentioned, those
agreements are hard/impossible to enforce in court, part of the reason of
which is that they are completely one-sided, vague and almost enslaving (we
own whatever you create also in your own time, can't compete
directly/indirectly for 10 years after leaving, can't use anything your
learned while working for us...). But what stops the ex-employer accusing the
ex-employee of stealing trade secrets and keep them in courts for ~3 years
(and forcing to spend hundreds of thousands)? Cause, you know, it's hard to
litigate with someone who has a few orders of magnitude more resources than
you do.
As for non-solicit - I have a different opinion. Have seen companies breaking
apart because some of the middle-managers/team leads decided to leave the
company and take their team and the clients (with whom they had direct
contact) with them. E.g. that's how Lycos Armenia's history ended.
~~~
dia80
This only possible because companies want to be able to fire their employees
quickly so that means the employees can leave quickly. I know of one place (in
the UK) with a one year notice term. You can't leave quickly so their business
is secure but you are secure too as they have to give 12 months notice before
letting you go.
~~~
skarap
12 months for both sides? So if an employee wants to leave the employer can
make them stay for one more year? Doesn't sound like a good thing to me.
~~~
mcv
12 months is extreme. But it's extreme for both sides.
~~~
Lawtonfogle
If the company goes under, good luck getting a year of pay from them.
It is better than many deals, but still seems to favor the employer for the
reason most laws do, which is that when a deal is between a person and a
company, the law never treats them the same and the company gets what I always
see to be the favorable treatment (for example, company can't go to jail).
~~~
skarap
It's not always true, at least not everywhere. E.g. in my country (Armenia)
the employee can leave whenever they like with just a two week's notice
(except in situations when they have some central/important role in the
organization - in that cases it's 1 month). The employer on the other hand has
almost no way to fire someone if he doesn't have very good reasons for that
(e.g. lost trust in employee). Mass layoffs are allowed if there is some
global change (technology, economy, ..). In that cases the notice period in 3
months.
I guess we inherited this from the USSR (where corporate interest was not a
thing) and just didn't have time to change yet.
------
Sukotto
If your employee is going to leave anyway, your best course of action is to
encourage them.
Perhaps something along the lines of: "We're really going to miss you, but
it's clear that this is a great opportunity for you. When it's time for you to
move on from that role give me a call... I'd love to chat with you about roles
back here that would be a good fit with that additional experience under your
belt"
------
drawkbox
Non-competes are the most anti-American, anti-business, and anti-innovation
devices ever created. They are protectionism. They need to end everywhere.
Employment will only be more fruitful with freedom to create and innovate. It
encourages companies to pay people with skills in their field. As the country
moves to project/entrepreneur based contractual employment this is actually a
big issue.
------
IvyMike
There are companies out there that simultaneously proclaim the need for strict
non-compete laws while also stating how difficult it is for them to hire
qualified candidates, never seeing the conflict.
------
colanderman
"The law clearly violates corporate equal protection under the 14th Amendment
and I am just waiting for a client to ask me to challenge the law."
Couldn't have picked a more biased source ;)
~~~
tracker1
I think we need to establish a constitutional amendment that explicitly states
that non-living entities (companies, corporations, etc) are not legally
allowed to express opinions in so far as they donate to PACs or directly to
campaigns. Also, that the congress or the states may limit the rights that
non-living entities have beyond what an individual who works for or owns a
non-living entity has.
"Corporate Personhood" is such a horrible idea that it just doesn't make any
sense at all.
EDIT: for clarification, the 14th amendment refers to Person(s)/People, not
corporations specifically... which is where my statement was coming from. It
may not be a popular subject, but the fact is that corporation rights exceed
that of people at this point.
~~~
bmelton
On the contrary, if corporations didn't have personhood, we could not sue them
when they did wrong, or enter into contracts with them.
Personhood has its own challenges for sure, but it originates more to protect
people than it does to advantage corporations.
~~~
elevenfist
The point that's being missed in this discussion is that corporations are
abstract entities defined by the state and society, ideally for society's
benefit (otherwise why the hell would or should they exist, and also the
original corp was for public benefit). These abstract entities can be given
attributes, rights, relationships, etc. as needed, but they do not have any
inherent properties in and of themselves.
Corporate personhood is an analogy, and a poor one at that. Many of the
properties we assign to personhood are not suitable for corporations.
~~~
bmelton
I dunno what gives you the impression that I've missed that point, really, but
the scope of your message, which comes across to me as "perhaps we could
slightly restructure the rights and responsibilities of corporations to better
fit what we see as their role in society" is dramatically different from
"Corporate Personhood is such a horrible idea that it just doesn't make any
sense at all."
Both statements are equally true, as is my rebuttal. We perhaps could reframe
the rights of corporations, but abolishing personhood would likely make the
situation far worse than it makes anything better, as we then lose the ability
to enter contracts with or sue corporations.
Much of the abilities of corporations that stem from personhood are
commensurate with their other roles. I personally don't see a problem with
corporations having representation, as those same corporations are otherwise
bound by the laws of the land. Despite the "Wal-Mart is not a person"
rhetoric, it's worth noting that many corporations are sole proprietorships,
or, rephrased, people, and if they have the responsibility of obeying the
whimsy of the legislature in the myriad regulations they are responsible to
perform (worth noting, corporate responsibilities are typically far more
burdensome than personal responsibilities) that they have the right to speak
out against that whimsy where they wish.
That isn't to suggest that my word is definite, and there's definitely wiggle
room to restructure, but as it stands, corporations have burdens, and knee
jerk responses neither obviate nor necessarily better the proportionality of
their rights in response to those burdens. Ut totum, abolishing personhood is,
I think, as horrible an idea as mandatory mediation.
------
renownedmedia
Let's pack up all the Silicon Valley engineers and move to Hawaii ;)
~~~
hueving
Sadly it's a much cheaper place to live.
~~~
jegutman
Housing maybe, although not the stuff I have imagined in my head. Everything
else is really expensive in hawaii though because of shipping costs and lack
of scale.
~~~
hueving
Cost of stuff is only important if you spend all of your money on stuff. With
a tech salary, the cost of food going up 15% should be nothing compared to the
rent you will save.
~~~
tracker1
You think the cost of food is only 15% more? That's funny.. still not enough
to offset the cost of housing in SF though. Been looking at moving out to San
Jose (to work in Los Gatos, that's expensive to live in), and need to make
about 75% more to offset the cost of housing and taxes than I do in Phoenix.
I totally understand why some large companies would put their IT hubs in Texas
or Arizona now. Relative to the cost of living, we have it pretty good here..
I don't want to be outside in June, July or August though.
~~~
hueving
What are you talking about? I was pointing out how expensive SF is and how you
might hit a 15% higher food cost in Hawaii than SF. But that will be offset by
the massive amount you will save in rent.
~~~
jegutman
Okay, but if you're only talking about SF then that's pretty silly. Because
there are parts of the bay area that are much cheaper although I get that even
they are expensive. But if you're paying to live in SF proper or Palo Alto
proper you're paying a premium for either a low commute or to be around other
tech people or both. You can find places that are affordable in plenty of
parts of the east bay.
------
re_todd
I wish there were a Presidential candidate that would make come out strongly
against these things. Left or right, I'd vote for him/her. Unfortunately, most
Americans probably are not affected and thus do not care.
------
mathattack
The question I have is "Why limit this to High Tech"?
------
monksy
Lets see Illinois do this as well!
------
vacri
Why is this limited to just the high-tech industry?
~~~
j_b_f
The individual citizen (!) who lobbied tirelessly for this bill tried to get a
broader version passed in the previous session. Unfortunately as bbanyc45
points out there was too much opposition from entrenched interests for that to
pass. So he tried again (which is pretty admirable), this time using narrower
language.
------
lgleason
Good for Hawaii! Georgia went the other way. My advice to anybody is to not
sign them if you are asked to. They are bad for everybody.
~~~
colanderman
Doesn't work in my experience. I started not too long ago at a startup whose
founder actively publicly campaigns _against_ non-competes. Yet there was
still a non-compete in my employment contract, and they wouldn't let me strike
it, presumably due to pressure from their lawyers regarding potential
investors.
They have laudably since removed the clause, even retroactively from current
employees' contracts, but it just goes to show how little bargaining power
employees have in the arena of employment contracts.
~~~
hwstar
Investors and banks are the root of the problem when it comes to non-competes.
They insist that companies include these in all employee agreements.
If you live in a state where non-competes are legal, and if you are a job
candidate and they refuse to let you strike the non-compete, then push back
with the following: If employment is terminated by them and not you, ask them
to pay you 100% of your salary during the non-compete duration so you can go
on "Gardening leave". If they refuse to do this, then decline the job offer.
Oh, and make sure you state that you need to see everything up-front I will
need to sign in the next 6 months as an employee in the offer documentation
package. Some ethically-challenged companies wait until you have accepted the
offer and hit you with the non-compete and invention agreements on your first
day of employment with a "sign or be fired" requirement.
------
ErikRogneby
My understanding is that if non-compete clauses are unreasonable then they
they are generally unenforceable. As in if they put undue hardship on you
finding employment elsewhere. It seems the exception is usually up at the
senior leadership and C-level where strategic intelligence comes in to play.
(joe/jane-coder not so much.)
~~~
CognitiveLens
Unfortunately "unreasonable" is something that generally requires a court to
define. That's a big burden for a worker to bear even in the most justified
cases.
~~~
hueving
especially when said worker that bothers to sue is unemployed.
------
fulafel
How does it work out in the US wrt what you can bring with you to a new
employer, where non-compete agreements are outlawed? Is all information then
free game? European countries tend to have it in national legislation that you
can't disclose important trade secrets.
------
wahsd
Are there any clear and concise sources regarding non-compete and non-
solicitation clauses and their enforceability in various states? Basically,
some kind of primer on the topic?
------
lsllc
Good for Hawaii!
MA has tried to do this recently but sadly the big corporate interests were
able to bribe the pols; not a surprise really since MA politics are completely
corrupt.
------
omouse
I wish this would happen in Ontario; I know a judge struck down a non-
compete/non-solicit clause in one case but employers still stick that shit in.
------
jon-wood
Sadly the most important ideas are rarely the best funded. For example Zynga
has vastly more funds at their disposal than Wikipedia, and I'd challenge
anyone to argue that's the right way round.
~~~
javert
Of course it's the right way around. Wikipedia has, basically, what it needs.
I don't see how throwing more money at Wikipedia is going to accomplish
anything.
~~~
fapjacks
Oh? And Zynga "needs" something? Or is going to accomplish anything nearly as
worthwhile as Wikipedia? Or... ?
~~~
javert
People enjoy the games, they pay for them, those payments accure to employees
of the company and eventually investors who make it all possible. So the whole
goal of the business is literally creating happiness.
The investors, having produced value, can then invest in something else.
The people playing the games are also producing value, because they earned
their paychecks doing something productive for somebody.
Of course, all of this is true of every productive company and is readily
evident in everyday life (unless you live under communism). You need to take
an econ 101 course. Or maybe just pay attention.
~~~
fapjacks
I feel sorry for you, needing to resort to those kinds of statements. Whatever
made you that way, please know that life gets better, and it's possible to
draw inspiration for positive change from many different things around you.
It'll get better, buddy, I promise.
~~~
mjcohen
Until our civilization collapses. Then it will get better for all except
humanity.
------
MrTonyD
I think there needs to be some middle ground. What is completely ignored by
such an "all or nothing" law is the trade-offs required in order to create a
high quality of life for individuals while also thinking of our society
overall.
It is in society's interest for some industries to be protected - in order to
avoid low-cost competitors and worse employers. We are over-reacting.
~~~
GeneralMayhem
Middle ground in inherently non-equal relationships (employer-employee,
landlord-tenant, etc) doesn't usually work because the areas close to the line
need courts to sort them out, and courts cost money, which one side of the
relationship doesn't have, so what happens instead is that the line inches
slowly but surely in favor of the powerful side of the relationship because no
individual can afford to challenge it.
There are some ways to combat those effects - for instance, large statutory
damages make the reward larger, and unionization makes the individual risk
lower - but by far the simplest and most direct is to sacrifice nuance to at
least avoid a worst-case option.
------
CognitiveLens
In unrelated news, Hawaii's High-Tech industry collapses.
I think this policy is awesome and should be universal, but it seems a little
crazy to enact it unilaterally - if a company can choose which state to
operate in, Hawaii is going to lose out to all the others that allow unfair
(IMO) employer protections.
~~~
WilliamSt
Aren't non-compete clauses banned in California?
~~~
ridgeguy
Pretty much, as long as you're an employee.
There may be exceptions if you're the owner of a business that you sell, or a
member of a partnership that's dissolved, or part of an LLC that's being
dissolved.
Useful info on US noncompete laws:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
compete_clause#Exceptions_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-
compete_clause#Exceptions_-_valid_non-compete_agreements_in_California)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cisco AnyConnect for the iPhone - ciscozine
http://www.ciscozine.com/2010/09/23/cisco-anyconnect-for-the-iphone/
======
logic
Sadly, a few issues:
\- Requires iOS 4.1. For those of us who jailbreak, that's a showstopper (for
now).
\- No iPad support. See above. :)
\- Requires an additional license on the ASA side. So, the "free" on the app
listing is a bit misleading.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Skype can't fix a nasty security bug without a massive code rewrite - nautical
http://www.zdnet.com/article/skype-cannot-fix-security-bug-without-a-massive-code-rewrite/
======
user5454
From the disclosure
([http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2018/Feb/33](http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2018/Feb/33)):
> An unprivileged (local) user who is able to place UXTheme.dll or any of the
> other DLLs loaded by the vulnerable executable in %SystemRoot%\Temp\ gains
> escalation of privilege to the SYSTEM account.
On my machine at least an unprivileged user does _not_ have access to
%SystemRoot%\Temp\ so it seems to be a case of what Raymond Chen refers to as
_" on the other side of the airtight hatchway"_.
~~~
taspeotis
I believe the default permissions for a volume grant users the ability to
create folders, so they should be able to create a folder in C: called Temp
and put files into it.
It’s also possible that when Skype’s updater creates the folder it has
different ACLs.
~~~
Amezarak
%SYSTEMROOT% is C:\Windows, not C:\\.
I too cannot access C:\Windows\Temp at all without escalating permissions.
Neither can I write to anything in C:\Windows as described in the original
source without escalated permissions.
I'm a little puzzled about what would stop someone with the same permissions
from doing exactly the same thing with the fully qualified name.
~~~
enzanki_ars
I need to test this later as I only have access to an unprivileged account at
the moment, but based on comments online
([https://stackoverflow.com/a/11917816](https://stackoverflow.com/a/11917816)),
C:\Windows\Temp (%systemroot%\Temp redirects here, and is the folder Skype
accesses from, is write only for unprivileged users (FILE_ADD_FILE).
Preliminary testing shows that I was able to write there with out any problem.
No way for me to read it at the moment though...
Edit: As noted by another user here, yes, it is writeable.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16367722](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16367722)
------
jmull
The title isn't quite right here.
It's not that Microsoft can't fix this bug without a massive rewrite. It's
that they'd rather do the massive rewrite than fix this security bug in the
current client.
They could put a small amount of resources on critical fixes for the current
client. It would have a small effect on the release of the new client but put
them in a much better position once the new client is ready in terms of how
many users they retain and how happy those users are. Overall, there's a lot
of bang for the buck for this in terms of the overall health of the product.
Now, Microsoft may very well have a critical fix effort for the current client
but this bug didn't make the grade as a critical bug. (I can't tell from just
this article whether I would consider this a critical issue or not.)
------
korethr
The article mentions that this vulnerability affects Mac and Linux too. I'm
curious how that's the case. DLLs, as i understand, are the Windows equivalent
of shared libraries on Unix-like systems. Even if that's the case, there'd
have to be subtle but important differences in the implantation details, due
to the differing heritage of both systems, wouldn't there?
I've heard about DLL-injection many a time, for purposes ranging from benign
(fun Counter-Strike mod) to evil (I am now NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM, bitches). I've
not heard about .so injection on Unix-like systems. Why is that? Is it because
implementation details of Unix shared libraries preclude them being used in
the same or a similar way, that I've just not been on the right mailing lists
to hear about it, or more nobody cares to bother because everyone's on
Windows?
Those of you whom are familiar with either or both systems, what material
would you recommend for study that would answer my questions, or help me
understand enough to ask a smarter one?
~~~
netvl
As far as my understanding goes, performing a .so injection at least on Linux
systems is much easier: you just need to set up an LD_PRELOAD variable before
running the program and that's it. See, for example, here [0].
And it _is_ sometimes useful. One thing I can recall when this was necessary
when I had an old webcam which did not work with Skype (a native application,
at that moment) under Linux because of incompatibility with V4L2. To make the
camera work, I had to do the LD_PRELOAD trick to preload a compatibility
library (see here [1], search for "v4lcompat"). Another example, provided in
[0], is overriding the default memory allocator.
Another, more coarse-grained way to manipulate the way libraries are loaded is
to use the LD_LIBRARY_PATH variable. I believe it is currently used by Steam
to specify its own set of libraries.
Granted, this is not really a DLL injection as it is usually understood
(adding code to a running process), but it is the same thing as described in
the article, as far as I can tell.
[0]: [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/426230/what-is-the-ld-
pr...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/426230/what-is-the-ld-preload-
trick) [1]:
[https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SkypeWebCams](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SkypeWebCams)
edit: grammar
~~~
cesarb
Both the LD_PRELOAD and LD_LIBRARY_PATH variables are ignored for setuid
programs, and if the program was started by something else you won't be able
to change these variables. The issue here is not injecting code into a process
you control, it's injecting code into a process running under a different
account.
------
airza
Maybe it's pedantic, but I wish security reporters wouldn't list their pubkeys
and signal # on a page that isn't served over TLS.
------
tankenmate
The article mentioned that the bug reporter claimed that MacOS and Linux were
also possibly affected. I run Skype on Xubuntu and it is installed via apt and
a signed repo / package. Also Linux by default doesn't have '.' in the search
path for dlopen() / ld.so.
------
jwilk
Technical information is here:
[http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2018/Feb/33](http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2018/Feb/33)
------
adamkruszewski
Few years ago after not logging into Skype for few months when I have launched
Skype I was logged in automatically to another person's account (similar in
name to my own, but with additional prefix). It happen few times in period of
2-3 years. When I tried to report it, support staff supposedly handed the info
to their supervisor and that's was it. Fortunately web client had resolved
such issues.
------
vforvangelis
An interim solution could be to install the UWP Skype app from the Store. I
don't think it relies on Updater.exe for patches.
~~~
ocdtrekkie
Yeah, the article seems to fail to mention that the current version of
Windows, which almost everyone had two years to upgrade to for free, has a
version of Skype that isn't vulnerable. Given that Windows 10 has been out
since 2015, and everyone with a Windows license going back to 2009 had a free
upgrade path, failing to mention that Skype on Windows 10 (they don't
recommend classic Skype for Windows 10 users) isn't vulnerable borders on the
FUD barrier.
~~~
Nexxxeh
I don't know if it's still the case, but is the UWP a crash-prone nightmare
that doesn't have feature parity with the older client family?
~~~
ocdtrekkie
It's gotten significantly better over time. I can't remember the last time it
crashed, sync between clients of the chat log is kinda wonky sometimes but
that's just Skype in general. Not positive on feature parity, I've been on the
UWP version for quite a while and couldn't tell you what's different anymore.
~~~
Nexxxeh
I've literally had to go out to unfuck a Skype UWP install onsite tonight, in
what may be a freak co-incidence.
Skype decided a perfectly working webcam was permanently in use by something
else. It wasn't, but a uninstall and reinstall of the app cured it.
------
ppeetteerr
Skype needs a rewrite. I don't like saying "rewrite" but I also hate Skype's
messaging system.
------
pier25
The new Skype version has been terrible, at least on macOS.
What are some good alternatives that offer group calls and screen sharing?
~~~
saagarjha
That's because they rewrote their native Cocoa application in Electron and
threw away years of work that they had put into it making it decent along with
it.
~~~
rspeer
I don't know what those years of work were accomplishing, but they didn't make
Skype decent.
Skype was decent a decade ago, and it has declined since then.
~~~
pier25
That may be true, but the Cocoa version was still better in terms of
performance and usability.
------
INTPenis
Time to use the web client.
Or not at all, I haven't had a need for skype but the last client I used was
the web client on Linux.
~~~
StavrosK
I've had good experience with Jitsi Meet
([https://meet.jit.si](https://meet.jit.si)). You can run it from a browser,
it's very pleasant and works quite well. Plus, it's open source.
~~~
tmalsburg2
Thank you. Just tried it and it works great in Chromium.
------
devit
It's not "nasty" at all, it's an irrelevant bug, since local account security
is easily bypassable in a lot of ways.
