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This Company Has Solved the Software Security Problem - arnieswap
https://www.tfir.io/polyverse-creating-security-through-diversity-alexander-gounares/
======
verdverm
Skeptical of anyone who claims to have solved software security
------
jiveturkey
garbage link. real link is [https://polyverse.com/](https://polyverse.com/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do I build cross-platform phone apps? - bakbak
Instead of making apps for different platforms (iphone, ipad, android etc.) , is there a way to build cross-platform apps ? can we build it in HTML5? what are the challenges?
======
filipcte
You should look into Appcelerator Titanium (<http://www.appcelerator.com/>)
and PhoneGap (<http://www.phonegap.com/>). They allow you to build _native_
mobile apps using HTML/JavaScript, by exposing device specific API's (camera,
location, address book etc.) to JavaScript.
There's an excellent review and comparison between the two, on StackOverflow:
[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1482586/comparison-
betwee...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1482586/comparison-between-
corona-phonegap-titanium)
------
ecommando
Some others:
<http://www.anscamobile.com/corona/>
<http://www.airplaysdk.com/>
Cheers, R
------
bdfh42
I am currently trying jQuery Mobile - which is promising but at the current
alpha stage there are rather too many issues at the moment to commit to it.
However I do think that this framework has all the right signs for the future.
<edit> link here <http://jquerymobile.com/> </edit> Oh and Jo looks
interesting as well <http://joapp.com/> </>
------
gspyrou
Try <http://www.phonegap.com/>
------
charlesdm
If you're writing games, you should probably go with a C or C++ based solution
with OpenGL es. That can run on all platforms except for Win phone 7 (for
now).
For applications there are a couple of iOS/Android solutions such as
Appcelerator or Phonegap
------
neworbit
I like appcelerator but they really need to step up things on the Android side
of the house
------
binaryfinery
Depends. Let me start by addressing the HTML/javascript toolchains out there:
they suck. One of my clients has experience of this. The first thing they
tried was using one of those javascript/html systems. Its a fairly simple app
that one would think was ideal for HTML/javascript, but it was barely usable
and tech support was awful. Thats why they hired me.
What platforms are your target - the "etc" you mention? Blackberry? Blackberry
is still huge but by iPhone and Android standards they are hardly smartphones.
How about WP7? Interesting but so far tiny.
Next question: what kind of app? If its games, you use C/C++ and OpenGL for
Android and iPhone.
Personally, I use C# and manage core business logic libraries with platform-
specific user interfaces in Silverlight, MonoTouch and MonoDroid. I have a
client who wants Android and later Blackberry, so for that we do the Android
version in "normal" java so we can share libs with Blackberry in the future.
I don't think there's a one size fits all. The ones that do (e.g. Flash, or
HTML/javascript) end up looking or running like ass.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Email token service - siscia
Hi HN,<p>there is any "email token" service out there ?<p>I mean that I would like to generate every time a new email address (something crazy like: [email protected]) and use that email address to register to only one single service.<p>When I receive an email to that address, the email it forwarded to my own, "real" address.<p>As soon as I start to get spam from a particular token I can simply stop the forwarding of email.<p>Is anything like that available ?
======
afics
Shameless self-plug.
If you are running postfix as your mail server, you could use something like
[0] (or write your own solution, utilizing a database or whatever, of course).
[0] [https://github.com/afics/vmailmgrpy](https://github.com/afics/vmailmgrpy)
------
mc_hammer
yea the phrase used for indexing on google is "one time email address"
10minutemail i guess?
~~~
siscia
Dear friend,
your message show that you haven't even read my message.
I appreciate your reply, but next time, please, take time to read the message
you are replying to.
Best.
------
scheda
You could easily use something like Mailinator (or their Pro service) for
something like this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How HN helps you? - seriousQ
======
gallerdude
I keep a curated list of a bunch of interesting quotes I find here. When I'm
not quite feeling like working but don't feel like descending to Facebook or
YouTube, it's a great read.
~~~
pouta
Mind to share that list?
~~~
gallerdude
[https://pastebin.com/nGdTsKXx](https://pastebin.com/nGdTsKXx)
Not all these are from HN, but it was the origin of the list, and majority of
the quotes are.
------
bmuppireddy
I have started reading/using HN from the last 2 months. Here are my takeaways
from it.
1.I get to pick and read the highly approved news in the areas of my interest.
It cuts down the time I need to spend on other sites. 2\. I get curated news
from other subjects which I can choose to ignore or sometimes get high level
insight into it if it interested me. 3\. Because of the quality of readers in
HN, it kind of points what is important and what is not. 4\. Last and the most
important aspect is the comments section which adds more value than the topic.
To capture the gist, the signal to noise ration is high in HN which helps my
time.
------
zhte415
It gives osmosis. This is valuable, circumstances being in environments
distant culturally and technologically from peers.
------
alashley
I got work through HN when I was in a tough spot a few years ago.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Simple SSL Certificate Monitoring for You and Your Team - CertCheckr
https://certcheckr.com?ref=hn
======
ansien12
I built this (minimum viable) product in response to a problem we were having
at my current company. Which was managing hundreds of SSL certificates for
different websites and different customers.
I am currently trying to gather feedback about the product to see in what
direction I should take it next. Thanks
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
You got your Erlang in my Ruby - coglethorpe
http://brainspl.at/articles/2009/04/30/you-got-ur-ruby-in-my-erlang
======
futuremint
We're using Nanite on a project for delivering e-mails in the background (for
now). We have bigger plans for it, but its pretty easy to get running once you
get RabbitMQ going.
It has also been running really well in production, though no real load to
speak of yet. However, we also run an ejabberd server which has been bullet
proof, as are most erlang servers of decent maturity.
Being able to run any number of agents and have them be load balanced with
Nanite out of the box, and also add and remove agents from the system flexibly
and at will is great.
------
mojuba
Why is the title showing (.brainspl.at) ? Is it a bug? Just checked some other
submissions from country domains - there are .ca, .in, .co.uk and they all are
fine.
~~~
ezmobius
yes i think it is a bug in yc with .at domains as anytime my blog shows up
here it has that dot in front of it
------
Andys
1\. How far does it scale, in terms of number of agents, without needing to
change the way you do things?
2\. Does this need to run on a LAN or is it possible to spread the agents
across the Internet at multiple sites?
~~~
ezmobius
1\. So far I have tested it with 2000 agents and was not pushing the limit of
the broker, rabbitmq is know to handle a lot more connections then this. my
goals/estimations will be around probably 5k agents per rabbit cluster with a
need to federate/shard nanite systems after they grow that big.
2\. This works on LAN or across the net transparently, so it can be used
across data centers easily.
------
kentf
awesome! I love this. Now I can finally build my Ruby Web Crawler. Thanks
Ezra.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What are the most productive ways to spend time on the Internet? - wolfgke
http://www.quora.com/Intelligence/What-are-the-most-productive-ways-to-spend-time-on-the-Internet
======
pskittle
MOOCS,edx,udacity,udemy,
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Democracy Doesn't Exist Anymore Because of Facebook - fagnerbrack
https://www.ted.com/talks/carole_cadwalladr_facebook_s_role_in_brexit_and_the_threat_to_democracy
======
gruglife
Is it just me or are other people sick of all the finger pointing at Facebook
for the worlds ills. Sure FB isn’t perfect but it’s hard for me to believe
they are solely responsible for Trump, Brexit, the end of democracy, and hell
freezing over.
~~~
fagnerbrack
I wish that was opinion so that we could actually argue against it. It's not a
matter of belief at this point, as unbelievable as it may sound.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Malicious Subtitles Threaten Kodi, VLC and Popcorn Time Users - seycombi
http://blog.checkpoint.com/2017/05/23/hacked-in-translation/
======
ConfucianNardin
Was annoying to find the details.
Looks like PopcornTime was rendering subtitle text as HTML, inside their app
(html/js-based), creating an XSS vector (looking at
[https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-
desktop/commit/a...](https://github.com/popcorn-official/popcorn-
desktop/commit/a9aa8e16610ee8cb23ba4a6452c5a69bf88d9107),
[https://github.com/butterproject/butter-
desktop/pull/602](https://github.com/butterproject/butter-desktop/pull/602)).
Likely the javascript runtime they're using allows file access and execution
of arbitrary executables, enabling the metasploit shell shown in the demo.
For VLC there are a bunch of out of bound reads and heap buffer overflows.
f2b1f9e subtitle: Fix potential heap buffer overflow
611398f subtitle: Fix potential heap buffer overflow
ecd3173 subsdec: Fix potential out of bound read
62be394 subsdec: Fix potential out of bound read
775de71 subtitle: Fix invalid double increment.
The article implies that VLC and the others are affected by the same issue
(leading to code execution), but according to available information it seems
to be completely different issues.
The Kodi issue was a zip archive path traversal (i.e. no protection against
zip files extracting files to parent directories).
~~~
easuter
If only VLC had been re-written in rust this would never have happened. For
shame.
~~~
nradov
Feel free to rewrite VLC in Rust. No one is stopping you.
~~~
usefulcat
Pretty sure that was sarcasm.
------
OneLessThing
I did security research on VLC on Windows a year or two ago. I may be
remembering incorrectly, but last I recall every module was protected by ASLR.
Which means that remote code execution is not likely because there is no
scripting or network comms to dynamically create a valid ROP chain.
I also didn't check for executable heaps at the time but given that all heaps
are non executable (which they really shouldn't be executable in VLC) again I
don't see how RCE is possible. Maybe there is some way to validate and
therefore brute force addresses? I don't know. But there was no VLC POC and
I'm sure they would have made one if they could have.
Use VLC it's the most secure media player I've seen.
~~~
Animats
_every module was protected by ASLR._
Address space randomization is not "protection". It's a form of security by
obscurity. The odds of an exploit working are reduced, at the expense of more
crashes due to exploit failure.
It helps developers ignore bugs, since they can no longer reproduce them.
~~~
alasdair_
>Address space randomization is not "protection". It's a form of security by
obscurity.
This is somewhat akin to saying "Randomly generated passwords are not
'protection'. They are a form of security by obscurity."
If things are random enough that an attacker is significantly hampered in most
cases, that's one measure of security, no?
~~~
saurik
It is going to vary quite a bit depending on the entropy of the ASLR
implementation. Many have only had 8-12 bits of entropy to start with, and you
sometimes don't need the full address. It is also important to note that
services that crash typically restart, allowing retries (sometimes as many as
you want). In this case, one might imagine trying to attack thousands of
people: some of them will randomly work (and a lot of users are going to see
VLC crash and will retry playing the file a number of times, increasing your
probability).
------
resoluti0n
Kodi 17.2 with the fix for this flaw has now been released:
[https://kodi.tv/article/kodi-v172-minor-bug-fix-and-
security...](https://kodi.tv/article/kodi-v172-minor-bug-fix-and-security-
release)
------
kutkloon7
The thing that most amazes my about Popcorn Time is how they find the
subtitles. It seems to succeed even when I can't find subtitles myself.
More related to the article, you would think that subtitles are literally the
easiest file format in existence to safely handle. It's incredibly well-
defined in terms of textual data and times.
~~~
FranOntanaya
> literally the easiest file format in existence to safely handle.
Well, which one of them. There's nearly a hundred different subtitle formats,
and each one has a whole set of variants. Just Timed Text alone (XML) can have
more layouts than one could count, specially since it's meant to be able to
replicate technically all previous industry formats.
~~~
amptorn
> it's meant to be able to replicate technically all previous industry formats
Even the DVD subtitle format, which is just a mostly transparent image
overlaid on the picture? In _XML_?
~~~
FranOntanaya
Yes, in the TTML2 spec [https://www.w3.org/TR/ttml2/#embedded-content-
vocabulary-chu...](https://www.w3.org/TR/ttml2/#embedded-content-vocabulary-
chunk)
------
_jomo
These are the VLC commits adressing the issue:
[https://github.com/videolan/vlc/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=subt...](https://github.com/videolan/vlc/search?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=subtitle+OR+subsdec+%22checkpoint.com%22&type=Commits)
~~~
pawadu
Holy crap, that code doesn't look good. I predict we will see more exploits
for this project.
Maybe we should stop random people from contributing to complex C projects?
~~~
jbk
Look at FFmpeg and all the multimedia libraries and you will be horrified.
~~~
pawadu
I thought they cleaned up after the last round of exploits?
~~~
jbk
hahah :)
I wish :)
------
mrmondo
Interestingly running VLC 2.2.4 on MacOS 10.12 and checking for updates
returns 'VLC 2.2.4 is currently the newest version available.', obviously I
downloaded 2.2.5.1 from videolan.org but still odd.
~~~
jbk
The update will be deployed today or tomorrow in the updaters.
~~~
zuck9
Is that a default behavior or something you chose to do?
What if there's a bigger security fix you need to push to people asap?
~~~
jbk
It is something that we chose to do.
We usually let between 24hours and a few days before doing an upgrade, seeing
the possible regressions.
From tag to release to updates can take only 4hours, if we want enough
mirrors.
~~~
muterad_murilax
Well, 10 days later and 2.2.4 is still shown as the latest version when trying
to upgrade... :/
------
greggman
AFAICT every plugin to Kodi has full machine access. Subtitles of course you
don't expect to install malware but I wish plugins ran in a sandbox
------
pawadu
Slightly related to this: where can I find data sanitizers for common file
formats (PDF, MP3 and so on)?
~~~
chii
what counts as sanitizing? How do you know a file is malicious?
~~~
Piskvorrr
Especially with PDFs, my "sanitization" can be your "stripped away all the
fonts and functionality - might as well have given me a plain .TXT", and vice
versa.
~~~
rsync
"might as well have given me a plain .TXT""
Yes, please - that sounds fantastic.
~~~
Piskvorrr
I agree - but it's 1.surprisingly complicated for a general solution
(positioning and such), and 2.not really a solution for the usual end user
(who might appreciate a JPEG instead)
~~~
Piskvorrr
(btw there's `pdftotext`, which is pretty good in most cases)
------
runeks
Can anyone recommend a video player written in a memory-safe language for OSX
that handles MKV files? Or is the simple truth that the problem lies in the
parsers, which are shipped as a library written in C, because no sane
developer wants to rewrite parsers for 25 different subtitle formats when
writing a video player?
~~~
jbk
There are none. You can use VLC inside VLC sandbox, but you won't get
something perfect.
------
sotojuan
What about mpv? That's my preferred video player.
~~~
m1el
While I too prefer mpv, I suspect that there are plenty of vulns in that
player.
~~~
Filligree
It's written in C, so I imagine that's almost guaranteed. In this case
obscurity helps to protect you, however.
------
sparaker
It would be interesting to see which subtitles are using these vulnerabilities
and what they are achieving with them. We could estimate how long this has
been around.
------
mplewis
This is another reason you should use a tool like a parser generator when you
have to parse untrusted data, rather than writing your own parser by hand.
------
Sujan
Does anyone know if the subtitle hosting services added checks for this as
well?
------
soylentcola
This is interesting to me for reasons outside of anything to do with exploits
or malware. A while back I had a bit of a brain fart while playing with my Hue
bulbs: would there be a way to use the subtitle track for a video to encode
time-controlled data that can be sent to/read by another application that
sends these values to a set of Hue bulbs or similar devices for synchronized
ambient lighting?
I figured that subtitles were an obvious place to start because you can
download them in small files, play them back alongside a video, and they are
designed to be "timed out" to synchronize with a video already.
I looked into it for a bit but never really found a way (within my abilities
at least) to do anything like this from within a .srt file or similar. I'd be
interested in hearing if anyone else has more info on how you might do more
with that "framework" than displaying text on screen.
------
Filligree
Speaking of Popcorn Time, last I heard there were a couple of forks and doubts
about the safety of each and every one.
Is there any more clarity around the situation now?
------
captainmuon
Wow, that is bad. I'm always amazed by such vectors in supposedly passive
formats, like fonts, images, and so on.
There is no excuse that these kind of applications are not completely
sandboxed. All you need is some kind of DLL, raw data in, raw pixels out. In
case of hardware accelerated codecs, raw pixels in, surface pointer in,
nothing out. There is no need to be able to access the filesystem, etc.. To
render subtitles on top of the video it's the same.
I wish a fraction of the energy we put into DRM would go into sandboxing
instead.
~~~
jbk
Ha, the famous sandboxing remark. I wish it was that simple!
So, let me share some light on the sandboxing for multimedia (I work on VLC).
If you sandbox an application like VLC, in the current way of doing
sandboxing, which we've done for macOS, WinRT/UWP, and snaps, you still need a
lot of permissions.
Namely:
\- you need to be able to open files without user interactions (no file
picker), in order to open playlist, MXF or MKV files;
\- you need the same if ever you have a database of files (media center
oriented);
\- you need raw access to /dev/* to play DVD, CD and other optical disk (and
the equivalent on Windows);
\- you need ioctl on such devices, to pass the MMC for DVD/Bluray;
\- you need raw access to /dev/v4l* for your webcams and be able to control
them;
\- you need access to the GPU stack, which is running in kernel-mode, btw, to
output video and get hw acceleration;
\- you need access to the audio stack, also in low-level mode;
\- you need access to the DSP acceleration (not always the GPU);
\- on linux, you have access to x11 for the 3 above features, which is almost
root;
\- you need access to /etc/ (registry) for proxy informations, fonts
configuration and accessibility;
\- many OpenGL client libraries need access to the /etc too;
\- you need access to the network, as input and output (think remote control);
\- you need access to the system settings to disable screensavers, and adjust
brightness;
\- you need access to mounts to be able to see the insertion of
DVD/Bluray/USB/SD cards and such;
\- you need to expose an IPC (think MPRIS on Linux);
\- you need to unzip, untar, decrypt, decipher and so on;
\- you need access to the fonts and the fonts configuration (see fontconfig).
and I probably forgot one or another case.
The point is, all those features have good reasons to exist and very good use
cases; but the issue is that for a media player, it will request almost all
permissions except GPS and address book.
And quite a few of them are very close to kernel mode.
So, what is the solution?
Probably do a multi-process media player, like Chrome is doing, with parsers
and demuxers in a different process, and different ones for decoders and
renderers. Knowing that you probably need to IPC several Gb/s between them.
I've been working on such a prototype, but it's a lot of work... I accept
donations :)
~~~
jbverschoor
You actually don't _NEED_ a lot of these things I'm perfectly fine with a
default / embedded font. I don't have an optical drive A database can be in
the local app storage. I'm fine opening a subtitle file myself. Why would I
need IPC? Why would I need to unzip anything? If it's subtitle files, it can
be done in-memory. Are you sure we need low-level audio?
I don't have a remote, so I'd like it to be disabled by default. I don't need
any access to the network.
etc. etc. etc
~~~
stordoff
Those restrictions work for you, but would make VLC borderline useless for me.
> I don't need any access to the network.
90+% of what I use it for comes from my NAS or the Internet.
> I don't have an optical drive
Most of the rest is from optical discs.
> I'm perfectly fine with a default / embedded font. [...] I'm fine opening a
> subtitle file myself.
It's _fine_ but far from ideal. Both are useful quality of life features.
> Why would I need to unzip anything?
Non-essential, but being able to play video from a ZIP is a useful feature.
------
adynatos
If Popcorn Time renders all subtitles as HTML, would an exploit work if the
subtitles were embedded in video container? Seed latest hit on Pirate Bay,
root a lot of boxes. Yikes.
------
lanius
Is Media Player Classic affected?
~~~
buttcoinslol
Not according to this bug report: [https://trac.mpc-
hc.org/ticket/6169](https://trac.mpc-hc.org/ticket/6169)
------
yq
here is how it looks in real time:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYT_EGty_6A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYT_EGty_6A)
------
Sujan
Does this also work for Android versions of Kodi et al?
~~~
etix
Android does have a sandbox, so impact should be pretty limited if ever
exploitable.
------
nto
does this work on Linux and Mac OS? or is it limited to Windows systems?
~~~
gpvos
I can't say for these vulns specifically, but in general, if software is
vulnerable on one OS, it is very likely also vulnerable on other OSs. The
differences aren't that big. Exploits generally have to be written for each OS
separately, though.
------
alexvay
It's sad that VLC checks updates over HTTP and HTTPS
~~~
jbk
VLC updates are signed with asymetric encryption.
HTTP or HTTPS does not change that.
~~~
sslalready
HTTPS would increase user privacy by not leaking application details though.
~~~
jbk
Indeed, but that's not what GP is referring to.
------
jwilk
What does the "IPS Signatures" section mean?
------
theGimp
This is the sourced post [http://blog.checkpoint.com/2017/05/23/hacked-in-
translation/](http://blog.checkpoint.com/2017/05/23/hacked-in-translation/)
The ingenuity that goes into RCE exploits never ceases to amaze (and terrify)
me. Can't wait for more details to be released.
------
lloydjatkinson
Hollywood is resorting to shitty tactics
~~~
jessaustin
I would be impressed if this were actually "Hollywood". It's better than e.g.
the RIAA lawsuits.
------
thresh
Clearly VLC should be rewritten in Rust.
~~~
pjmlp
Looking at the bug fixes done in VLC, Ada or Modula-2 would be enough,
although there are plenty of options actually.
Rust isn't the only alternative to write native code safer than C will ever
allow.
~~~
viraptor
Don't know about Modula, but have you tried Ada? The usability of it is
nowhere near modern languages IMO. We learned a lot about nice code since then
:-)
~~~
DenisM
Modula 2 is much like C in it's close-to-the-metal performance abilities.
On the downside, if you want to call it that, is a more prominent syntax
(keywords instead of curlies, upper-case keywords, etc).
On the upside it lacks any unsafe operations, except for dealloc. In addition,
it has actual modules in lieu of includes, hence it's blazingly fast to
compile and/or recompile. It'a a pity it didn't catch on, the language lacked
a company to back and promote it. AT&T promoted C, Apple promoted Objective C,
Microsoft promoted VB...