It's also trivial to fix: just create a directory in Temp and put the
executable there instead of directly in the Temp directory.
------
ulfw
Absolutely nothing surprises me with Skype anymore. Sadly.
Messages do not get delivered to iPhone, iPad and Mac. Only pick two. Pick
random two.
Not sure what Microsoft's plan for Skype was. But I don't see it working out
either way.
------
enzanki_ars
I must be missing something obvious here. Why can’t skype just hard code the
locations and hashes of the dll files it needs to load? Why is Skype loading
random DLLs from user accessible folders? I must be misunderstanding how
Windows programs use DLLs and why it needs to just search for them.
Edit: @jwilk in the comments here pointed to a better article about the
security vulnerability [1]. Based on the technical details, there seems to be
no reason why Microsoft could not issue a very quick fix loading the DLL from
the secure location.
Important quote in my eyes:
“The engineers provided me with an update on this case. They've reviewed the
code and were able to reproduce the issue, but have determined that the fix
will be implemented in a newer version of the product rather than a security
update. The team is planning on shipping a newer version of the client, and
this current version will slowly be deprecated. The installer would need a
large code revision to prevent DLL injection, but all resources have been put
toward development of the new client.”
In other words, it seems Microsoft/Skype doesn’t care about security at all. A
couple of lines to fix the bug, in theory, but Microsoft is too busy to do it.
Doesn’t make sense, unless a new version would have been released shortly, but
it has been 4 months between that email and disclosure.
[1]:
[http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2018/Feb/33](http://seclists.org/fulldisclosure/2018/Feb/33)
~~~
cptskippy
> A couple of lines to fix the bug, in theory
Yes that's all it takes. No code reviews, security review, integration
testing, quality assurance testing, compatibility testing, or validation. None
of the work on the installer or updater. No release notes or other
communication to the community.
Just a couple lines of code. Easily done before morning coffee.
~~~
vorpalhex
> No code reviews, security review, integration testing, quality assurance
> testing, compatibility testing, or validation.
If this was a small startup, I can absolutely see those being hurdles. This is
Microsoft on a product they've had for 20+ years that is a major part of their
platform - those things should be mostly automated and well oiled machines.
A mature enterprise level company has no excuses for "QA is hard!" or "We
can't validate patches!" for a product they sell. I don't expect them to get
this out in ten minutes, but they should be able to manage a patch in 24 - 72
hours for a fairly critical and relatively easily solved security bug.
~~~
latencyloser
As a former Microsoft employee, my experience was that the longer a product
was around, the harder it was to figure out who understood any part of it well
enough to change something.
I would guess I averaged about 10 lines a month on my project that had been
around for decades. Making even slight tweaks required dozens of meetings,
design discussions, functional and performance testing, etc. etc. It took an
eternity.
~~~
patcheudor
Microsoft is still actively patching Skype. Here's an example of them patching
what sounds like a similar DLL flaw just last year:
[https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2017-6517/](https://www.cvedetails.com/cve/CVE-2017-6517/)
------
TorKlingberg
A bug sure, but does anyone really care much about local privilege escalation
on Windows? On a system where Skype is installed?
~~~
jessaustin
Someone without 2FA might check their email on that system. Their bank might
send them email...
------
Kipters
As far as I've seen, no one noticed that this is about the old legacy version
of Skype, the "rewritten client" they talk about in the article is the
__current __Electron-based client. That one and the UWP version are not
affected by this.
------
redleggedfrog
Oh yes please, whatever the reason. The current Skype is rubbish. Make us
something nice!
------
codedokode
It is interesting to note that there is no option to control or disable
updates in new Skype RT for Windows. Opera browser also doesn't allow user to
control updates.
------
heisenbit
suid programs and the installer is de-facto such a beast should not be written
if one can avoid it. Providing users with sufficient powerful APIs and
installing software on a per user level is one way to avoid this mess. Another
is to delegate installation to the operating system and not rolling your own.
Anyone else messing up this way may be able to point to Microsoft. Now those
folks at Skype are here in a bit a pickle.
------
tamrix
Sure they can't...
P.S check out Microsoft teams!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bitcoin Versus Electronic Money - cryptonews
https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/18418
Source : http://cryptocurrencylive.com/item?id=8832
======
cryptonews
Source:
[http://cryptocurrencylive.com/item?id=8832](http://cryptocurrencylive.com/item?id=8832)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
No Free Lunch Theorem - mgh2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_theorem
======
s_Hogg
This paper is great. Every beginner data scientist should be forced to study
its implications, because they can be summed up to "anyone acting like a man
with a hammer is actually an idiot with no clue". Not surprising it has
survived the dawn of the information age completely in tact.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What happens when you ask people to draw a bike (2016) - dlazar
http://www.gianlucagimini.it/prototypes/velocipedia.html
======
jdietrich
Drawing and painting is almost entirely a visual skill. The mechanical skills
of wielding a pencil or mixing paint are almost trivial; the hard part is
being able to _see_ what's actually there.
A bicycle is an incredibly simple visual form. You can doodle one in about
five seconds. They're not rare or unusual objects and they're relatively
homogenous. Nonetheless, most people have never actually _seen_ a bicycle.
They've looked, but they haven't understood its form, they haven't decomposed
it into lines and shapes. They know that it has two wheels, a chain, a saddle
and some handlebars, but they've never actually noticed the shapes that join
them together.
[https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-
Definitive/d...](https://www.amazon.com/Drawing-Right-Side-Brain-
Definitive/dp/1585429201/)
~~~
21
> A bicycle is an incredibly simple visual form
I disagree, compared with most objects a human daily interacts with - doors,
furniture, lifts, cars - a bicycle is one of the most complex visible forms.
I'm talking about what can be seen from outside, since obviously a car is much
more complex on the inside.
Most of the stuff we deal with is composed of square/boxes and circle/tubes.
Triangular shapes are quite rare in human spaces (I don't have any in my
house), and the bicycle critically has two triangles at it's core. Chains are
also very rare. So I don't think it's a surprise that many struggle with the
core - two triangles and a chain.
~~~
jdietrich
Clench your fist. Take a moment to notice the complexity of the geometry.
Consider how you might reduce that shape to simple geometric forms. Consider
how you might represent the three-dimensional form as a set of two-dimensional
lines. Turn your hand around and look at it from a different angle. Open your
fist and make an "OK" or a "peace" sign.
Go to your refrigerator and take out a lettuce leaf or a piece of broccoli.
Look out of your window at a tree or a bush. Go to your bathroom and look at
the toilet or the faucet. Look in the mirror and make a funny face.
A bicycle is more complicated than many rectilinear man-made objects, but it's
a relatively straightforward collection of lines. Even the drawings in the
linked article with their horribly mangled geometry are immediately
recognisable as a bicycle. It's not a difficult thing to draw, relatively
speaking.
~~~
blt
You conflate geometry and topology * . The topology of the human hand is right
in front of you to examine. A lettuce leaf is like a disk plus a wavy boundary
and noise. Broccoli is a tree. A bicycle is topologically complex object with
high genus. A bad drawing of a hand can still has the right connectivity, it
could be smoothly deformed into a realistic hand. Not true for most of these
bicycle drawings.
* using "topology" to refer to the graph structure of the skeleton of the solid, not the typical mathematical meaning.
~~~
Doxin
> it could be smoothly deformed into a realistic hand.
It's probably a good thing that this isn't what defines a drawing as good. A
bicycle frame has a couple straight lines and that's about it. A hand, or
broccoli, has complex compound curves all over the place.
Ask any artist to draw a bicycle and it'll probably end up pretty good. Ask
any artist to draw a hand and there's a good chance it'll not end up good,
even when using reference material.
There's a reason a lot of artists have problems drawing hands.
~~~
gowld
Hands aren't hard to draw because hands are super complicated; hands are hard
to draw because humans are evolutionarily finely tuned to recognize and be
disgusted by distorted human bodies, which in nature is a signal of disease.
Look at the diversity of broccoli proportion at the grocery, then imagine
hands with the same diversity -- grotesquely long or lumpy or twisted, which
too few or too many fingers. OTOH, cartoon hands, outside the uncanny valley,
look fine, even when (as is common) missing a finger.
------
duderific
If you scroll down, the designer has produced images that match some of the
ideas from the sketches. They are beautiful and mesmerizing.
At first I thought he had actually built out the physical bicycles from the
sketches, but it turns out they are just computer renderings. Nonetheless it
shows the power of "mistake" driven design, to generate novel ideas.
~~~
atourgates
As odd at is - this[1] design has a couple elements that have been reproduced
in the real world.
While the exact 2wd system shown in the rendering would have some real issues,
2wd mountain bike systems do exist. They can rely on impressively strange
chain routing[2], a system of gears and internal shafts[3], or just an
electric hub[4] (which is admittedly, not really the same thing).
As far as the one-sided frame goes, Canondale makes a one-sided fork called
the Lefty[5], that's in mass production and reasonably popular. One-sided rear
triangles only seem to exist on motorcycles, and there's an interesting
discussion here[6] on why that's the case, with an example of a one-off
"righty" bicycle.
[1] [http://www.gianlucagimini.it/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/Gian...](http://www.gianlucagimini.it/wp-
content/uploads/2016/03/Gianluca_Gimini-Velocipedia-7.jpg)
[2] [https://www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-gear/all-wheel-
drive-m...](https://www.singletracks.com/blog/mtb-gear/all-wheel-drive-
mountain-bike-test-ride/)
[3] [http://christinibicycles.com/](http://christinibicycles.com/)
[4] [https://newatlas.com/easy-motion-evo-awd-big-bud-
ebike/54434...](https://newatlas.com/easy-motion-evo-awd-big-bud-ebike/54434/)
[5]
[https://www.cannondale.com/en/International/Innovation/lefty...](https://www.cannondale.com/en/International/Innovation/lefty.aspx)
[6] [http://forums.mtbr.com/general-discussion/why-dont-we-
have-l...](http://forums.mtbr.com/general-discussion/why-dont-we-have-lefty-
rear-triangles-yet-1025959.html)
~~~
dirtyaura
I didn’t know about 2WD bikes existed! I’d love to try out to experience how
it feels to drive 2WD.
The Lefty design also looks very interesting, do you have practical experience
with it?
What an amazing comment full of new eye-opening information for me, thanks
~~~
atourgates
I've ridden a lefty a couple times, and apart from the visuals, it didn't
really feel unusual. I more or less didn't notice that I was on a lefty.
Here's an article that looks at it a bit more in depth:
[https://factoryjackson.com/2016/02/18/cannondale-lefty-
the-s...](https://factoryjackson.com/2016/02/18/cannondale-lefty-the-story-of-
half-a-fork/)
I haven't tried a 2WD, but everything I've read suggests that the added weight
and friction delivers pretty limited utility, at least in non-electric
versions.
------
lev99
There seems to be two things tested in this exercise. Technical drawing
capabilities and knowledge of bicycle mechanics.
I assume most people that drew bicycles have ridden one, but there are a few
basic common mistakes. The location of the pedals (closer to rear wheel, very
near to floor), the way the chain operate, and the triangle frame are some
examples. I did not notice anyone drawing details around the gear mechanisms
nor the breaks. Many people demonstrated acceptable drawing technique while
getting mechanical details of the bicycle incorrect.
I think this exercise highlights a great amount of ignorance around bicycles.
I purpose society would benefit from better bicycle education. Better bicycle
education might encourage bicycle adoption (needs testing to verify), and
bicycle ridership improves climate change, obesity, traffic, and heart
disease. In addition to increased adoption, bicycle education would improve
bicycle safety.
Bicycle education as a semester long optional course in high school is a great
reach goal. It could mirror driver education where teenagers learn traffic
rules and laws, and also basic bicycle maintenance. Perhaps with enough active
bicycle riding time it could count as a Physical Education credit.
A good first step would be more high quality videos and pamphlets on the topic
of bicycle education.
~~~
jschwartzi
Ask people to draw the powertrain or running gear of a car and you'd get much
the same result.
~~~
Buldak
Is that a good comparison? How often does the average person actually see
either of those things? The reason it's surprising that people struggle to
draw bikes from memory is that most of us see them all the time.
~~~
21
The brain doesn't work like a photo camera. It remembers strictly the minimum
required to do it's job, in a highly abstract and compressed form.
How a bike fits together it's kind of irrelevant for most people, even if you
ride one or if you must dodge one.
~~~
macintux
Which is effectively the point of the article.
------
pornel
Reminds of of Character Amnesia[1] phenomenon, where people can forget how to
write Chinese/Japanese characters, even though they know how to read them.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Character_amnesia)
~~~
dvh
I know how to read Mississippi
~~~
majewsky
I know how to read miscellaneous. (Thanks autocomplete.)
------
userbinator
It would be interesting to split the respondents into two groups, one who
rides bikes regularly and one who doesn't, and compare the results.
The "2WD" ones are particularly perplexing.
On the other hand, I bet if you asked people to draw a car, 99% of them would
draw something realistic --- it's the arrangement of the frame tubes on a bike
that most people just haven't looked at in detail or remembered.
~~~
huphtur
Pro cyclists asked to draw a bike in 15 seconds:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU)
~~~
gnicholas
Wonder how their mechanics would have done.
I think the only reason I could draw a bike with any accuracy is because my
dad taught me how to fix it. Otherwise it would be a complete black box.
------
skybrian
I don't know if he redid this independently or failed to give credit, but here
is an article [1] describing some similar experiments done by Rebecca Lawson.
And a formal academic paper from 2006 [2].
[1]
[https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~rlawson/cycleweb.html](https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/~rlawson/cycleweb.html)
[2]
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03195929](https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/BF03195929)
------
ianbicking
I'm looking at the third one down and wondering: why aren't all-wheel-drive
bikes a thing? (Well, steering...)
I guess there is such a thing:
[http://christinibicycles.com/](http://christinibicycles.com/) – sounds pretty
complicated: 'A handlebar-mounted switch controls the AWD “shift on the fly”
clutch. When the clutch is engaged, the rear spiral gear interlocks with the
rear hub and power is transferred via internal shafts to the forward spiral
gear set, which drives the CHRISTINI freehub. Due to a slight gearing
differential, the front wheel is not actively powered on smooth level ground.
However, the moment the rear wheel slips, power is instantaneously transferred
to the front wheel. Similarly, the moment that the front wheel decelerates, as
in hitting a rock or starting to wash out in a corner, power and traction are
transferred to the front wheel.'
Makes me wonder if you could make an electric-assist bike where the assist was
on the front wheel, thus saving all the complicated mechanical power transfer.
I also suspect driving the front wheel feels crazy on a bike and I just don't
realize it.
~~~
douchescript
My electrib bike is AWD. Electric in the front and mechanical in the back.
Very good for recovery on a patch of ice, impossible with just back wheel
drive.
~~~
ianbicking
What does it feel like when you aren't peddling and it's just front-wheel
drive?
~~~
douchescript
It doesn’t drive if no peddling, legal stuff here in sweden.
------
jonshariat
I think this is a great example that shows how our brains remember/recognize
things. (Which may be help in machine learning)
This is how people have remembered a bike.
2 wheels, spaced apart Metal connecting Pedal in the middle Seat on top
Handlebars connected to the front wheel.
The details of how it's connected, where, spacing, etc. Isn't really noted by
our brains unless they see/use them often.
I wonder if this exercise could help use fine tune ML patterns.
~~~
edgarvaldes
I think it's funny how many comments give great importance to the object being
a bicycle or the person being a bike rider to explain the output.
~~~
jonshariat
Agreed. It can really be anything. People don't look at things, they scan and
store/recognize optimized patterns.
------
okmokmz
I wonder why such a high percentage of females attached the chain the the
front wheel in their drawings
edit: a better way to phrase it would probably be: Of the drawings where the
chain was attached to the front wheel, I wonder why such a large majority were
done by females
~~~
hermitdev
I was surprised at the number of drawings that connected the front & rear
wheels directly. I'm sure those would be fun to ride...
Also the number of bikes that were just structurally unsound, such as just the
seat-stay attached to the rear wheel. Quite likely first bump you hit, things
would not end well (if it even took that long). I'm not a mechanical engineer,
but I did take a single class on statics in college, and that's enough for me
to see that things would not end well (at least with current materials I'm
aware of).
~~~
okmokmz
Agreed, some of the frames were surprising and quite funny. I've never ridden
a bike professionally, or even as a serious hobby, but I would've guessed that
way more people would at least get the general frame shape of a rhombus with 2
connected corners and the fork coming down from the front edge.
------
pasta
In Firefox I had to go to readability mode for it to see, but the idea and
execution is great!
Reminds me of the company that creates dolls how you design them:
[https://www.childsown.com/](https://www.childsown.com/)
------
logfromblammo
I thought it was interesting how many of the wrong designs were similar to the
lead image, with one central triangle and all other elements sprouting from
it. It's tantalizingly close to the "standard" design, yet still incorrect.
I wonder how many of those people would _insist_ that their sketch is correct,
even when confronted with the evidence of an actual bicycle for comparison...
------
chatmasta
This is like what happens when you ask the client what they want the website
to look like.
------
C4stor
If I sum up : a guy "pesters" (good way to make sure people do a bad job !) a
lot of people to draw a bike, selects the 50 most flawed drawings, and HN
commenters conclude "people are bad at drawing bikes"?
The experimental process is flawed on so many levels I'm amazed anyone is
jumping to a conclusion besides "That's some funny looking bikes here!".
Something the author reckons by refraining to conclude anything himself.
------
bunderbunder
I like this. Even if they wouldn't work, some of the designs are really
beautiful when translated into 3D models.
It also sort of reminds me a bit of a minor collection I've been making of
children's book illustrations of kites, which started out of a morbid
fascination with how, despite how very simple an object a basic diamond kite
is, very few of them get all the details right.
------
bena
I had to go look up pictures of actual bikes to confirm what (I think) is
wrong with the lead picture.
I also wonder how I would have done in the blind.
~~~
garrettgrimsley
For any still not seeing it: The chain stay from the bottom bracket is
missing. The rear wheel should be held by a triangular arrangement of the
frame, but the side of the triangle that runs parallel to the ground isn’t
there
~~~
bena
I didn't want to mention what I thought was wrong because I didn't want to
accidentally influence anybody else, especially if I wound up wrong.
But yeah, after giving it a good, long look, along with his mention that it
would break when someone sat on it, I guessed that there should have been a
bar between the back wheel and where the pedals are.
~~~
skykooler
I'm not sure it _would_ break when you sat on it; the chain would be in
tension, holding those two sections together and filling the task of that bar.
The problem would be when you started to pedal, and that bar is not there to
stop the chain from pulling the rear wheel towards the pedals.
------
keypress
That's odd I noticed this on some vector art just two minutes before seeing
this story.
[https://www.cyclotricity.com/uk/custom/mix-match-your-own-
co...](https://www.cyclotricity.com/uk/custom/mix-match-your-own-conversion-
kit.html)
~~~
keypress
Not to mention the magic drive train.
------
YeGoblynQueenne
>> Some diversities are gender driven. Nearly 90% of drawings in which the
chain is attached to the front wheel (or both to the front and the rear) were
made by females.
It would be more interesting to know what percentage of drawings had the chain
attached incorrectly, first- then how many of them were by female
participants. If it was just a couple of drawings, there's not much "gender
driven diversity" to speak of. Equally for the overcomplicated frames drawn by
males, of course.
(Edit: I'm sorry to pick on such an irrelevant detail of this beautiful
posting, but at this point anything that seems to allude to stereotypes about
females not being comfortable with the function of complex mechanisms, grates;
especially if it's using numbers to make a point).
~~~
Dylan16807
I'm curious about more numbers, too, but even if it's 1 vs. 7 I think it's
worth noting.
------
akhleung
Heh, when I was a kid I used to draw a lot, and I remember being bothered that
I didn't know how to draw a bike, so back then I explicitly memorized the
shapes (parallelogram in the back, and another line for the front wheels).
Wonder if that's common for doodlers.
~~~
notatoad
A parallelogram is missing the seat tube, which is a fairly important part of
the bike.
------
jvagner
To extend this a bit...
If you like watching any of the popular Gym Fail video channels on Youtube --
many people also have poor, or counter- intuitive notions of things like
purpose built machines and the physical body mechanics/physics that marry up
to them.
Recall is hard, but so is.. deciphering.
------
toomanybeersies
I'd be interested to see this broken down by country. Do Dutch or Danish
people draw more correct bicycles than Americans?
Another interesting thing would be to see if there's any reason why people
draw bikes facing left or right. I feel like for me it's natural to draw
vehicles facing right, so they'd drive in the direction that you read in. It
seems that most of the drawings here are in the opposite direction. The cycle
lane signs in New Zealand also face to the left [1].