~~~
pjmlp
> Apple promoted Objective C
Actually Apple promoted Object Pascal, but then they decided to cater to the
growing UNIX market and replaced the Mac OS SDK with C and C++ (PowerPlant)
one.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacApp](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MacApp)
------
ackfoo
Treat data as data. Taking the Subrip format as an example, everything starts
out fine so long as there is good bounds checking on the purely textual data.
Then, however, some dipshit decides to extend the format by adding tags for
things like bold, italics, underline etc. This is completely unnecessary for
subtitles because the emphasis can be inferred from the dialogue. The
unnecessary complexity increase the potential for vulnerabilities.
Then some total dickhead decides to add an HTML5 tag, for no reason
whatsoever, and it all goes to hell.
This is illustrative of the problem with most software: the absence of a
clear-headed benevolent dictator to say, "no; you are an idiot; we're not
doing that."
~~~
cbr
This is completely unnecessary for subtitles because
the emphasis can be inferred from the dialogue.
Seems useful for deaf people
~~~
emodendroket
It also seems like you could use it for applications like karaoke.
------
grahams
These exploits will go nowhere without a catchy name ala HEARTBLEED...
I vote for SUB-DURAL HEMATOMA
------
pawadu
> The attack vector relies heavily on the poor state of security in the way
> various media players process subtitle files and the large number of
> subtitle formats.
Well, last years exploits against iOS, Android and Ubuntu where all related to
media metadata processing. It is only natural that the same folks screw up
this one too.
~~~
oblio
What same folks? iOS, Android and Ubuntu are not developed by the same people.
More than that, it's not like these apps are actually developed by Apple,
Google or Canonical.
Plus you're dissing some very complex projects. I think you're underestimating
the complexity of the work these "same folks" are doing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Debt Ceiling: China Calls for World to Be 'De-Americanised' - rpm4321
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/articles/513431/20131013/china-debt-ceiling-shutdown-xinhua-de-emericanised.htm
======
paulhauggis
This is funny coming from a nation that regularly violates the freedoms and
basic human rights of its citizens.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dialogflow and Sendgrid = AI Mailbox - ushakov
https://github.com/mishushakov/dialogflow-sendgrid
======
zanek
People really need to stop using AI in everything. It reduces the meaning.
There is zero AI in this , just a scripted workflow .
I’m sure it’s not as catchy as saying “Scripted Actions for Email”
~~~
shishy
AI in the current public narrative is almost synonymous with "technology"...
------
amolo
What is the difference between that and an "AI bot" ? Why should I have to
wait for STMP and POP3 ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Things I've learned from hiring interns for IBM - acangiano
http://programmingzen.com/2010/09/20/things-ive-learned-from-hiring-interns-for-ibm/
======
wooster
I could literally hear them typing as I presented
them with questions that they weren’t familiar with.
I've had this happen to me while conducting phone interviews more times than
I'd ever expected. It's amazing that people think they can get away with it or
that it's in any way appropriate.
~~~
vicaya
More reasons to type on glass :)
------
chrisaycock
I second the comment about open-ended computer science questions. I like to
ask candidates what happens during a thread switch. Their responses allow me
to probe other areas of computing knowledge. What are the performance
implications of locking? How can we make a networking application event-driven
without threads? That really gives me a sense of whether the candidate keeps
up-to-date with concepts like epoll() and libevent.
------
ulicin
For more information about this article, and applying to an IBM internship at
the Toronto lab, visit [http://blog-db2oncampus.blogspot.com/2010/08/job-
internship-...](http://blog-db2oncampus.blogspot.com/2010/08/job-internship-
opportunities-at-ibm.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Communist Principles in Design - zan2434
http://zainshah.net/blog/2012/09/communist-principles-in-design/
======
jicksta2
"With too much freedom comes far too much responsibility; not that users
aren’t entitled to full responsibility but, honestly, they don’t want it."
Equating communism in general to a restriction of freedom is simply erroneous.
A core tenet of communism is democratic control over production. There are two
main branches of communist philosophy: statist and anti-statist. The anarcho-
communists, who are more liberal than any other political philosophy I can
think of, would never say that a freedom must be restricted by someone above.
"Authoritarian" is what the author meant. Ironically, capitalism exists to
allow for the design of somewhat decentralized, somewhat competitive
authoritarian institutions that will control production. What he's describing
is more inherently capitalist than communist. He's confused by the fact that
the USSR was simply a state-capitalist society just like the US is, only with
weaker trust networks.
~~~
greenyoda
"Equating communism in general to a restriction of freedom is simply
erroneous."
Perhaps, but it's certainly an easy mistake to make, since historically, all
governments that have claimed to be communist have been authoritarian or
totalitarian, and none have had democratic control over production (or really
over much of anything). Some of these governments hold "elections", but who is
going to be in charge after the election is never in doubt.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
First Look: Blossom - A SproutCore Spinoff Using Only HTML5 Canvas For Rendering - devongovett
http://badassjs.com/post/18610722419/first-look-blossom-a-sproutcore-spinoff-using-only
======
Me1000
Until people try building a desktop class application using te DOM, I think
it's probably best for them to reserve judgement. Cappuccino and Sproutcore
are the only ones who did it well (maybe Ext, but I don't know the API well
enough), unfortunately it always lead to a leaky abstraction (I say that as
core team member for Cappuccino). Then web developers come in and want to use
their jQuery widgets, and are confused why it's terrible. The canvas approach
is an almost pure abstraction, and should be explored thoroughly.
~~~
devongovett
Right. I'm not saying it's perfect, just that it's an option worth exploring.
HTML and CSS simply weren't designed for applications. They're great for
documents, but it turns out that using them for this style of application ends
up causing a lot of trouble later on as the applications get more complex.
Abstractions can help with this, and once it is abstracted, it shouldn't
really matter what the rendering backend is. Could be DOM or canvas in the
browser, and as this project is showing, various native backends as well. I
think that's really powerful.
~~~
zachstronaut
When we identify places that HTML/CSS are falling short for making desktop
quality applications, and we bring those issues to the standards community,
and we make HTML/CSS better, then we lift up everybody's applications. We make
the whole web better. Together.
If we can get missing UI features into the browser, those UI features will
have native implementations and APIs, and that will give all of us free
functionality and better performance.
~~~
devongovett
Yup, and canvas is just a part of that. It gives control back to the web
developers and allows us to create anything we want without waiting for
browser implementations. IMO, HTML and CSS are fundamentally not designed for
building this kind of app, which isn't really a solvable problem without
inventing something new anyway. Either that or we abstract them to make
working with them easier.
~~~
zachstronaut
Can you give an example of how Google Documents is falling short of being
desktop class with their HTML/CSS based UI?
~~~
devongovett
Seriously? Google Docs is nothing compared to any native word processor. Just
look at Apple Pages or Microsoft Word. The kinds of layouts and power you get
from those tools is way beyond what anyone has ever been able to do in the
browser.
Secondly, yes Google Docs uses HTML for their UI, but it's seriously
abstracted I believe as Google Closure though I may be wrong. My point is that
HTML and CSS can still be used, but they need abstractions for this type of
app. Canvas is just another approach to the same problem.
~~~
zachstronaut
Do you have links so I can check out some web based word processors that
deliver more of a desktop class experience than Google Docs does? Especially
one where the UI is done entirely with Canvas?
~~~
Me1000
CappCon had couple awesome demos using all canvas. Example is here:
<https://github.com/austinsarner/Frappuccino> unfortunately it's pretty buggy
since it was never finished (due to a lack of funding) I believe a video of it
being used was shown in the single video of the talk we released, it can be
found on the Cappuccino blog.
Edit: here's a link to a video from very early on in development.
<http://db.tt/2YX8gpYx>
------
erichocean
I wrote Blossom, and also was on the core team for SproutCore 1.0, so I fully
understand the "do it in HTML/CSS" side of the equation.
@zachstronaut I'm 100% in favor of interactive HTML documents with JavaScript,
HTML, and CSS. What nearly 5 years of experience developing desktop-class
applications in web browsers has soured me on is using a language and API for
writing documents (HTML and CSS) to write views in apps. I can do it well, but
most developers can't and it's a constant source of bugs in SproutCore today.
Today, GWT, SproutCore, and Cappuccino all treat the browser as a runtime for
apps, but only one of the three (SproutCore) really embraced HTML/CSS in doing
so. I think it's fair after 4+ years of doing that to assess the situation
with SproutCore and realize that the HTML/CSS experiment for views just didn't
work out all that well for SproutCore developers, and it made running
SproutCore apps well on Android and iOS really, really hard.
Blossom treats HTML 5 like a runtime. And more: HTML 5 is the _baseline_ for
what is expected from any runtime, in the browser, the desktop, or on mobile.
From my perspective, that puts Blossom far ahead of GWT and Cappuccino in
terms of "embracing the web" when it comes to apps, and if Blossom is to
evolve in the future, the web will too. That benefits everyone, including the
people writing interactive documents with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
Best, Erich
------
webcowboy
Does this scare anyone else, at least just a little bit?
It seems so odd to me that now Flash is being de-emphasized, we're picking it
up all over again. Yes, there are some performance benefits and cross-platform
problems you can jump over... but isn't this just a proprietary, non-standards
way to approach web design all over again?
~~~
zachstronaut
Yes. I share your concerns. This attitude that HTML and CSS and browser UI
somehow need to be replaced by a custom layer of JavaScript ultimately is a
slippery slope towards things like applets and swfs... towards a byte-code
compiled web. See also: Native SDK.
We've got all these mechanisms built up to deal with web UI that is
constructed with HTML and CSS in terms of accessibility, in terms of search
indexing, in terms of browser plugins and extensions, in terms of web services
and bookmarklets, in terms of UI debugging... Also, the web UI you get with
HTML and CSS inherits a bunch of standard behaviors and defaults that make for
more consistent experience from site to site. Consistency in UI mental models
is a great thing.
I can't think of a single argument FOR this idea of rendering UI entirely in
canvas that shouldn't instead be met with a response of "so lets make HTML and
CSS better!" Instead of improving the open standards of HTML/CSS, people are
pushing towards proprietary solutions.
Sometimes even the best intentions can go awry. I don't think this is malice
so much as ignorance.
~~~
devongovett
Sorry, but those things are totally different. Applets and flash are plugins -
proprietary additions to browsers that live in a black box. Canvas is a
standard, and is part of the browser itself. HTML and CSS don't need to be
replaced for most things, but this _is_ an interesting experiment to see
whether for a certain class of applications, canvas can outperform the DOM and
take care of some of the cross browser issues that CSS is plagued with. I
don't get why people are so attached to HTML and CSS.
~~~
zachstronaut
I'm attached to HTML and CSS because I remember UI programming before HTML and
CSS. I'm attached to HTML and CSS because of the debugging tools for HTML and
CSS UI. I'm attached to HTML and CSS because it allows for bookmarklets, and
screenscraping, and browser plugins/extensions. I'm attached to HTML and CSS
because it creates a beautiful separation between front end and back end code.
I'm attached to HTML and CSS because UI designers can skin software built by
JS programmers by tweaking a CSS file without having to know any JS. I'm
attached to HTML and CSS because the web is HTML and CSS.
~~~
andrewjl88
Just because things sucked before HTML and CSS doesn't mean that they're the
pinnacle. I personally find debugging HTML and CSS incredibly frustrating.
Uneven standards implementation across browsers doesn't help either.
And I am seeing first hand how UI designers find CSS (it's NOT intuitive at
all).
We build things with HTML, CSS, and JS that they were never designed to be
building blocks to. At some point we either have to accept that these are not
up to scratch or we can continue to see the web eroded in favor of native
platforms (most of which are even more closed).
Attitudes like this makes this quote ring true: "All truth passes through
three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third,
it is accepted as being self-evident."
~~~
zachstronaut
Let's not get all Gandhi here. You're not liberating a people from an
oppressive colonial power. You are programming.
The newness of an idea does not indicate its objective "truth."
I'm saying that HTML and CSS can and should be brought "up to scratch."
I also disagree with your assertion that HTML, CSS, and JS somehow have some
predefined subset of things that were intended to be built with them.
~~~
andrewjl88
Actually I do find the DOM oppressive, especially at 4am in the morning before
a deadline ;)
On a serious note, there is no historical precedent for standards committees
to competently steer the technical underpinnings of a platform as dynamic and
fast-changing as the web. Web development is unwieldy right now because of
this.
I never asserted "that HTML, CSS, and JS somehow have some predefined subset
of things that were intended to be built with them." At the end of the day,
software performance is based on architecture. The architecture of a platform
or a language or a framework is intertwined with it's intended purpose.
Anything otherwise is just bad engineering.
HTML and CSS are reasonably well engineered tools. They just rely on the web
from the 90's, a set of interconnected documents. Not the application and data
driven web. The architecture is not designed to handle these new paradigms.
And JS? JS was designed to do form validation. Nowadays it can run your entire
web stack, it was NEVER designed to do this. Can you build awesome web apps
with HTML, CSS, and JS? You bet. But don't kid yourself that it's easy. Tools
like Cappuccino, and Sproutcore, and Blossom are awesome and help sort of
solve this issue but they do so at huge performance costs.
Someday the web will be written using the tools and frameworks that don't
drive developers to frustration. How soon that day comes will have a lot to do
with how attached we are to the outdated architectures used by the web today.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mea Culpa: GitHub works well, my mistake made them look bad - NoKarmaForMe
http://www.andrewljohnson.com/article/Mea%20Culpa:%20GitHub%20works%20well,%20my%20mistake%20made%20them%20look%20bad
======
adelevie
Very classy apology. While Andrew's quickly jumping to conclusions is
certainly not something to emulate (as he obviously implies in his apology),
his ability to assume complete responsibility for a mistake that damaged a
reputation is something all members of Internet communities should take note
of.
~~~
petercooper
Similarly, GitHub acted in a classy way too. Tom helped Andrew throughout the
thread without any snark or dismissals that are, sadly, quite easy to dish
out. It certainly contrasts with the recent "go away" Tumblr story.
~~~
baxter
Hadn't heard of this. <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2151768>
~~~
steveklabnik
Don't forget to see this comment!
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152203>
As well as this one: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2152047>
------
js2
With apologies to xkcd:
$ git push origin HEAD:make-me-a-sandwich
git: what? make it yourself.
$ git push origin +HEAD:make-me-a-sandwich
git: okay.
------
theDoug
Instant overreaction and posting to HN has come up a lot lately.
The Skype story yesterday was another mistake where a technical support person
wrote that a bug was "by design" when they meant to type "bug," so of course
it gets raced into HN as 'news' rather than trying to get clarification.
~~~
Dobbs
To be fair when working as a software tester on more than one occasion did a
developer mark an obvious bug as "by design".
~~~
ryanpetrich
Sometimes it is by design, but the design is flawed.
------
jefe78
+1 for actually stepping forward and apologizing! Always impressive when
people do that.
------
nowarninglabel
Thanks for this, it's always tough to admit when one is wrong.
------
guywithabike
I think the lesson here is that for all our high-minded self-esteem, Hacker
News is just as susceptible to hive-mind behavior as the sites HN users like
to pooh-pooh.
------
wanderr
I wish github (and git in general) had a better way to view the history of
your history, as it were. It's great that get let's you change histoy, but it
can be quite problematic if someone messes up that history, especially if it's
not caught right away. Yes, it's in the reflog, but so is _everything_, so
finding the right thing can be quite daunting.
~~~
steveklabnik
Have you tried gitk, or <https://github.com/shoes/shoes/network> , for
example? What would you like to see?
I don't work for GitHub, I've just never really had this problem, so I'm
curious.
------
perlgeek
As a side remark, I'd love it if github had an option to disable forced pushes
for a project. In general they are very confusing in collaborations.
------
grandalf
Shame on those who upvoted the original linkbait story. When will these sorts
of sensational headlines stop?
~~~
dschobel
No kidding, if I were GH I would be furious that that story was sitting at the
top of HN (which is about as influential in the circles GH cares about as it
gets) for the better part of a day.
It's embarrassing for both Andrew and for HN.
------
epochwolf
Google cache:
[http://www.andrewljohnson.com/article/Mea%20Culpa:%20GitHub%...](http://www.andrewljohnson.com/article/Mea%20Culpa:%20GitHub%20works%20well,%20my%20mistake%20made%20them%20look%20bad)
Site is down. (Or not, there was a 500 error when I tried to access it)
~~~
jefe78
Seems to be back again.
------
bbuffone
It is great to admit but this is also good lesson for developers... you should
always blame yourselves first; I have heard lots of funny stories over the
years.
1.) I think there is an issue with the compiler :) 2.) The Java Classloader is
broken :) 3.) Git is broken :)
My response -> "I will think of a million things it could possibly be on my
way to your desk of those; the compiler, the classloader and git won't even be
in the list"
3.) It doesn't work in IE 6...
Well ok, I guess the browser is the one area where blaming something else
might be appropriate.
If after looking through all the possibilities that could be a reason for it
not being your fault, stand up get a coffee and look at it again.
------
spullara
Wouldn't it be great if your scm actually kept all your changes no matter
what?
~~~
spullara
So it appears that every response to my message said that it wasn't lost but
would be in 90 days if no one noticed. That is not the definition of 'never
loses changes'. The fact of the matter is that someone that doesn't understand
the way git works can cause irreversible damage without recourse if not
discovered. In many source control systems this is not the case. I still use
git on github even with this flaw.
~~~
wladimir
The underlying problem is that GIT was never meant as a centralized scm. A
centralized source control system will never lose changes, even if one of the
users messes up. This means that it distinguishes between normal committers
and 'admins'. Only admins can do irreversible actions.
Git uses local, cloned repositories and users can do everything they like with
them. Changes can be pushed and pulled to other repositories, possibly
changing them irreversibly.
By using github you use GIT in a (kind of) centralized way. Suddenly there is
an 'central project repository' again, that needs to be protected against
damage. But as GIT was never meant to do this, and trusts its users, it has to
be bolted on somehow... at least, that's how I understand it.
I hope they will get this right as it's very important for accountability.
~~~
stewars
You don't need to allow others write access to your repositories on github.
Simply have them fork your public repository but don't add them as a
collaborator. They can commit all they want and send you or any one of your
'admin' collaborators a pull request. This idea that git/github is losing
changes is not true. You have at least until the next time the gc is run (90
days at github?), which is well beyond the time required to resolve the issue
in any active project.
------
alexg0
This is something that always bothered me about git. Anyone with access to the
repository can delete or overwrite a branch. Would be nice, if github had a
way restrict deletes of a branch, or a prevent a force push. Not sure if git
architecture actually makes this possible.
------
malkia
Wasn't there fiasco involving one prominent magazine for PC machines, where
the author claimed that Vista was using all of the memory, while that memory
in fact was cached.
But when in doubt, what happens with your cache on XP, Vista or Windows7 just
use Mark Russinovich's RamMap. For example it helped me realize that NTFS
compressed files, although compressed on disk would end up using the same
amount of cache (memory). For that reason, it's probably better to store files
compressed, rather than relying on NTFS.
<http://www.google.com/search?q=rammap>
------
eli
Good for you. I think this points to plenty of opportunity out there for
making Git easier to use. I know I would pay for something like that.
------
forkrulassail
Takes something to apologize like that. I'm sure they're glad about it.
You seriously made me paranoid about my repositories.
------
AliCollins
Nicely done, sir. Assuming all present here are human (!), we all screw
up...something to do with the programming, I guess?!
------
BasDirks
Everyone learns from this! Now let's form a circle, colour some line-drawings,
and watch a Disney flick.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Classic RAND Papers - miobrien
https://www.rand.org/pubs/classics.html
======
indescions_2018
Hmmm. "Vietnam -- US Relations: 1945-1968" seems to be missing from this list
;)
I love Space Technology textbooks from the 1960s. Largely because the physics
and math of orbital mechanics can still be provided for good simulations.
Not sure if the same holds true for Game Theory apart from historical
interest.
For a better introduction see Networks, Crowds and Markets:
[https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-
book/](https://www.cs.cornell.edu/home/kleinber/networks-book/)
~~~
jacobolus
Why wouldn’t game theory books from the 1960s be relevant? People still
recommend the 1944 Von Neumann & Morgenstern book all the time.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Games_and_Economic_B...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Games_and_Economic_Behavior)
~~~
Bromskloss
Ooo! I knew they had a theorem [0]; I'm excited to see they have a book too.
[0]<[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenster...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Von_Neumann%E2%80%93Morgenstern_utility_theorem>)
------
yodon
I’m disappointed only in how few titles are listed here. The impact RAND had
on how we think about complex topics and the caliber of people they engaged
was simply amazing. So much of their work from their heyday in the 1950’s
seems either comically obvious or comically arrogant now, not because they
were clueless but because they so completely shaped how we think today that we
can’t imagine being the first to ask those questions that way.
[edit added] And yes, I do get there were a lot of projects RAND was involved
in that people could reliably and reasonably dislike or find highly
objectionable. For me, as important as that is, it doesn’t change the
historical significance and importance (and interest) of the work RAND did,
both good and bad.
~~~
anigbrowl
These are highlights but there's a ton more material on their website, just
curated by category. There aren't enough hours in the day to read it all.
------
_jal
The first game theory book I read was _Compleat Strategyst_ [1]. Less
interesting flipping through it now, but at least at the time it was a good
sales pitch, leading me to read a bunch more on the topic.
Seeing analytic techniques applied across competitive games was a revelatory
moment for high-school-me, in the mind-candy sense. In an odd way, learning to
try to wrap math around human activities shaped how I approached programming
for a long time. Not that I was trying to apply game theory to programming,
rather the general approach of thinking about the world as a sort of meta-
word-problem. Wish I had started trying to get rid of that habit earlier.