[1] [https://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/traffic-control-
devices-m...](https://www.nzta.govt.nz/resources/traffic-control-devices-
manual/sign-specifications/view/54)
------
kevin_thibedeau
Some remind me of Pedersen's [1] which look ungainly and structurally unsound
too.
[1] [http://www.pedersenbicycles.com/](http://www.pedersenbicycles.com/)
------
mzzter
When I applied to art school, I had to draw a bicycle as part of the admission
evaluation. My peers would post their admission submissions online whether or
not they were eventually admitted. If you search “RISD bicycle drawings”,
you’ll see tons of bicycle drawings. They range from insanely photorealistic
to simply abstract.
Obviously, we all used reference material to make sure our depiction was
accurate. But it is nonetheless interesting to see what people come up with
when trying to impress an art school admissions team.
------
ada1981
What happens when you ask people to make a mobile friendly website?
~~~
superkuh
Most web design has been corrupted by mobile-friendly concepts. It's nice to
finally see a site that isn't made crap by giant buttons, whitespace, and thin
vertical scroll.
~~~
ada1981
The site just didn’t work on Safari Mobile without a huge bloated menu.
------
baddox
> Little I knew this is actually a test that psychologists use to demonstrate
> how our brain sometimes tricks us into thinking we know something even
> though we don’t.
This seems like a leap, or at least an oversimplification of what the author
is referring to in psychology. I’m convinced that my attempt to draw a bicycle
would be quite terrible, but I’m also convinced that I would be able to look
at my drawing and judge it as terrible.
~~~
comboy
Most people don't do this check though.
------
theshadowknows
So what’s wrong with the bike?
~~~
staz
missing a metal bar behind the chain
------
wuliwong
This made me smile. I'm actually somewhat skilled as an artist (just compared
to the average person) but I can assure you I have never drawn a respectable
image of a bicycle. I really liked taking these sketches and making them more
realistic. Maybe there is some genius hidden in these seemingly inaccurate
sketches?
------
balabaster
These are somewhat amusing, but I'd have to say that if you asked a bike tech
or anyone that spent any amount of time being their own bike mechanic, even
with a very limited amount of artistic talent, there's virtually nothing to
drawing a bike that would function adequately in the real world.
------
ThJ
I won't get the answer to that question, it seems, because their site doesn't
work properly on mobile...
------
gameswithgo
I have done a lot of biking and saw this article a while back. It makes me
look closely at every depiction of a bike I see. We have some pillows with
bikes on them. I look close and notice the chainring is MONSTER huge, like a
60T. Whoever rides the bike on those pillows is not to be messed with.
------
anonytrary
I find it strange that no one drew the bike projected on a plane other than
the plane containing the wheels. No one drew the bike head-on or at an angle.
~~~
jshevek
I speculate that the author created an expectation of a "quick, simple,
sketch". Even an artist might prefer that plane, if they are expected to draw
quickly.
------
Kagerjay
reminds me of this meme that gets featured on reddit r/programmerhumor fairly
often
[https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/5fyv4r/kir...](https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/5fyv4r/kirby_dev_team_attemps_to_draw_him_by_hand_xpost/)
------
caf
S02E06 of Brain Games asks a university class to do this - then they build
each of the drawn bikes and attempt to ride them.
------
framebit
I love this project! We got some prints of these for a family member who's a
rabid cyclist and also one for our house.
------
visarga
All the while we're still looking down on GANs. AI has surpassed average human
level in this domain.
------
brna
I bet it would be hard going trough all of these and drawing a bike
afterwards.
------
lesss365
Funny, this is RISD's infamous application requirement.
------
clojurestan
These people went ahead and made the mistake bikes[0].
[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hXwbgio5cU)
------
colanderman
Similar: draw an ant, top-down view.
Where DO the legs go?
~~~
jshevek
Is this really a common misunderstanding? I thought everybody knew that ants
have three body sections, and the legs attached to the middle. We learned this
in elementary school. Putting legs on the head or the back section would
create so many unnecessary complications.
~~~
colanderman
> Putting legs on the head or the back section would create so many
> unnecessary complications.
I mean, so would attaching a bicycle chain to the front wheel.
After all, why shouldn't an ant have one pair attached to its tail segment? 6
is a lot of legs to cram into the tiny middle segment.
I first partook in this exercise in a small group of STEM graduate students
preparing for a youth teaching program. Maybe 2/3 of us got it wrong (myself
included).
~~~
jshevek
Thank you for this information.
------
ir193
when our programmer implemented exactly what PM required...LOL
------
phendrenad2
I’ve never seen a less mobile-friendly layout. Fixed decorative elements on
the page forcefully covering content.
~~~
monkpit
Agreed - Unreadable on iPhone 6
~~~
adrianhel
Funny. On my Samsung I just saw a non-mobile website and zoomed in.
So I guess...
Samsung > Iphone
~~~
adrianhel
This will get so many downvotes...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Mall of Shame - replicatorblog
https://medium.com/@foundercollective/the-mall-of-shame-5c9de67df34
======
crushcrashcrush
This piece is hilariously out of touch.
“Middle-class staples like Williams & Sonoma, Coach, Lush, and an Apple store
(along with the obligatory food court Sbarro) help account for $1.8B in annual
sales.”
Those are not middle class “staples” - the US middle class can not afford to
shop at Williams Sonoma. Apple is a luxury or near-luxury brand, same with
Coach.
~~~
swarnie_
Never heard of Williams Sonoma before, visiting their website gives me an idea
as to why...
"PAGE IS NOT AVAILABLE IN YOUR REGION
TO OUR VALUED CUSTOMERS,
We regret that due to technical challenges caused by new regulations in
Europe, we can for the time being no longer accept orders from the European
Union.
If you reside in the UK you can continue to order from our UK websites or shop
from our locations and partners."
~~~
beat
It's a fancy kitchen store for malls. The kind of place to go if you think a
set of beautiful hammered copper French pans will make you a better cook, or
you want a really Italian-looking espresso maker. Nice place to buy a serving
dish for your mother-in-law.
And yes, middle class people can afford to shop for luxury goods, and do so.
It's not unusual to have a moderately expensive hobby.
------
ergothus
> many of the products in these stores seem to be dubiously sourced, the
> commitments of some, e.g. Christmas Town, are definitionally short, and the
> branding is banal. Currently, 10% of the storefronts are occupied by these
> independent brands, but one wonders what happens when this shrine to
> shopping begins to feel more like a swank swapmeet?
Other than the dubiously sourced products (which is a problem at Amazon too,
so hardly unique to this space), I'm unclear on why this is such a problem?
What happens when a "shrine to shopping" begins to feel more like a "swank
swapmeet"? Presumably people buy stuff, which is the point, and honestly,
after a lifetime of being deceived by or taken advantage of non-"banal"
brands, banality doesn't sound so threatening. The rest of the article (not
that there's much of it) leaves me likewise uncertain of what need is going
unfulfilled. Is there anything I'm missing?
~~~
replicatorblog
Apple never co-locates with a Dollar Tree store. There's a point at which
Apple and other high-end retailers will decide that their brands are being
diminished by being located next to an Alpaca-based clothing store. This may
create a death spiral that accelerates the demise of the mall.
~~~
ghaff
The NH malls across the border from Massachusetts are a somewhat unique
situation. I'm not really familiar with the mall the author is writing about
but the other one across the border is definitely lowish end by Apple
standards. However, because lots of people cross the border to save on sales
taxes, it makes sense Apple would be there--and is one of the busier stores in
the whole mall.
------
markbnj
I don't get this piece at all, starting with the title. What's shameful, or
even mysterious? Malls all over are closing/shrinking due to disruption of the
retail business by Amazon and others. In this specific case the mall is
located at a sales tax gulf between NH and MA (I used to live in Londonderry
and shop at Rockingham) and so the shrinking fortunes of the mall owner have
provided an opportunity for independents to move in and acquire "first class"
store frontage they otherwise couldn't afford.
~~~
replicatorblog
Author here. My point is that if a mall that is by all accounts one of the
success stories can only fill space with low-quality retailers, maybe the
situation is more dire than we're being led to believe. I live in that area
and was shocked to see how many storefronts had suddenly gone low-rent. But
YMMV.
~~~
ghaff
I'm much more familiar with the other NH mall in Nashua (Pheasant Lane). I
guess I would have said that it, at least, has long been midrange at best--not
that I've made a study of it. It does have an Apple Store which is something
of an outlier for the mall as a whole but, as you allude to, Salem and Nashua
are both somewhat unusual because of the sales tax situation.
~~~
cbm-vic-20
For more context for people not in the area, the Pheasant Lane Mall is close
enough to the border that part of the parking lot is in Massachusetts.
Also, the Merrimack outlet mall that opened a few years ago is also almost
certainly taking foot traffic away from the southern NH malls.
------
oceanplexian
I grew up going to this mall. I think the premise of this article is a bit
misleading.
Sure, some malls are not doing well, some will go out of business, and some
will evolve. For example, the nearby Bedford mall lost tenants, turned into a
ghost mall, and was demolished a few years ago. But in its place, they built a
Whole Foods. And right down the road, a large outdoor mall with outlet stores
opened and is thriving with over 100 stores filled with upscale national
retailers.
Lots of large chains and even anchors have died. Circuit City, CompUSA,
Filene's, KB Toys, Ames, and so on. Amazon didn't kill these companies. These
stores were killed by poor management (For example Best Buy is thriving in the
age of Amazon). Tech giants would do well to learn from big box retail
failures because having a website does not make one immune to poor management
or a failure to innovate.
------
bluedino
Our local mall has lost most of the bigger stores, anchored by a Sears and JC
Penny. McDonald’s, subway, and Taco Bell have left the food court.
It almost looks like a flea market inside. Tattoo shops, stands that sell gold
by the inch and cheap phone cases, bootleg t-shirt vendors, nail salons,
there’s even what’s basically a convienence store.
Cheap rents sound good, but they bring in low-end retailers that don’t stick
around and sell gray market product.
~~~
ghaff
My closest mall still has its Sears and JC Penney but we'll see for how long.
Macy's is its _most_ successful anchor store. The complex has already lost
Toys R' Us. There's a successful local grocery chain and a Home Depot that are
always busy in the same shopping center; the mall itself has stores but very
little traffic.
------
martin-adams
As someone who has worked for a startup in this space, I understand the
sentiment of this article. Shopping malls desire anchor stores to be the
driving force of footfall traffic. Those stores are very keen on knowing the
spending power of where they operate which the malls use survey data to
collect that information. When the profile of stores change in the mall, it
changes the spending power of people visiting. That in turn can cause those
anchor stores to relocate elsewhere.
Retail is suffering right now. High street brands in the UK are collapsing
with HMV in just the past week. Mike Ashley (Sports Direct CEO) has called to
tax online retailers to make it a level playing field for the high street[1].
I personally disagree because I honestly don't think the retail experience is
helping themselves to innovate and train staff correctly (at least in the UK).
When visiting shops becomes a frustrating experience for the consumer, then no
wonder people turn to shopping online for convenience.
I think the article is saying that if things continue on their trend, it will
get a lot worse before it gets better.
[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/03/mike-
ashley-...](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/dec/03/mike-ashley-wants-
tax-on-retailers-with-online-sales-of-more-than-20-per-cent-sports-direct)
------
beat
While the mall obviously needs some revamping, I don't think tech entrepreneur
magic is going to revamp it. It's ultimately a problem of customers wanting a
physical space to shop in, otherwise, why bother leaving the couch at all? Why
not just get what you want on Amazon? The invisible hand of the market will
refine the malls, if it can get past the coarse-grained lumpiness of large,
expensive facilities.
I'm almost more interested in online boutique stores, and their fates. How do
they compete against Amazon? I hate going to buy some obscure thing, and then
getting hit with a ten buck shipping charge for something that will arrive two
weeks later, when Amazon Prime has me used to "free" two day shipping. But
when I want that fancy smoked salt, or the obscure imported Japanese pen, I
have to go to the boutiques.
~~~
will_brown
>why bother leaving the couch at all? Why not just get what you want on
Amazon?
You are obviously pro-amazon...but my experiences with amazon are awful.
From counterfeit goods, to just shit products (examples: dress ties that stain
my white dress shirts, ill fitting clothing, to goods that never arrive, even
amazon basic products have turned out to be embarrassingly shit quality).
I recently purchased a new snowboard jacket and would never have thought about
rolling the dice on amazon when I could buy online from the manufacturer
direct at the same price and know I’m getting the real deal.
I completely understand someone opting for an in person shopping experience
over amazon. buying online direct from manufacturers is one thing, but I
honestly can’t understand why anyone would buy from amazon after my
experiences.
~~~
beat
I don't think I'm "pro-Amazon", but I'm generally a happy customer. Then
again, I use them mostly for name brand goods. Prices that are too good to be
true are a warning sign for me.
~~~
will_brown
>Then again, I use them mostly for name brand goods.
Why not buy straight from the manufacturer for name brand goods? I’m guessing
price or maybe the name brand products you buy the manufacturers don’t sell
direct. If it’s the former, isn’t that a warning sign?
------
dexwiz
I don’t understand the point of this article. It starts off with by discussing
that the most successful mall is a tax haven, and then muses about possible
future mall occupants.
Also this article has a suspicious number of upvotes, no comments, and is
realitivily low quality. Smells like vote manipulation.
~~~
replicatorblog
Hey, author here. If you look at my submission history, you'll note vote
manipulation is not my foray :)
If you want a clear point, how about "At what percent of mom and pop retail
occupancy do malls, even successful ones, become unattractive destinations for
the stores that are still driving retail sales."
------
ungzd
Related series of videos:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNz4Un92pGNxQ9vNgmnCx...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNz4Un92pGNxQ9vNgmnCx7dwchPJGJ3IQ)
"Dead Mall Series: Informative tours of some of the most depressed shopping
malls in the mid-atlantic region and beyond."
------
megaman8
I hope all these mostly useless malls get replaced with things are that more
needed: libraries, decent grocery stores, farm co-ops/local farming, and
especially housing. At the end of the day, humans need shelter more than they
need stuff to put in their shelters.
~~~
KozmoNau7
Absolutely agreed, we need more empathy and less stuff in our lives.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
We've Launched... - blored
http://www.clutterme.com
======
jey
That is a horrible front page. You don't want your users to see that right
away. I do understand that you want your users to see right away that your
service is "OMG SO EASY" and everything, but throwing them right into the
empty personal page is very confusing. You should have a more general front
page that explains what's going on succinctly using simple terminology and
pictures, with a big "Get Started!" button that drops them into the editing
interface that's the current front page.
Alternatively, your front page could be the editing interface, but with the
default contents set to an explanation as described above. So the user would
just get started by removing your content and adding their own.
I understood your front page, but only after a moment of confusion. Your
average user is just going to be confused and scared away by that page. (They
have no incentive to put in the effort to figure out what's going on, so it
has to be obvious.)
Just my two cents.
~~~
blored
What front page do you have?
~~~
ed
Alright, so the parent poster was not very constructive with his criticism but
personally I have no idea what to do with this site. And don't take that to be
a reflection of your own abilities as a developer, it just means it's time to
push through the next iteration cycle and do better.
A front page should provide a value proposition, either implicitly (allow the
user to sample your service in a way that makes its value clear, like google)
or explicitly (by stating your value prop, like photobucket). I think the best
front pages are hybrids, much like Flickr, which allow you to both quickly
sample the service and read how you should be using the site.
Just some food for thought!
------
waleedka
You got a good name and it matches the message you're trying to convey. I
think that's very good. I'd suggest putting snapshots of the sample web sites
so users get a real sense of what can be done on your site. Having the sample
links as text links might not get many to click them.
~~~
Shooter
"You got a good name and it matches the message you're trying to convey."
Why? Can someone explain the name to me...?
~~~
Alex3917
Because their target users (MySpacers) view animated gifs and busy color
schemes as a form of self-expression.
~~~
Shooter
To each his own.
------
chadboyda
Fantastic job with the simplicity of it all. Only suggestion I have right now
(after about 30 seconds) is to change the move block of text icon. I think
it's a "paw"? But it was not intuitive at all to me what the "paw" did. I kept
asking myself "how can I move this block of text?" Only after several guesses
did I figure out it was the "paw" icon.
~~~
blored
We're trying to get more intuitive than that. You don't really have to use the
paw, just click and drag.
------
Prrometheus
When I started using it, I thought "Holy G------ S---. That is F------
Awesome!" Pardon the language, but I was excited. I mean, it needs work, but
this could become THE de facto site for any novice looking to put together a
quick website. And it gets an "A" for mind-blowing usability.
~~~
blored
We're a bitch in IE though.
~~~
Prrometheus
This is the way people are going to make websites in the future (except
techies like you and me). They're just going to pop open a site like clutterme
and CLICK AND TYPE. Do you know how much easier that is than WYSIWYG editors
like Dreamweaver? It takes a sophisticated 15 year-old to work Dreamweaver. On
the other hand, my MOM could do this, hell my Grandmom, hell: my dead
Grandmom. No HTML elements, no uploading, some slick GUI voodoo-magic. That is
soooooooooooooooooo Fuckin' cool.
Add links. Ditch the social networking shit. Make it less kiddie (or make one
for the kids and one for the adults). Bingo. Good-bye Dreamweaver. Hello THE
de-facto place to make a website.
This could seriously rock the world, man.
~~~
blored
=)
Thanks Prrometheus, we just have to keep on spreading the word.
Update: IE now works a _lot_ better.
------
vlad
Sample site: <http://www.clutterme.com/vlad>
You guys should have a demo site. You can use mine.
------
zach
This is totally cool. Well done.
Don't worry about the Comic Sans haters, of which I include myself. I think
it's great for this site because it communicates being approachable and
homemade. I think the very fact that it's used so much more widely by
individuals than advertisers or corporations gives it that kind of "a person
made this" feeling. Then again, this weekend I saw a church whose sign out
front was in Comic Sans... sigh.
------
almost
Really needs a "save" button. I'm guessing to save the page you just sign up
but that's because I'm used to this sort of thing, your average web user is
probably not going to understand.
Very nicely done though, I'm impressed.
~~~
blored
It's automatically saved even without signing up.
------
darragjm
just found a bug...if you click Options->Widgets, check off a new widget and
try to save without logging in the Cancel button stops working. same thing
goes for trying to change the background without logging in.
~~~
darragjm
checked it again this morning and it appears you guys fixed it. keep up the
good work!
~~~
alex_c
Yup, fixed it last night. Thanks for the heads-up!
------
tokipin
bugs:
if i click on a picture and go back before it's finished loading, a page shows
up momentarily, saying "The image [...] cannot be displayed, because it
contains errors." nice formal english there btw
the button onclick action triggers from clicking on the text of the button
(for example, "Privacy") but nowhere else. i'm using firefox
private frames can have the object border around them even though they can't
be edited
ideas/suggestions:
those sample pages need to be actual pages. currently they're images. i saw a
working version of one so i'm guessing that's currently the only way to link
from a picture
a "settings" control for widgets (alongside the font/color stuff) for
configuring widget-specific things such as links. i'm guessing you're already
working on something like this
a few templates would be good to start people off
what's "Blank Button?"
some might find it useful if the top frame of the google custom page could be
edited, to put links in for example. making the frame persistent might also be
desirable -- hide/show on hotkey? drag & drop from host page? into a "look at
later" box?
a text widget that automatically shifts/hides/tabs/scrollbars text when
resized. supporting multiple entries would make it a nice blog widget
when clicking on a picture, show the enlargement without leaving the page
allow movement of multiple items by click & dragging a selection box around
them
\-- just some heuristics. i like the site so far. gl
------
wastedbrains
Seems like an interesting personal wiki, with a very cool ability to WYSIWYG
create and move things around. The main problem I have is I can't see how it
would be anymore useful than a personal wiki. Also while the WYSIWYG it
doesn't add to the usefulness of the site, and I had problems using some of
the design features. So I like the concept, and some of the ideas are really
cool, but I don't know what I would ever really want it for.
------
herdrick
Very cool. But that default font has got to go.
~~~
ModelCitizen
Agreed. <http://www.bancomicsans.com/>
~~~
nickb
Even though I absolutely hate Comic Sans, I think that Comic Sans is used
correctly in this case: text for speech bubbles. I'd use something else for
bigger paragraphs of text.
~~~
blored
It depends what page you're looking at. There are 3 versions of the splash
page we are trying out. Speech bubbles appear only on the third one.
------
Zak
geocities -> myspace -> clutterme?
If that's your target market, I think your chances are good; I don't think I'd
use it, but if I had a 14 year old sister I'd show it to her.
------
blored
Digg:
[http://digg.com/tech_news/Easiest_website_creator_on_the_Int...](http://digg.com/tech_news/Easiest_website_creator_on_the_Internet/blog)
Reddit: <http://reddit.com/info/2vgiy/comments>
~~~
blored
The reddit one no longer works because I deleted it. I resubmitted with a
catchier title.