[1]
[https://www.rand.org/pubs/commercial_books/CB113-1.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/commercial_books/CB113-1.html)
------
MichaelMoser123
It includes a book co-authored by Issac Asimov 'Planets for Man'
[https://www.rand.org/pubs/commercial_books/CB183-1.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/commercial_books/CB183-1.html)
Is it really true that people in the sixties thought that interstellar travel
is 'just around the corner' as claimed in the blurb to the book? I mean RAND
sold this book as a product for serious people.
~~~
Avshalom
I don't know _how many_ people did but in the seventies there were a lot of
people who had seen the birth of the airplane to the landing on the moon. With
people believing in exponential progress of technology amd things like Orion
an NSWR I suspect _a lot_ of people rid assume interstellar travel was right
around the corner.
~~~
jfoutz
My great grandmother saw the Wright brothers fly as a teenager. The moon
landing was a big deal to her.
You’re absolutely right. I was little when I talked with her, but my parents
would surely say she would have completely accepted interstellar flights as
the next thing.
~~~
mkempe
Read the science/tech magazines from the 50s and 60s -- travel to the planets
was imminent and ineluctable. [1]
While in principle and reason enormous achievements and progress are within
reach of private enterprise, the 20th century was not dominated by reason and
freedom, to say the least.
[1]
[http://www.astronautix.com/v/vonbraunmarpedition-1969.html](http://www.astronautix.com/v/vonbraunmarpedition-1969.html)
------
chb
"A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal Deviates"
([https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1418.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1418.html))
Had you described this to me in conversation, I'd have been incredulous.
~~~
rlongstaff
The review comments on Amazon tell you everything you need to know.
~~~
chb
Given the tone of so many of these reviews, I can't tell if the first reviewer
("Obi Wan") is being serious/delusional or if s/he's using the pagination of
the text to subtly(?) mock the other reviewers.
[https://www.amazon.com/Million-Random-Digits-Normal-
Deviates...](https://www.amazon.com/Million-Random-Digits-Normal-
Deviates/dp/0833030477)
------
lasercookies
[https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R3283/index1.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R3283/index1.html)
Timeless classics. If only we were taught etiquette about electronic messaging
like this in 2018.
~~~
outsideoflife
This really is good. I might use some of this at our company. I love the stuff
about not replying while emotional!
------
ggm
Also, Baran was not the only voice in the packet networking sea.. Pouzin
should be recognized more. No disrespect either Baran, or RAND, but this has a
feel like the washington mall history of invention.. if it didn't happen
either in the US, or by a person who subsequently immigrated to the US, it
almost didn't happen.
------
ggm
I share Shapiro/Anderson on email with anyone I can convince to read it. I
remember it coming out well: I'd been slung off a UK JANET email list for
abusive behaviour just around this time!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Power9 Rollout Begins with Summit and Sierra - rbanffy
https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/09/19/power9-rollout-begins-summit-sierra/
======
equalunique
Anyone interested in having an open-source-friendly Power9 system may
currently pre-order a Raptor Engineering Talos II:
[https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/prerelease.php](https://www.raptorcs.com/TALOSII/prerelease.php)
~~~
flyingfences
Are there any projects in the works for an open-source-friendly Power9 system
that doesn't cost $6k?
------
virtuallynathan
If the Summit system has 4600 nodes, each w/ 2x Power9 and 6x Volta V100 GPUs,
I calculate, in the GPU alone: 3.3 Exaflops for FP8, 440Pflops for 32bit FP32,
and 220Pflops for FP64
Unless i'm missing something, this machine is a beast. 13MW sounds right by my
math.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A circuit board from the Saturn V rocket, reverse-engineered and explained - mcrute
http://www.righto.com/2020/04/a-circuit-board-from-saturn-v-rocket.html
======
tectonic
This reminds me of this short piece about debugging a live Saturn V
([http://www.zamiang.com/post/debugging-a-live-
saturn-v](http://www.zamiang.com/post/debugging-a-live-saturn-v)), and also a
detailed video about the Saturn V's Launch Vehicle Digital Computer
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mMK6iSZsAs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mMK6iSZsAs))
— it had 112 KB of dual-redundant hand-woven magnetic core memory.
(Links borrowed from my weekly newsletter about the space industry called
Orbital Index [https://orbitalindex.com](https://orbitalindex.com) — check it
out if you like this kind of nerdery.)
~~~
grecy
> _it had 112 KB of dual-redundant hand-woven magnetic core memory._
Purely out of curiosity, do we know the amount of memory a modern orbital
rocket like the Falcon 9 has?
~~~
kbaker
You might find this question interesting:
[https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9243/what-
computer...](https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/9243/what-computer-and-
software-is-used-by-the-falcon-9)
> The Falcon 9 has 3 dual core x86 processors running an instance of Linux on
> each core. The flight software is written in C/C++ and runs in the x86
> environment.
~~~
segfaultbuserr
It's unusual that x86 and Linux, which are generally not considered to be
reliably and robust under an extreme environment, are used here. But since
it's developed by SpaceX, it makes sense - move fast and break things, use
off-the-shelf commercial systems as the basis to reduce costs.
Anyway, I think it should be more interesting to compare it with a modern
rocket that uses a more specialized computer system, VxWorks comes to mind.
~~~
Cthulhu_
It's a risk assessment tbh; if they can put in more redundancy instead of
fault-tolerant hardware at a fraction of the cost then it'll be cheaper for
them.
I mean compare it with mainframes vs cloud computing; with the latter, you use
off-the-shelf hardware and build your software in such a way that you will
randomly lose machines, BUT because cloud computing you'll automatically spin
up a new machine in that case.
------
PostOnce
This guy's blog is ridiculous(ly good). Browse the rest of it, you'll be glad
you did. I'm glad I did.
[http://www.righto.com/2014/10/how-z80s-registers-are-
impleme...](http://www.righto.com/2014/10/how-z80s-registers-are-implemented-
down.html)
[http://www.righto.com/2020/03/inside-titan-missile-
guidance-...](http://www.righto.com/2020/03/inside-titan-missile-guidance-
computer.html)
[http://www.righto.com/2016/10/simulating-xerox-alto-with-
con...](http://www.righto.com/2016/10/simulating-xerox-alto-with-
contralto.html)
~~~
kens
Thanks! I'm glad you're enjoying the blog. I'm here if you have any questions.
~~~
djmips
Do you plan on revisiting your analysis of power bricks with regard to current
models. I know it's not as exciting as Apollo era computers but I found it
intriguing.
~~~
kens
I probably won't repeat my charger analysis since I'm unlikely to find
anything new and interesting. There are other sites that are doing detailed
reviews of chargers now.
------
cpascal
My new favorite YouTuber, CuriousMarc, has a whole series of videos about
restoring the Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC).
His AGC Playlist:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSahAoOLdU&list=PL-_93BVApb...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KSahAoOLdU&list=PL-_93BVApb59FWrLZfdlisi_x7-Ut_-w7)
His channel is full of fascinating retro-computing and EE videos.
~~~
kens
Just to keep everything straight, the AGC that we restored is a totally
different computer from the LVDC/LVDA that this board is from. The AGCs were
on the Command Module and the Lunar Module that went to the Moon's surface,
while the LVDC was onboard the Saturn V rocket.
The AGC was one of the very first computers to use integrated circuits, while
the LVDC used hybrid modules. The LVDC used triple-redundant circuits with
voting while the AGC was not redundant. The LVDC was a 26-bit serial computer,
while the AGC was a 15-bit computer. The LVDC was built by IBM, while the AGC
was built by MIT and Raytheon.
It's interesting that the two computers were different in so many ways.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lack of sleep boosts levels of Alzheimer's proteins - dnetesn
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2017-12-lack-boosts-alzheimer-proteins.html
======
DrScump
Blogspam of
[https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/lack-sleep-boosts-levels-
alz...](https://medicine.wustl.edu/news/lack-sleep-boosts-levels-alzheimers-
proteins/)
------
Nomentatus
But remember that the largest effects are from darkness, not sleep per se.
True darkness (can't see your hand), at very regular times and long enough to
create biphasic sleep. Red light doesn't trigger ipRGCs, and melatonin leads
garbage clean up in mitochondria.
~~~
perl4ever
That's interesting, because I've acquired an aversion to having the light off
when I sleep. For some reason it doesn't inhibit me from falling asleep with
it on any more and while I can sleep with it off, it doesn't feel quite right
somehow. I also have developed irregular sleep patterns, spending anywhere
from 5 to 22 hours awake, and 8-10 asleep.
~~~
manmal
Alcohol also doesn’t inhibit one from falling asleep (on the contrary), but
sleep phases are messed up. I feel quite rested after one night with alcohol,
but things fall apart after 2-3 consecutive nights.
What I mean is.. if I were you, I would try sleeping in pitch black for a week
and then check how I‘ve adjusted.
~~~
dzhiurgis
Alcohol screws you up in long term - try some valerian - it produces the same
hormone that makes you fall asleep on booze GABA.
------
Apocryphon
In recent weeks if not months, HN has been my go-to "fret about getting
Alzheimer's/dementia" newsfeed.
~~~
davidw
Has it come up here before? I don't really recall.
~~~
Apocryphon
Search turns up way more, but these were the recent stories that came to mind:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15978252](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15978252)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15477048](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15477048)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15508714](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15508714)
~~~
eweise
I think that was a joke.
------
hendry
This video lecture by Professor Matthew Walker is great to learn more on the
importance of sleep:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXflBZXAucQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXflBZXAucQ)
~~~
spjwebster
I can highly recommend the book - Why We Sleep - mentioned at the top of the
video. It goes into quite some depth on the reasons for and mechanics of sleep
in a way I found approachable for someone with only a layman's understanding
of chemistry:
[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501144316](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1501144316)
------
db48x
Of course we still don't actually know if amyloid beta causes Alzheimer's, or
if it's just another symptom.
------
fnayr
I wonder how the protein collects in people like myself, who will routinely
stay up 24-30 hours, but then sleep 12-14 hours after.
~~~
pishpash
It says in the article, clearing away happens at the same rate, but production
happens at a higher rate when awake. Your peak concentration of this protein
will be higher, thus causing more damage. This seems to indicate that frequent
naps and polyphasic sleep may be good.
~~~
fnayr
But if the rate of clearage is the same then because I’m sleeping longer it
should clear more of the protein?
~~~
yorwba
The amount of harmful protein cleared is likely proportional to the product of
concentrations of the harmful protein and the clearing protein, because the
two need to interact. That means that clearing becomes slower as less harmful
protein is left.
Prolonging the clearing process would mean that you spend a longer time at
very low concentration, but not that the minimum concentration would be much
lower. If the harm of high concentrations is disproportionally higher, the
longer time at lower concentration would be unable to balance that out.
However, this is only based on my rough intuition and I didn't even do any
napkin math. If you want to really get a quantifiable comparison, you'd better
find out about the concrete interactions in question and calculate it
yourself.
Or you could ask a physician who specializes in sleep (I forget what they are
called), but if it isn't already published science somewhere, it's unlikely
they could tell you anything other than that what you're doing is highly
unusual and you should probably stop.
~~~
fnayr
Thanks for the intuition. We're done very soon and hope to never go this hard
again.
------
QAPereo
It’s worth pointing out that while b-amyloid and tau proteins are _suspected_
of playing a crucial role in Alzheimer’s, disease it isn’t actually confirmed.
------
joveian
It is hard to tell from this article, but looking at the paper the key thing
they were focusing on is the mechanism for the previously observed diurnal
variation in amyloid beta. They do some modeling that they say suggests that
the main factor allowing levels to decrease at night is reduced production
rather than increased clearance. One implication of this is "Given that there
are many approved therapies targeting sleep, the effect of sleep-inducing
drugs on CSF Aβ should be tested in individuals with sleep disruption and
promising candidates investigated in AD prevention trials."
------
dzhiurgis
I keep wondering how much impact cannabis has.
I recently found out that it inhibits REM sleep, which really starts to feel
after few months being stoned. The worst part is coming back from it - the
dreams are extra vivid.
Now the article mentions long-wave sleep being the cause tho, but I can’t help
to think that constant REM sleep deprevation has to have some sort of impact
in the long term, perhaps we haven’t discovered it yet.
------
polskibus
Is this process helped by taking melatonin?
------
superobserver
Given that the etiology of Alzheimer's is tied to the very same proteins that
must be cleared out during sleep, and that the requirements of sleep decrease
with age, there seems to be a cyclical feedback loop at play here, insofar as
healthy aging does not typically difficulties with R&R. (This example becomes
more salient in the case of supergenarians who can rest and let little stress
them a great deal.) Compound that with a likely immunodeficient response
during sleep (where the brain is supposed to become more spongy) for these
proteins to be cleared out and a poorly functioning blood-brain barrier, it
would seem finding treatments that focus on these self-restorative responses
would be most beneficial. Whereas treatments that temporarily boost processing
capabilities will only somewhat delay the onset clearly shows that this is
most likely the case.
I wonder what study on general EEG signatures may reveal with respect to the
efficiency with which the cleanup process can be facilitated thereby. Perhaps
meditative practices could be demonstrated as a form of protein-cache clearing
even when in a waking, albeit altered, state of consciousness.
~~~
joveian
It sounds like production is the key here not clearance but I am also
interested if meditation affects that. I did a quick search and didn't see
anything.
------
chiefalchemist
To be clear, afaik, the lack of sleep doesn't increase levels; sleep lowers
levels, as sleep is the body's / brain's recovery process.
~~~
joveian
It looks like they are saying the opposite, that the lack of sleep does
increase levels.
~~~
chiefalchemist
Waking ups levels. Sleep lowers them. This is the natural cycle/process.
Remove sleep and yes levels will increase. But the cause isn't being awake,
it's the lack of sleep. Yes?
~~~
joveian
My understanding is that they are saying that the cause is being awake. I
don't understand the modeling they are doing, but they are saying that the
time curve of the concentration should be different if clearance was changing
at night, so they think there is little change in clearance but only in
production.
They mention one alternative that would also fit the data: "In order for
decreased glymphatic clearance during sleep deprivation to increase soluble
CSF Aβ, a decrease in irreversible losses (e.g. to the bloodstream or
lymphatics) due to prolonged overnight waking would have to be perfectly
matched by an increase in Aβ clearance to CSF. This is plausible but unlikely
and not identifiable from the current data."
They say "The SILK kinetics results unequivocally show that glymphatic
clearance alone, without compensation from other clearance mechanisms, would
be ineffective in protecting the brain from AD because overall clearance rates
are not changing. Glymphatic clearance may potentially contribute to the
protective effects of sleep against AD, but changes in production rate seem to
be the necessary and critical factor."
Also worth noting that they were unable to test if changes in slow wave sleep
made a difference because sodium oxybate didn't actually increase slow wave
sleep in that group vs normal sleepers.
It does sound like this contradicts previous research, at least:
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3880190/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3880190/)
They do cite that paper but do not have a detailed analysis of how their
results could be consistant or are contradictory to what that study found. In
that study radioactive amyloid beta was directly injected into mice and then
how much of it was left was observed after varying amounts of time later and
in sleeping vs. awake vs anesthetized. Maybe newly produced amyloid beta could
be cleared instead of the radiolabeled amyloid beta or maybe the injected
amyloid beta had different clearanace properties than naturally generated
amyloid beta, but I don't know if either of those are plausable. Maybe they
are just contradictory results.
If it is correct that the production changes are what makes the difference, I
wonder why that is the case considering the much larger fluid exchange that
happens at night. Also I wonder if some of the other similar substances that
cause problems if they accumulate too much have a similar issue. Maybe stuff
that can be cleared at high rate is easier to get rid of with relatively
little sleep and stuff that can't is more likely to cause trouble over time.
------
waytogo
That lacking sleep creates all kinds of disease is no surprise. The question
is _how_ to get sleep.
~~~
overcast
The answer is going to sleep, at a regular time. Put down the computer, put
down the cell phone, put down the games. Go to bed early. Above all else I
make sure I get my eight hours every night. If I'm tossing and turning, I'll
call into work. As a result, I am NEVER sick. Ever. Anecdotal sure, but if I
don't get sleep, I feel like I'm coming down with something.
Also naps, take advantage of them. I'll often go home on lunch, and take a
snooze for an hour.
------
ianai
Reads like a commercial for Sodium oxybate. Also makes me want to further hone
in on my sleep.
------
thats_right
Is this why living life according to a stupid fucking alarm clock, where I
have to blast my ears with noise at 6AM, to snooze until I actually get out of
bed at 7AM every morning, be out the door by 8AM, and wade through shitty
commuter traffic until 9AM, makes me want to stab people?
I honestly am not worth talking to before 11AM, and I need at least half an
hour to settle in and check emails. Oh, you’re taking lunch at noon? Good for
you. See you at 1PM. I don’t care. I’ll stay until 8PM. Just give me my
mornings back, please?
Why the fuck am I in 10AM meetings? Why are people awake at 9AM? I have to
drink a gallon of coffee to make it to 5PM, and that fucks my shit up until
2AM. I fucking hate all of you.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mobility Blues - naish
http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2008/07/18/Mobile-Net-Gloom
======
Tichy
"[...]iPhone net clients[...]And, for the first time ever, they’re decently
programmable in a somewhat-uncrippled way."
Actually, my impression is that iPhone is going through all of the steps of
the J2ME evolution, starting all over again. At least there are a lot of
similarities: applications can only access their own "disk space", so no
interaction between applications. Applications can't run in the background.
And then there is the issue of the "forbidden runtimes".
At least iPhone apps can access the address book, but so could a lot of J2ME
devices. Not sure how push works - a lot of J2ME devices allow push via SMS,
and other ways I have never fully understood.
The one advantage of programming for the iPhone is not having to worry about
cross-platform compatibility. Like with J2ME, some phones allow access to the
address book, others don't. Some phones allow sending of SMS, others don't.
Some allow accessing the camera, others don't. And so on - knowing what you
get with the iPhone is a big advantage, but for sure there could be even more
freedom for developers.
~~~
andreyf
I'm not sure if having proprietary standard hardware imposed by Apple will
play out well for them, in the long run... it didn't with computers against
DOS, why would it with cell phones against Android?
~~~
Tichy
To be honest I hope they will fail, but I will probably get an iPhone
anyway... But as soon as viable "open" solutions are available, I will switch.
------
davidw
I think Android is stumbling a bit, but still moving along at a pretty good
clip, and that it's the best of the bunch for the time being. I trust Sun more
than Google to be able to "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory".
------
andreyf
I think his most prudent concern, that of applications being artificially
limited on the devices, will change quickly when the networks become open, and
that's only a matter of time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's the fraction of lurkers vs active users? - Anon84
In your respective blogs or collaborative sites, what is the proportion of "lurkers" vs the number of active users?
By active I mean creating content in one form or another (commenting, tagging, etc...). I imagine this information would be useful in planning how to monetize sites that depend on user collaboration and participation. Is there any larger scale data on this?
======
nostrademons
FictionAlley (Harry Potter fanfiction) was a 100:10:1 ratio - we usually had
about 10-20 simultaneous users actually posting on the forums or fanfic sites,
100-200 registered users browsing, and 1000 simultaneous unregistered guests
(out of a total registered userbase of about 100k). This seems fairly typical
of most community-oriented sites.
Diffle (Flash games hosting) maxed out at about 1200 uniques/month, a dozen or
two registered users, and about 6 that actually contributed content or games.
Similar ratios, but fewer registered visitors because people go to flash games
sites to play and you didn't need to be registered to play.
------
unalone
I think Hacker News might have a significantly lower rate of lurkers, because
of the fact that it keeps itself out of the public eye. OmegasEye, an old site
of mine, had very little lurking, because the people who knew about it were
usually its members. Hacker News isn't _that_ obscure, but it isn't a site
that attempt to make itself high-profile.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Simple screen recorder for Mac? - chatmasta
I’m looking for a really simple screen recorder to use to keep clients updated on local development. It needs to record smooth video (so react interactivity doesn’t look janky), and preferably make it very easy to share those videos.<p>Any recommendations?
======
mtmail
Open Quicktime, then 'File' > 'New Screen Recording'. It allows to select a
region of the screen. Sharing has a couple of default, the one for iphone
generates small *.mp4 files.
~~~
charlieegan3
This. There's also [http://recordit.co/](http://recordit.co/) which is good
for GIFs in PR comments (it costs money for the non-janky version)
------
niftylettuce
Kap [https://getkap.co/](https://getkap.co/)
or
Quicktime
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apt: please make the moo reproducible - teddyh
https://bugs.debian.org/848721
======
smcl
Took me a while (after reading through the reply, to no avail) to figure out
what this refers to. Here's the feature this is referring to:
$ apt-get moo
(__)
(oo)
/------\/
/ | ||
* /\---/\
~~ ~~
..."Have you mooed today?"...
Edit: maybe not actually! Just found this too:
$ aptitude moo
There are no Easter Eggs in this program.
$ aptitude -v moo
There really are no Easter Eggs in this program.
~~~
simias
I don't really understand what in this feature makes the build non-
reproducible. Judging by the patch it's the call to time(NULL) that seems to
be problematic, but I don't understand why.
~~~
kr7
The output of "apt-get moo" changes on special days (4/1, 12/25, 8/16, 11/7,
2/18). So if another program was using "apt-get moo" in its build script, the
build would not be reproducible. With the patch, the SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
environment variable can be set to make "apt-get moo" deterministic.
I don't think anything actually uses "apt-get moo" in its build script.
This kind of patch makes more sense for build tools like "ar" (static library
creator). By default, "ar" injects a timestamp into the output file, so the
binary is different each build. But, use the "D" flag and "ar" becomes
deterministic.
~~~
rzzzt
The time-dependent part can be seen here:
[https://github.com/Debian/apt/blob/master/apt-
private/privat...](https://github.com/Debian/apt/blob/master/apt-
private/private-moo.cc#L164)
~~~
kr7
There is a second part above too:
[https://github.com/Debian/apt/blob/master/apt-
private/privat...](https://github.com/Debian/apt/blob/master/apt-
private/private-moo.cc#L33)
------
Piskvorrr
Hilarious, yes. Except this: "The followers advice is dropping the curly
brackets for these one-line ifs to make them all happy."
Did I just read a code review advocating for #gotofail, just to avoid a minor
formatting nitpick?
~~~
omginternets
What exactly is the risk here?
~~~
stonemetal
Here? Not much but as a style choice it is what lead to an SSL bug in iOS.
[https://www.imperialviolet.org/2014/02/22/applebug.html](https://www.imperialviolet.org/2014/02/22/applebug.html)
------
the_duke
David Kalnischkies response is the most hilarious code review I've ever read.
~~~
ja30278
It's quite funny, but..
" The followers advice is dropping the curly brackets for these one-line ifs
to make them all happy. "
I have never understood why anyone would do this. It's a bug waiting to happen
(as goto fail showed), for truly marginal benefit
if (foo)
bar();
if (foo) {
bar();
}
~~~
__david__
Because one takes an extra line. For something that's effectively an error
condition. There's so reason errors should take up so much vertical code space
(which is at a premium even today, given how wide monitors are). This is one
of my primary quibbles with golang, and why I will never give in to the
community's slavish devotion to "go fmt @
~~~
nitrogen
Try rotating your screen 90 degrees.
~~~
chris_wot
Do you know how weird that makes me look when I'm coding on my laptop at the
airport?
~~~
nitrogen
No doubt it's quite weird, but I am of the opinion that hardware should serve
the code and coder, not the other way around. Maybe use a portrait orientation
tablet with a bt keyboard for travel. I think there could be a small market
for laptops with a portrait mode, too.
------
dabber
Related bug:
[https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/56125](https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apt/+bug/56125)
~~~
jordigh
I am sad that my contribution to this bug has been dropped from Debian:
[https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=413725](https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-
bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=413725)
------
syassami
apt-get install cowsay - for all your mooing desires.
~~~
fennecfoxen
fortune | cowsay | lolcat
------
pksadiq
There is also:
ip moo
~~~
kworker
PETA approved.
------
hellofunk
Can I just say.. Holy cow!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jim DeMint: No Internet Taxation Without Representation - JayNeely
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444226904577559414267708728.html
======
daninus14
This is ridiculous! We should try to stop this!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Artificial Ovaries Could Expand Fertility Options for Chemo Patients - ArtWomb
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/how-artificial-ovaries-could-expand-fertility-options-chemo-patients-180969547/?no-ist
======
trdtaylor1
Their answer of grafting ovarian tissue into place is a terrible choice, for
all the reasons listed. Just make an artificial WOMB, figure out how to
cleanly generate sex cells, and provide the immune system information from
mother.
~~~
cimmanom
"Just"?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Minimal puppeteer pool - jgalvez
<a href="https://gist.github.com/galvez/0b4f0bc752b1e6cf4d4b15343dee1020" rel="nofollow">https://gist.github.com/galvez/0b4f0bc752b1e6cf4d4b15343dee1...</a><p>I couldn't find any example of this so I thought I would share one I put together. It's a mind dump of code used in production, although this particular bit is untested, it shows the idea. I used it for a PDF generation pool (Launching new chromium instances on every request was making the server run out of memory)
======
halfeld
Pretty good
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Write code every day - brettlangdon
https://brett.is/writing/about/write-code-every-day/?hn=1
======
copsarebastards
> _More times than not the above exercise leads me to a problem that I then
> can go off and solve. For example, a few weeks ago I sat down and decided I
> wanted to write a web server in go (think nginx /apache). I knew going into
> the project I wanted a really nice and easy to use configuration file to
> define the settings. So, I did what most people do these days I and used
> json, but that didn’t really feel right to me. I then tried yaml, but yet
> again didn’t feel like what I wanted. I probably could have used ini format
> and made custom rules for the keys and values, but again, this is hacky.
> This spawned a new project in order to solve the problem I was having and
> ended up being forge, which is a hand coded configuration file syntax and
> parser for go which ended up being a neat mix between json and nginx
> configuration file syntax._
You make a persuasive argument for why someone should _not_ write code every
day, but instead step away from the keyboard occasionally and get a sense of
perspective.
No, your mix between json and nginx configuration file syntax is not "neat".
It's pointless, and doesn't solve any real problem. In fact, if anyone ever
uses your idea it will _cause_ problems, by adding another random pointless
format for the rest of us to have to support.
And did you miss the beginning of what you said? You set off to write a web
server and instead you got bogged down in parsing the config files. Your
efforts did not produce a web server. Writing code every day has apparently
not taught you how to focus.
In short, quantity of code does not beget quality. Quality code isn't just
code that's nicely formatted, clear, terse, etc., it's also code that solves a
real problem that you've set out to solve. And just writing more code isn't
going to help you learn what a real problem is, let alone how to solve it.
~~~
furyofantares
The goal, as stated, was to have the experience of writing code. Bringing
another web server into existence was not the goal, it was a potential means
to the goal.
~~~
hoers
Why not set the goal to 'make something that works'? You'd get the whole
'experience of writing code' with it for free
~~~
furyofantares
For the same reason athletes have practice routines that are not "play a game
of <sport>" \-- it allows you to focus your practice. If OP wants to practice
writing nontrivial code, re-implementing something is a good way to avoid the
MORE difficult problem of having to invent a product. It allows him to
concentrate on having a nontrivial coding experience.
As an aside, I personally code just for fun. Not for practice, and not to make
something. I write a lot of code nobody but me will ever see because I enjoy
doing it. Putting pressure on myself to turn each thing into a product can
ruin the joy of experimentation. I'm doing it for the joy of doing it, for the
same reason I might watch TV or play a video game or do a sudoku puzzle.
~~~
copsarebastards
Who said anything about a product?
You can solve real world problems with code without creating a product. Things
don't have to be monetizeable to be useful (and indeed many things that are
monetizeable aren't useful (except to make money)).
And experimentation is totally a necessary part of solving real-world
problems. I'm not sure where you get off representing "solving real problems"
as being anti-experimentation.
~~~
furyofantares
The reason I responded to someone else rather than you is that you do not
appear to be making much of an attempt to understand the things you are
replying to. You are, to my best estimation, simply being argumentative. For
example, in your previous post, you said you could just write echo "Hello
World" over and over, which clearly does not give you any practice at writing
code and is clearly not related to the conversation. In this post you talk
about monetization, something I didn't mention at all, and while "product" may
not have been the best possible word I could have used, it makes me think you
didn't make much of an attempt to understand my point.
~~~
copsarebastards
> For example, in your previous post, you said you could just write echo
> "Hello World" over and over, which clearly does not give you any practice at
> writing code and is clearly not related to the conversation.
No, it definitely _is_ practice at writing code; it's just not useful
practice. My point is that not all practice is useful. If you're going to
accuse me of not making much attempt to understand my point, maybe don't
dismiss what I said so easily?
------
throwaway12309
Actually, spend time with your kids every day. Or your special one. Or
kitesurfing. Or playing pool. Or just learn about chess and play folks in the
park.
Do other things and let your mind expand and bring those benefits to your
code. It will make you a better coder (and person) and life will actually be
interesting.
~~~
dominotw
what? How did you come to those conclusions ?
~~~
veb
I think his point is quite obvious, which is basically "don't forget there's a
life outside of the tech world".
I know that I'll sit here doing nothing on the Internet when I'm not
constructive yet the hours still fly on by. Realistically, I should realise
when things won't get better, get up, go for a walk or play with my son. On
the off chance I've done this in the past, I always feel more refreshed and
can turn a previously crappy day into something positive.
But sitting on your chair, punishing yourself because you don't know what to
do/code, isn't very effective in bettering yourself.
I hope that's what OPs point was. :)
~~~
brettlangdon
I totally agree with this. And is actually a really good point I missed in my
article.
You cannot, and should not, force yourself to sit in front of the computer
non-stop just because you "should". You need to take those breaks too, they
are just as important as the work you put towards mastering your craft.
------
davelnewton
No no, don't.
Athletes don't practice every day, they rest.
The brain needs rest, just like the body. Take some down time. Come back
refreshed. Practice deliberately.
~~~
ggreer
I'm sorry, but your comment is doubly-wrong.
First, most athletes _do_ train every day. Even tapering before an important
competition involves training daily. I ran track and XC competitively in high
school and college. Some of my teammates hadn't missed a day in _years_. Most
of us only skipped training if we were injured or very ill.
Second, the brain is not a muscle. Sleep deprivation and stress hormones can
diminish its abilities, but no amount of thinking or drudgery can damage it.
Neurons can't tell if they're reading, playing video games, or debugging code.
An examination of history also supports this. A mere century ago, people
toiled far greater for far longer than we do today. The average work week was
over 60 hours![1] Despite such exertions, even the _concept_ of burnout didn't
exist. It _still_ doesn't exist in some cultures, and in the cultures it does,
burnout doesn't affect everyone. Unlike sleep deprivation or physical
exhaustion, some people just don't burn out. If you start looking at studies,
you'll find papers like, _Is burnout separable from depression in cluster
analysis? A longitudinal study_.[2] The answer: no. So far, researchers
haven't been able to reliably differentiate between burnout and depression.
This indicates that burnout _is_ depression, not a guaranteed consequence of
working.
Of course, one should still be wary of depression, and work is one piece of
that puzzle. Yet work alone is neither necessary nor sufficient to cause ruin.
Exercise, social gatherings, and friendships are equally (if not more)
important.
As one more piece of evidence that work alone doesn't cause burnout, I submit
myself. I have written code every day for the past 908 days.[3] That's almost
8% of my existence. Those commits aren't just whitespace or linter changes.
Every day, I write real code that runs in production. I also exercise,
socialize, and generally live a fulfilling life. People sometimes voice their
concerns about burnout. But to me, it's as if they'd asked, "Are you worried
about getting burnt out from reading so much Hacker News?"
1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Gradual_decrease_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_time#Gradual_decrease_in_working_hours)
2\.
[http://geoff.greer.fm/files/Bianchi_20R__20et_20al__20_28in_...](http://geoff.greer.fm/files/Bianchi_20R__20et_20al__20_28in_20press_29.pdf)
3\.
[http://geoff.greer.fm/images/github_streak_908.png](http://geoff.greer.fm/images/github_streak_908.png)
~~~
atinoda-kestrel
Great response!
There's also the lovely condescension that I can't help but sense when someone
tells me why writing code every day shouldn't be as fulfilling as it is.
That's a big part of how some people get a sense of fulfillment, myself
included. I suck at drawing and painting, and programming is my main creative
outlet. Implying (or sometimes stating!) that I should be spending less of my
time coding so as to spend more time doing something that they find more
fulfilling is... rude at best.
~~~
davelnewton
Nobody said anything even _remotely_ rude, let alone "rude at best". Nobody
said you don't find coding fulfilling, and nobody said you should do something
_they_ find fulfilling. Nobody said coding isn't creative, either.
_I_ think if _all_ one does is code then the vast possibilities life offers
is being ignored.
~~~
atinoda-kestrel
I wasn't responding to the parent poster directly, but rather addressing some
comments I've heard in meatspace. Sorry I didn't make that clear!
~~~
davelnewton
My bad.
I'll grant you that a lot of people (a) assume coding isn't a creative act,
and (b) assume that what they enjoy _everyone_ will enjoy.
------
lewisjoe
I see a lot of negative comments here. The point being missed is doing
something is better than doing nothing.
Yes he might not have ended up finishing with the web server what he started.
But I'm pretty sure he did NOT set out to build something that would be a
product or a startup someday. He set out to do something repeatedly, so that
he becomes good at it and uncover new problems that are interesting to keep
working on. None of this relates to productivity or writing the best code
possible.
You start out with something; end up finding pleasure in doing something else;
then you keep on doing it until you've written enough code to know where you
stand and keep improving.
The take away for me is this. As for me it always was the chicken to the egg
problem. I need to be keep working to find new problems. However, I need to
start somewhere with a problem that I don't know yet. Trying to rewrite
existing stuff was something I'd do to learn new tech. Now it hits me that I
could use the same, to keep my fingers stuck to the keys.
I'd love to read more writes like this. Sharing how you overcame something is
noble. It helps more people than you anticipate.
~~~
brettlangdon
Thank you. This does a great job of summing up the article. It was exactly
what I hoped people would take away from it.
------
chipz
[do something here] every day is the key to master everything.
~~~
melling
Yes, the 10,000 hour rule.
Except that's wrong...
~~~
shogun21
How is it wrong?
~~~
melling
Are you asking me to Google that for you? I just got downvoted for simply
pointing out that they're wrong.
~~~
mcbutterbunz
No, he's asking you to back up your claim. If you're going to make a statement
like that, you should be prepared to provide some information. Dont make
others do the research.
~~~
melling
Here:
[https://www.google.com/#q=10000+hour+rule+wrong](https://www.google.com/#q=10000+hour+rule+wrong)
The first couple of results are great. However, if you really are interested,
I would look through Google's entire first results page.
------
anoplus
For me the whole point of technology is to free us. I want to write code that
solves a real problem. 90% of my time is spent thinking about what problem to
solve.
------
meowface
Off-topic, but why did you decide not to go with YAML? Did you just want a
version of YAML that wasn't whitespace-significant? Forge just looks like an
nginx-y YAML, with no arrays and `=` instead of `:`.
~~~
brettlangdon
Was mostly just how it turned out. A lot of the decisions were mostly
arbitrary, I wanted something that look/felt like an nginx config but was more
generic (didn't have application specific directives), it just so happened to
end up looking a lot like yaml.
'=' was arbitrary, I think paired with ';' I was going for a programming
language type feel, which might not of been the best decision, but it is what
I did. I also have plans to add more features, there currently are references
(pointers essentially), intend on adding list/sets, operators
(merge/concatenation/substraction/union/intersection/etc) and being able to
reference environment variables. Not sure what else is to come.
Also, side note, I found writer a parser that deals with brackets '{}' to
define blocks was much easier than trying to do it via whitespace. So that
decision was mostly a time based decision.
I wrote an article about the project here:
[https://brett.is/writing/about/forge-configuration-
parser/](https://brett.is/writing/about/forge-configuration-parser/) It
doesn't give any good details into why I made the decisions I did, just a
quick overview.
------
tectonic
Always Be Coding.
~~~
orthoganol
Lol, that article when it came out was incredible. The author somehow failed
to realize that "ABC", from Alec Baldwin's psychopathic character, is actually
satire about the mindset of such psychopaths, not actual advice to live by.
~~~
current_call
How do you know it's satire?
~~~
orthoganol
General literary sense. Have you read the play?
~~~
current_call
That's vague. I'm not entitled to a thorough explanation, but I was hoping for
a better one.
I have not read the play, seen the play, or seen the movie.
~~~
orthoganol
It's similar to asking why I think Malfoy in Harry Potter is portrayed as a
bad person. There's nothing subtle about the GGR character. I recommend
watching the movie, primarily for the performances.
~~~
current_call
I've seen the speech. He isn't nice, but he's still right. "Do a good job or
be replaced by someone who can."
I guess I need to add the movie to my backlog now.
------
quii
While I appreciate the sentiment when you set your goal as coding every day,
that becomes your hammer to solve every problem.
The best example of this is your confguration project. I am amazed how many
well-intentioned projects there are to do with configuration when really all
you need is environment variables. No libraries, works everywhere, with every
language and easy to understand.
[http://12factor.net/](http://12factor.net/)
------
xacaxulu
Work at Wal-Mart every day.
Fix cars every day.
Perform brain surgery every day.
Fly passenger jets every day.
Flip burgers every day.
Hmmm. Doesn't really seem like a great idea.
~~~
Adlai
"Hey hey hey..." yep, that one doesn't quite work either.
"Do you want to know the secret of life? [I'll] tell you the secret of life:
it's not the amount of time we have... it's not quantity and it's not even
quality. It's variety." \- Bardo the Just, _Neverness_ (by David Zindell)
------
_RPM
And tell people who judge you for drinking too much coffee to kindly go f __*
themselves
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fun with UB in C: returning uninitialized floats - luu
http://yosefk.com/blog/fun-with-ub-in-c-returning-uninitialized-floats.html
======
Filligree
Can I just suggest that... forcing programmers to become language lawyers just
so their language-lawyer compilers don't get overly clever and optimise away
half their program is _probably a bad thing_?
~~~
rcfox
Someone says this every time the topic of undefined behaviour comes up.
Ignoring the original portability concerns, there's a large of set of
optimizations that are only possible if you can assume that no undefined
behaviour occurs.
Accessing past the bounds of an array is undefined, and generally a bad thing
to do. If the compiler decides that a block of code could only run if you
access outside of the array, why not delete that code? Surely, it'll never
run!
Even eliminating array bounds checking is an optimization that requires the
assumption that you don't go past the end of the array. Languages like Java
and Python pay a premium to ensure you don't do this on each iteration of your
for loops.
~~~
thoughtpolice
> Surely, it'll never run!
Oh, the hilarious irony of giving language-lawyery, glib responses of
"obviously, the code will not run" to users (who probably, you know, wrote
code _with the intention of it running_ ) - users who are complaining about
language lawyering optimizing compilers in the first place. It's like two
people reading the same page in a different book or something.
~~~
mikeash
Let's say I write a function that looks like:
int ComputeStuff(int value) {
if(value < 27) {
long and complex computation specialized for values under 27
return result
} else {
long and complex computation specialized for values 27 or more
return result
}
}
Then I call it from somewhere else like so:
int x = ComputeStuff(12);
Let's say the compiler decides this is a good candidate for inlining. Since
the programmer wrote code _with the intention of it running_ , are you saying
that the compiler should not take advantage of the fact that it knows the
exact value being passed into the function in this case and can delete half
the code knowing it will never run?
~~~
SoftwareMaven
That's is not remove code due to undefined behavior, so is an apples/oranges
comparison. If we keep your function, but the call looks like this:
int value1, value2;
value1 = compute_value_1()
ComputeStuff(value2) # oops, fat-fingered the '2'
Do you really think the author meant to not have ComputeStuff run? Since
value2 isn't initialized, it could be optimized out.
Yes, in this case, you would get a warning, but it is illustrative of the
kinds of things can cause optimizers to do very unexpected things to your
code. And it is surprisingly easy to find the UB conditions.
It's worth reading through this three-part post called _What Every C
Programmer Should Know About Undefined Behavior_ [1] from the LLVM folks to
see how UB can screw with you, including removing NULL checks, eliminating
overflow checks, and making debugging incredibly difficult to follow. It also
explains why they can't just generate errors while optimizing.
1\. [http://blog.llvm.org/2011/05/what-every-c-programmer-
should-...](http://blog.llvm.org/2011/05/what-every-c-programmer-should-
know.html)
~~~
mikeash
I don't think it is apples and oranges. Here's my next example:
int ComputeStuff(int *value) {
if(value == NULL) {
long and complex computation for a NULL value
return result
} else {
long and complex computation using the data pointed to by value
return result
}
}
Then I call it from somewhere else like so:
// NOTE: value must be non-NULL
void DoStuff(int *value) {
int pointedTo = *value;
// do some work with pointedTo
int computedResult = ComputeStuff(value);
// do some more work with whatever
}
Now, are you saying the compiler should not take advantage of the fact that it
knows value is non-NULL at this particular call site and eliminate half of the
code in this situation?
------
userbinator
That seems like a very unusual way to define a function. I'd want 'ok' to be
the return value, and the actual value returned to be via the pointer, since
that allows for
float c;
if(get(v, &c))
...do something with c...
instead of the more verbose
bool ok;
float c;
c = get(v, &ok);
if(ok)
...do something with c...
~~~
aciuix
I think it is a matter of being consistent. Both ways have certain syntactic
dis/advantages.
The first one enables you to have the function call directly in the if
statement, but requires you to define a variable beforehand.
The latter gives you the option to check the return value, pass a NULL, if you
don't need it for example, and use the return value directly.
------
exDM69
This is an interesting corner case but I'd like to see a practical piece of
code that actually causes this issue when compiled and executed. The example
code is quite contrived and compiler warnings should be raised.
Further, does the signalling NaN behavior happen with SSE (or NEON) or is this
an x87 issue?
~~~
stephencanon
The default behavior in every OS with which I'm familiar (this is specified by
IEEE-754) is for x87, SSE, VFP and NEON _not_ to trap on signaling NaNs. You
have to explicitly unmask the invalid floating-point exception in order for
this to trap. All that would happen with the default floating-point
environment is that the invalid flag would be raised in FPCR.
IIRC, FSTP st(0), to simply clear the stack without using the result as
discussed in the article, doesn't even generate #IA, so it can't trap _or_
raise invalid (it only generates #IA when the store converts to a smaller FP
type (fun fact: this is so FLD/FSTP could be used to implement memcpy way back
when))
------
panic
Is this really undefined behavior? The C spec says (6.7.8.10) "If an object
that has automatic storage duration is not initialized explicitly, its value
is indeterminate." The fact that the indeterminate value could be a signaling
NaN is a feature of floating point numbers, not C.
~~~
aciuix
The example shown in the article is in fact undefined behavior:
_6.3.2.1,p2 If the lvalue designates an object of automatic storage duration
that could have been declared with the register storage class (never had its
address taken), and that object is uninitialized (not declared with an
initializer and no assignment to it has been performed prior to use), the
behavior is undefined._
~~~
_yosefk
The funny thing is, returning it just to discard it constitutes "use",
apparently.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Do you get stressed/bummed when your code review contain bugs? - reimertz
======
abronan
I definitely don't get stressed when people are pointing out errors in my
code. It's a sign that you can trust your coworkers. As some people mentioned
already, I become stressed when people just approve a big and complex change
without any question/comment because this is likely that they are busy and
that they didn't try to understand it. This is how you get bugs slipping into
production environment.