------
ardit33
WTF is this? Can you explain in three sentences or less what you guys are
doing with clutterme?
~~~
bootload
_"... Can you explain in three sentences or less what you guys are doing with
clutterme? ..."_
Agreed. But I'd settle for either
\- Text description of medium length - yuk!"
\- Here's a picture of how to make something with text - Sort of ok
\- Watch the video- Best
Since this is a tool it's probably better to create a viewable demo so you can
get an idea BEFORE you start. Especially for people who are not really sure
what is going on. One other thing that annoys me a tiny bit is there is no
menu so I can't really navigate anywhere so I can find out who made it,
instructions, blog, etc.
One other point. It might help users to have a graphic indicating where they
can click to edit an object. You run your mouse over an object and the
controls appear, move it away and the controls disappear. It is not
immediately apparent where to move your mouse again.
_A bit later..._
Yep it's a pain to find the edit point. I would have liked some visual clue
(outline, dotted text around the control) where it is until I accept the edit.
I know the page is an "in-edit" page but I'd like some visual clue to controls
I have edited, and bits that still need work
~~~
blored
Good points.
I should have posted the video link.
Here's the video Demo of our site:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=og7GBtFLZhA>
~~~
bootload
_"... I should have posted the video link. ..."_
Thanks. If you can add the link it to the demo page.
Had play with it and it does work and made a sort of messy myspace inspired
page. Couple of things I found.
\- it wasn't obvious you needed widgets to type stuff in but once I found
"options" it was
\- background + profile image upload worked fine
\- text resizing ok but as you increased the size to say 72pt the edit outline
stayed at old size
\- no problems moving controls around screen but noticeable delay (but not
unworkable)
\- worked as advertised but a bit slow but not too slow.
\- thought I would have needed grids so I could nicely lay stuff out but
realised this really not needed.
One question on style. Why have you chosen to have Ajax style edit dialog and
not say a plain html page on a separate url? I'm noticing this on lots of
sites (for me it's a pain but livable) why is it chosen?
Another Q? How do you make a hyperlink?
_A bit later ..._
Had some trouble with the login on the homepage. Logged in via the main page ~
<http://www.clutterme.com/bootload>
~~~
blored
Hyperlink = www.clutterme.com or <a href="<http://www.clutterme.com>">This
Links</a> ... without embedded styles.
------
nextmoveone
I dont really like the Home Page, as a 'stupid' user I don't know what to do!
And that background thing has me stuck there in Firefox.
You should really consider redoing the home page...but other than that...it's
simple enough to use.
------
randallsquared
Took me a while to figure out that the front page isn't tied to a cookie or
something. I was compiling a bug list, and then it became clear that other
people were deleting things. :)
~~~
blored
I think I was editing the splash page while you were looking at it.
------
initself
You beat me to it!
I am having a great time using the site and I suspect other people will too.
I'm getting close to my 50MB limit already. It's a blast to use!
------
imsteve
that actually looks rather nice.
------
jshgmail
totally totally broken in safari
~~~
blored
I know, and as a MacBook user I'm totally ashamed.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Skype server took a short break - dotpot
http://www.skype.com/intl/en/
======
lapusta
On Win7 Deleting "C:\Users\\{Your Username}\AppData\Roaming\Skype\shared.xml"
solves the problem.
~~~
fogus
And on OSX it's `~/Library/Application Support/Skype/shared.xml`
~~~
phatbyte
Thank you, that fixed it ! Love HN :D
------
pearle
Wow, ok -- I thought I was crazy for about 40 minutes this morning as I tried
launching Skype on 4 of my computers (2 Windows 7 machines, 1 Ubuntu machine,
and 1 MacBook Pro). It crashed within seconds on each and every one.
It's good to know it wasn't just me.
BTW, thanks to those of you who posted potential fixes.
------
bad_user
My Linux Skype client (ver 2.2) kept crashing on me since 3 hours ago, as in
when I'm starting the client it stays open for about 3-4 seconds, then quits
with message "Aborted".
To fix it, I first deleted ~/.Skype, then I disabled by Internet connection,
then reopened Skype, then tried to login (of course it doesn't work, my net is
down, but it's going in a loop mode continuously trying to connect), then re-
enable my Internet connection.
Well, either that or just dumb luck, but I'm not touching it to see if the
method is repeatable.
~~~
mbubb
Reiterating the Windows and MacOSX fix:
[http://heartbeat.skype.com/2011/05/problems_signing_into_sky...](http://heartbeat.skype.com/2011/05/problems_signing_into_skype_an.html)
For me on Ubuntu - simply moving the .Skype directory and rerunning the
program worked
------
edvinasbartkus
"Some of you may have problems signing in to Skype and making calls. We’re
investigating and hope to have more details to share soon."
<http://twitter.com/#!/Skype/status/73718207676022784>
------
fogus
<obligatory Microsoft joke>
~~~
rakkhi
Don't worry they are migrating to IIS
------
sapper2
Downgrading to Skype 4.2 seems to solve it.
[http://blog.alertfox.com/2011/05/mysterious-skype-crash-
down...](http://blog.alertfox.com/2011/05/mysterious-skype-crash-downgrade-
to.html)
------
teoruiz
Even <http://heartbeat.skype.com/> seems to be suffering, and when it loads it
claims that everything is "working normally".
Sigh.
------
andrewpi
Everything seems to be back now. I didn't delete anything and launched Skype
normally without any crashes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Resurrecting impl Trait - nercury
http://aturon.github.io/blog/2015/09/28/impl-trait/
======
arthursilva
This would be a great addition. After non lexical lifetimes this is probably
the most awaited post-1.0 feature.
------
pornel
What's OIBIT?
And why is a new sigil required, instead of:
fn produce_iter_static<I: Iterator<u8>>() -> I
~~~
bbatha
>What's OIBIT?
Opt in built in trait. These are traits that implemented for everything by
default. They are generally marker traits for some kind of functionality. The
standard library has Sync (shared memory thread-safe) and Send (thread safe to
send over a channel). Some more detail can be found in the RFC[1] that
implemented them.
[1] [https://github.com/rust-
lang/rfcs/blob/master/text/0019-opt-...](https://github.com/rust-
lang/rfcs/blob/master/text/0019-opt-in-builtin-traits.md)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Should YouTube Charge a Fee to Upload Video? - peter123
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/16/should-youtube-charge-a-fee-to-upload-video/
======
DanielStraight
Sure, if they want to lose 99.9999999999999999999999% of their uploaders.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ring and Nest helped normalize American surveillance - pseudolus
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/02/18/ring-nest-surveillance-doorbell-camera/
======
kwillets
The drama on this is just getting out of hand.
Let he who has not posted a picture on social media cast the first stone.
~~~
DeedsMoraine
_throws stone_
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Gravity’s Kiss: The third ripple - dnetesn
http://mitp.nautil.us/feature/159/gravitys-kiss
======
Camillo
I'm going to save you some time, having lost mine. The article consists of a
sociologist listing the mentions of gravitational waves he has seen in the
media. But it has no meat to it, and there is no payoff: it just lists them,
and ends. It's excerpted from the guy's book, but it won't make you want to
buy it.
The only slightly surprising things (I won't go as far as to say
"interesting") are:
1) The Daily Mail and Barack Obama apparently made the same mistake about
Einstein's predictions.
2) Without comment:
> Later I will discover that my major thesis about social construction, which
> turns on pointing out that no gravitational waves were seen but merely a few
> numbers that were interpreted as gravitational waves, has been thoroughly
> anticipated (albeit on a strange, flat-earther YouTube channel that appears
> to treat conspiracy theories as an art form).
~~~
c517402
"1) The Daily Mail and Barack Obama apparently made the same mistake about
Einstein's predictions."
Einstein predicted the phenomena of gravitational waves mentioned by Obama,
but Einstein did not predict the gravitational wave chirp of coalescing black
holes detected by LIGO and mentioned in by The Daily Mail.
------
PaulHoule
The US military has had an SBIR out for years to develop a gravitational wave
radio. It could go right through the earth, no need for satellites. The
transmitter though would probably use enough energy to destroy the enemy,
maybe even the whole Earth.
~~~
gus_massa
Do you have a link to support your affirmation?
The gravity waves detector are enormous. To get a good signal, the gravity
waves emitter must be enormous too. I haven't done the calculation, but I
doubt that gravity waves can pass through the Earth. Gravity affect dirt and
it will absorb the waves.
~~~
birdtime
Gravity waves don't "go through" the earth but rather the earth expands and
contracts in space-time. This contracting and expanding of the earth itself,
although minute, is the evidence and detection of gravity waves.
~~~
gus_massa
I know about LIGO, but ...
Can LIGO "see" only upwards or it can "see" downwards too? Neutrinos can pass
though the Earth because they only interact with week force and gravity, and
both have a very small coupling. Can "gravitons" pass though Earth?
As someone noticed in an comment a few months ago, there is no experimental
evidence of the gravitons and no complete theory about them, but I think it's
a good guess.
So, in other words, the minute contracting and expanding of space inside the
Earth while the gravitational waves pass though it must interact with any
particle with mass. The coupling is weak, but there are plenty of them. So
some of the energy of the waves will be dissipated as heat inside the Earth.
How much of the energy of the waves is lost while passing though the Earth?
~~~
gliese1337
Can "gravitons" pass though Earth?
Yes. And the fact that there is no complete theory of gravitons doesn't really
matter. It is sufficient to know that scare-quoted "gravitons" (which may be
real fundamental particles or may simply be mathematically convenient pseudo-
particles corresponding to a classical gravitational wave) can pass through
the Earth.
They must be able to do so, for essentially exactly the same reason that
neutrinos can: they couple extremely weakly to matter. Which should not be a
surprise, because gravity is such a relatively weak force- weaker even than
the eponymous "weak force". The fact that neutrinos couple so weakly to other
matter is also why they are so dang hard to detect. Meanwhile, gravitons /
gravitational waves couple even more weakly to matter, and thus are
correspondingly even harder to detect than neutrinos, and pass through solid
matter even more easily.
Annoyingly, if it were easier to detect them, that would necessarily imply
that the Earth is less transparent to them, and vice-versa: they harder they
are to detect, the more transparent the Earth must be. Because, if the Earth
were not transparent to them, then that entails that there are materials in
the Earth that interact strongly with them, and we could use those materials
to build a better detector!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jakarta Is Sinking So Fast, It Could End Up Underwater - prostoalex
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/21/world/asia/jakarta-sinking-climate.html?_r=0
======
sathackr
So the city is sinking many inches, even feet per year(due to excessive ground
water withdrawals). With all the problems the city has, how does climate
change(an average sea level rise of a few millimeters per year) even wind up
on the reporters radar?
I'm no denier, but it aggravates me when someone tries to force a connection
to global warming/climate change.
~~~
pje
Sea levels are projected to rise from 0.6 to 6 meters this century. [1] So
while urban sinking is a much bigger immediate threat, climate change will
pose a significant problem in the near future, and—crucially—will affect
_every coastal city in the world_ , not just Jakarta.
[1]: [https://sealevel.nasa.gov/understanding-sea-
level/projection...](https://sealevel.nasa.gov/understanding-sea-
level/projections/empirical-projections)
~~~
mrighele
> Sea levels are projected to rise from 0.6 to 6 meters this century.
I think you mixed up the units, the article says
> 0.2 meters to 2.0 meters (0.66 to 6.6 feet)
~~~
pje
Yes, thank you! I did mix up the units, and I can no longer edit my original
comment :\
------
chewz
Entire Indonesia is falling apart. Economic development is terribly slow over
long term and their main export industries (oil, mining, coal and palm oil -
[1]) do not seem to have a future due to underinvestment and drying demand.
Quite sad.. Such a beautiful, diverse country and nice people.
[1]
[https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/idn/#Exports](https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/profile/country/idn/#Exports)
~~~
averagewall
This is a bit of a nitpick but saying a country has nice people bothers me. It
sounds like an empty platitude when they don't have much else to be proud of.
Do you really mean Indonesians are nicer than people from somewhere else? What
countries don't have nice people?
~~~
robk
Madagascar. Least nice people I've ever encountered
~~~
jpatokal
This sits rather oddly with the fact that the Malagasy are basically a bunch
of Indonesians who landed on an island off the coast of Africa.
------
stmfreak
Sea levels have risen a couple millimeters in recent decades, but Jakarta has
sunk (according to this article) 14 feet in some areas. But keep on beating
that climate change drum!
Sea level rise is global, but it seems wherever we can find sinking cities we
get stories about climate change and its relation to rising sea levels.
------
Feniks
Yeah Jakarta was founded as the Amsterdam of the East Indies. Sadly Indonesia
doesn't have the near limitless resources of its old colonial owner that keeps
Amsterdam/Holland from sinking.
Climate change is going to hurt the poorer countries the most.
~~~
rsj_hn
Ultimately the resources a nation has are the skills of its people and
political will. No nations resources are limitless, and the Netherlands has
far fewer real resources but much better skills and organizational
capabilities.
The fact that the Netherlands was a former colonial power doesn't give them
any "colony juice" that they can squeeze onto the ground and dams rise up like
apple trees. They still have to design and build the thing given their smarts
and labor, and Indonesia has to design the thing given their smarts and labor.
The only difference is in the pool of available talent and the organizational
abilities of the government to marshall that talent. Given Indonesia's much
larger population and greater abundance of natural resources, it's a joke to
suggest that it has no resources to build a dam whereas a tiny nation with
fewer resources is able to do it. Indonesia's problem is that they are more
corrupt and disorganized, and can't marshall their resources effectively.
~~~
defo_nonconvex
Tiny country by land mass maybe, but you know the Dutch East India Company's
peak market cap was (inflation-adjusted) 8x10^12 USD, right? If you don't
understand the economic impact of early resource abundance, on the ability to
construct education systems, universities, professional organizations,
infrastructure, and industry, and the 'pool of available talent', then pick up
a strategy game.
Otherwise just Rand-ian codswallop.
~~~
rsj_hn
Yes, but those nominal amounts are just paper. They are a mechanism to
marshall labor, nothing more. They don't correspond to real resources. This is
an interesting fallacy -- I remember playing Freeciv, and you would get 1000
coins in the bank, and if you wanted to speed up building of some monument,
you just spend the coins and poof, all these things get built, even if you
don't have the labor or real resources to do it. The world doesn't work like
that. In the real world, if you try to cash out your stock and sell it to
build something without the real resources to do it, all that happens is
inflation goes up. But a country really only has the labor and land and
domestic equipment that it has, and it needs to use that to build all the
dams. You can create paper claims valued at hundreds of trillions of dollars
if you want, but it doesn't add a single hour of manpower to the country.
------
blunte
"Nobody here believes in the greater good" \- this, and an apparent basic lack
of education.
Remember that time in western history that we learned of the benefits of
washing hands for disease control? I have witnessed people in Jakarta
regularly urinating into little drainage ditches just a few meters away from
people who were washing their dishes. You could assume they do this because
there are not better places to wash dishes (but if you've ever camped you know
you can "clean" all the surface with dirt/sand and then use a small amount of
less contaminated water to finish the job). You wouldn't assume the guy peeing
had no other options, as there are plenty of corners of garages and sheds
available. So that's one big problem.
From my admittedly limited experiences in Indonesia, I would characterize the
people as positive, reasonably industrious, and friendly. When managed and
directed, they can build massive structures. Jakarta has so many high rise
buildings you would be shocked. But the parts that are not managed are kind of
left unfinished or are poorly finished. Fittings in buildings are irregular or
worse, and spaces just a hand's reach beyond one's property boundary are left
full of trash or even excrement as if it didn't exist. This I cannot
understand. Perhaps it's something to do with a lack of pride (which can be a
positive attribute when compared to societies too full of pride, but which can
also be detrimental at this low extreme).
Some other fascinating examples of strange (and collectively detrimental)
behaviors... there was a stretch of major freeway that had a minimum occupancy
requirement during rush hours. As I understood, you were not allowed to drive
on that stretch at that time with just a single occupant. And during those
times, there were (presumably poorer) people who would stand dangerously close
to traffic, casually waiting for someone to stop and pick them up. They would
be driven to the other end of the zone, paid a small tip, and then deposited
back onto the road. Then they would somehow cross the road and ride back the
other direction. Some women would do this with their small children in tow.
This suggests the level of poverty and (potentially) the lack of opportunity
for some people, but it also demonstrates how plans designed to improve
situations can be hijacked for individual gain. And traffic was so horrendous
that you really can't blame the city for trying that occupancy approach.
I was at a talk given by an engineer who was doing volunteer work to help
communities be aware of floods as they were developing. It was fascinating -
basically analyzing Twitter activity to determine very localized details of
flooding. But during his time there, he observed layers of flood walls built
that should have prevented many floods. He also observed that along these
stone walls, locals had cut openings through them to facilitate easy foot
passage. In case it's not clear from my description, they had cut openings in
flood walls so it would be easier for them to walk. Predictably, during flash
floods, the water would be a meter higher on one side and just POURING through
the man-made openings here and there. Eventually it would equalize, leaving
the entire area flooded. _boggle_
Finally, driving in the higher end shopping areas, it was not too uncommon to
see $140,000 Mercedes AMG G wagons and the occasional Rolls Royce driving
around. My driver explained that some of these people were government
employees, and that it was well-known that government employees would receive
extra payments and lavish gifts for providing beneficial opportunities to
wealthy individuals or businesses. Fortunately that sort of thing doesn't
happen in our developed countries.
There is no clean end to this wall of text.
~~~
cinquemb
I've been living in Jakarta for about a year and a half now, and Id agree with
what you are saying overall.
I think a big problem is that since a lot of the institutions are at the
national level with offices locally (very different from having institutions
organized/with jurisdiction locally and having one or more overarching
above/beside them), such that there's no "competition" over local governance
which would naturally attract/repel people to regions over others based on how
things are run. Which incidentally, seems in line with the pervasiveness of
the corruption.
You just wont get the local office for the national police to care about
people cutting holes in the flood walls, or pretty much anything unless you
pay them.
------
mattdeboard
Well actually _adjusts fedora_ rate of sinking is orthogonal to whether it
winds up underwater
~~~
newfoundglory
Well _actually_ , if it sinks slowly enough then people could build sea walls
and so on to keep the water out.
~~~
blunte
But if you see my unfortunately long comment elsewhere, there will be some
locals who will cut holes in your wall to facilitate foot traffic.
------
Pica_soO
Best point in time to calculate the settle point of the waterline and develop
new waterfront property. Good point in time for alot of cities at the moment
------
imr_
Hence the definition of sinking...
~~~
choward
Good point. The "so fast" part actually means nothing.
~~~
forinti
Maybe they meant it's so fast there's no time to do anything about it.
------
DonHopkins
Isn't this old news from 2011?
[http://jakarta.apache.org/](http://jakarta.apache.org/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Don't Quit Your Day Job to Start Something New - daveambrose
http://adage.com/talentworks/article.php?article_id=131219
======
kschrader
I've done both the "work and start a start-up" and the "quit and start a
start-up" thing, and I wouldn't ever do the double work thing again.
When you're first starting a tech start-up you need to go through an intensely
creative period to help you figure out what exactly you're going to do at the
beginning. After that you need to put a ton of time into making things happen.
In my experience, your day job will suck so much life out of you that your
start-up will pay a huge price during this crucial early period.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Finding links between the Standard Model of particle physics and the octonions - knv
https://www.wired.com/story/the-peculiar-math-that-could-underlie-the-laws-of-nature/
======
_Microft
The original article at Quanta Magazine has been discussed here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17575585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17575585)
------
tranchms
I highly recommend you watch her thesis on YouTube:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBTUVg91bao](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBTUVg91bao)
You don’t have to be a math wiz to appreciate the octonion model and it’s
implications for fundamental particle physics.
It really is a beautiful insight of profound proportions.
------
beautifulfreak
There are higher dimensional algebras, too. We have: 4-dimensional
quaternions, 8-dimensional octonions, 16-dimensional sedenions, 32-dimensional
trigintaduonions, 64-dimensional sexagintaquattuornions, 128-dimensional
centumduodetrigintanions, 256-dimensional ducentiquinquagintasexions
Who knows, maybe reality is explained by even higher dimensional systems. The
32 dimensional algebra ends with "onion," so that's my pick.