Unnecessary nitpicks that are holding Pull Requests for days/weeks are
stressful though. Because they are holding a feature hostage to satisfy the
ego of the commenter on an opinion that is subjective. It is especially
unnerving when the commenter is dropping the nitpick and then disappears and
never comments on the PR again, or only after months. I appreciate when the
commenter clearly points out that this could be an optional change to slightly
improve the code (or by opening a separate issue after merging).
------
xyzzy_plugh
When my code reviewers find bugs, then I know they read my code and understand
the intent.
When I get approval with no other feedback, I become deeply concerned. For
non-trivial changes I let them soak in review for longer than necessary, until
I'm unfamiliar enough with it than I feel confident reviewing my own code. I
often find bugs this way.
------
clusmore
No, not really. I work in a team of four, one of whom is my boss, and I've
done code reviews for all three others and been reviewed by all three others.
Reviewing others and finding bugs or mistakes in their code, especially my
boss', has helped me realise that everybody makes mistakes.
My team sees code reviews as a way to lift the burden of responsibility from
the person who wrote the code and share it evenly among the reviewers as well,
so bugs that make it through code reviews belong as much to the reviewer as
the author.
------
MaulingMonkey
I've spent a number of long days and late nights hunting bugs that made it
into production - or the master branch - and are blocking our release,
blocking my coworkers, or crashing for our customers. It sucks, it's
stressful, it's frustrating - it's even depressing.
So I'm actually kind of stoked when a code review catches a bug in my code.
They're often the exact kinds of edge casey corner cases that would've
manifested as the kind of heisenbugs that lead to exactly those kinds of long
days and late nights - but the code review caught it, so none of us will have
to go through any of that over it. Yay!
Do I wish I hadn't made the bug in the first place? Sure. But to err is human
- and statistics means this err will be you averaging X bugs a month, Y of
which won't get caught before the code review, Z of which will get checked in
when the code review doesn't catch them either. The goal isn't to have no
bugs, it's to reduce X Y and Z until it's no longer cost effective to do so
(which is at a very different point for NASA than it is for your website or
app.)
I'm also acutely aware that when you've been staring at the same code too
long, your brain starts replacing the code that's there with what the code
"should" be, and you start missing the obvious right in front of you. Again -
human nature. The solution is a second set of eyes from time to time. This
isn't an excuse to be lazy or to avoid trying to improve, but it _is_ a
perfectly acceptable excuse not to beat yourself up when you've been putting
in the effort, and still somehow missed the fact that you were assigning a
reference to itself.
What's that? You want to be human too? I'll allow it!
------
acomjean
I'll be honest, I don't like being critiqued, and having a mistake you've made
pointed out, or "why didn't you use this 2% faster algorithm) can be annoying.
I got used to the reveiws. Then I joined very small teams and I miss not
having them.
If you look at it as a learning experience, you get other people to look at
your code and give you helpful advice. If you have somewhat abrasive coworker,
look at what they say not how they say it.
------
mattm
I'll get stressed out in these types of situations when I'm not accepting
things as they are and expecting things to go perfectly like in my mind. If
I've worked on a large issue and been thorough with my testing, I'll commit it
and send it to code review. While doing that, thoughts will go through my mind
thinking that everything is done and how well I did it. Situations like these
are when I'll feel stressed about a poor code review because my expectations
don't match reality.
I played hockey with a guy who would just shut down whenever the play didn't
go how he thought it should go. If someone didn't pass to him when he thought
they should, he would just basically stop and give up as a result of the
difference between his expectations and reality.
The key to getting over it is to not dwell on the work you've done in the past
and just accept what is being given to you now.
If the code review comes back with bugs and you're getting stressed about it,
you're probably still thinking about all the work you did in order to get to
the point of committing it. Focusing on the feedback that came back from the
code review and how you can implement it will help to get over the anxiety.
I'm writing a book - Programming Spiritually - that helps developers deal with
stresses and issues in their work in a more holistic way. If you're interested
in being notified on progress with the book you can check out
[https://leanpub.com/programming-spiritually](https://leanpub.com/programming-
spiritually)
------
joshuamcginnis
Are you concerned about the bugs or the style used to communicate there was a
bug? Those are two different things and I find that most folks don't actually
have a problem with the former.
The issues I've seen re: code reviews are often due to a lack of emotional
intelligence amongst developers who use reviews to promote their own ego or
lack the experience to know how to craft their feedback in a cordial manner.
~~~
Shanea93
I agree and there are two sides to this coin: The people who don't realise
that they are reviewing a product of someone's work and not the person, and
the people who don't realise that the people reviewing them are reviewing a
product of their work and not them.
------
davismwfl
I get bummed when the defect is something I should've caught. But if it is a
tough bug or something that takes multiple people to find I don't feel bad or
get bummed. I get inquisitive as to what they saw which led to the discovery
though.
I do get embarrassed if I repeat a mistake and am really tough on myself in
that aspect.
~~~
reimertz
I think you and I are very much alike. One thing that has helped me is how
linting has become more available these recent years.
~~~
davismwfl
Sounds like it.
Linting definitely helps, setting up the IDE properly can catch things, in
C/C++ running memory profilers etc.
I think people who are passionate about what they produce will always feel
similarly. Caring about what you produce is important. It doesn't matter
whether you just started coding or have been doing it for a couple of decades.
------
gonvaled
I get _angry_ at code style comments: naming things, line length, uppercase /
lowercase, specially when running a linter through our already existing
codebase produces tons of errors.
If it works, it has tests, and it is understandable, merge it ffs.
------
insomniacity
My code reviewers only find style/standards issues. I refuse to believe I'm
that good... so does anyone have any tips on improving reviewer engagement?
~~~
guitarbill
Automated linting? Then the reviewers can focus on actually reviewing?
Other than that, for a while we tried the policy that if a commit you reviewed
broke something, the reviewer had to fix it, not the committer. It doesn't
really work though, as you might expect.
Edit: I should point out that I'm convinced the main benefit of code review is
that your team knows what code you've worked on and what you've changed.
Catching mistakes is a nice bonus, but this kind of information transfer is a
huge productivity boon.
------
bottler_of_bees
I think if you can remove your ego from the equation (I don't think anyway
likes being told they're wrong or what they've done is
stupid/illogical/inefficient), they're an excellent way to learn new
approaches and how other people think about code. Sometimes a good excuse for
vocal devs to soapbox and assert dominance too in these lovely open-plan
devpits.
That said, most times I've had code reviews, it's more of a superficial rubber
stamp. Probably been guilty of doing that too... not really as much fun
reviewing code as writing it.
------
vorotato
I get stressed and bummed when the code I have to review contains bugs.
Definitely not the other way around though.
------
Walkman
No. Just accept it will have bugs :) Every code has bugs except for Linus
Torvalds' code, but he is not coding nowadays therefore every code has bugs.
------
tedmiston
Not at all. If there are no bugs, then you spent too much time on it. Also,
not all bugs are worth fixing. Sometimes it's better to just ship and iterate
more.
Also a second set of eyes just really helps sometimes. That said, it's also
important that your reviewer is experienced enough that they can provide a
substantial code review. I much prefer a critical eye to "looks good to me"
every time.
------
bcbrown
No. I am not my code.
------
shaldengeki
Having been through the opposite extreme, where a coworker refused to code
review and constantly merged buggy code with no comment, I have to say that I
definitely appreciate it when someone cares enough to pore over code I've
written and find bugs.
The stress and burnout that results when code reviews aren't properly done and
production is constantly on fire is _far_ worse than the alternative.
------
gargarplex
I used to. It was because I had an inferiority complex where I felt I had to
write perfect code in order for people to take me seriously. I have gotten a
shift towards a much more humble attitude to my programming abilities. I know
for a fact I am not a master programmer and accepting that has helped me
tremendously because I can ensure someone who is can cover my weaknesses
------
kc10
I love code reviews, but I do my best to test the functionality and unit test
them before I submit for review. At times my approach to solve a bug may not
be efficient and if someone points it out, we discuss the merits and
agree/disagree.
It's always good to get a good code review and get confidence than deploying
buggy code to prod and worry what would happen tomorrow.
~~~
Shanea93
In my opinion, all bugs are worth fixing, else you risk lazy or junior members
of your team taking liberties with the severity of the bugs which don't need
fixing.
I would go so far as to say that your first and second paragraphs are
antithetical.
------
seanwilson
Do more code reviews for others until you realise bugs and mistakes are always
going to happen no matter how experienced you are. If the reviewer is make a
huge deal out of it though then they need to adapt their approach.
I always try to give some positive review comments as well as just getting a
list of negatives is grating.
------
lacker
I do get bummed because I try to not have bugs in my code and when a code
review finds a bug that means I missed something. But it is inevitable you
will have bugs in your code. You have to just keep cranking along, fixing all
the bugs anyone can find and not let it stress you out.
------
pmiller2
Hell no. If they find bugs before it gets deployed, it's that much easier to
fix.
It occasionally annoys me for a few seconds when someone will nitpick the
style of the code, but I get over that quickly. Usually I just change it and
move on.
------
jghn
I do as much as I try not to. I don't hold it against other people when their
code has issues but I have never been able to not take that stuff personally
when it is my code
------
bjourne
I'm the opposite. I get stressed and nervous when the code _I am_ reviewing
contains bugs because I now the author might get stressed/bummed. :)
------
mrmondo
Nope, mine almost always do and I'm thankful for others pointing them out so I
can not only fix them but also learn while I'm at it.
------
EJTH
Yes. But I get more stressed and bummed when the bugs pass review and end up
in production.
------
AnimalMuppet
I will sometimes mentally kick myself, but for 30 seconds maximum. After that,
it's time to fix it.
------
payne92
Never. I always leave a deliberate bug or two to see if the reviewer is paying
attention. ;)
~~~
aerovistae
It infuriates me when people do this, frankly. If it's a deliberate syntax
typo that's one thing but if you leave a logic hole then you're essentially
wasting other reviewers' time-- they carefully trace through the patterns to
verify to themselves that the hole they think they see is in fact there, only
to find out you left it there on purpose as a take-it-upon-myself approach to
checking your peers' competency. You may as well come over to my desk and ask
how much code I've gotten written today, to me it's just as contemptible.
~~~
MaulingMonkey
I do this much more rarely than "always", and tend to continue self-reviewing
or start the review a little earlier instead of explicitly leaving in a
deliberate bug, but I still act in a similar vein.
> [...] only to find out you left it there on purpose as a take-it-upon-myself
> approach to checking your peers' competency.
This is never my goal. I don't send a review your way in the first place
unless I think you're competent. But sometimes entirely competent people are
overworked, distracted, a bit too trusting... it happens. It's human. It's
fine! It's happens to all of us.
I just want to not check in broken shit.
It leads to long days and late nights. If you're overworked, it's just going
to make things worse. This might involve me leaning on another reviewer more
for a bit. This might be more closely scrutinizing my own code for a bit. This
might be me offering to help take something off your plate if I think I can
fit it onto mine. This might be a little friendly ribbing that helps you bring
your focus back, if you're just a bit distracted.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
RetroBSD: Unix for microcontrollers - fanf2
http://retrobsd.org/
======
unwind
Pretty cool.
Made me wonder if it would make sense on these SoC targets to dynamically load
a program from external storage and write into internal flash for execution,
then start running it without a reboot.
Since such flashes are typically only erasable in pretty big blocks
("sectors") it would require some interesting design choices, but it should be
doable. :)
~~~
okl
There are several runtimes for microcontrollers that feature an elf/hex loader
for static binaries, or a bootloader that retrieves a program and executes it
in RAM. Sometimes you can re-enter the bootloader from your application
software. On some embedded systems (satellite OBSW comes to mind) you can
actually hot-patch the code function-by-function while running. You
compile/link the software with some extra space before and after your
functions for future modifications. Then when you patch, you have to make sure
that the modified code is locked out and that the variables used by the
functions being patched are in an acceptable state as well as the cache.
Whether all of that extra effort makes sense? - it depends. But in most
embedded projects you can just flash a new firmware and avoid the overhead of
executing from RAM. (Depending on your target, flash might have a separate
memory bus and could be one or two clock cycles faster.)
Edit: Hot-patching in flash is totally possible as well.
~~~
ramzyo
Sounds interesting - any runtimes in particular you could point out?
Interested to read more about them.
------
ris
As interesting as this is, I'm not really sure what this gets you over a
regular RTOS that might be used with these sorts of microcontrollers apart
from easy porting of existing unix software (though with 2.2BSD it would have
to be very restricted in its use of syscalls - does it even have sockets?)
------
iuguy
I have this running on a Fubarino. It's nice to fiddle with but not quite
useful to be serious. I have an ethernet module that at some point I need to
hook up to it.
What I really want is a DIP version of the PIC32 with enough RAM and flash to
run this or the 4.4-based LiteBSD[1] by the same people.
[1] - [https://github.com/sergev/LiteBSD](https://github.com/sergev/LiteBSD)
~~~
squarefoot
I wonder why there's no port for the ESP32 boards family. Plenty of RAM/Flash
(compared to PIC32), lots of I/O ports and peripherals and built in WiFi/BT.
It just seems to me the perfect target, or am I missing something?
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP32](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP32)
~~~
VectorLock
I think its because the PIC32 uses the MIPS 4k CPU architecture which a
compiler that can build this RetroBSD exists for. I'm not sure what kind of
CPU architecture the ESP32 uses-- I think its some proprietary DSP core.
~~~
shakna
Xtensa.
For most compilers: xtensa-esp32-elf will work, so long as the ESP-IDF
toolchain is available.
------
dvfjsdhgfv
PIC32 is one of the the most underestimated MCU architectures; you get a small
powerful computer for a fraction of the cost of one. I think it's doomed
because of Cortex-M, but what you can do with it in that price range still
amazes me. If only the Chinese picked it up... The boards by Olimex are nice
to work with but could be a bit cheaper.
------
btashton
If you want to checkout a POSIX RTOS for microcontrollers, I would checkout
Nuttx. I have built some commercial products with it.
[0] nuttx.org
------
erric
The hardware looks pretty limited right now, but I have to wonder if this can
be used as a base for replacing closed source Lights out Management such as
iLO, DRAC, and LoM
~~~
exikyut
Interesting idea; but this is 2.11BSD, not OpenBSD, so the attack surface/weak
links are mostly unknown for this majorly obscure kernel configuration/port.
IMO I'd generally want OOB management kit to be Very Very™ secure, and
especially if it lets me near any secure boot keys. In any case this kind of
thing will categorically have the ability to reboot the system, so if I can
tinker with configuration I definitely want to have some degree of confidence
in the auth process etc.
Completely outside the scope of a microcontroller, what would a reasonable
10-year target for video capture be within a "server console/admin" context?
1080p? 2K? DisplayPort? HDMI? (Obviously VGA)
I'm guessing HDMI and maybe 2K. Hm.
~~~
cat199
> 2.11BSD, not OpenBSD, so the attack surface/weak links are mostly unknown
> for this majorly obscure kernel configuration/port.
They're actually probably pretty well known for most things, just buried under
decades of literature and commits.
Starting off with a 4BSD would probably be better though since 32bit vax bsd
unix got a lot more traction (and more direct code lineage to the modern
ports).
But yes, if going 32bit with enough ram, might as well just port
OpenBSD/NetBSD and get on with it.
~~~
loeg
Any idea what the minimum RAM requirements of something like Open or NetBSD
is?
I know that modern FreeBSD can _boot_ to a single user process with something
like 32M RAM on 32-bit systems with a very stripped down kernel configuration.
64M gives a little more breathing room. But those are both many orders of
magnitude larger than 128kB.
It wouldn't surprise me if OBSD or NBSD can fit in a little less RAM, but it
also wouldn't surprise me if they still need at least a handful of MB, i.e.,
32-64x Retro's 128 kB.
~~~
nils-m-holm
> I know that modern FreeBSD can bootI to a single user process with something
> like 32M RAM on 32-bit systems with a very stripped down kernel
> configuration.
Wow! My first BSD box (386BSD) had 8 megabytes of RAM and that was plenty! You
could even compile moderately large programs without any swapping. But then,
feeping creaturism has always been a BSD tradition! :)
~~~
loeg
> But then, feeping creaturism has always been a BSD tradition! :)
In general, living software adapts to the constraints of the hardware
developers use and care about. The most visible case of this is probably web
browsers (and web sites).
If BSD developers were interested in a minimal memory configuration, they
could make it happen. It just hasn't been anyone's priority, and machines have
many orders of magnitude more RAM today than they did in ~1992.
~~~
nils-m-holm
My comment was not intended as criticism, but merely as an "oh, look how times
have changed!". If anything, it was intended as an expression of affection. I
have used BSD ever since as my only OS.
That being said, software development in general is in a desolate state these
days with unnecessary layers of abstraction and bloat all over the place. The
featurism of ancient BSD looks pretty harmless today.
------
ishikawa
This can be pretty interesting for inexpensive IoT and IIoT devices.
~~~
TickleSteve
No, this is jut a toy, it would never be used for real IoT or IIoT devices.
There is no need to dynamically load any code on these type of devices, you
would generally just use eXecute-In-Place (XIP). The type of applications you
develop for these devices simply do not require UNIX like features (multi-
user, etc). Many more appropriate OS'es exist for this to be taken seriously.
~~~
okl
> No, this is jut a toy, it would never be used for real IoT or IIoT devices.
There's lots of outrageous stuff inside today's consumer products. What makes
you so sure that this won't be used in a real (whatever that means) IoT or
IIoT device by someone?
~~~
TickleSteve
Because I design this sort of stuff for a living and have done for over twenty
years. As a realistic product solution, this has no benefits over existing
widely supported solutions that are more targeted at this level of device.
For example... it can work in 128KB RAM. If you're using 128KB just to run the
OS, thats completely wasted RAM that could be used by your application. This
really counts when you're making 100'000 of these devices and are paying for
every byte. You don't waste valuable resources on desktop-level abstractions.
That would make for a very expensive product.
~~~
nickpsecurity
Many people might think you're talking figuratively about paying for every
byte. I'll add for others that 8-16-bit MCU's still sell billions of dollars
of volume specifically to increase profit per unit by using tinier, cheaper
chips. Likewise, stuff like eCos lets you include just the software you need
in the RTOS to further shave off ROM or RAM needs. This helps per unit since
suppliers often charge extra for extra RAM/ROM on a specific chip. Finally,
reliability and security can improve a bit by simply having less software or
hardware to screw up.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why Google Just Got Hit with a Record $5B Fine - hippich
https://gizmodo.com/heres-why-google-just-got-hit-with-a-record-5-billion-1827683622
======
nikonyrh
I wonder what kind of criteria Apple has for phone manufacturers in this
regard ;) Are they more permissive?
------
mhkool
in simple words: Google got fined for the same reason Microsoft got fined many
years ago when then enforced Internet Explorer on Windows.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Augmenting Human Intellect (1962) - seanmcdirmid
http://www.dougengelbart.org/pubs/augment-3906.html
======
awinter-py
One truism of AI research (and 'human augmentation' is fairly in the AI space)
is that the best brains have overestimated our ability to write useful rules.
In a sense our legal systems and national economies are large-scale structures
for organizing human effort into something greater. In the 50s people thought
white-collar bureaucracy was the crowning achievement of the 20th century
(read about White Collar by C Wright Mills).
Other than 'faster mail', it's not clear that any rule systems of the consumer
internet make people more efficient workers. No futurists predicted that
grindr & SMS would be the best our century had to offer re: automating human
resources.
Neural nets were certainly hampered until the 2000s by weaker CPUs, but I
wonder if part of the problem was the expectation and hope that humans would
be able to write useful rules. This is a very old illusion.
~~~
lazaroclapp
grindr & SMS?
Try: e-commerce and search engines. We are pretty good at getting used to
technology, to the point that we forget we ever had to search anything in
books and encyclopedias, or call a travel agent to book hotel reservations
halfway across the globe, or seek a distributor for a part we needed in the
yellow pages. Now, is not that I don't agree that the march towards automation
advances more slowly than predicted in a lot of areas, but we have definitely
come up with systems that improve significantly how things are produced and
distributed when compared to mid 20th century...
~~~
awinter-py
e-commerce is cool but not because we've invented smarter rules for it. amazon
isn't that different from sears 116 years ago; collab filtering is a
difference, but that's a stat algo, not something humans design. They also use
TLA+ for their distributed systems -- i.e. they're solving problems at the
limit of unassisted human understanding.
(TLA and CF are definitely solid examples of human augmentation; but that
doesn't mean e-commerce is. the merchant is being augmented, not the
customer).
grindr as a proxy for any service that says 'match me with an arbitrary person
with these characteristics at this place and time'. grindr was one of the
early successful ones. stackoverflow careers (or monster.com, god help us)
also belongs on this list.
and SMS as an alternative to making plans and sticking to them; remember when
you had to be on time and couldn't edit plans on the way?
~~~
Kadin
Taken individually, all the improvements might seem merely like changes in
degree -- Amazon is an improved Sears, Roebuck; Wikipedia is an online version
of Britannica, etc. -- but in the aggregate it creates a difference in kind.
By making things easier and faster, it becomes possible to _do_ more.
I'm sure I'm not the only person who has done more -- and I don't necessarily
just mean work at my job, I mean hobbies and projects and artwork and things
that I want to do, completely disconnected from _needing_ to do them --
because it's a lot easier to find information, order things, talk to other
people, etc. Projects that would have just been too complex to get off the
ground a few decades ago, because they would have involved multiple library
trips and probably bunches of ILLs and perhaps correspondence with various
people, each letter having a significant roundtrip time, are the work of a few
nights of reading online, a couple of online orders, and a weekend.
It's not AI, but it's certainly an enhancement. I'm not sure that there are
any entirely new categories of things that people, as a group, can do that we
weren't able to do before computerization, but it's certainly possible for an
individual to do more, and a number of artificial limitations have basically
disappeared.
------
nefitty
So did we make any progress in the last 50 years? Is the Flynn effect
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect))
a natural side-effect of the increasing complexity of a society, or the result
of active work and research toward increasing society's intelligence? I'm very
fascinated by this area, as I'm sure many of you here on HN are as well.