------
okket
Discussion about octonions from 12 days ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17575585](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17575585)
(186 comments)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IAmA Dane Jasper, CEO of Sonic, Northern California's Largest Independent ISP - quantisan
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/8eccqb/im_dane_jasper_cofounder_and_ceo_of_sonic/
======
Permit
I especially enjoyed the story of Sonic's founding
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/8eccqb/comment/dxu0km...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/8eccqb/comment/dxu0km6)
Relevant portion pasted below:
Regarding the founding, when Scott and I were at the Santa Rosa Junior
College, he did a project in 1992 to provide dialup access to students, using
this new OS called Linux. Linux had just gotten its first Ethernet interface
driver support a week earlier (for the Western Digital 8003EP, a 10BASE2
thinnet card), it was very early, and under really active development - great
for a student project. Active SRJC students could get dialup shell access for
the semester and use Telnet, email, FTP, IRC, Gopher, etc.
Some months later we got a call from another college reporting that “one of
your students is being rude on the Internet”, and would we please tell them to
stop cussing at people on IRC. (Yes, the Internet was a kinder, gentler place
back then.)
We looked up the student record and discovered a weakness in our signup
scheme: the staff who ran the campus mainframe didn’t trust students like us
with much access to records (think: WarGames style grade changes), so we
allowed students to sign up with only a birthdate and SSN, and we asked the
mainframe if that was a current student via a serial line, which squirted back
a 0 or 1 (no or yes) to indicate enrollment status.
As things turned out, some student employees in registration had figured this
out, and when an older student (Mildred) would sign up for aquatic aerobics at
the local JC, the SSN and DOB was being put on a Post-It and sold to a student
(Max) at the nearby high school. Max, as it turned out, liked to troll folks
in IRC, leading to the discovery.
Asking around, we learned that the going rate for a stolen college login was
$25, which led to a lightbulb moment: If people were stealing this thing, we
could replicate what we’d built at the college and offer it commercially. Thus
began Sonoma InterConnect (SON-IC, get it?).
------
wpietri
I'm a huge Sonic fan, so this is great to see. I stuck with them on DSL for a
long time just because a) I wanted a reliable, well-supported connection more
than a flaky but nominally higher speed line, and b) I hate oligopolies, and
did not want to give Comcast a nickel.
Now, though, I have their gigabit fiber and it's great. Less money, same great
support, and much higher speeds. I feel very lucky to live in one of the few
competitive ISP markets in the country. Free markets are great when there's
real competition.
~~~
ww520
They seem to just trying to milk as much out of their DSL customers as
possible, designed to push them to fiber. I used to have their DSL. Their DSL
price was then raised to $55+ a month after the $40 introductory rate. The
speed was not great at 3Mb/s, due to AT&T line quality. I've asked for a break
due to the low speed but the response was the $40 was for new customers. It's
a horrible deal even for $40. I finally bit the bullet and switched to Comcast
on 100Mb/s for $50.
~~~
wpietri
If I understand rightly, the economics of DSL are not great, because they have
to pay AT&T a lot for the access. I agree that 3 Mb/s is not great; I was at
12, which seemed fine to me.
I still thought that was a much better deal that Comcast. I occasionally had
to deal with other people's Comcast lines, and the poor quality and terrible
support meant that I was happy to pay a lot more for a reliable connection
with smart, effective people at the other end of the phone when I needed them.
~~~
bobbytherobot
I find it crazy how AT&T keeps trying to sell me the same DSL for more money
with data caps than I pay Sonic.
------
handedness
I found the WISP discussion interesting:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/8eccqb/im_dane_jasper...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/8eccqb/im_dane_jasper_cofounder_and_ceo_of_sonic/dxuay14/)
------
saryant
I remember getting a call from Dane when we first got DSL from Sonic.net
living in Benicia. He wanted to ask if the service was up and running to our
satisfaction.
Great company, miss having them as my ISP.
------
sulam
I will be happy when I can buy their Gigabit product. Until then, Comcast has
my business. :/
(Previously I was a very happy customer, but having children pushed me from
being a "9Gbps is fine" customer to "ok, I need some serious bandwidth now"
kind of guy.)
~~~
robbiet480
...I sure hope you meant 9Mbps, otherwise I and I assume many others here
would be very jealous of a home 9Gbps connection and more jealous that you
didn't think it was enough for some pretty light internetting :)
~~~
sulam
Sigh, yes. 9Mbps.
------
lewis500
Bless you
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Treehouse – Social Done Right - brandonpindulic
http://brandonpindulic.co/treehouse-social-done-right/
======
pskittle
they're good ,but can be better. Seamless video transmissions would help.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Apple stock is down today? - ilhackernews
http://www.thestreet.mobi/story/12881012/1/why-apple-aapl-stock-is-down-today.html
======
Jiloko
non-mobile link if anyone is looking for it:
[http://www.thestreet.com/story/12881012/1/why-apple-aapl-
sto...](http://www.thestreet.com/story/12881012/1/why-apple-aapl-stock-is-
down-today.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Senseless Ambiguity of North American Turn Signals [video] - lambada
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O1lZ9n2bxWA
======
lambada
As a European this astounded me. The idea of combining the brake and turn
signals is something I've never come across before.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
You can now play Pacman anywhere in the world using Google maps - ReviewDeeper
http://www.reviewdeeper.com/2017/04/google-maps-introduces-pacman-and-you.html
======
camillomiller
Am I the only one who finds all these April fools from google a tad annoying
and unprofessional?
~~~
laumars
It's unfortunate that you've been down voted because you do raise a valid
point in terms of desktop policies in industries that dont the have the same
lax attitudes to PC usage that us IT professionals enjoy.
In an previous job our company also supported call centres. The call centre
agents wouldn't be allowed to use their PCs for anything other than work
usage. Definitely no games. We would use web filtering to help enforce the web
usage policies but Google Easter Eggs, April fools jokes and even the
occasional Google Doodle would often prove to be a complete nightmare for us
as many of the lesser motivated agents would just sit on them all morning
(bare in mind we are talking about entry level jobs in an industry with
limited career growth).
Some of us oldies will also remember the Easter Eggs in MS Office (eg the 3D
flight simulator in Excel 98 and the pinball game in Word 95) and the problems
that caused desktop administrators in the late 90s. It's essentially the same
thing again from Google.
I think sometimes we on HN can forget that IT isn't just used by motivated
engineers like ourselves. Many schools and businesses enforce stricter usage
policies. So i completely agree with you that these kind of stunts from
Google, while amusing for engineers like ourselves, are ultimately
unprofessional for the wider business community.
------
edoloughlin
It was a bit distracting when I accidentally turned this on in navigation
mode. It made my commute much more fun, but I ended up driving all over the
city and was very late for work.
------
mvdwoord
It takes me to a random location somewhere in the world (St Petersburg, Some
place in China or Argentine etc.) Not sure if Google understands the idea
behind April Fools.
------
elliotec
But why
~~~
robjan
Look at your calendar
~~~
leifou
they pulled the same 'gag' in 2015
------
arisAlexis
i was pretty sure i had a malware when i saw it yesterday
------
throwayedidqo
Playing this was deeply satisfying
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Give me examples of C++ work I can do to land me a junior C++ position - sedeki
Give me examples of C++ work I can do to land me a junior C++ position. Please. :-(
======
trcollinson
If you are just trying to get a junior or intern position in a c++
environment, then a basic understanding of c++ oo principles should suffice.
You might want to look at my favorite c/c++ interviewing slide show:
[http://www.slideshare.net/olvemaudal/deep-c](http://www.slideshare.net/olvemaudal/deep-c)
Did you know most of these things before watching the slide show? Great you
are ready to work! Did you need to look a few things up but got excited about
what you were learning? Great you are ready to work! Did you think this was
stupid and that you already know enough, why should you bother looking these
things up? Ut oh, you are not ready to work in this business.
That being said, it seems like you have an underlying concern about getting
into a job at all. Have you applied to some junior c++ positions and been
rejected? Are you living in an area where there are few positions or the
competition is very high? Giving us a bit more information about your
situation will help us to know how to help you.
------
Hiiii5
As I have also had trouble in this field, although mine is more concerned to
game programming, what comes to mind is fundamentals, like what trcollinson
linked. Some of the most important things to know about any programming
position is the language in question. This seems simple in theory, but much of
what programmers need is fundamentals such as algorithms and language
semantics. When I first went for an interview for a game programming I was
asked a question about how to find if a point is in a triangle (find the area
of the original triangle and the area of the triangles created by the points
of the triangle and the point you are looking for, if they are equal than the
point lies within the triangle). I could not answer this question at the time
but some of what was the problem was not knowing the fundamentals of c++ and
not just math.
If you are going for a junior position and it's dealing with information based
programming then dealing with string literals is very important. Many
companies, namely google and micorsoft, love asking questions dealing with
problems with string.
If I had to lay out the steps to getting the job, trcollinson's link is very
good, I would then after knowing not just the slides but the importance behind
the ideas presented I would then learn some fundamental algorithms in dealing
with arrays, string literals, sorting, etc. All of which can be found at
wikipedia:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_algorithms](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_algorithms)
Also equally important is a good cover letter and resume so here is a link to
a story posted by peteretep on how to write these:
[http://www.slideshare.net/perlcareers/how-to-write-a-
develop...](http://www.slideshare.net/perlcareers/how-to-write-a-developer-
cvrsum-that-will-get-you-hired)
------
MrGando
Hey there,
Just go through a good programming interview questions book and solve
everything using the language of choice... in your case it would be C++11.
In case you need some help, I'm in a similar position myself, I could send you
a programming question to your e-mail once a week or so, so we can then
discuss it a bit. That would improve your confidence for sure.
Cheers :)
~~~
sedeki
Yeah sure. What's your email?
EDIT: Do you have Skype rather?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Programmers should know R - jsavimbi
http://www.r-bloggers.com/programmers-should-know-r/
======
etrain
Love the headline, but the article doesn't do the tool justice.
Have been using R off and on for the last 5 years or so, and very heavily for
the last year. For data analysis tasks that fit in memory, it simply can't be
beat. The functional style and REPL work like Lisp/Python with a focus on
crunching numbers, and the graphing/charting and statistics libraries are the
best out there.
There are 1-2 dozen programs I've written over the last year or so that would
be 200 lines of non-trivial java, 50 lines of python, and end up being <10
lines of R.
It's not great at everything, but if you've got some room in your toolbox, and
work with moderate amounts of data regularly, you should consider investing
the time to learn it.
------
r00fus
I think the more important thing is learning statistics - without a
fundamental understanding of why you would do statistical analysis on a
dataset, you can hardly fault someone for not using [Excel,R] to do so.
I'm re-tooling my knowledge of basic stats before I dive into using tools like
R to automate: [http://www.khanacademy.org/?video=statistics--the-
average#st...](http://www.khanacademy.org/?video=statistics--the-
average#statistics)
~~~
zmonkeyz
Wow thank you for that link!
------
JackDanger
For another perspective on why R is worth learning, check out Zed's essay on
it: <http://zedshaw.com/essays/programmer_stats.html>
(note: just ignore the ranty parts and there's brilliance underneath)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Obama Is Hiring a Twitterer - raju
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2010/02/12/obama-is-hiring-a-twitterer/
======
JCThoughtscream
While arguments can be made that Twitter, Facebook et al encourages only
superficial coverage of weighty governmental concerns... hey, at least it acts
like a gateway.
Seriously - what do you notice first? A line on your facebook feed, an alert
from your Tweetdeck account, or a thousand-word column on the NYT or White
House blogpost exhaustively covering every detail? I would hesitate to say
this is in absolutes, but I do feel that the two former two forms of media are
/more/ likely to drag an audience to the latter two - it'd exist outside of
their range of concerns otherwise.
------
joe_the_user
Sadly, I don't think it will help.
Obama came into office with promise that he was going to change how things
operated, not put simply forward the same old programs (of whatever political
stripe). I think that promise is deader than any other. Washington itself
could easily be to blame but I think it's clear that government at the speed
and _transparency_ of twitter is not going to show up very soon. Predictable -
perhaps. Sad - certainly.
~~~
anamax
> Sadly, I don't think it will help.
What could it help?
Twitter is a communications medium. Which of Obama's problems are due to
communications?
~~~
dzlobin
None, which leads me to say what the hell is the point?
------
mscantland
Your tax dollars at work.
I would be for this expenditure if it were likely to involve real
communication. Instead, your money will be spent to pander to the proletariat
and to oversimplify issues that align with Obama getting re-elected.
~~~
spamizbad
> Your tax dollars at work.
From the article: ' __The Democratic National Committee __’s “social networks
manager” job description says the position entails maintaining the President’s
accounts on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace.'
It's a position paid for by the DNC, not the US Government.
~~~
pavs
You and your facts have no place here. hush!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A C# Reading List by Eric Lippert (Principal on C# compiler team at MS) - shawndumas
http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1769249
======
gjulianm
It's a nice list. I would add _C# In A Nutshell_ , it's a pretty good
reference book for both beginners (in the language, not in programming) and
experienced developers.
But this list is outdated. Last C#/CLR edition came with some new features,
like await/async that literally blew my mind, and it would be pretty nice to
have a good reference and explanation on them.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fired Google memo writer draws scorn, cheers and a job offer (from Wikileaks) - pseudolus
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-diversity-idUSKBN1AO1WY
======
moxious
This guy touched a nerve, and now he is the latest football in a really toxic
culture war being waged right now. All of the various culture warriors on both
sides are now going to be lining up to take their 15 minutes in the spotlight,
to wear on their sleeves their commitment to their cause (both sides).
The loser in all of this will continue to be any sense of nuance or rational
debate. If he had a point, it's lost now in claims of "anti-diversity". If his
opponents had a point, it's lost now in claims of "PC authoritarianism".
~~~
_ar7
So if we were to have a rational debate, what points did he have, and points
did his opponents have?
~~~
moxious
The original post that started all of this is here:
[http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-
div...](http://gizmodo.com/exclusive-heres-the-full-10-page-anti-diversity-
screed-1797564320)
Some useful ideas in that post which were buried: Google itself has unexamined
biases; There's real fear among some people that they can't speak their mind
on sensitive issues because they might be ostracized for fired for them (which
the author was); Google needs to have an open and honest discussion about the
costs and benefits of our diversity programs; Google needs to focus on
psychological safety, not just race/gender diversity.
By my count, zero of those were discussed after the memo. Related to the
content of the linked article we're discussing -- the author tried to actually
promote diversity with some ideas (albeit in a hamfisted, and potentially
offensive, way)
His opponents have some points too... (here's a typical response:
[https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-
man...](https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/so-about-this-googlers-
manifesto-1e3773ed1788))
The memo is pushing a fairly outdated and unsupported notion of fundamental
biological differences between the genders. The memo did not out and out say
"women can't code" but it sure did seem like that's what he meant. The memo
author did not for even an instant think about what affect his memo would have
on other people, and so whether misinterpreted or not, he may be guilty of
creating a hostile work place. The memo called for "De-emphasize empathy".
This would validly seem to many people like a really bad idea.
On a sensitive cultural issue, engineers will tend to get upset if what they
write/think is misinterpreted. But on emotional issues, you'd best pay
attention to how your message arrives, because it's always more important than
what you intended your message to mean.
His opponents are currently drowning him out, but the way that even they are
doing it isn't terribly intellectually honest. For example, making simple
claims that all of his claims are refuted by decades of science but neglecting
to proffer that science is a fairly normal but annoying intellectually
dishonest thing to do in a debate.
\--
Google got put in a bad situation here. Diversity is a very important cultural
value to them. So they couldn't do nothing. And I also think it's a terrible
idea to fire a person who was explicitly writing about how the company won't
permit open discussion of hard issues. __This is what makes him a culture war
football, because the extremes on both sides will be able to look at this
case, and see all of their worst fears __.
~~~
d3ckard
I do not see "women can't code" anywhere in that memo. I see "women are less
likely to take interest in coding (for biological reasons possibly)" which is
completely different thing.
~~~
moxious
Granted. To this point, I'd say this: more than half the internet read his
memo and understood "women can't code". At some point, it doesn't matter if
that's not what he said. The impact of his work is how people perceive it, not
what he meant. This isn't really fair, but it is so.
One thing that's obvious: the author clearly did engage in broad
generalizations about half of the population; your quoted sentence is proof.
He hedged these statements with others, saying that of course it always
depends on the individual. But when a person makes broad generalizations about
populations, they're always playing with emotional fire. And once people get
bothered and emotional, all of the rational hedging in the world won't save
your job.
------
alexc05
Wikileaks may have started with the best intentions from the "information
needs to be free" playbook (or maybe it has always been corrupt).
But it is very clear for anyone who has been watching, that they are
absolutely operating as an arm of the Russian government now.
They put their "reputation on the line" to denounce the Steele Dossier. I wish
I could remember the other weird calls they've made recently... but there have
been a few.
There has been congressional testimony claiming Wikileaks as a propaganda arm
of the Russian government.
Through the US election they switched their hosting to Russia:
[http://www.stopfake.org/en/wikileaks-switched-to-russian-
web...](http://www.stopfake.org/en/wikileaks-switched-to-russian-web-hosting-
during-election/)
Current CIA director Mike Pompeo: [http://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-cia-
boss-wikileaks-is-a-r...](http://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-cia-boss-
wikileaks-is-a-russian-tool)
James Clapper former Director of National Intelligence.
[http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/08/clapper-wikileaks-is-
russi...](http://dailycaller.com/2017/05/08/clapper-wikileaks-is-russian-
propaganda-video/)
Not being funny - but I think a job at wikileaks is likely going to get you
walking out the door in handcuffs one day.
~~~
smsm42
Way to drag the Red Scare into a totally unrelated topic.
~~~
alexc05
So the topic isn't entirely unrelated. In fact there is some evidence out
there that the story itself is being artificially amplified by Russian social
media bot accounts.
http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/
Updated on August 8, 4:28 PM
The second story related to the firing of
a Google employee who wrote an internal
manifesto against diversity. In both cases,
users amplified existing hashtags as well as
mainstream news content. Influence operations
aim to raise the profile of certain themes and
issues, but they don't always create the content
they amplify. This is likely the case with the
Google story, which has been trending among
far-right users.
Russia frequently amplifies content related to
the far-right in both the U.S. and in Europe,
but it does so opportunistically. It's easier
to amplify something people are already talking
about than to create a trend out of thin air.
Gamergate was similar. Right wing discord was amplified opportunistically.
These are stories which reasonable shouldn't be more than a "blip" but by
amplifying their importance it serves the Russian strategy. There are a number
of strategic reasons that it benefits their aims.
They sow chaos & discord. Make the fringe appear larger and more powerful than
it is. Embolden & attract people who may have had "leanings" or agreed with
smaller parts of it.
It's a propaganda war. It is totally asymmetric and the USA is getting crushed
by it.
Recognizing that is important.
~~~
smsm42
> the story itself is being artificially amplified by Russian social media bot
> accounts
Any shit (or anything that looks like shit) about US would be amplified,
because the idea they are pushing is "maybe it's crappy here, but you wouldn't
believe how crappy it is _over there_ ". It's a very powerful and very
successful strategy, they didn't invent it (pretty much every totalitarian
regime has used it) but they are surely following it.
> who wrote an internal manifesto against diversity
Useful rule: anybody who writes "manifesto against diversity" didn't read it,
doesn't know anything worthy of mention about it and should be completely
ignored.
> Right wing discord was amplified opportunistically.
_Every_ discord will be amplified opportunistically. That's what they do. The
right thing to do is to ignore them.
> These are stories which reasonable shouldn't be more than a "blip" but by
> amplifying their importance it serves the Russian strategy.
Russians didn't make it a story. Google and MSM did. Also people throwing a
fit because somebody published a thoughtcrime did.
> They sow chaos & discord.
They sow nothing. Nobody in US watches them. Nobody in US cares about them.
Stop blaming Russians for what Americans do to themselves.
> It's a propaganda war
Maybe. But if it is, it is a propaganda civil war.
> It is totally asymmetric and the USA is getting crushed by it.
On the contrary, USA doesn't even notice it. The rating of any Russian media
outlet in USA is zero. The only way anything gets to the eyes of the public if
US media amplifies it - which now unfortunately they do quite a lot, because
the stupid part of Democrats thinks that blowing up the Red Scare would help
them topple Trump. And they don't care about the collateral damage. Absent
that, the influence of Russian media on the US is zero point zero.
------
Diggsey
Original memo:
[https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-I...](https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/3914586/Googles-
Ideological-Echo-Chamber.pdf)
Might be worth actually reading it before arguing over whether this kind of
material should be censored and its author shunned.
~~~
YCode
It's a bit ridiculous he was _fired_ , but by the same token I don't buy the
biology story he's telling.
I feel like if he had skipped that and simply made his suggestions then the
memo would have firmer ground to stand on, because then others could say they
support them without giving the impression they are sexist.
------
rhapsodic
This has been flagged as a dupe, but the other posting didn't rise:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14955319](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14955319)
------
khazhou
Did the original title include "(from wikileaks)"? If not, then that's a
curious bit of editorializing, given wikileaks' history with Hillary.
~~~
xiphias
It removed the clickbaity part of the title. Withough that I have to skim the
whole article just to find that information
------
dogruck
If this guy changes his pronoun, heads will explode.
------
rhapsodic
_> James Damore, the engineer who wrote the memo, confirmed his dismissal,
saying in an email to Reuters on Monday that he had been fired for
"perpetuating gender stereotypes"_
It's time to start scouring the Twitter feeds of female Google employees
searching for tweets that perpetuate stereotypes about the male gender, and
report them to Big Brother.
~~~
vernie
Nobody's stopping you. GLHF.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Can we put a stop to all the irrelevant gender politics articles on HN? - animus9
I am a long time Hacker News reader. I have never posted before today (even had to sign up) but here goes:<p>Hacker News is one of my favourite websites and I am bothered by the way in which certain demographics are poisoning its content with pseudo-tech articles that carry an antagonistic and one sided political message that degrade the overall experience of the site.<p>I think I can speak for most men here: We very much like females and want to see more in the tech industry, BUT, we're here because of technology. We do not care about gender, race, class, or any of those other things: these are irrelevant to technology. This new age divisionist jargon doesn't jive with the spirit of community, here or anywhere else for that matter.<p>I do not think a mythology of victimization is a healthy way to be a part of the tech industry and only hurts those females who are genuinely interested in participating. It breeds resentment between individuals who would otherwise be on friendly terms. I believe it causes the very problem it claims to be fighting against: If you go out looking for a fight you will most certainly find one.<p>I do not believe this is an appropriate forum for these sorts of articles: so can we put a stop to them?
======
dmschulman
I know where you're coming from and I agree with the sentiment, but despite
"gender, race, class, or any of those other things" being "irrelevant to
technology", we live in a world that is much more than programming languages
and processors. We are not soulless machines.
We should put a stop to talking about topics relevant to our society and
culture just because they create dialog? Many discussions beyond gender
politics and tech have a tendency to get blown out of proportion and off
point. Should we ban discussion on that too?
I think HN is one of the most appropriate places to discuss these and other
kinds of issues (theoretically at least).
------
rubyfan
+1
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The land that no country wants (2016) - kawera
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/03/welcome-to-the-land-that-no-country-wants-bir-tawil
======
bjourne
> On Egyptian maps, Bir Tawil is shown as belonging to Sudan. On Sudanese
> maps, it appears as part of Egypt. In practice, Bir Tawil is widely believed
> to have the legal status of terra nullius – “nobody’s land” – and there is
> nothing else quite like it on the planet.
This is wrong and the article later corrects itself:
> Their ties to the area may be based on traditional rather than written
> claims – but Bir Tawil is not any more a “no man’s land” than the territory
> once known as British East Africa, where terra nullius was repeatedly
> invoked in the early 20th century by both chartered companies and the
> British government that supported them to justify the appropriation of
> territory from indigenous people.
The fascinating thing is that the idea that Bir Tawil is, or ever was, terra
nullius comes from atriciously bad Wikipedia pages on the subject (in the past
even the West Bank was listed as terra nullius!). It likley was those that
lead Jeremiah Heaton to think he could claim it by planting a flag there.
Because you cannot find any scholarly sources claiming that Bir Tawil is terra
nullius. So what must have happened is that one or more Wikipedians, with no
legal training, must have found terra nullius described in some source and
then started to give terra nullius designations to pieces of land that they
thought fit.
Along comes a lot of clueless journalists and repeats Wikipedia's erroneous
claims. Wikipedians in turn find these articles and inserts them as references
into the articles and the circle is complete.
And fwiw, the literal translation of terra nullius isn't "nobody's land" it's
"empty land". Ownership of land is orthogonal to whether it is inhabited.
Examples of terra nullius would be Antarctica or tiny remote islands that
sometimes pops up in the Atlantic far from any country's coast. Bir Tawil
does't fit the bill because it is inhabited. Which state has sovereignty is
unclear but we do know it is either Egypt or Sudan. There is no room for a
third party to make any claims.
~~~
jmkni
I've often wondered if you could use the process described above to create an
historical event that never happened.
Create the Wikipedia page(s), some journalists write about it, then add those
articles as references. I wonder if people might even say they remember it
happening.
~~~
namdnay
If the model worked well, any source reputable enough to be cited enough in
Wikipedia would fact check it and drop it. But I'm not sure that would work
today, apart from the most reputable newspapers
------
thomasfl
A few years ago Norwegians officials tried to give Finland a mountain as a
gift to celebrate Finlands 100 years as a free nation. Norway’s constitution
states the kingdom of Norway is "indivisible and inalienable", so they had to
give it up.
[https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-
entertainment/films/news/...](https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-
entertainment/films/news/norway-finland-mountain-gift-present-border-birthday-
anniversary-bj-rn-geirr-harsson-k-fjord-a7541941.html)
~~~
mongol
Too bad. Otherwise they could have traded some equal sized land back, like
Finland and Sweden did with Märket.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A4rket](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%A4rket)
------
kebman
"Every reputable travel agent we approached turned us down point-blank, citing
the prevalence of bandit attacks in the desert. Thankfully, we were able to
locate a disreputable travel agent." For some reason this story reminds me of
Mos Eisley...
------
ggm
Belgium and it's northern neighbour swap land as the delta shifts. I believe
last time the Netherlands donated some land.
There is an island on the France Spain or Spain Portugal border which takes
turn about. Easier than fighting.
Enclaves are a thing. Maastricht and Liege have a couple nearby I believe. Too
hard to tidy up. Partially alienated land is in some jurisdictions forbidden
to be given up in law. The attempt to donate a mountain in skandi counties hit
a constitutional barrier because the leaders are pledged to indivisible
boundaries.
~~~
lb1lf
Norway trades a wee bit of land with Russia, too - a couple of banks in the
Pasvik and Grense Jakobselv rivers are traded back and forth as the currents
shift them from one side to the other of the centerline, the bilateral
agreement governing this calls for the border to be reviewed every 25 years.
One amusing tidbit I remember is that even as the border is to follow the
centerline of the rivers, no country is to gain or lose territory when the
border is reviewed - so there's still some room for arbitration; the net size
of both countries is to be unchanged.
One of the officials involved in the Norwegian delegation claimed that Norway
was the only country ever to have been ceded part of Russian territory in
modern times, though I expect this to be one for the newspapers - presumably
other states with a river border with Russia have similar agreements.
~~~
bushin
China got half of Bolshoy Ussuriysky island and Tarabarov island on Amur river
in 2004.
------
atlasunshrugged
I do think there's something to be said about trying new experiments for
nation states with different operating models. There's obviously been mixed
reactions and outcomes with places like Liberland and Seasteads (not to
mention the micronations) but I'm hopeful that a small country like
Estonia/Lithuania/Singapore/Rwanda that wants to be internationally
competitive will innovate heavily in governance, economic models, etc.
------
olodus
Haven't read the whole article yet, but if I can put one unnecessary and
unimportant opinion from the whole thing out there, I don't really like the
flag Jeremia Heaton chose for his new country. I mean, it isn't terrible. I
have seen worse but common man, you had the rare chance to create a new flag
and you went with something that kinda has a seal in the middle of it (fourth
principle of flag design). I mean it isn't the worst seal on a flag out there
but at the same time the crown will surely not be destinct from a couple of
hundred meters away even.
------
zainhoda
If the article is too long to read, watch this video instead:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5iJSXaVvao](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5iJSXaVvao)
~~~
omarhaneef
Still too long. Do you have a summary in a tweet somewhere?
~~~
signa11
Veni, vidi, verti, cessi :o)
------
orpheline
I blame Disney for an unrealistic princess fantasy.
------
29athrowaway
It's disputed territory, but one thing is clear: that guy does not belong
there and has no legitimate claim to that place whatsoever.
------
Areading314
> an American dad claimed a tiny parcel of African land to make his daughter a
> princess.
Can I just point out that this would be a fantastic plot for a movie or a
novel? Could throw a lot of interesting themes into this
~~~
weinzierl
From the article:
> Jeremiah Heaton, beyond the “kingdom for a princess” schmaltz and the
> forthcoming Disney adaptation (he has sold film rights to his story for an
> undisclosed fee) [..]
I'm not sure if this was meant seriously though.
------
wruza
Tl;dr: there are two versions of land borders in that region, and the land
which _is_ valuable. Bir Tawil is a flip side of this coin. If one country
claims it, they auto-lose the other side.
~~~
dmurray
This seems quite naive as geopolitics go. One imagines China or the US, for
example, would have no qualms about claiming both. "We assert Egyptian
sovereignty over Hala'ib based on the treaty of 1899, and Egyptian sovereignty
over Bir Tawil based on the inalienable historic right of the Adabda people to
live under Egyptian rule."
Maybe it works better if you can afford to build a settlement there, like in
Palestine, or an airstrip like in the South China Sea.
------
ptah
> “Are white people still allowed to do this kind of stuff?” good question
~~~
barking
Are Chinese people white 'cos if so then maybe? Xinjiang, Tibet, South China
Sea.
~~~
ptah
they have had claims on all of those for a few centuries now, they didn't all
of a sudden travel across oceans and continents to proclaim it theirs
~~~
barking
It's OK to claim an adjacent territory, bring in settlers, oppress the
natives, etc, just not OK to cross water to do so. is that your position?
Hardly?
~~~
ptah
no i never said that. i merely observed that a question in the article is
legitimate. not sure how i got dragged into addressing whataboutism in this
subthread but ok
------
bawana
do citizens of Bir Tawil have to pay taxes? Why hasnt google bought it? Can
multinational corporations set up banks there and avoid taxes altogether?
------
rmason
If there's water there then there is value. Be a great place to plant
greenhouses, grow flowers and with an airstrip fly them into the heart of
Europe.
But it would take quite a bit of capital and without formal recognition and a
security force then it's a pipe dream. A pleasant one, but still a pipe dream.
~~~
dotancohen
Actually, there is no water. Nor soil. Nor vegetation which would depend on
the other two.
~~~
londons_explore
Drill deep enough, and you might find water.
You might also be able to buy water from somewhere.
Solar farms don't need water either...
Lack of security force might not be an issue - being stateless means no taxes,
so your business can probably afford to just hire it's own security against
bandits. Get a reputation for shooting bandits on sight, and they won't come
close.
I think the biggest risk is that if you actually manage to build a city there,
both of your neighbours might decide to claim your land as theirs unless you
have an army to threaten them with, or UN protection, both of which might be
hard to get.
~~~
jsjohnst
> Get a reputation for shooting bandits on sight, and they won't come close.
On what basis do you make that claim?
Probable reality will show they’ll just come with more armed bandits than you
have security forces, assuming the value warrants it.
------
beobab
This kind of thing is why I am looking forward to "No Man's Sky" VR release
tomorrow.
No-one is likely to complain when I colonize a planet far off the beaten track
where the highest form of life is a small feline creature with tentacles.
~~~
swarnie_
Are people actually still playing One Mans Lie? I'd assumed everyone charge
backed it on day one....
~~~
barking
The company has actually redeemed its reputation by continuosly releasing
updates, afaik. Not fair to malign them like that.
~~~
swarnie_
If I bought a broken car then the dealership spent the next two years slowly
fixing it to match the sales pitch initially sold I'd still be pissed off.
Why do people allow game publishers to get away with the crap...
~~~
TheBranca18
I'm not really following your analogy. A video game isn't a car, a car is a
means of transportation that depending on your situation, is a requirement in
order to get goods and retain employment. A video game is a hobby for most
people, it's like watching movies or television. I'd say it'd be more similar
to how people reacted to Lost's final seasons rather than a broken car.
One can separate the launch of the game, where clearly there was a lot of
confusion and misleading information, from the events since. They have issued
free updates for years. They received death threats and other harassment as
well. I'm not saying you have to like the game, but I'm just confused as to
what they're getting with.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If the moon were only 1 pixel - _Microft
http://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html
======
cannedslime
I am very grateful that I have a mouse that can unlock the scroll wheel so it
just keeps on spinning :)
~~~
_Microft
In the bottom right corner there is a small icon making you scroll with the
speed of light away from the sun by the way.
~~~
cannedslime
Speed of light takes too long :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
San Jose set to become largest U.S. city to enact natural gas ban - prostoalex
https://www.mercurynews.com/2019/09/17/san-jose-could-become-largest-u-s-city-to-enact-natural-gas-ban/?te=1&nl=california-today&emc=edit_ca_20190918?campaign_id=49&instance_id=12464&segment_id=17113&user_id=ad1d38d7aeb88df9a49d1052fc4f5fba®i_id=4617603
======
KingMachiavelli
What's interesting is that my home built in the early 1970s apparyently had
all electric heating since they believed they would be getting cheap nuclear
power soon. When a storm took out power for a more than a week, the entire
block installed natural gas heating/boilers.
So I'm a bit skeptical if making long term planning betting on renewables
replacing the bulk of hour heating & cooking power.
It seems the city is thinking the same way:
> City leaders also voted to require new buildings be equipped for all-
> electric operation, even if they continue to rely on other sources of energy
> in the near term.
A lot of people perfer gas for stove cooking, but maybe new electric &
induction stoves are just as good?
Anyway, I would thing the cost of wiring for electric appliences is low (just
a few 240V circuits) while running gas lines is more expensive anyway so I
would be suprised if a significant portion of new construction was putting in
more gas appliences besides water heaters & HVAC.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to get started in Computer Security? - krmboya
I've been in software development for a while now. News on HBGary, Anonymous, Wikileaks etc shows there's a lot going on in the Computer Security field. For those already in the field, are there some good online resources or books that you would recommend for one getting started, or particular skillsets one should have?
======
david_shaw
I generally look for people that have a background in either systems
administration or coding. Depending on what area of security interests you
(there's a lot of difference between malware analysis and, say, compliance pen
testing), different specialties may come in handy. For web application
testers, it makes sense to have some experience with web programming.
Although this certainly doesn't ring true everywhere, at my company we use
Linux and BSD almost exclusively for our tools. Although I would never reject
a candidate based on their distro of choice, being intimately familiar with
linux and command line tools is a must. You'd be surprised how many people are
confused by even simple tasks in other operating systems.
The most important thing you can do, however, is show that you're passionate
about the subject. Do security related projects, stay current on news in the
field, publish your work if you can. Attend conferences like DEFCON if you
can, and if not at least try to catch videos of some of the talks.
The field is growing and loves to find new, bright, interested talent. It's
hard to separate people with a real, keen interest in security and a
background to support it from the kids that try to bullshit their way through,
though. Be honest about your skillset, your interest level and your
background, and it will all fall into place.
------
broohaha
[http://www.amazon.com/Web-Application-Hackers-Handbook-
Disco...](http://www.amazon.com/Web-Application-Hackers-Handbook-
Discovering/dp/0470170778)
Awesome book covers EVERYTHING with practical instructions + a comprehensive
checklist.
------
krmboya
Thanks guys, guess i better get to work
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Troubled Teens Make More Successful Entrepreneurs - gmatty
http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2013/08/14/troubled-teens-make-more-successful-entrepreneurs/?mod=e2fb&mg=blogs-wsj&url=http%253A%252F%252Fblogs.wsj.com%252Feconomics%252F2013%252F08%252F14%252Ftroubled-teens-make-more-successful-entrepreneurs%253Fmod%253De2fb
======
hardwaresofton
Don't want to spark class warfare, but this really only seems to point out to
me that rich kids who got into trouble during their rebellious stages get to
be entrepreneurs later when they want to rebel against something else.
While I'm not silly enough to think that's always the case, the article seems
to support it, someone prove me wrong:
Quote from the article: "The economists find that self-employed workers with
incorporated businesses were almost three times more likely to engage in
illicit and risky activities as youth than were salaried workers. These
behaviors include but aren’t limited to shoplifting, marijuana use, playing
hooky at school, drug dealing and assault. In addition, the self-employed with
incorporated businesses were more educated, more likely to come from high-
earning, two-parent families, were more apt to score higher on learning
aptitude tests and exhibit greater self-esteem than other employment types.
“Of course, you have to be smart,” says Mr. Levine. “But it’s a unique
combination of breaking rules and being smart that helps you become an
entrepreneur.”
~~~
ondross
"It’s a unique combination of breaking rules and being smart that helps you
become an entrepreneur"
This seems like the key point - you have to be experimental, non-risk-averse,
and a little stubborn. Plus both activities are tons of fun!
~~~
hardwaresofton
True, and a non-class-minded non-critical mind might take just that away from
it, but I think it's really apparent that they are skirting the entire
perspective (of what happens to a probably larger swath of youths) -- they
"broke the rules" and _got away with it_ , which enabled them to go on to
success.
To take it even farther (because this wouldn't be the internet if I weren't
trying to one up everyone including myself):
Stoners have great ideas, some stoners go to jail for petty posession 3 times
and do not get much of a chance at life after being incarcerated. I don't
think I need to point out which stoners end up going to jail, and which get a
slap on the wrist and get to smoke on a college campus later.
I'm really not trying to enrage anyone -- I just think this article was super
unbalanced
~~~
cstavish
I can't upvote this enough. I know about a lot of behavior that occurs inside
and outside of private high schools that goes unchecked or loosely-punished,
instead of resulting in police action at most public schools (poor or not).
Nothing against the more privileged kids--I don't think a lot of the
"troubling" behavior listed in the article is all that problematic (barring
shoplifting and assault of course).
------
vjeux
I would re-title the article as "Entrepreneurs are more likely to be troubled
teens". No where in the article it says that troubled teens are more
successful entrepreneurs than non troubled teens.
~~~
niels_olson
Directionality! How dare you impose higher order critical thinking! That poor
journalist can't be bothered with such abstract things.
------
GuiA
For the non-native US-english speakers on HN, "playing hooky" means not
showing up to class :)
------
coldcode
Also better felons. If you only count the successful ones, you get this sort
of thing.
~~~
poetiq
Interestingly those two are not mutually exclusive. It is indeed possible to
be both a better entrepreneur AND a better felon :D
~~~
buu700
In fact, one might say that an entrepreneur is the _best kind_ of felon!
(I'm not sure what one might mean by such a statement; nevertheless, one might
say it.)
------
btilly
This fits well with #4 on pg's list at
[http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/founders.html).
As he noted there, asking about real world hacks became part of their standard
ycombinator application.
~~~
ballard
Yup. More ways to show off.
There's a line that can be crossed if the reviewer isn't cool enough or it
comes off wrong. Caveat submitter. But who's gonna worry about that? :)
------
jacalata
The headline here on HN is completely misleading. Aside from the editorial
decision to only mention the more acceptable behaviours listed in the article
(alternative: 'entrepreneurs more likely to have a history of teen assault'),
the article makes _no_ claim that they are more successful founders than
people who haven't got this background - just that self-employed people who
have an incorporated business are more likely to have this history than
salaried workers.
------
maximz
I think this is because of different risk preferences, which make the
conclusion obvious.
These teens have higher risk preferences. Entrepreneurship is a high-risk,
high-reward endeavour.
Since we count only the successful ones, those who take higher risks and are
successful naturally are more successful than those who take smaller risks.
------
ballard
The language of the title is overloaded.
Sometimes circumstances of survival force individuals to develop hustle, while
others are content with following.
The key is perhaps rebellious temprament, from authority, whether parent or
employer, to seek independence and freedom despite risk.
------
belowlightsblue
From the article: "Using data from the March Supplements of the U.S. Census
Bureau‘s Current Population Survey and the National Longitudinal Survey of
Youth, they look at the cognitive, noncognitive and family traits of self-
employed individuals who have incorporated businesses and compare it to the
characteristics of salaried workers and the self-employed who don’t have
incorporated businesses."
So the population of the study is people who have incorporated businesses. So
by "Troubled Teens", it means "Troubled Teens" who did well enough to
incorporate a business. But that doesn't count the many troubled teens who
ended up poor and/or imprisoned...hopefully parents aren't getting the idea
that it's better for their kid to get in trouble if they want to be rich later
------
olalonde
Could it simply be that they are more likely to found startups? (which would
not necessarily imply that they are more successful entrepreneurs but instead
that they are more likely to become entrepreneurs)
~~~
s_baby
In other news gamblers are more likely to win money gambling.
------
loceng
Doesn't that then just sound like they're bored? Being an entrepreneur/founder
will never leave you bored - always things to do..
------
WalterSear
This has confirmation bias written all over it.
------
anovikov
Why is this surprising? Success in life is about breaking rules. Startups are
one example.
------
n3rdy
Job well done, Youth Center Counselors.
------
Jormundir
Who wasn't a troubled teen?
~~~
cenhyperion
Apparently the ones that didn't get caught.
------
AsmMAn
Is not what I seen.