~~~
visakanv
> a natural side-effect of the increasing complexity of a society, or the
> result of active work and research toward increasing society's intelligence?
I think the two are interrelated, and maybe one might be a function of the
other– that is, "society's intelligence" is a function of the operations we
can perform unconsciously. We are more intelligent than before because we
don't have to reinvent everything from scratch, we can build on what others
have learnt and discovered before us.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Jeep Grand Cherokee’s recalled Monostable transmission shifter explained - quotha
http://www.tflcar.com/2016/06/jeep-grand-cherokees-recalled-monostable-transmission-shifter-demonstrated-and-explained/
======
quotha
This poorly designed shifter has/will cause deaths and injuries.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Behind The Scenes At Homejoy, A Cleaning Startup That's Really A Tech Company - mlinsey
http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/18/homejoy-behind-the-scenes/
======
nugget
The potential for client->platform->service provider disintermediation here
seems high. If I use the service and find a cleaner that I like, why wouldn't
I just establish a direct relationship and pay them more money, as I become
comfortable with them?
People already do this with repeat tenants on Airbnb, usually business
travelers who visit the same locations constantly for extended stays. These
types make up a small % of Airbnb's market so it doesn't threaten the model as
much.
This type of direct relationship isn't really possible with Uber and on-demand
transportation services because you need someone to respond within a very
short time frame (minutes) which means their physical location matters.
------
yesimahuman
Pretty close copy of the highrise landing page:
[https://www.homejoy.com/](https://www.homejoy.com/) (screenshot:
[http://i.imgur.com/OqCgfFT.png](http://i.imgur.com/OqCgfFT.png)) vs
[https://highrisehq.com/](https://highrisehq.com/)
Don't forget about Curebit getting called out for copying it as well (but they
brazenly used the same assets): [http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/curebit-
apologizes-for-copy...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/28/curebit-apologizes-
for-copying-37signals/)
I'm not trying to call them out on it, just pointing out the shit storm that
happened last time.
~~~
brotchie
Hmm, have they changed their landing page since you posted this, or are either
of the sites A/B testing? Because I don't see any similarities.
Highrise: [http://i.imgur.com/wbqjkUP.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/wbqjkUP.jpg)
Homejoy: [http://i.imgur.com/DfW1CKQ.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/DfW1CKQ.jpg)
~~~
yesimahuman
Yea, looks like an active A/B test, here's the SS:
[http://i.imgur.com/OqCgfFT.png](http://i.imgur.com/OqCgfFT.png)
------
fortes
I really wanted to like Homejoy, as they're much more affordable than Exec
cleaning. I used them once and had a good experience. However, my wife booked
w/ them three times, and each time Homejoy was a no-show.
Hopefully they work out the kinks.
~~~
mediaman
Similar experience here. Initial schedule was a no-show, and further, nobody
picked up the phone at Homejoy, and there was no way to contact the cleaner.
It took them several hours to follow up on the voicemail that nobody made it.
However they did schedule a follow-up and the cleaner did a reasonable job a
week later.
------
philip1209
From what I can tell, you cannot have an appointment less than 2.5 hours,
which with the service fee works out to $55. While this is still cheaper than
Exec, I do not think that 2.5 hours of cleaning is necessary every other week
for a <500 square foot studio.
The price isn't bad, but I would be more comfortable if they didn't stick to
"$20/hour" and instead did something along the lines of "$50 for a basic hour-
long cleaning, including travel and cleaning fees, and only $20/hour for every
additional hour."
~~~
proexploit
I don't see the problem. You're just asking to pay more? If they're done in
two hours, they'll either charge you less or leave, so you pay $55. In your
example, that two hour cleaning is now $70. Additionally, I think you're
underestimating the amount of time a good cleaning can take, even of a smaller
apartment / studio.
------
jmduke
Anthony Ha's written quite a bit about Homejoy:
[http://www.crunchbase.com/company/homejoy/posts](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/homejoy/posts)
------
kylelibra
It seems that every new company is so reliant on technology it could be
considered a tech startup. Where does one draw the line?
~~~
yuhao
One does not. Software will eat the world.
------
dhugiaskmak
Anyone know if this company is still classifying all of its cleaners as
"contractors" to avoid paying taxes?
edit:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3846208](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3846208)
it was a huge topic of conversation when they got mentioned here about a year
ago.
~~~
gamblor956
They are classifying their cleaners as contractors to avoid paying payroll
taxes and benefits. It's not a completely shady practice on its own, but in
combination with everything else that these guys have done (stealing website
designs, fake yelp reviews, repeatedly missing scheduled appointments,
allegedly not paying their contractors), it definitely suggests that these
guys are more Groupon that Google.
------
joe_the_user
Having aging parents who need multiple service providers, I feel like I
understand this a bit from the service end.
While service are is probably big factor, compatibility is probably a bigger
one. "Cleaning" involves many degrees of, well, cleanliness as well as
requiring a lot _or_ very little customer contact/presentation/compatibility.
And there's the question of what people think they want versus what people are
eager to pay for. I suspect a lot of package deals are appealing to people
because they don't like having spell out (to themselves) that 75% of the cost
is pleasant conversation with a person sharing their culture and values.
------
alexhawdon
A friend of mine is considering starting a cleaning company and I engaged in
some out-of-the-box thinking, I'd be interested to hear HNs views on the idea:
Cleaners that CCTV themselves.
It could be done with something as simple as a low-cost smartphone worn around
the neck, or in the future something more sophisticated like Google Glass.
Lots of potential issues (would the cleaners accept this condition? would
clients be happy to have a video of their house sat on a server?) but it's a
potential solution to the trust issues inherent in the business - two main
ones being 'is my cleaner dipping into petty cash' and 'is my cleaner actually
cleaning'.
~~~
corry
My $0.02 - this might be the wrong way to address the 2 biggest risks
(cleaners stealing, cleaners not working). For me, by drawing so much
attention to these items you're basically saying "we don't really trust the
cleaners, and neither should you, so let's monitor them".
And then there's the question of who actually watches the video? The customer
= more work for them. You guys = not super scalable.
What about privacy? What if the smartphone captures something super sensitive
out on someone's desk (e.g. a major contract)?
The final point is that your competitors could just say "Ya, we actually just
hire good, trustworthy cleaners so we don't have to bother with spying on them
(and neither do you). Here are 10 customer testimonials that proves this.
Those spying guys probably just hire really shady people and need the spying
to keep them in line."
All just my $0.02 - take what you want! :)
------
noelrock
Interesting how many startups are appearing in this space. I was an avid
follower of the "localcasestudy" reddit which followed a cleaning company from
$0 to $120k a month in fantastic detail -
[http://www.maidsinblack.com](http://www.maidsinblack.com) . Has worked out a
lot of the problems these guys mention without being so heavy on the employee
side, and has (IMO) a smarter approach to pricing which has been mentioned
above.
------
MikeCodeAwesome
Homejoy also got a writeup at AZ Tech Beat when they "launched" in Phoenix
last month [http://aztechbeat.com/2013/07/homejoy-an-online-booking-
home...](http://aztechbeat.com/2013/07/homejoy-an-online-booking-home-
cleaning-service-launches-in-phoenix/).
------
victorology
I live in Korea and house cleaning is a really common service. Around $40 for
4 hours and $70 for 8 hours.
Perhaps there would be a great opportunity for someone in Korea to start an
Uber for house cleaning since all you have to do is create an app and send
additional business to the existing cleaning services.
------
damian2000
Their prices seem reasonable. Over here in Australia similar home cleaning
agencies typically charge AUD $30 (~USD 27) an hour with the cleaner getting
around AUD $25 (~USD 23).
~~~
muzz
I had suspected that Homejoy wasn't taking a cut, and that $20/hr was just
"initial" pricing and they would raise it later like Exec did.
They haven't raised the rate, but my cleaner said she gets $13/hr so it
appears that Homejoy does take a cut.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stickam shutting down today, Jan 31st - tinok
http://techcrunch.com/2013/01/31/scene-kids-cry-as-streaming-site-stickam-shuts-down/
======
tinok
Why would they shut it down instead of selling it? I'll take it off their
hands for $500K today.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Evaluate my side project please? - maxbrown
I've been working on a side project lately and I'd love to get some basic feedback and marketing advice - randomfreeapp.com.<p>1. How do you feel about the page? Is it intuitive? What would you change?<p>2. How would you market it/drive traffic?
======
heynk
I'd consider applying CSS border-radius to all of the app icon images. Some of
them have a beveled edge and the square edge, which looks a little less
proffesional.
------
ctb9
1\. looks great. I would suggest fixing the next button vertically so that it
doesn't get pushed down by apps with long descriptions.
------
pcharles
1\. There should be a blurb about the site. But focus on the 'Why' and not the
other W's. 2\. Beef up on SEO and spread the word on other sites, blogs
------
gspyrou
Some ideas :
1.Add some kind of copy that describes what the site is doing
2.Include free apps for WindowsPhone and Blackberry
------
maxbrown
Clickable: <http://randomfreeapp.com>
~~~
justliving
kind of stumbleupon for free apps?
Nice idea! Perhaps you should make is clearer what exactly it is all about :-)
Good luck!
------
jamifsud
The ability to go back would be nice, I got a bit click happy and accidentally
missed something that looked cool at a first glance.
~~~
aorshan
Same here. I think a back button would help a lot.
------
skadamat
Have some kinda cool HTML5 transition when you hit the next button. The site
itself is just a cool site, so people expect nice looking animations. Instead
of generating a random integer and passing it in as an 'id' in your php
script, you should look into keeping everything static except the main box
itself. To do this, you need to use JavaScript (preferably jQuery, also look
into CoffeeScript) Keep the logo at the top and the 2 tiles at the bottom for
social media the same. Don't make the site reload everytime you hit 'next'.
Design-wise, it's great. Very clean and simple, and the logo's cool.
~~~
maxbrown
Would love to talk with you more about this if you have time - e-mail in my
about.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
[ChromeOS] Self-Titled Planet - sallywu
http://web-poet.com/2009/11/23/chromeos/
======
mbrubeck
sallywu, you've posted about 200 of these over the last two years. None of
them has ever made it to the front page, and only a handful of people have
ever given them a single vote. Maybe they're just not a good fit for this
particular site?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google hosted videos shutting down - ars
http://video.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1233300
======
iuguy
Given that it's shutting down, what's HN's favourite videos? I'll start.
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9077214414651731007> \- The Union:
The business of getting high
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8653788864462752804...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8653788864462752804#)
\- The Fog of War. Incredible war documentary
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5968506788418521112...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5968506788418521112#)
\- If you only watch one, watch this. This is a Horizon's documentary 5 years
after Chernobyl when they were still worried about a second explosion. The
people there are all working under massive radiation doses, and there's loads
of camera artifacts that are a result of radiation exposure (trails caused by
the CCDs being exposed to radiation, white flicks of light on film etc.)
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5267640865741878159...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5267640865741878159#)
\- Robert Newman's History of Oil
[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3323021761394989726...](http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3323021761394989726#)
\- The human animal
<http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3840459477996788886#> \- A blank on
the map
If you want to download the videos to keep then you can use a service such as
<http://keepvid.com/> or if you're using firefox, search for the flashgot
extension. The resulting files can be played with a player like VLC
(<http://www.videolan.org/>).
------
Jetlag
There's an effort to archive the videos, similar to the one to download
Yahoo's videos before they shut down. To check it out go to #googlegrapes on
EFNet.
------
Padura
too bad, there are lot of good documentaries there..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Unable to detach emotionally from work? - throwawayzza
I really care about my work and I'm having a hard time taking a more relaxed approach after a few incidents at the workplace.<p>I don't work well in agile environments with strict tasks and sprints because I'm all over the place doing project work but also fixing a lot of small things that pile up (and nobody cares to fix).<p>Lately, I've been asked why I'm working on these things when there are other things to do. there are always other things to do.<p>Attemtps to communicate with other teams to sync and improve processes were also shutdown... because it's not my responsibility and the team leads felt threatened.<p>Anyway, I told my boss I'd strictly work on my Sprint tasks and not making a single extra contribution (in these exact words).<p>Fast forward a few weeks, here I'm again doing more than I've been asked and getting passive-aggressive responses.<p>I can't quit this job right now. How do I care less?
======
counterpoint1
Focus on being "good at your job" not at "making everything better" or
whatever you're doing now.
What you think of as doing extra work also ends up causing extra work for
other people. You say "Attemtps to communicate with other teams to sync and
improve processes were also shutdown... because it's not my responsibility and
the team leads felt threatened" \- it's almost certainly not that your team
lead "felt threatened" (wtf?) but because you caused an extra hassle for them
by causing confusion among your coworkers about the processes and practices
for communication, documentation or decision-making.
Your time spent "fixing a lot of small things" that nobody cares about means
other people have to code review, QA test, merge, deploy etc your work, which
as you stated, was not scheduled/prioritized/desired.
An important part of being a team is playing your role, which includes not
interfering with other people doing theirs. You see yourself as an
unappreciated hero picking up the slack for everyone else, but everyone else
sees you as an unpredictable wildcard causing confusion and extra work. Just
focus on doing your job well and let the whole team thrive.
~~~
throwawayzza
_> What you think of as doing extra work also ends up causing extra work for
other people_
This is a very good point but none of the things you mentioned are happening
to other people (code review, QA, merge, deploy). Maybe that clarifies the
kind of environment I'm working with.
In any case, I understand that even if more work is not being done, more
stress is being caused because people just assume things will break in
unimaginable ways. I can appreciate how that would be a problem for others.
_> everyone else sees you as an unpredictable wildcard causing confusion and
extra work_
Thanks for the harsh truth. Would you say the kind of work I'm doing has a
place in any other type of company? Or at all?
------
bedane
Anecdotal(worked for me and a friend):
Find another activity (hobby, sports, taking care of someone, meditation,
side-project, anything) and gradually have it replace work in your head.
You won't be able to "detach from work" because the mind (especially in people
who like to think) doesn't work this way. You'll have to expel it/push it out.
Any time you catch yourself thinking about work in an emotional way, or
outside your office hours, force yourself to shut it down and think about the
other activity you chose as replacement.
This process took me years but it's really been worth the effort.
~~~
throwawayzza
That seems like the best action for me. Thanks!
------
wolco
Don't do extra things. Let the sprints guide you. Try to make your code
better. The place doesn't want you to do these cleanup tasks without them
being approved in a sprint. So next sprint meeting suggest it and only do it
if it gets approved.
~~~
throwawayzza
I feel the planning done by management doesn't let me feel proud about the
work I'm doing. That's the emotional component I'm struggling with.
I've been told the things I raise as necessary to be done "will be done in the
future" but they never are and I'm not given good reasons for why not. Most of
the time it's because people don't consider them important (see my other
comment for examples).
So I kind of rebel against that in a way and, while I think my output is
better, I'm not appreciated for that and worse, might get reprimanded.
------
codegeek
You need to first understand why you are getting passive-aggressive responses.
Just because you think you are doing "other things that no one cares about",
it doesn't mean it aligns with what your Manager/Team/Company needs from you
to ensure you are effective at the job you were hired for.
Superstars in a team are easy to spot. They not only get their stuff done but
do other things that help the bottomline. Problem is that sometimes you may
think you are helping the team by doing other things, but you are probably
doing it at the cost of your own work.
------
itronitron
You are being micro-managed, it's worth comparing your current work
environment to what you were told it would be like when you hired on.
If there is a large difference between the position description and reality
then you may be able to push back with the hiring manager so that you are
given more autonomy to prioritize tasks during sprints.
Ideally your management should be asking you to first do items in set X and
then giving you time to work on tasks that you prioritize.
This is why I prefer Kanban over Scrum as Kanban doesn't limit the set of
tasks per sprint as Scrum does.
~~~
throwawayzza
It's funny that you mention that because we used to do Kanban and switched to
Scrum because that was what all other teams were doing, and "it helps with the
reports".
I think I see a lot of tech debt and I want to solve it. I'll admit there are
situations where I'm purely being extra zealous and I shouldn't and I'm trying
to work on that.
I agree with the micro-management part too. If at least we were aligned and I
was micro-managed for doing things management and I agree on, it wouldn't feel
so bad. But the way things are right now, I feel like I might get fired for
doing extra work, which is a first for me.
~~~
celticmusic
I don't necessarily think you're being micromanaged, but I can tell you I
dislike agile and one of the reasons for that is because despite what people
say, it's segmented as shit and typically prevents you from doing good work.
And when I say it prevents you from doing good work, I mean it. The last
company I was at did scrum and I found it difficult to even call someone up to
have a chat about things without blowback. My "PM", aka manager, insisted that
he was a requirements gathering bot, and any attempt at requirements gathering
that didn't go through him was promptly shut down. And by shut down I mean 2
weeks into the job I had a meeting with someone about a new feature and 15
minutes into it this "PM" magically shows up and completely derails the
conversation. nothing got done. The next day I recieve an email from the
manager of the person I had the meeting with declaring that all meetings going
forward would have her in it. When I questioned why with my manager I was
quietly pulled off of that project, and I watched the other developer on it
come back from every single meeting over the next 2-3 months repeatedly saying
he still had no idea what they wanted.
It was like trying to develop in a straight jacket. The final straw for me is
when I had asked some questions over an email and the VP over that department
didn't like the questions and told my direct manager to write me up over it
(he told me this directly). That was on a thursday, I had an offer for 20
hours/week by the end of friday (enough to live on), and basically told them
to go fuck themselves. I made it very clear to them that it only took me a day
and they're not going to keep any talent acting like that.
On the flip side, I've been working on another project as a freelancer for the
past 8 months (with a break in the middle) with another developer, and this
guy just wreaks havoc on everything he touches. Just last week I looked at
something else he did, sat back and said out loud "how is it that I disagree
with literally every decision you make?".
This guy would rewrite everything I wrote. He would take the idea and just
restructure because he wanted to. Only, in such an overengineered manner that
I'm just kind of miffed at what he's doing. I remember after about the 3rd
month I just called the owner of the project up and straight up told him they
need to stop paying me because he's _literally_ rewritten every piece of code
I've written. I told them in no uncertain terms that I would take _no_
responsibility for the quality of the work because none of it was actually
mine, they're just paying for everything twice. I straight up told them they
need to get rid of the guy.
fast forward to 8 months and that same owner asked me to come back on board
and told me directly that the company was going to be paying the cost of
having this man work on their stuff and they're planning on releasing him.
Why? Because a 2-4 week project isn't stable 8 months later and it's actively
put their business in danger.
So I'm now working 40 hours a week and have completely replaced the income
from that shitty company.
My point is this: I've seen both sides of it and just w/i the last year. You
need to do serious thinking to determine which side of this coin you're on,
and make the changes you need to make.
If you're in a company like that, get the hell out because you're too good and
you're going to hate your life there. If you're like that man, you need to be
kept in check and grown because you're not experienced enough to be left to
your own devices without actively putting businesses at risk.
------
tjchear
It's in my experience that when one elects to keep themselves busy with A
instead of B, it's because they're more adept at A than at B. Doing B requires
one to get out of their comfort zone, and doing A let's them believe they're
making progress while avoiding having to think about B.
Now that's just me, maybe it's different for you.
If I may ask: how are the sprint tasks different from the other small things
you feel compelled to do?
~~~
throwawayzza
_> B requires one to get out of their comfort zone, and doing A let's them
believe they're making progress while avoiding having to think about B_
There's definitely some of that.
_> If I may ask: how are the sprint tasks different from the other small
things you feel compelled to do?_
Sprint tasks are almost always about new features. The other tasks are more
about maintenance and tech debt.
For example, my Sprint task will be about feature X. When I'm adding tests for
X, I realize this particular repo has been neglected and is using very
outdated dependencies, not following CI best practices we're using
everywhereetc. So doing all that slows me down but I feel it's the right thing
to do. Others disagree and don't see any problem with that.
Or our monitoring system started to spill out false positives a lot (or I took
a look at that just this week), and I need to adjust things so the oncall
doesn't keep being woken up unnecessarily. Or worse, they just keep pushing
the ignore button.
Or the code I'm working on is using a database that's behind updates and is
missing security updates.
There's a lot of yak shaving if I'm to look at the whole thing and feel proud
about it.
~~~
tjchear
Hey, that's the mark of a great engineer. I'm sorry your peers did not see the
value in what you do.
My armchair diagnosis is you and your company are a poor fit for each other at
this phase of the company. You have probably already surmised that you'd do
better at large corporations or companies not focused on growth, but on
greasing and sustaining their existing products.
Since you mention that you can't quit this job, there are several options you
can consider:
1\. Internal transfer to another team, if possible.
2\. Start looking for other opportunities that are more aligned with what you
do.
3\. Be mindful of priorities and timelines. Visualize and draw the timeline on
a piece of paper if you have to, and understand that it's physically
impossible to do both new feature and the small tasks, and still meet the
deadline. Hopefully doing so helps you to see the big picture as the company
sees it, and lets you override your compulsion. Write this down on a sticky
note as a reminder and stick it on your monitor if you have to.
~~~
trilinearnz
I agree with this. The OP is demonstrating a level of conscientiousness,
professionalism and self-agency that a lot of companies would like from their
developers who only do what they are told to do. See: Theory X and Theory Y
management (don't want to work vs. want to work).
However my only addition to what the poster above mentioned, is be wary of the
perils of the consequences of continually updating dependencies as this can be
a never-ending spiral. If your organisation lacks the labour to maintain
projects properly, your efforts may well be more sensibly allocated towards
the greenfields areas you are being asked to focus on.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is MoviePass Here to Stay? - IntronExon
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2018/01/is-moviepass-here-to-stay/551741/?single_page=true
======
nugi
Looks like a classic power play ala ticketmaster, albeit with better prices,
for now.
------
bfuller
I am not renewing. Turns out I prefer watching movies at home.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hackers Lurking in Vents and Soda Machines - wallflower
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/08/technology/the-spy-in-the-soda-machine.html?hp
======
stcredzero
_“When you know you’re the target and you don’t know when, where or how an
attack will take place, it’s wartime all the time,” Ms. Hallawell said. “And
most organizations aren’t prepared for wartime.”_
The government should get in on this with pen testing and honeypots. Even
individual companies don't have the resources it would take to make it an even
contest. The government can't protect everybody, but it could change the
risk/reward calculations of being a criminal cracker. (If done correctly,
admittedly a big if.)
------
aeberbach
"Agent 13, is that you?"
------
sadfnjksdf
Misleading title- I didn't see much mention of a soda machine. :)
~~~
imagepop
I think soda machine was used to catch user's attention about the topic of
cyber vulnerabilities..
~~~
Wistar
Mountain Do While...
------
noir_lord
The fundamental problem is that having a highly secure network costs large
amounts of money and time (in direct work and as a knock-on effect of reduced
efficiency due to the overhead).
That and a lot of the software used in the Enterprise was intended initially
for smaller companies in a much less hostile part of the market.
I have no idea how to solve this problem, systems and software are basically
insecure from the ground up and often for convenience/cost reasons that is the
way they where _designed_.
As an aside I installed an older ReadyNAS today (little raid box) and out the
box it created AFP and CIFS shares with guest access on the local network, now
that is fine for me as it's a wired only network and there are only two of us
in the office but how many medium sized companies without IT departments are
running little NAS boxes that are shared to the world over WiFi and that is
just one recent example I can think off.
------
q_revert
the output of htop is almost distinguishable here
[http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/08/business/Vulnerabl...](http://static01.nyt.com/images/2014/04/08/business/Vulnerable2/Vulnerable2-superJumbo.jpg)
"Companies scrambling to seal up their systems from hackers and government
snoops are having to look in the unlikeliest of places for vulnerabilities."
------
001sky
"Hackers Lurking in Vents and Soda Machines"
~~~
JetSpiegel
I vanted orrange.
~~~
ckozlowski
"Zee machine gave me grape."
Deus Ex reference, I'm guessing. (The first one.)
~~~
endgame
Isn't is "I vanted orrange. It gave me lemon-lime"?
~~~
JetSpiegel
Ja!
Laputan Machine.
------
SixSigma
> as countless third parties are granted remote access to corporate systems.
> 23 percent — of breaches were attributable to third-party negligence.
23 percent of countless is > infinity.
Leaving yourself exposed from third party equipment connected inside your
firewall is your own negligence.
------
jds375
These networks need to be better modularized with respect to security. I'm
sure it's expensive, but it has to be cheaper than dealing with big security
debacles such as Target's recent one.
~~~
chadgeidel
That's what I was wondering as well. Why does your HVAC monitoring system need
full network access (or even inside the firewall)?
I'm not a networking guru, would someone care to enlighten me?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What app or type of app am I looking for specifically? - gxs
I am having a hard time articulating what I am looking for, but it's some combination of the following:<p>-Reminders every X minutes to take a break, stretch, look away from the monitor, etc.<p>-A way to log a thought - either during the break or during the period being timed<p>-A way to input what I did during the break, i.e., log events (took a walk, grabbed a soda, etc.)<p>-A way to get the data in something like CSV so I can slice and dice it<p>Can anyone recommend an app or app category to facilitate doing what I'm trying to do?<p>Will it require multiple apps, is this just not a thing?<p>At a high level it's a daily journal, at a lower level it's a pomodoro technique app with journaling capability?
======
kazishariar
Well if you're looking specifically for pomodoro journaling,
[https://pomotodo.com/intl/en/#apps](https://pomotodo.com/intl/en/#apps).
There's an app for that.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Rovio valued at $9B - eyes IPO - camlinke
http://macdailynews.com/2012/05/07/angry-birds-maker-eyes-ipo-golden-egg/
======
Codhisattva
OK I think I just understood something about "Valuation". It has nothing to do
with the value the company brings to customers but it solely means the
potential value (pay off) a company brings to investors.
That pay off occurs at IPO day and not a day later either.
This is probably obvious to everyone else, but it just dawned on me this way,
right now.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NASA Maps Surface Changes from California Quakes - infodocket
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7448
======
blululu
That is a very cool finding. Though I must say that visualizing the data with
a jet colormap and no legend is a little disrespectful to anyone who is sober.
~~~
nemetroid
This was my initial reaction as well, but the article mentions that
> Each color cycle represents 4.8 inches (12 centimeters) of ground
> displacement either toward or away from the satellite.
...so what we're actually interested in is counting the number of cycles
through the color map between two points, for which jet actually seems like a
perfectly good choice.
jofer explains in their comment why the data is shown this way:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20398703](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20398703)
------
SubiculumCode
The aftershocks going on here (most small, but higher frequency than usual) is
interesting to look at, if not a little disturbing :). A 4.0 in the last hour
too (6:48 PM).
[http://scedc.caltech.edu/recent/Maps/118-36.html](http://scedc.caltech.edu/recent/Maps/118-36.html)
------
breck
> Each color cycle represents 4.8 inches (12 centimeters) of ground
> displacement in the radar line-of-sight.
Is there a legend somewhere, or at least a max? I'm not sure what is meant by
"color cycle".
~~~
jofer
You're looking at an interferogram.
The method used here can't measure displacement directly. It measures a phase
difference between two radar images. Turning this into a map of displacement
is non unique in the presence of noise and limited spatial resolution.
That's why you'll see this type of data displayed in this way. The rainbow
palette is mostly convention, but either way, it's the most direct view of
what actually measured.
It's also kinda pretty, i.m.o...
~~~
mirimir
It is certainly pretty. But I'm still not clear what it means.
OK, so the radar is measuring distance between the satellite and reflecting
surface. They're compairing data from July 8, 2019 and April 8, 2018. I'm
guessing that the two images look pretty much the same. Especially given
limited spatial resolution.
But ELI5, what does the interference pattern show? I mean, are there 12 cm
amplitude waves of vertical surface displacement? Something like frozen S
waves?
~~~
jofer
An earthquake is rocks sliding past each other. What you're looking at here is
a measure of how much they moved. (It doesn't "slide back" afterwards -- the
motion is permanent.) For an earthquake of this size, the motion will be on
the order of a few meters.
\------------
In a bit more detail, the radar can't measure distance precisely enough to
detect the movement. The distance measured before and after by radar is the
same, within error. However, there's another part of the radar signal beyond
just how long it takes to travel. That second part is the phase of the
returned signal. Imagine the first time we imaged a small area, we got a
return waveform that looked like this (zero phase):
/\ /\ /\
\/ \/ \/
but then the next time we got back a slightly different result (270 degree
phase):
\ /\ /\ /
\/ \/ \/
The difference is shape of the returning signal is a phase shift. The radar
wave is shifted slightly
We know that it moved at least three quarters wavelength in the ascii art
example above. However, we'd get the same result if it moved ten and three
quarters, though. We can measure part of the change very precisely, but the
bulk of the motion looks the same to us. We're looking at that fined-grained
part of the motion (phase difference) not the overall motion itself.
In programming terms, we're looking at the result of a modulo operator.
~~~
mirimir
Thanks.
I see that the ALOS-2 SAR uses L band, which seems to mean 1-2 GHz (30-15 cm).
So maybe the ALOS-2 actually uses 12 cm?
So does that mean that the pattern shows something like contour lines?
~~~
jofer
Yep! You can think of the bands as contour lines of deformation.
~~~
mirimir
Hey, thanks.
------
mturmon
Relatedly, InSAR images of the Kilauea volcano area:
[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA13910](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA13910)
And land subsidence due to groundwater pumping in California’s Central Valley,
showing motion of up to 70 cm (!):
[https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16293](https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA16293)
------
golem14
At first glance, this looks very much like some Julia sets.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How redundant is S3? Do I need another backup? - marcamillion
How often does S3 lose/delete your files? Or is there some backup feature/functionality built in, that is pretty robust?<p>If it will be storing all the user uploaded files, should I also be pushing those files to some other CDN - like Rackspace's CloudFiles?
======
dholowiski
I've heard it said that "if it doesn't exist in three places, it doesn't
exist". Despite any claims of reliability, I would always make sure my
critical data is backed up in two totally different locations.
~~~
davej
With S3 your data is stored in more than three places though.
~~~
dholowiski
But it's only stored in one service. If amazon goes bankrupt tomorrow, it's
gone.
------
davej
Honestly, you don't need do; everything stored on S3 (unless you're storing it
on RRS) is crazy redundant. Amazon claim 99.999999999% durability in any given
year: <http://aws.amazon.com/s3/faqs/#How_durable_is_Amazon_S3>
A bigger worry IMO would be accidentally deleting the files yourself (perhaps
through a bug in client code). You can always enable versioning on your bucket
to protect against that though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hardware is Expensive, Programmers are Cheap - WalkingDead
http://lastinfirstout.blogspot.com/2009/01/hardware-is-expensive-programmers-are_29.html
======
patio11
Isn't the real story of this "incompetence is expensive"? Seriously, that
application design is worse than the worst implementation we've ever had in a
failed outsourcing project. (I make Big Freaking Web Apps for Japanese
universities at the day job.)
Up until recently universities pretty much had to overspend on hardware,
though. (Virtualization/expandable-on-demand cloud computing may eventually
get around to changing it, but the customers aren't ready for it and the
programming costs to take advantage of it dwarf the benefits for our clients.)
Most of the important systems that need to scale have very, very bad usage
patterns from a hardware buyer perspective: for example, take course
registration. (Edit to clarify: They are probably not talking about course
registration, because there is no way in heck that peak is only 50% more than
the steady state.)
At a university with 10,000 students, about 360 days out of the year you can
run the course registration on a laptop while it is being used to play World
of Warcraft. Then there is course registration season, at which point your
peak concurrency goes from 1 user per hour to generally a _multiple_ of your
student population all signed in at once. (Because, no matter what you do,
they will open multiple windows/connections/etc because "the site is so slow,
come on duuuuude, why the heck is this POS always so slow?")
All the accesses are dynamic. Most of them have writes attached. You have to
get caching right because if you overbook a class and tell 15 students that
they're confirmed a seat in a room which sits 12 because your cache got stale
for three minutes, your customer gets yelled at, and they will turn around and
yell at you. The end users are also typically incompetent at using the system
(typically 1/4 of them have never used it before) and they will perform an
impromptu fuzz test on it.
(Oh the stories I can't tell, sadly.)
~~~
TJensen
I used to work at a company providing enterprise systems for higher education.
Fall registration was panic season; we were in fire-alarm mode for most of
August and September.
Those were good times. :)
------
danielrhammond
Sometimes Hardware is Expensive, and so is time though.
I think often times in a startup, especially one thats bootstrapped, its easy
to get caught up in trying to optimize everything too early on to scale for a
million users before you have your first thousand. Sometimes you have to
optimize for your development time first and product development goals, and
leave the optimization till you get a bit of runway.
~~~
alecco
> Sometimes you have to optimize for your development time first and product
> development goals, and leave the optimization till you get a bit of runway.
That's a typical way to postpone and fall into a trap. Not all optimizations
take huge amounts of time. And certainly there are some architectural
decisions you can take early on that can save you a lot of wasted time later.
The most common is to prevent bottlenecks.
For example, it's not necessary to make a clustered DB from launch day but
coding and managing the UI and middle-ware to be ready for a switch to
clustered DB usually takes very little impact. If you don't do this and the
site becomes successful, re-engineering your whole site to support a new DB is
usually close to impossible or extremely expensive. The site ends up in the DB
hardware feedback trap just like in the article.
Edit: format fix.
~~~
billswift
Architectural decisions also limit what you can do later. Generally, the more
focussed/optimized a system the less flexible. To the extent you KNOW exactly
what the system should do, it should be optimized from the beginning; but, as
PG points out repeatedly, most startups change direction at least once after
launch.
------
stcredzero
In other words, figure it out for yourself in your particular situation. Do
the back of the envelope calcs. The reason why articles like this and the
opposing view at Coding Horror are posted is because authors want to draw
attention to management with preconceived notions.
------
bayareaguy
Looking at things along the hardware/programmers are expensive/cheap axis
(take your pick) is short sighted and highly subjective. Setting aside
political considerations, the real thing decision makers should focus on are
the organization's underlying time and efficiency constraints and
unfortunately these things are most often overlooked, misunderstood or
inaccurately represented.
------
jasonkester
This sounds like an edge case to me. Now that it's no longer 1998, most of us
don't spec out $500,000 boxes for our stuff anymore. A $5,000 box will get you
a long way for just about anything you need to do.
I suspect that the author is looking at a problem that would require tons of
hardware regardless of how well it was optimized. Evidence of this can be
found in the fact that even after tons of optimization, his $1.5M setup is
still running at 20% load steady state.
Our single <$5,000 box handles about 4M pageviews per day without moving the
cpu above 5% steady state. That's the sort of baseline I'm used to from the
Microsoft stack, so it causes me to question whether the author is really
looking at a mainstream case.
~~~
kscaldef
> Our single <$5,000 box handles about 4M pageviews per day without moving the
> cpu above 5% steady state. That's the sort of baseline I'm used to from the
> Microsoft stack
You realize how meaningless a statement like this is, right? You just can't go
around talking about "pageviews" as if they were some uniform measure of
workload.
~~~
sho
Yeah, I was about to mention that. 4M a day is about 50/sec; if it's nothing
but static pages you could serve that on a Pentium 1 without breaking a sweat.
I've been giving away P4s recently, so their value is effectively zero - they
can probably do it at under 5% too.
The problem is obviously when you're _not_ serving static pages.
------
radu_floricica
This is not a problem of hardware vs software. It's a problem of vendor's
money vs your own. Of course he doesn't care. Actually, the more you spend on
hardware the cheaper the software seems.
~~~
patio11
_Of course he doesn't care._
My day job sells integrated solutions to Japanese universities. We would care
very intensely how much the hardware costs in a circumstance like this. (Which
we wouldn't be in, because we try not to deliver software which is an
abomination against all that is good and holy in terms of database use, but
still.)
The math is simple: the university typically has a budget of X million yen to
Get This Done. It doesn't matter what the line items are on our invoice -- we
can't charge them more than X million yen.
Given that constraint, what do you think we want to charge them? Software
license fees for our solutions, where our margin is anywhere from... crikey, I
can't tell you the numbers, but "high to higher". Software license fees for
third party providers like a certain Enterprise Database, where the margin to
the reseller (us) is from low to medium? Or the margin resellers get on
hardware, which compared to our software is small enough we could use it to
remove food from between our teeth?
~~~
radu_floricica
I mean, once the contract is signed. I know how sucky it is to go into such a
relationship with a vendor. Custom apps are always risky... and hardware costs
are one of the risks.
In your situation, actually in most situations when the client can compare the
costs for both software and hardware before, it's logical to optimize the
software.
------
cbetz
there is a fundamental difference between software for sale and software as a
service when it comes to this debate. the economic efficiency math is much
different for licensed software because more than one company is using it.
~~~
edw519
"the economic efficiency math is much different for licensed software because
more than one company is using it"
So is the risk.
Nothing drives customers crazier than a slow system because _someone else_ is
having a busy day.
I spent my first 10 years decoupling applications from each other because
independence was more important than economies of scale. Now we're swinging
back the other way. Hopefully, we will have learned something this time.
------
zandorg
Yeah, if you can make software run 100 times faster with lots of profiling and
hand optimisations, that $300 laptop is basically a $30,000 laptop.
~~~
dasil003
Of course you need to consider what those optimisations will do to maintenance
and future development costs.
------
vaksel
I think the problem is that the costs add up slowly. Your site starts getting
slow? You just throw another dedicated server at it, increasing your cost
300-400 bucks a month.
------
Tichy
Hm, why not find something to do with the remaining cycles?
~~~
alecco
In a production database!?
~~~
Tichy
I was assuming in a modern "cloudy" setup, processing power and storage is all
kind of fluent. Or if it isn't yet, might be worthwhile to make it so? They
could set it up all with virtual machines and stuff?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Secret trade agreement covering 68 percent of world services - xkarga00
http://rt.com/usa/167088-wikileaks-tisa-secret-trade/
======
xkarga00
[https://wikileaks.org/tisa-financial/](https://wikileaks.org/tisa-financial/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Give a Dime – Donate Spare Change to Local Charities - deegles
https://www.giveadime.org/
======
deegles
This is my friend's startup. He would appreciate any comments or feedback!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Using machine learning to predict the best distributors in the 2018 draft - connorgreenwell
http://dribbleanalytics.blogspot.com/2018/07/draft-class-distributors-ml.html?m=1
======
connorgreenwell
Posted to r/NBA yesterday:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/8zanxy/oc_using_machin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/nba/comments/8zanxy/oc_using_machine_learning_to_predict_the_best/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Developer hits back at Intel's Android fragmentation claims - sylviebarak
http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4231220/Developer-hits-back-at-Intel-s-Android-fragmentation-claims
======
nextparadigms
Intel is just upset because they wanted Android to work _only_ on Atom, and by
that I mean they didn't want it to work on AMD chips nor on their high-end x86
chips (probably because they are still trying to preserve the "Wintel"
leadership in that market).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Python Programmers Support the Ada Initiative - inglesp
http://jacobian.org/writing/python4ada/
======
jMyles
Wow, so the goal is already reached?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Microformats.org at 5: Two Billion Pages With hCards - hazelnut
http://microformats.org/2010/07/08/microformats-org-at-5-hcards-rich-snippets
======
hazelnut
i never thought that there are so many sites out there using microformats -
especially hCards.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How do Zynga employees feel about the company's summer 2012 stock price drop? - benwerd
http://www.quora.com/Zynga/How-do-Zynga-employees-feel-about-the-companys-summer-2012-stock-price-drop
======
benwerd
Worth noting that we can't verify if these are Zynga employees, of course.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Capehart Communications Collection – For Sale - perceptron2go
https://telemuseum.info/
======
haltingproblem
This is super cool, it would make for an amazing exhibit paired with an
interactive audio/video tour. Having said that, I seriously doubt this is the
largest collection in the world by any measure.
~~~
chronomex
i've visited a number of private telephone collections and Don's is absolutely
massive by any standard. i can't do it justice, nor can any photo album. but
he has, among other treasures, some highlights from my memory:
- autovon equipment
- several generations of digital switches
- electromechanical switches too
- loads and loads of paper documents on compact shelving
- bell labs prototypes
- phones that i never knew existed
- the first switch from Sprint's long distance network
i sincerely hope that he finds homes for all his collection.
------
wyxuan
Largest private collection by an individual
------
perceptron2go
Just imagine 8,000 sq feet of display area, and, as far as I know, there is
also a living area there, like a house inside this warehouse. The price is
very reasonable and I would buy it if it was not so far away from me.
~~~
vageli
Where did you see the price listed?
~~~
perceptron2go
Inside info. I am just a secret fan who wishes he had this building in his
backyard. Hopefully some crypto baron realizes the historical significance of
this collection and buys this marvel for the chump change
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Redeye VC: Validate Your Own Damn Market (aka Entrepreneur Pickup Lines) - jkopelman
http://redeye.firstround.com/2008/06/validate-your-o.html
======
aston
If your market was thought to be niche or relatively inconsequential, I think
it's pretty fair to say the entrance of a major player validates your
hypothesis that it was a big deal. You're only screwed if you can't out-
execute them.
This seems like a lot of unnecessary laboring over a cliche coupled with some
examples of big companies beating smaller companies.
------
dfranke
My usual response to concerns about competitors is "then we shall hack in the
shade".
------
staunch
1\. Create a great new market.
2\. Wait for a Giant to come in to play.
3\. Kick Giant's ass.
4\. Sell yourself to Giant or Giant's competitor.
Hasn't that happened quite a few times in various ways?
~~~
xlnt
That's from Ender's Game.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
1 year since I quit my job to learn how to code - emilepetrone
http://www.proudn00b.com/post/7764086648/i-year-since-i-quit-my-job-to-learn-how-to-code
======
kacy
Proud of you Emile. Keep up the hard work!
~~~
emilepetrone
Thanks Kacy!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Just Room Enough Island - zeroonetwothree
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_Room_Enough_Island
======
warent
What I love most about this is that there seems to be some form of nominative
determinism at play here because the surname of the original owners is
Sizeland, which doesn't take a big leap of the imagination to connect to their
owning an island of notable size. At the very least, Sizeland is definitely an
aptonym.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aptronym)
------
dmckeon
From the title, I was expecting
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand_on_Zanzibar)
(title from a mention in the novel of a factoid that the entire human race,
standing close together, would just cover Zanzibar.
Would love to see either this or Brunner’s
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shockwave_Rider)
as well-produced films.
------
canjobear
Do they have electricity and running water?
~~~
watersb
Looks like a lot of running water to me.
------
potiuper
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother-in-
Law_Island](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother-in-Law_Island) AKA "Not
enough room" island
------
dmd
The "Sizeland family". What a perfectly matched name.
------
hn_1234
I see there is also something similar here , castle in an island
[https://www.boldtcastle.com/visitorinfo/](https://www.boldtcastle.com/visitorinfo/)
~~~
sonofgod
They're around 250 metres from each other.
The Thousand Islands seems a completely ludicrous place that feels like a
fantasy novel. Or Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker
[https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Boldt+Castle+%26+Boldt+Yacht...](https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Boldt+Castle+%26+Boldt+Yacht+House,+1+Heart+Island,+Alexandria+Bay,+NY+13607,+United+States/Hub+Island,+Alexandria+Bay,+NY+13607,+USA/@44.3437032,-75.9240831,18z/data=!4m14!4m13!1m5!1m1!1s0x4ccd393928956011:0x67988c8497b22eca!2m2!1d-75.922653!2d44.34434!1m5!1m1!1s0x4ccd393013332baf:0x40b64c50bbcd7568!2m2!1d-75.9248733!2d44.3426381!3e0)
------
RickJWagner
Cool looking house.