------
snowwrestler
Yvon Chouinard, founder of Black Diamond and Patagonia:
> My favorite quote about entrepreneurship is that to understand an
> entrepreneur, you should study a juvenile delinquent. They're both saying:
> "This sucks and I'm going to do it another way." You have to want to break
> the rules and prove that your way works.
[http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-06-19/yvon-
chouinar...](http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2008-06-19/yvon-chouinard-on-
entrepreneurship)
------
saraid216
Did they check CEOs, too?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Excess Deaths Associated with Covid-19 (CDC Website) - hovden
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid19/excess_deaths.htm
======
lolc
It's sad to see what an effective early response could have prevented.
Especially bitter to know that that response didn't come because society first
had to see the effects to accept the necessity.
Observing the situation in Europe during February, I had the fatalist view
that "even if governments understand what's coming, they first need enough
cases to avoid being perceived as overreacting."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
200 Open Source Projects Later: Source Code Static Analysis Experience - AndreyKarpov
http://www.viva64.com/en/n/0104/
======
AndreyKarpov
The PVS-Studio analyzer is a methodology of detecting errors in program code.
However, error is not an incorrect work of the program but also a potential
vulnerability. Everything depends on perspectives you look at this errors.
That is why we took part in this forum and tried to demonstrate how often
programmers make mistakes or make it vulnerable without any suspicions. The
report is based on checking more than 200 projects experience. We were finding
various defects with the help of PVS-Studio.
Here we suggest you to acquaint with our report:
\- English version of presentation :
[http://www.slideshare.net/Andrey_Karpov/200-open-
sourceproje...](http://www.slideshare.net/Andrey_Karpov/200-open-
sourceprojectslater)
\- Russian version of presentation :
[http://www.slideshare.net/Andrey_Karpov/200-open-
sourceproje...](http://www.slideshare.net/Andrey_Karpov/200-open-
sourceprojectslaterru)
\- The record of Russian version of presentation with English submits:
[http://www.phdays.ru/broadcast/](http://www.phdays.ru/broadcast/) . The
report's start: 06:13:21. You can easily find it by number 200 on the page and
choosing this report in the list.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Erlang Shell - strmpnk
https://medium.com/p/ab8d8bec3972
======
rdtsc
> When systems have faults due to concurrency and distribution, debuggers will
> not work.
Those are very tricky indeed, mix in threads with pointers and a system
becomes haunted. "This one customer noticed a crash, on this hardware, after
running for 10 weeks, but ... we couldn't reproduce it". "Oh I suspect there
is a memory overwrite or use after free that corrupted the data". People start
doubting their sanity -- "Oh I swear I saw it crash, that one time, or ...did
I, maybe I was tired...".
Someone (could have even been Jesper Andersen, the author) said that the
biggest performance gain an application gets is when it goes from not working
or being crashed to working. And the biggest slowdown is also when it goes
from working to crashing unexpectedly.
There was talk of 60 hour weeks here before, one of the things that happens at
8pm at night is people huddled over a keyboard debugging some of these hard to
track bugs. Managers and some programmers see it as great heroism, pats on the
back for everyone, but, others see it as reaping the fruits of previous bad
decisions and it is a rather sad sight for some. It all depends on the
perspective.
I guess the point is one of the main qualities of Erlang is not concurrency
but fault tolerance. Many systems copy the actor concurrency patterns and
claim "we have Erlang now but it is also faster!", and that is a good thing,
but I haven't heard too many claim "We copied Erlang's fault tolerance, and it
is even better than Erlang's!". [+]
[+] you can do the same pattern up to a point using OS processes, LXC
containers, separate servers, having watchdog processes restart workers, for
example.
~~~
chubot
Nitpick: mixing threads with pointers isn't really the problem; it's mixing
threads with shared mutable state.
A concurrency idiom I've gotten a lot of mileage out of is to use threads,
_without_ shared state, but _with_ pointers. Instead of shared state, you use
a message passing style where you pass pointers over queues. Threads only
mutate data that they are explicitly handed via a queue. After putting an
object on a queue, they NULL out their local reference.
It's basically like Go's goroutine idiom, but with C/C++/Python, real OS
threads, and a thread safe queue (which is all a channel is). There is also
some relation to the SEDA architecture.
The logical structure of such a program is not really that different than an
Erlang program, I imagine. It just works a little better with existing C/C++
codebases, and is potentially faster in some cases.
It has a completely different character than spaghetti written using threads
and shared state, and can be made extremely reliable. Especially because the
explicit channels provide a hook for testing black box behavior.
~~~
tbrownaw
_Instead of shared state, you use a message passing style where you pass
pointers over queues._
If you don't have a queue library and don't want to risk getting the locking
wrong, you can get one from _pipe(2)_. While simultaneous writes/reads are in
theory permitted to be interleaved, the implementation would have to be
actively insane to interleave anywhere other than page boundaries.
...I actually did this when I was at university, for the first class that
covered locking and concurrency. Amazingly enough, I didn't fail that
assignment for delegating what we were supposed to be learning to the OS.
_The logical structure of such a program is not really that different than an
Erlang program, I imagine. It just works a little better with existing C /C++
codebases, and is potentially faster in some cases.
It has a completely different character than spaghetti written using threads
and shared state, and can be made extremely reliable._
Maybe this is why I don't get all the C++-hate? The things that make code
unreliable or thread-unsafe tend to also make it hard to read and think about
(even without threads), so I just find some other way that doesn't give me a
headache.
Interestingly code that doesn't give me a headache tends to have a strong
resemblance to functional-style code, even tho actual pure functional code
also tends to be mildly headache-inducing.
~~~
chubot
Yup, pipe() is actually a great, minimal solution. POSIX guarantees PIPE_BUF
to be at least 512 bytes, so you are guaranteed atomicity for any size
pointer. I think on Linux the unit of atomicity is 4096 bytes, which is a
page.
Yeah, there are a million ways to use C++. To be fair, most people have their
architecture forced upon them, rather than creating it from scratch. And the
C++ world does have a culture of spaghetti with shared mutable state and
threads. In Erlang you have the opposite culture. So I can understand the
association that people make with a language, even though it's more a matter
of culture.
In addition, C++ doesn't even have a thread safe queue in the STL (although I
was pointed to a draft for one in the next version of C++ by a coworker).
pipe() is a good solution I would use, but not portable to other OSes.
------
phamilton
I'm another recent Erlang convert (though I'm still trying to get used to the
paradigm and ecosystem). There are a few concepts that haven't quite clicked
for me.
I come from a Rails background. While Erlang's hot code reloading and the
ability to attach to running nodes is cool, I am not quite able to connect the
dots on how this is useful. In Rails, a process is short-lived by design (the
lifecycle of a request). Attaching to a process is useless, but the Rails
console essentially gives you an isolated process to inspect production code
and data. I don't see how extending that to an existing process would be
useful.
So, challenging my assumptions, perhaps short-lived processes aren't the best
approach for a web service. Perhaps that's the paradigm in Rails because Ruby
lacks the tooling to make a long-lived process easy to maintain. If a long-
lived process is as easy to maintain as short-lived processes, then suddenly
new architectures open up. How are these architectures different? What are the
benefits? What are some examples?
~~~
Jacqued
Since you recently started out, may I ask you what good resources you found to
get started with Erlang ?
~~~
Veratyr
[http://learnyousomeerlang.com/](http://learnyousomeerlang.com/) seems to be
the standard reference. I find it most amusing in both style and name (Learn
You Some Erlang -> LYSE -> Lies) as well as informative.
------
brickcap
> As an Erlang programmer I often claim that “You can’t pick parts of Erlang
> and then claim you have the same functionality. It all comes together as a
> whole”.
I am guilty of this. I am relatively new to erlang programming and I have
skipped on some of the features that make the language great. For instance I
have neglected learning both supervision and hot code reloading.
~~~
lostcolony
Hot code reloading I'd personally grant you as an exception; it's a
maintenance tool, not a development tool, and you can largely ignore it until
you want it, if you're adhering to OTP principles.
Ignoring supervision, however, is...not wise, if you have -any- sort of
reliability considerations (even ones as weak as "I'd prefer it to remain up";
if it's just a one off thing that you'll manually execute again if it fails,
meh, fine).
Supervision is really, really easy to use, at least for the base use case
(creating a good hierarchy, so that processes restart the other processes that
should be restarted, is an architectural consideration that can be a bit
hairy), and it's truly heartening to grep a log for something you've been
running a while, find crashes that indicate issues you want to fix (even
simple stuff, like sanitizing inputs), but the system is still running as
though nothing happened.
------
tel
I find it funny that the author willingly gave up static typing to have Erlang
process control—I made the opposite switch as I grew tired of the overhead and
attrition of modeling a complex domain in Erlang. I think the Erlang VM is
easily my favorite place to live as a programmer, but I do with Erlang-the-
language gave more.
~~~
lostcolony
What were your thoughts re: Dialyzer?
~~~
tel
It's nice and once I learned how to use it I tried to be very consistent with
it. The success types provide good documentation, but I found that the types
still felt very flat. The fundamental component of Erlang abstraction is the
process and the process tree, so your types reflect that and don't end up
composing well.
~~~
tel
(To clarify: rather your types end up composing much like messages between
actors. That's a very fine way to compose things, but it's still just _one_
way)
------
_pmf_
> And all this without service interruption. And you get all this for free,
> just because you picked Erlang as the implementation language.
GDB or even VS's debugger can do a lot of magic even if you use C. Until
absolutely necessary, leave debugging information reasonably high and
optimization reasonably low or off and you'll get an amazing, dynamic
environment to inspect a live C system.
------
skywhopper
Reading about "correct software" as if it were an realistic goal makes me
itch. Sure, we should be striving for as few bugs as possible, but any non-
trivial application will never be made "correct", if only because it'd be
impossible to write the full specification to compare it to.
------
rurban
Oh nice. They have now almost a Common Lisp environment. Getting closer to
Greenspun's tenth rule.
~~~
bitwalker
Is it actually possible to do hot code reloading while preserving the state of
the running system in Common Lisp? I'm genuinely curious, I kind of had this
impression that it was a feature fairly unique to Erlang.
~~~
agentultra
> Is it actually possible to do hot code reloading while preserving the state
> of the running system in Common Lisp?
Yes.
> I'm genuinely curious, I kind of had this impression that it was a feature
> fairly unique to Erlang.
It's not. iIRC there's even a version of the JVM with code reloading.
What's interesting about Common Lisp is that not only can code be dynamically
compiled into the running image but class definitions can be changed and live
instances will be updated without stopping the program or reloading anything.
There are a tonne of features in Common Lisp like this that are geared towards
robust, maintainable software.
~~~
bitwalker
> It's not. iIRC there's even a version of the JVM with code reloading.
I've seen some info about the JVM implementation, but I could've sworn it
wasn't able to preserve state while hot swapping. I haven't dug in to it
though, so it's totally possible it handles that.
> There are a tonne of features in Common Lisp like this that are geared
> towards robust, maintainable software.
I'm a fan of Lisp in general, though my experience is limited to a tiny bit of
Scheme and experimenting with Clojure. I'm glad to see that stuff like this is
available in at least one of the Lisp variants! Question for you (if you
program in Common Lisp): What are the main selling points? I spend a lot of
time already with a couple of languages, Elixir/Erlang (for fun), C#/F# (for
work) - what is it that would make me want to switch from one of those to
Common Lisp?
Thanks!
~~~
agentultra
In no specific order:
1\. Configurable compiler. You can tell the compiler where it's safe to ignore
types and where to be strict about types. For the battle-hardened critical
sections of code turning off run-time type checking can be a pretty big win
performance-wise.
2\. Extensible compiler. Macros are like tiny compilers. It's possible to
create DSLs for the programmer to work with a problem in terms of nouns and
verbs that make sense for their task while still compiling to VHDL for your
application. Common Lisp becomes the substrate on which you build the language
you need to solve your problem.
3\. The best error handling system I've seen in any language. Signals,
handlers, and restarts allow higher-level code to choose an appropriate
strategy for recovering from errors under various conditions without losing
state and restarting the computation.
4\. Top-class introspection tools. The JVM has been able to do some of this
stuff for a while but with CLOS and the error handling facilities available
Common Lisp makes this so much better. You can inspect any object, change
values on slots, trace any function, step through the entire stack, and
recompile code into the running image. There are nice tools written on top of
these facilities which provide some of the most elegant debugging sessions I
have ever encountered. Stop your program? Why? I can connect to a running
image, inspect the running program interactively, and compile the fix into it
without restarting. Even over SSH directly from my IDE.
And that's just the stuff in the specification. I'm a fan of the newer ASDF
systems for defining systems and their dependencies (implicit file-system
structure for defining module composition? No thank you). There are some
really solid libraries available (iolib, bordeaux-threads) and a very nice FFI
for interfacing with alien code. And various implementations provide
interesting extensions depending on what you need. Clozure Common Lisp, for
example, has really good native Cocoa bindings. SBCL has a very slick compiler
for generating fast code. Most of them provide threading extensions and there
are libraries which abstract away the differences if you're writing a library
that depends on threads.
~~~
bitwalker
Thanks for breaking it down! I'll have to investigate further, but there is a
lot here to like.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amazon Braket – Amazon Web Services - kiyanwang
https://aws.amazon.com/braket/
======
onion2k
It's fascinating how we've come full circle in computing and we're back to
booking compute time and putting jobs in a queue to run on a big shared
machine again. My Dad used to tell me about how he'd have to wait to run
things on the DEC machines where he worked in '70s, wait for the output to
print out, and debug his code by hand before he could run it again. No doubt
writing software to run on Amazon Braket would be a _pretty similar_ process
if it weren't for the simulators.
------
donw
I think there's a lot of interesting optimization problems that this could
lend weight to. There's a lot of small-ish manufacturers out there pushing the
limits of materials science, where being able to leverage quantum computing
could be a real advantage.
That said, I'm also curious what this means for attacks against cryptosystems
-- something tells me that anything that wasn't secure against various quantum
attacks either is, or will shortly be, blown wide open.
~~~
reikonomusha
Quantum computers do not currently solve any problems of the size or accuracy
of interest to any commercial industry that classical computers don’t solve
better and faster.
------
WrtCdEvrydy
Is it AWS new product season again?
~~~
divbzero
I think it was announced several months ago [1] and reached general
availability just last week [2].
[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21684668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21684668)
[2]: [https://venturebeat.com/2020/08/13/amazon-launches-braket-
qu...](https://venturebeat.com/2020/08/13/amazon-launches-braket-quantum-
computing-service-in-general-availability/)
~~~
archgoon
Preview was last December
[https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-
new/2019/12/introduci...](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-
new/2019/12/introducing-amazon-braket/)
------
arkanciscan
So now the only thing stopping me from programming a quantum computer is
thinking of any damned thing to do with it. Innovative new ways to feel
ineffectual!
~~~
gremlinsinc
If I had a clue, and was an expert in Math, I'd use it to break Bitcoin. Get
in, grab 10k bitcoins, get out. I'm not greedy, lol.
------
ramblerman
Someone have a good reference or primer on quantum computing?
I thought it just mean faster hardware, but they talk about specifically
designing quantum algorithms.
~~~
reikonomusha
Quantum Computation and Quantum Information by Isaac Chuang and Michael
Nielsen. Prepare your linear algebra skills over complex numbers.
------
Exuma
The video was hilarious.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An open letter to Mike Arrington: Please stop investing in startups - danshapiro
http://www.danshapiro.com/blog/2011/05/open-letter-to-mike-arrington-please-stop-investing-in-startups/
======
nextparadigms
Does anyone know if he has stock in Facebook? Or MG? I've watched them post
about every single increase in Facebook valuation from $20 billion to $80
billion.
"Facebook now at $20 bn..." "Facebook now at $25 bn..." ......... "Facebook
now at $75 bn..." "Facebook now at $80 bn..."
I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say they made a post every time
Facebook's valuation jumped 5 bn. I thought it was pretty excessive and
dubious. I was wondering if it wasn't actually their posts which lead to the
next $5 bn increment every other week.
It gave investors the idea that Facebook's valuation will keep rising. It
created a loop. I think $80 bn valuation (or $70 as it is now) is way too
inflated for the kind of revenues Facebook is making, and I think some of the
investors are realizing this and are starting to cash out now before all the
others figure it out.
~~~
nl
As a general rule, they are reporting investments made at those valuations.
Given the Techcrunch audience and the importance of Facebook in Silicon Valley
I think that reporting new investments is reasonable, and when the valuations
are as high as Facebook's are that will be news too.
I also think reporting on secondary-market transactions is important. There
are interesting legal issues surrounding them, and how much people are
prepared to pay for shares is instructive, too (especially since some
secondary market investors probably have more financial knowledge of Facebook
than you or I).
------
staunch
TechCrunch has always been Arrington's blog above all else. He uses it to help
his friends and defeat his enemies. Ask Jason Calacanis what it's like when
he's your friend (lots of easy coverage) and what it's like when he's your
enemy (LAUNCH conf boycott).
Any additional bias he may have because of investments won't be detectable in
the mass of existing ones he already exhibits.
~~~
alain94040
Exactly. Once you have watched how the insider game is played in Silicon
Valley, being an investor is the least of your conflicts. There are so many
weird relationships going on, it's almost like real life. I'm friends with X,
Z owes me a favor, etc. None of that stuff is disclosed, because it's just how
the world works.
Don't get upset about the 5% of cases where MA has a direct conflict or
interest, use your own judgment and filters 100% of the time. One of the key
values of reading TC is that it offers strong opinions. If you just want to
read bland press releases, I can point you elsewhere.
------
prpon
TechCrunch had never been an impartial reporter of startup or tech news. Their
coverage of startups even before Mike Arrington started investing is based on
how connected the startup is with VCs/angels. The users don't necessarily see
all startups in that space covered equally. For TC, it works well since it
guarantees access to other news stories before anyone else.
~~~
albedoa
It's really awful sometimes, and it's unfair to worthy startups that deserve
the attention.
Compare the coverage of Quora versus StackExchange, for example. There was a
period when there were two Quora articles _per day_ on TC. StackExchange is
lucky to be mentioned once every few months, and even then it's usually only
brought up as a comparison to "Quora and other Q&A sites".
~~~
IgorPartola
I am asking an honest question here as I have no idea as to what the answer
might be:
What good does it do for a startup to be featured on TC? I suspect it may have
to do with getting funding if you are doing a round, but is that it? I would
assume that most startups don't derive many paying/staying customers from a TC
post, unless the startup itself is narrowly targeted at entrepreneurs/other
startups.
~~~
benologist
Echo chamber benefits ... if people keep hearing your name they're going to
start saying it too, some will be investors, some will be users, some will be
disheartened competitors who can't get a major update written about while your
minor layout tweak got 300 words.
------
jjm
TechCrunch is not some 'outstanding' reporting venue with a long history of
righteousness.
This is the internet, this is capitalism.
Start your own 'Techcrunch' if you want fairness, no one is stopping you.
~~~
nostromo
No one is stopping us from asking TC to be a better source of unbiased
journalism either -- which is what this post is about.
~~~
jjm
Look, I do understand your point and that you want TC to be a "better source
of unbiased journalism". But TC doesn't want that. They just want to make
money. While once in a while you'll see a good article over there, they'll
never be a NYTimes, Tribune, WSJ, or TW. It is just not something they care
about.
It is almost like asking TC to pivot.
------
edw
I've never really expected—nor do I know anyone who expects—a lack of bias
from Arrington. People have been accusing him of playing favorites for a long
time.
I would be less upset—though it's not like I'm upset about this anyway—if he
hadn't sold to AOL, because this lessens his incentive to nurture TechCrunch.
If I were him, I'd be staring at the countdown clock that keeps me in my
golden handcuffs. One of the things I learned about starting a company is to
know when to disengage emotionally. And I'm guessing Arrington's is _way_
disengaged.
And if he's disengaged, it probably doesn't matter whether he invests in
companies or not. If he doesn't, it doesn't mean he's going to give attention
to the companies he considers boring or losers or whatever. This basically
allows him to place bets on the companies that he probably would have have
been a cheerleader for anyway.
Yeah, it's hard to get too worked up over this.
------
raganwald
Hi Paul Graham,
I’m one of your customers.
We don’t really know each other. We’ve chatted at a few events, Hacker News
features some of my posts, but I’m mostly just a guy who reads Hacker News a
lot. I find it’s a pretty good place to see what’s important in the industry.
I am software guy, not a media critic. But I’m a big believer that economic
incentives shape behaviors in subtle and unmeasurable ways. And I think your
decision to make investments in startups is going to make Hacker News a worse
product.
I can’t tell you exactly how. Are you going to be a little more likely to flag
stories about competitors to your companies? Upvote them, even when they’re
not newsworthy, to show you’re not biased?
I don’t know. But I think it’s going to happen, it’ll be subtle, and it’ll
make Hacker News worse.
I’m not making demands or threatening to leave. Just making a request, from
one software guy to another: moderator independence is a great feature. Please
don’t cut it.
Best wishes,
Reg Braithwaite
~~~
meterplech
I think that's not a fair analogy. PG isn't the curator for content on HN, and
while you could argue he could algorithmically alter stories about YC
companies, or manually remove stories, this isn't an editorial blog. It's a
collection, and the users vote stories up and down.
PG's goal from HN is to get a pulse of the tech community, see smart people
who may be interesting to invest with in the future.
Arrington theoretically runs a journalistic operation, and he brings up
journalistic integrity when it suits him. This is a much stronger conflict of
interest for something that perceives itself as journalistic.
While the blog didn't bring up great examples of how this will hurt TC, I
don't think it's an even analogy.
~~~
raganwald
It's fast and loose, but to be honest I neither agree nor disagree with the
post's premise, it just seemed like a good point to bring up to spark some
discussion.
As for journalistic integrity, my feeling is that conflict of interest in
journalism is between a journalist and his employer, not between a journalist
and his readership. Media properties all have strong biases fueled by the
self-interest of their owners, the market they are attempting to serve with
their product, or other factors. In the era of Wikileaks, Twitter, and blogs,
journalistic integrity seems like a quaint notion, more unusual when it is
present than when it is absent.
I live in Toronto. None of my daily newspapers are unbiased. How about your
town?
~~~
Laments
I disagree with this assertion: "my feeling is that conflict of interest in
journalism is between a journalist and his employer, not between a journalist
and his readership."
A lot of people view Arrington as the face of TechCrunch and I feel like his
stories drive a significant amount of traffic to the portal. I, for one, know
that I read stories with his name on it -- even if I'm not terribly interested
in them.
But, if Arrington's showing favoritism or is holding back, simply because he's
invested in a company, it makes TechCrunch less relevant -- since someone else
will break the story, or it may be biased. (And, let's be fair -- nobody
expects complete impartiality from an investor. They're already partial, else
they wouldn't be investing.)
To quote Arrington, "There’s a period of time with any investment when I know
an investment is possible or likely but it can’t be announced yet. During that
time I don’t write about the startup at all, because I can’t disclose the
investment. When another writer wants to break a story we may have to hold
that story, or it becomes a forcing function in announcing sooner." And this
is the hart of the debate.
To address your other point: I know many, many, many journalists who have
incredible integrity -- just avid news consumers today are becoming
disenfranchised by news media (and I'd like to point out that Wikileaks,
Twitter, and blogs are none of the above) does not mean that it does not
exist. Would you really rather go to the biased news source if the unbiased
one was right next to it?
This is the type of decision that is an inflection point -- because
Arrington's refusal to stop will allow a lot of tech journalists to begin
lobbying hand grenades at any unfavorable TC press ("I sure hope that
Arrington doesn't have a hand in that! hahaha.")
~~~
raganwald
_if Arrington's showing favoritism or is holding back, simply because he's
invested in a company, it makes TechCrunch less relevant_
It's up to you whether you want to read his stuff or not, and why. However, I
do not believe that bias in and of itself disqualifies a speaker/writer/source
from relevancy:
<http://raganwald.posterous.com/bias>
By way of a similar example, most people think Daring Fireball is biased. It
doesn't appear to have anything to do with Gruber's investments, just his
passion. Some people avoid his writing because of his bias, some embrace it,
and some--like me--try to include it in a portfolio of things I read.
I have my own reasons for not reading Techcrunch, but Arrington's investments
isn't one of them.
~~~
cube13
>By way of a similar example, most people think Daring Fireball is biased. It
doesn't appear to have anything to do with Gruber's investments, just his
passion. Some people avoid his writing because of his bias, some embrace it,
and some--like me--try to include it in a portfolio of things I read.
The difference between TechCrunch and Daring Fireball is that Gruber presents
Daring Fireball as his personal blog. It's not presented as a news source.
Gruber is more of a pundit than a journalist, and he wears his biases on his
sleeves, showing them to everyone. He's using the soapbox that DF gives him to
push his views.
TC, on the other hand, is presenting itself as a news site. The people on it,
unless they are offering commentary, are supposed to be Journalists. Their
reporting should strive to not be biased, which includes reporting any
potential conflicts of interest(i.e. investing) in a company within the
coverage of the company. A reader should think that the coverage on the site
is noteworthy because it is news, and should not have to question the author's
intentions or reasons for featuring it.
Otherwise, it's just advertisement at best. At worst, it's just self
enrichment by the author. I should note that I'm fine with with this, if the
site presents themselves as such. If you're going to be biased, announce it to
the universe. Don't hide behind being a "journalist" as your reason for not
disclosing anything.
~~~
raganwald
As a matter of personal morality, I would say this. I don't believe that
journalists need to >try to be< unbiased. However, if I were talking to
someone who does believe that journalists need to >try to be< unbiased, I
would be careful not to claim that my own writing is journalism. No matter
what I believe the word means, knowingly misleading someone else is wrong.
I don't know if Arrington knowingly misleads people by claiming to be a
journalist, but if he is deliberately setting an expectation of lack of bias
and lack of personal interest in order to profit from that, well, we can both
agree that regardless of what journalism means to me or to Arrington, it is
wrong to set a false expectation.
~~~
cube13
I said that the journalists should _try_ to be unbiased, not that they
themselves should be. It's a very subtle difference, but I know that it's
impossible for them not to be unbiased. They are human, after all.
The problem that I have with Arrington being allowed to invest in silicon
valley startups, while maintaining his role as an editor of TC is that it
presents a pretty clear conflict of interest.
That knowledge alone would make me, a reader, question the intent behind any
story. It makes it hard to take any of their coverage seriously, because for
all I know, Arrington could be using his readership to enrich himself over
actually reporting interesting news.
------
vipivip
Probably this is why some startups get so much coverage from TC while others
hit the wall.
------
blantonl
What journalistic organization doesn't play favorites?
It is role of the reader and other journalistic organizations to balance out
any inconsistencies in one organization's proclamations over another's. They
do this by:
* writing counterpoints that refute a proclamation
* walking with their feet
It may take time and a lot of effort to counteract a journalistic organization
that strays too far off the path, but that time and effort always results in
the truth.
------
cletus
File this in the category of "questions I never would've thought to ask".
There is a fine line between being a blog and being a journalistic
organization. Some argue the former is a case of the latter. In the latter,
there is clearly an ethical obligation to disclose any conflicts of interest.
Many journalists are either required to or choose not to voluntary (to avoid
the appearance of impropriety) invest in anything they're covering.
So while bloggers may not fall under the same umbrella, ethical bloggers I
believe would either avoid such potential conflicts of interest or at least
disclose them.
It's a real problem here because the issue isn't simply the coverage itself
but what companies get coverage and what don't. There's nothing to disclose on
for a story that isn't written. For startups this is a _huge_ problem.
What's more, I think AOL views itself as a journalistic organization. As such,
I'd be surprised if Arrington's angel investments didn't run afoul of AOL's
ethics policies.
Basically it looks to me like Arrington has gotten his big payout and he's not
so much interested in his earnout. Basically, I think he wants AOL to fire
him. He'd no doubt get some kind of acceleration on any vested stock or earn
out and I think he'd be happy with that.
Whatever the case, I think for TechCrunch to survive and be taken seriously
(as seriously as it ever was at least) it needs someone at the helm who, well,
gives a shit. That isn't Arrington.
~~~
knowtheory
I think you're asking the wrong question.
The correct question is who is Arrington's constituency? It's not the general
public. He doesn't care about ethical investing standards and bias.
Motherfucker is biased. Very biased. He represents the Silicon Valley bubble.
But he's okay with that. And he wants to know what's going on within the
bubble.
I agree that we should do away with the pretense that TechCrunch is some how
journalism, but i think that investor advocacy isn't a bad thing. It's just
not journalism.
In a way though, it doesn't matter. We live in the era of Fox News, "Caveat
Investor", and advocacy journalism as a business tactic. AOL ultimately cares
about eyeballs, not journalism. Do you think Arianna cares about ethics and
journalistic standards? I think she cares about eyeballs, and getting a
certain set of POVs out.
------
pauldisneyiv
This is interesting to me.
I wonder if we - to a certain degree - might receive better reporting since he
is more active on a day-to-day basis in the actual investing. I really have no
idea if this would be the case, but it's entirely possible that he might be
privy to additional info than he would otherwise.
As for as the open letter...Mike appears to be open about who he's investing
with and I would doubt he would want to harm his reputation - or TechCrunch's
- by appearing to be biased towards those he has a vested interest in.
Well written letter but perhaps wait until you have examples of the downsides
before you write the next. It will carry far more weight.
~~~
schmittz
I hadn't thought of that before reading your post, but I agree. Mike getting
into investing may actually improve TC because he now is getting involved with
startups on a more fundamental level. It might open him up to reporting on
startups that would have otherwise been missed because they aren't buzz
companies. In any event, it will prove to be an interesting case study in
journalistic integrity.
------
stretchwithme
Blogs are written by subject matter experts that know their topic better than
any generalist. They are, by definition going to have their hands in the pie.
So if you want coverage from people that are unbiased (or less biased) but who
don't quite get it, stick with mainstream media. If you want expertise with
potentially an axe to grind, go with blogs.
Better to look at both and always question what you read from both angles of
competence and integrity.
------
ares2012
Now that he's sold TechCrunch to AOL, I'm not clear why anyone would expect
that he would not invest in start up companies. TechCrunch is no longer just
him or him and a few bloggers, it's part of a major media organization. If
their rules allow him to invest in the companies he covers then that is a
problem with their journalistic policies, not with him acting in his own best
interest.
~~~
benologist
Their rules don't, they made an exception for him after the fact according to
allthingsd.
------
dterra
Only time will tell, and startups or established business es that will suffer
it or not, will let us all know. I dont agree with the letter, and even the
analogy with PG. You can still build and launch. and be successful not
depending on MA or PG. Let them do what they do, because they do it amazing.
Again, time will tell if MA is doing it all wrong. I dont think so.
~~~
raganwald
The analogy with Hacker News was not meant as a criticism. I personally think
that Paul's interest in investing in startups--which may be more about passion
than pecuniarum for all I know--actually makes Hacker News a better forum than
if it were moderated (or meta-moderated) by someone with an interest in page
views or the size of the community, to give two examples.
I had expected people to follow that reasoning and reply "Actually, HN is
better because Paul Graham is more interested in nurturing startups than in
selling advertising." I was mistaken and have learned that sometimes a simple,
direct argument is going to get the job done while an indirect argument may
just come across as noise.
Mea Culpa.
------
lotusleaf1987
TechCrunch has already gone downhill. Arrington covers himself more than any
other subject. Him investing startups will only exacerbate this.
------
geoffw8
He's always had "companies", i.e. Edgio.
I'm fed up of hearing peoples whiney opinions.
~~~
veb
Then don't come to a PUBLIC message board.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
China may build an undersea train to America - protomyth
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/wp/2014/05/09/china-may-build-an-undersea-train-to-america/
======
ColinWright
Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7718277](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7718277)
Other sources for the same story:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725148](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7725148)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7722993](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7722993)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7722328](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7722328)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7721668](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7721668)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
InterState: A Language and Environment for Expressing Interface Behavior [pdf] - wslh
http://www.joelbrandt.org/publications/oney_uist2014_interstate.pdf
======
zubairq
Interesting paper. I rea the PDF. I am exploring some similar state based UIs
here:
[http://connecttous.co/connecttous/connecttous.html?livedebug...](http://connecttous.co/connecttous/connecttous.html?livedebug=true)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is Bitcoin vulnerable to a “bank run”? - rbanffy
https://dev.to/peter/is-bitcoin-vulnerable-to-a-bank-run-8g6
======
troydavis
Matt Levine answers this better in
[https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-28/regulator...](https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-11-28/regulatory-
doughnuts-and-fx-fees). The short answer is no, because:
> if bitcoin speculators want to sell their bitcoins for dollars and nobody
> wants to buy bitcoins for dollars, then the dollar price of bitcoin will go
> down and the bitcoin speculators will be sad. But that is always true of
> everything; it is a feature of markets, not of bank runs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Are ERP's overpriced databases? - itsathrowaway
I have some limited exposure to SAP, which is an ERP. From my experience SAP is nothing but a database with a GUI. I haven't seen how SAP can do anything that any database (mysql, postgre) with a webframework (django, rails, etc.) couldn't do. Am I missing something here? I don't see why anyone would go with these vastly expensive ERP systems rather than hiring a few programers and using something like django or rails. ERP's seem like outdated over-priced nightmares to me.
======
tumba
The promise of ERP that drove people from best-of-breed application portfolios
to monolithic systems was primarily the efficiency of integration. That is,
your payables, treasury, etc. would automatically post to the general ledger
and utilize unified master data (customers, products, vendors).
Ironically, in large scale (SAP-class) enterprises today, the integration
problems are often relate to the fact that they are running multiple ERPs they
picked up through acquisition and run customized business rules that cannot be
cost effectively moved. Look at large scale master data management tools to
get a sense of this type of problem.
Much of my work involves mid-market ERP from Microsoft, Sage, Infor, etc.
These vendors can give a smaller company an entire integrated suite of tools,
with great support, an ecosystem of ISVs fully implemented for $200-300k,
including consulting. That remains a compelling value proposition and less
risky than hiring programmers, who these companies have no idea how to manage.
One company to watch is Infor. Their strategy involves traditional ERP
(usually products tailored for a vertical) at the core, with ancillary
products integrated through standard middleware or APIs and delivered through
Amazon cloud services.
------
brd
I'm an SAP guy. I've been a developer, architect, and now a manager of sorts.
I'm not necessarily a fan of SAP but SAP has certainly earned my respect.
ERP provides stability through support.
ERP provides common ground so you can speak with other companies, partner with
3rd parties, and easily hire people with knowledge of your system.
ERP provides standard interfaces for slapping together more ERP tools.
ERP provides security models, governance models, and provides the means for
meeting industry specific compliance requirements.
SAP in particular (and all ERPs to some extent) provide a shockingly massive
amount of business logic. They facilitate a vast array of industries, business
processes, and provide a robust system for tracking your business data in a
semi-stable/rational way.
Where SAP in particular has gone wrong is that they're entrenched in their own
proprietary technology. They're victims of their own highly successful code
base and cannot easily get out from under it. They'll lose eventually but
whether it takes them 10, 20, or 100 years to lose remains to be seen.
I'm a developer at heart and I can say, with confidence, that I would rather
spend money on SAP than build a home grown system knowing full well the mess
that SAP is. With the right team (i.e. damn good developers with industry
experience) I could probably build something better and I've talked to a few
people about it in the past but you are talking a true uphill battle from both
a technology and a sales perspective.
Having said that, if anyone feels the need to take on the ERP space, feel free
to contact me as I'm certainly not adverse to the idea. I've thought about it
plenty and there are definitely attack vectors available.
------
teddyc
I work on an ERP system in the higher education industry. Also, when I got my
MBA, they taught us a lot about the ERP systems from an executive point-of-
view.
The 'E' stands for Enterprise, which means this is a big installation. I think
2 big reasons to choose an ERP over an in-house solution are:
1\. They want support. They want to be able to hire people or pay consultants
that already have experience with the ERP system. Building a system that your
enterprise entirely depends upon introduces a level of risk. Having a big
company like SAP there to support you reduces that risk.
2\. They want something built for their industry. ERP systems are typically
designed around the generic business processes for a given industry. The
technical type of people that can write code might not know how to design a
system to properly match the business processes of the company.
\-----
Yes, at the heart of an ERP is a database, but there is more to it than that.
There is access/control concerns as well as audit log concerns. There are
various industry/government mandates (like HIPPA or FERPA) that need to be
adhered to. There are all the interconnections under the hood to make
everything work. ERP systems are so complex that usually no single person
understands the entire thing. You might understand a module or a component,
but it typically takes a group of experts to have a working knowledge of
everything.
And yes, ERP systems are really expensive. You have to buy annual licenses and
support contracts. The hourly rates for support are expensive too.
~~~
mjn
On #2, a colleague of mine has a hypothesis that that's a primary reason a lot
of smaller enterprises (on the threshold of enterprisey) buy ERPs: it tells
them what they should be keeping track of and how, along with providing the
tool to do it. When small companies grow large quickly they often end up being
very unsure of how to structure their processes and accounting, and having a
built-in solution for "this is how companies in field X do things" is
appealing. So it's not only that they worry about the risk of building an in-
house solution, but they also worry they wouldn't even know what should go in
the solution! Buying SAP not only gives them the software, but a template for
how to structure their business's processes.
In a way it's a little like adopting git and a particular git workflow.
Adopting the workflow can be the really valuable part, especially if you had
no idea how to structure a workflow in the company previously. The tool is
secondary, and just helps structure the workflow. Seen that way, implementing
SAP is sort of like buying a default-business-process template, along with
some enabling software. (On the other hand, it does run the risk of producing
some cargo-cult business practices. If businesses structure their processes to
fit SAP, rather than vice-versa, it's not necessarily the case that anyone is
checking whether these processes still make sense.)
------
dragonwriter
> From my experience SAP is nothing but a database with a GUI.
Yeah, its a database with a GUI.
> I haven't seen how SAP can do anything that any database (mysql, postgre)
> with a webframework (django, rails, etc.) couldn't do.
Sure, the difference is that the ERP has already had a lot of resources
investing in (1) researching what large enterprises users are likely to need
it to do, and (2) implementing the specific code to do that.
And lots of money marketing that investment to enterprise decision makers.
> Am I missing something here?
Probably.
> I don't see why anyone would go with these vastly expensive ERP systems
> rather than hiring a few programers and using something like django or
> rails.
Convenience record, perception of a proven track record (though ERP
implementations aren't exactly historically problem-free), having an stable
institution committed to support when inevitably things _do_ go wrong, and
likely a combination of you underestimating and purchasers overestimating the
amount of programmer time and cost that would go into implementing the
functionality any individual purchaser needs from scratch rather than starting
with the canned modules of the ERP and doing any needed customization.
Both rational and irrational factors are involved.
> ERP's seem like outdated over-priced nightmares to me.
They are designed for the massive enterprise market which has a different
preference for the degree and _types_ of risks that purchasers are willing to
take on, and the price they are willing to pay to mitigate them, than many
other markets, and where the decision-makers are usually pretty far removed
from the details of technology.
------
arethuza
What I would say you are missing is the amount of business logic there is in a
large ERP system. Consider all of the modules of an ERP system:
Finance (GL, Fixed Assets, AR, AP, consolidated reporting)
Product management
Production control
Planning
CRM
HR
Payroll
... a long list of other things
Take all of these features then add an appropriate security model, then add
the need to support localized business logic for each country (which you
_must_ have to meet local legal requirements) and spice up a bit with business
specific customizations.
Do ERP systems have problems? Absolutely. However, like pretty much any
developer when I've encountered a lot of systems I've thought "I could design
something better than this" \- in the case of a large ERP system (mind you,
not SAP) I did realise that it was a few orders of magnitude more complex then
any small team could really handle.
NB I do think there is a huge opportunity for someone to do for ERPs what
Salesforce did for CRM systems.
------
randomITperson
Yes they are. I worked at a place where I had to build some web based
reporting/BI apps around the data from an overpriced, proprietary ERP system
designed for manufacturing. The Windows based client could have just as easily
been a web interface and everything was stored in MSSQL DB's. Granted, there
was a crap ton of tables, but nothing that complicated. Once I dug through it
all, there really wasn't much to it. Most of the calculations it was doing
were straight forward arithmetic. The complex part was just understanding the
processes and workflows involved and how they related to the business side of
things (ordering, manufacturing, invoicing, purchasing, inventory, accounting,
shipping etc, etc.). But technically speaking, it's not that involved. My take
away from this experience is, if you want to build a successful ERP app, it's
all about usability.
------
benologist
Most of the internet is interfaces over databases, or "CRUD apps" because they
Create, Read, Update, Delete from a database.
People choose to use existing ones instead of making their own because it's
usually a lot faster and cheaper.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Create,_read,_update_and_delete...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Create,_read,_update_and_delete#Database_applications)
------
walterbell
SuiteCRM (OSS fork of SugarCRM) will soon be raising money to create a non-
profit foundation,
[https://suitecrm.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=artic...](https://suitecrm.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&layout=edit&id=181)
There is also Oodo (formerly OpenERP),
[https://www.odoo.com](https://www.odoo.com)
Either of these is better than starting from scratch, due to the existing
apps/templates.
------
chris_wot
The amount of business and industry logic tied up with ERPs is what makes it
so expensive.
------
hmahncke
You should act on this thought and build a billion dollar business disrupting
SAP.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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