I'd have to wonder how they keep the siding in shape, though. You'd have to
think waves would keep it wet, leading to rot or at least mold on the north
side.
Anyone got any ideas about that?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What to Do If Your Blog Goes Viral: 10 Tips - Apple-Guy
http://birdabroad.wordpress.com/2011/08/20/what-to-do-if-your-blog-goes-viral-10-tips/
======
wgx
While I sympathise with OP's frustration at others making money from their
work - there is provision in UK copyright law: "using any work, for the
purpose of reporting current events, with sufficient acknowledgement, is a
valid exception to copyright".
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing_in_United_Kingdom_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_dealing_in_United_Kingdom_law#Reporting_of_current_events)
------
glimcat
> Consider watermarking all of your photos
This part isn't such an awesome idea.
~~~
sixtofour
Why not, specifically? I can imagine technical and aesthetic reasons. What are
your objections?
~~~
glimcat
It's self-defeating because it degrades the quality of your site, it's self-
defeating because it blocks some user behaviors for discussing your site, and
it doesn't work. Rule of thumb: if you don't want something shared, don't put
it on the internet.
There are a few reasonable exceptions. Stock photo sites should probably use
watermarks and reduced-size images. Unobtrusively signing images sometimes
also makes sense (not watermarking) as it can serve branding interests.
But trying to block browser interactions is just annoying. Don't do that, it's
a great big sin against usability that violates the rule of least surprise. If
it's over-done, it may keep me from easily opening links in a new tab. It also
makes it hard to open _images_ in a new tab if I'm trying to get a better look
at them on a limited display.
~~~
sixtofour
Thanks.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Antichrist2020.com My blog archives from 1996-2019 - ZguideZ
http://www.antichrist2020.com
======
ZguideZ
These are all of my personal/tech/political blog archives over the past 24
years. Not proud of everything there, but fuck it - there it is.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dear Google Chrome Team: Please Add An SSH Client To Google Chrome - travisglines
http://www.travisglines.com/uncategorized/dear-google-chrome-team-please-add-an-ssh-client-to-google-chrome
======
nbpoole
Or you could use Portable PuTTY:
<http://www.straightrunning.com/XmingNotes/portableputty.php>
Edit: A different version is available at
<http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/putty_portable>
~~~
travisglines
I would still have to download or carry a usb stick with me, which is less
than ideal.
~~~
prodigal_erik
Even if a machine already has a trustworthy ssh client and you still use
passwords, you have to carry your known_hosts or download it via https anyway.
The pre-installed ssh client would be such a high-value target for attacks
that I think I'd prefer downloading a copy of mine.
------
chris_j
When I read the headline, I was wondering why you would need it. Of course,
the post explains where it would be of value: when using the computer
belonging to a friend/family member. In that situation, a Chrome ssh client
extension would be pretty useful. I guess you could generalise this a little
and say that it would be nice to have a Chrome extension for anything that
doesn't come as standard with Windows. How about a Chrome extension that
implements vi/emacs? Or the shell?
~~~
travisglines
I'm sure you could find an editor on the web for vi/emacs type editing. "the
shell" could be solved by a simple ssh into the loop back interface of the
local machine.
------
chris_j
I had a quick search for ssh extensions for Chrome and found at least one:
<http://ssh-chrome.sourceforge.net/>
I've not tried it so I can't comment on it. Is that what you are looking for
or do you want it baked into the heart of the browser (so it is there without
needing to install anything)?
~~~
travisglines
Overall I'd just really enjoy having a high quality SSH client come standard
with pretty much every computer I touch. One of the best ways to do that is
integrate it into modern browsers.
------
HardyLeung
I wonder if it is possible to write it as a Chrome extension?
~~~
int3
I think it might be possible via NPAPI.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Data Mining gone wrong - package addressed 'Daughter Killed in Car Crash' - grej
http://www.latimes.com/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-officemax-mail-20140119,0,6457094.story
======
greenyoda
Previous discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7087683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7087683)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Best approaches for Javascript game graphics? - thomanil
I'm wondering what the most viable approaches are for 2d (or 3d) graphics in straight browser Javascript?.<p>Canvas, SVG? Are there other straightforward approaches that offer primitive graphics operations like drawing lines, circles, pixels? Experiences and thoughts on this much appreciated.<p>(I recently wrote a dinky little javascript game [plug]messynotebook.com/?p=71[/plug]. Straight CSS+DOM worked for me in that case, but I'm looking into better ways of doing it next time.)
======
shaunxcode
checkout Raphael js it provides cross platform svg type drawing, pretty sweet
and that way you can target everyone.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: The static, static site generator - Xeoncross
https://github.com/xeoncross/Jr
======
chavesn
What a great idea, I'm really impressed with the cleverness and execution.
A few thoughts and questions for you (you may have already thought of/know
about):
\- Have you thought about "well-formedness" for the HTML? I realize that
adding anything besides the script tag would sort of ruin your point, and it
would be nice if browsers accepted that, but also I feel there are sometimes
hidden benefits to serving a well-formed document under the correct content
type that the server said was being sent (or extension).
\- This makes your site awesome to read with a text browser or curl.
\- About 1/2 or 1/3 of the times I click "back" or "next", I can't scroll the
page after it renders. (Chrome/MacOS)
\- The footer support is cool, have you thought about how you would do more
extensive template support? (Maybe there's no reason anything extra couldn't
be placed in the footer -- analytics, even a header -- although I think a
favicon might need to be in a `<head>` tag). Integrating this directly with
Markdown, too, could be really cool.
\- P.S. Your footer link says "Chanpter" :)
Great work, I love when I find something like this -- really clean, simple,
and challenges the norms in a clever way. The result even appears quite
polished.
~~~
Xeoncross
Thanks for the feedback. That is really what this project was about - thinking
outside the box to solve problems.
Like most projects, I would expect elegant solutions to some of these problems
to appear as more people think about the concept. I must admit, it works
pretty nicely for such an abuse of technology.
------
randomdrake
Another neat show of letting the client deal with the rendering.
From the example[1]:
"You see, there is really no need for the server to generate anything for
simple article-based sites like this. If the user wants to read your blog they
can spend a few processor cyles[sic] to render the page themselves."
This paradigm is beyond me and it seems to be growing for whatever reason.
Client-side processors rendering bytes through a separate engine, other than
the HTML one, only to have it eventually run through the HTML engine so the
client can actually read it.
The thought that everyone has a decent machine to do the processing is, in my
experience, _still_ a false one. This was true 5-10 years ago, and I haven't
seen evidence that it isn't still true today.
Your server probably has many, many cores. Probably SSD architecture. It is
barely blinking to answer a request and deliver text. Why on earth would you
leave the simple job of wrapping markup around text, to a machine that you
know nothing about?
The average Internet user isn't terribly savvy. Their browser is possibly
cluttered with add-ons. Their computer more than likely running 100s of
background processes they know nothing about.
Depending on the stats you look at, in 2014, we're looking at a lot of folks
with dual-core machines and a couple GB of memory, if they are lucky.
I can't understand why you would want to delay or hinder the experience to
getting to your content.
While it may load really fast on your Macbook Pro Retina, or ThinkPad X1, that
has a few text editors open and an up to date browser, the experience won't be
true for everyone.
When did it become trendy for developers to put burdens on their clients with
all of this front-end first thought? Just because it makes it easier for you
to write and deploy, doesn't give you the excuse to put the burden on the user
for rendering your stuff.
How many more times do we need to read about companies being forced into
dropping this ill-conceived paradigm because they realized it made the
experience for the client _worse_ , and in many cases, made the development
worse as well?
In this example, we end up with an HTML file that is all of 6,084 bytes.
To get there in this example, we used jr.js, a 5,616 byte file, to load
showdown.js, a 14,859 byte file, and render 651 bytes of text. Sometimes, the
loading and rendering is _so slow_ , that the code itself has handling for it:
// Empty the content in case it takes a while to parse the markdown (leaves a blank screen)
jr.body.innerHTML = '<div class="spinner"></div>';
21,126 bytes to generate 6,084 bytes of text which has to now be rendered (one
more time) by the browser.
Wouldn't it be great if there was some standard about the bytes that were
delivered over the wire that everyone could use and build upon? Folks should
get together and build a really good processor of bytes coming over the wire
that's delivered in a particular format to be rendered on the screen. It would
be great for the Internet! You could browse the entire thing!
[1] - [http://xeoncross.github.io/jr/](http://xeoncross.github.io/jr/)
~~~
Xeoncross
A server should serve. I to think too much front-end magic will slow down a
site.
However, I actually created this on that dual-core laptop you are talking
about. So not to take away from your point, but let me also take this from the
other perspective - bandwidth.
The 6kB + 15kB Javascript files only initially seem to be a waste. After you
think about the bandwidth you save transferring all the additional pages in
plain markdown and using the (now) cached JS build each page actually results
in much faster loading times even if the browser might have to spend a few
hundred milliseconds rendering.
~~~
randomdrake
> A server should serve. I to think too much front-end magic will slow down a
> site.
> However, I actually created this on that dual-core laptop you are talking
> about.
Right, which is why you have stuff in your code about dealing with the fact
that sometimes rendering the bytes coming down the wire is painfully slow. You
commented out the spinner GIF, which has replaced the Java applet loading, or
the Shockwave loading, we knew so well in the 90s and 00s.
> So not to take away from your point, but let me also take this from the
> other perspective - bandwidth.
It would take visiting 3.4 posts of the size in the example before you would
even reach the necessary bandwidth of the very first post.
Blog posts, by and large, get traffic for the single post in which someone is
visiting and very, very rarely get hit up for a 2nd, and even more rarely a
3rd story on the same site.
Taking that into consideration, who is wasting more bandwidth?
> even if the browser might have to spend a few hundred milliseconds rendering
Gather up 3 or 4 times waiting a few hundred milliseconds and now you're
waiting multiple seconds. Which is more than enough time for folks to hit the
back button.
I'm not dogging your efforts or your library. I hope you don't see it that
way. I am simply saying that the amount of work going into client-heavy
development these days, and the amount of folks hopping on the: "Wow, that's
such a great idea!" bandwagon, should be limited (educated).
A server should serve clients. There are human beings attached to the
requests. We, as developers, should hold ourselves to a higher standard of
doing whatever we can to remove burden from the clients.
I don't know where the idea that developers should be unburdened and servers
shouldn't work hard came from, but it stinks.
Pay $0.00000001 to ask the 16 CPUs to wrap text in markup. Sheesh.
~~~
notahacker
I'm sure there exist edge cases where the average user's browsing experience
is slowed more by the additional bandwidth used downloading gzipped HTML tags
on the fourth and fifth pages they visit than by the rendering script download
on the first page and their browser running a script to generate a static
layout features on every page.
But even then I'd wonder if the answer to save all that wasted time and
bandwidth wasn't "maybe we could do even better if we compressed those
images?"
~~~
GrinningFool
I think the "edge case" here is "many if not most mobile connections" \- not
everyone has LTE and even among those who do, it's a highly variable
experience.
In addition you are hitting those clients with a double-whammy: slow load over
a slow connection, and slow rendering on a [relatively] slow CPU.
~~~
notahacker
The edge case is one where the extra bytes in a set of plain old HTML files
are actually more of a significant overhead than the JS/markdown alternative,
which has a higher page weight for the first visit anyway as well as making
more demands on client-side renderers. (In retrospect I could have worded the
first post more clearly). Mobile is hardly likely to be this edge case since
as you point out yourself mobile browsers will have a more perceptible delay
when it comes to generating a page on the client side in javascript (and also
can't display anything until the script is downloaded which is possibly a
_big_ first page performance hit, and aren't necessarily effective at caching
the script for repeat visits)
------
davej
Interesting, I wonder do search engines crawl pages like this?
You'd need to add at least a `doctype` and `title` for this to be valid HTML5
(not that it necessarily matters for a search engine crawler).
Edit: Also if you added the script to the top of the doc then you could
`display: none` the doc and wait for the css to load before making it
`display: block`. This would overcome the FOUC effect.
~~~
nkozyra
As I understand it, wouldn't Google render this page while crawling? Perhaps
they'd punish it for doing so, but I think Google would have no issue with the
content itself.
I also wonder how much FOUC you could incite by increasing the size of the
markdown document.
~~~
Xeoncross
True, but don't forget that the JS and CSS is cached so after the first page
load - every other page is instantly ready to be rendered.
~~~
nkozyra
That's not true in this case - the JS and CSS are cached but the output of the
JS (the rendered HTML) is dependent on the _execution_ of the JS. If that
meets any delay (ie, through parsing 1,000 nodes in a document for example),
the page will look unformatted until the parsing is complete.
~~~
Touche
FOUC is easily enough fixed with some css rules. Can even give it a snazzy
transition effect after it's rendered.
------
lowmagnet
I did something similar years ago with xslt rendering xml in browser. It used
an xsl stylesheet loaded in the xml itself, similar to this approach. It was a
pain to debug, and I'd imagine this approach is easier because tooling has
caught up with this sort of thing.
I use httpsb so this comes through as a pile of text until I allow the js to
do its thing. I'm ok with this, since a browser plugin that does markdown
would work here too.
Sometimes I miss things like Archie that had very small network footprints due
to technical requirements of the past. They really were able to focus on the
content, like this solution.
~~~
X-Istence
I loved the idea of using XSLT rendering to take an well formatted XML
document and process it client side in the browser, but it came with more
problems than it solved.
The tooling was terrible to accomplish it, but different browsers reacted
slightly different to the XSLT, some had a flash of unstyled XML followed by
it rendering the page using XSLT, JavaScript didn't work right since the page
had to be served as XML not as HTML, Adsense my ad network at the time didn't
work with it either.
XSLT had potential, but it never really caught on, and now we just have
JavaScript frameworks that do all the rendering client side using JavaScript
instead.
~~~
th0ma5
I noticed a similar flash with this project, although the end result is very
cool, and to think except for links, this is somewhat all Lynx compatible.
------
jscheel
Now we just need a static site generator generator.
~~~
fournm
Have the server inject the javascript into the page?
------
j_s
Dang it, I was hoping for a 'pick your features & download your customized
version of jekyll'! I guess that would be a static site generator generator...
------
scorpion032
Static Site Generators seem like the Twitter client of today (which itself has
been the "Hello, World!" of Web 2.0)
Here is a site that compares 270 of them:
[http://staticsitegenerators.net/](http://staticsitegenerators.net/)
~~~
dangoor
Most (all?) of those 270 static site generators generate HTML files that sit
on disk on the server. This tool takes markdown files with a single script tag
and serves that up to the client. While I'm pretty sure I've seen this idea
before, it is at least different from the typical static site generator.
~~~
p4bl0
Many static site generators use (or allow you to use) markdown to write your
pages, and then generate static html from it. And I can only see benefits to
the no-javascript approach.
------
partomniscient
If there's javascript in the output, it's not really static is it?
~~~
k__
Well, you can deploy it with a simple web server. No server side processing.
Theoretically this is the best scaling solution.
Practically it makes the site slower for every client.
~~~
HeyImAlex
>Theoretically this is the best scaling solution.
Html markup on your pages is probably minuscule after compression (you're
using zopfli with 5000 cycles and minifying your html, right?), and amortizing
the upfront cost of that extra js over the average number of page views is
definitely worse than plain ol static html for your blog 99.9% of the time.
But let's get real; theoretically the best? I doubt markdown is even near the
optimum in terms of bits on the wire. Don't even talk to me unless you're
writing your own binary markdown serialization format.
~~~
k__
Well, with 1 client, you have one machine which renders the page and with 1000
clients, you have 1000 machines which render the page.
The processing capacity depends on the amount of clients.
With a static site generator, the processing capacity depends on your own
machines and is independent of the clients.
But yes, for a static site, this just doesn't help much, since every client
gets the same data, so why should every one process it on its own.
------
philbarr
So am I right in thinking that this is like a template, but the template gets
added dynamically by javascript?
~~~
nkozyra
You can confirm this by inspecting the document - the markdown is parsed into
nodes through regexp and then a full HTML document is constructed and injected
into the DOM (or rather, creating the DOM and then injecting it).
Cool, fun, but probably not something for which I can see a practical use.
------
joshvm
I guess the only downside is that if your client has NoScript, they just see
the raw Markdown. With HTML if the client has a text based browser things like
links, images, etc will still work. I still use Lynx over SSH if I need to
grab paywalled content from my work machine or check something on the local
intranet when I'm out of the office.
The text based browser is splitting hairs, but NoScript isn't. Unless there
are browsers that will natively render Markdown if served/detected (i.e. not a
plugin)?
~~~
Blahah
You could see that as an upside - Markdown is designed to be human-readable
and is pretty successful in that design goal. So a NoScript user will see a
rather nice plaintext.
~~~
billyhoffman
uhhh, Markdown is "nicely" formatted for geeks, and is great for easing the
burden of content creation.
however My mom (and I imagine any non-geek) would have trouble reading the
hyperlink format, and be completely confused by the strong vs italics, code,
or block quote sections of Markdown.
~~~
Kiro
Remember that we're talking about markdown being shown to people with
noscript, something I highly doubt non-geeks are using.
~~~
yohanatan
Wouldn't it also be shown to people who merely have Javascript disabled?
------
JasonFruit
Using Google Chrome Version 34.0.1847.132 on Linux, if I open pages (e.g.
[http://xeoncross.github.io/jr/](http://xeoncross.github.io/jr/),
[http://xeoncross.github.io/jr/john1.html](http://xeoncross.github.io/jr/john1.html))
in a new tab that is not immediately focused, they never visibly render. I see
that frequently with client-side-rendered pages.
------
michaelbuckbee
While not what I'd do for every site, it's a pretty neat tool for some use
cases.
In particular, Heroku has moved to a similar setup with Boomerang [1] - a JS
include that puts the nice Heroku branding at the top of your add-on
configuration pages.
It neatly sidesteps the need to make a component/template for every single
framework and backend in use by their different partners.
I could also see it being useful as an easy "drop in" way of tying the
branding+nav together on a number of different sites within an organization
(so your auto generated docs, your tutorials, etc all live on different
systems but easily look the same).
1 - [https://github.com/heroku/boomerang](https://github.com/heroku/boomerang)
------
BHSPitMonkey
What about accessibility?
~~~
JetSpiegel
This comes down to reimplementing a HTML rendering engine in Javascript.
Accessibility is the least of their problems.
------
untitaker_
And now i want to generate a TOC ;)
~~~
hrjet
Great point. Client-side can't do any meta analysis about the data, unless it
fetches all the data. Which is a big waste of bandwidth and cpu.
~~~
untitaker_
Furthermore, unless you do some hackery in your .htaccess or something like
that, there is not even a way to discover all existing pages.
------
anon4
At first I balked because I positively hate frivolous use of javascript and in
fact browse with noscript and only a few sites allowed, but then I realised
something.
This is actually really good for people like me. If I visit with javascript
disabled, I get a nice, readable markdown. If I visit with lynx, I get
markdown. I can actually read your blog with curl, if I want to. This is
pretty much the holy grail of graceful degradation right here.
------
gramsey
This is an awesome idea, and looks like it is very well executed. I have two
suggestions:
\- Add some sparse html tags (i.e. a basic doctype/body), which can help with
search engine parsing.
\- You'll notice that for a few milliseconds on page load, the text is shown
before the JS rendering takes over. This can probably be solved via
Javascript, just find a way to cache or pre-load the pages.
------
notJim
I was hoping this was going to be a generator that generates static site
generators, since they seem to be the hot new project.
------
nir
Neat idea. Is the "Download Jr" part required, or could it just be included
from GH pages of the original repo?
Could make for a very quick & simple way to put up some content online while
keeping it looking decent, and users could contribute new themes etc.
------
dwg
Neat idea for very small, quick and dirty sites.
Pros:
* No build process (yet), source == build & no need for dev server * Easy to integrate client specific code (e.g. browser compatibility)
Cons:
* How to transpile to CSS/JS? * Apples-to-apples, slower than static sites with "build" process * SEO?
TBD:
* Client processing speed
------
SimeVidas
That demo looks amazing w/o JavaScript:
[http://i.imgur.com/sgC4sdN.png](http://i.imgur.com/sgC4sdN.png) (</sarcasm>).
Adding JavaScript as a SPOF cannot be a good approach -.-
------
ClashTheBunny
I would wrap the markdown in a gigantic < pre > so that when noscript is
enabled, you end up seeing at leat markdown, and not a wall of letters.
As for advantages of this, it seems like it would be better for a more open
web. If you put this on the web, it doesn't matter where you serve it from, I
can send you really good well formed patches. On thing the web currently lacks
is the ability to participate at a web scale. If I see something that I can
improve and can get to the source, I'll send a patch or pull request. These
days 'view source' means 'view generated code that nobody has seen'. This gets
back to the roots of the web.
------
chenster
Do we really need this level of overly extreme optimizing? Today's modern Web
browsers are already doing the most layout and rendering with CSS plus CDN and
client side cache.
------
juanuys
Broken? "curl -i
[http://xeoncross.github.io/jr/"](http://xeoncross.github.io/jr/") Content-
Type: text/html.
------
zhte415
I have had a, static, static site generator for many years. It is called
gedit. I've heard Notepad++ is pretty good too.
------
dyadic
I think the idea is pretty neat, but the flash of unstyled content before the
js kicks in really ruins it for me.
------
exizt88
> $then = "email" \+ "@" \+ "davidpennington.me"
Is this supposed to be PHP or Javascript?
~~~
Xeoncross
So here is my dilemma. I wanted to write it in Javascript, but the "then"
looked lonely without some kind of starting context. I was going to write it
in Go, but "var then..." kind of messed up the sentence. So I wrote it in PHP
since everyone knows what that horrible $ is all about.
~~~
exizt88
'.' is the proper string concatenation operator in PHP.
------
haldean
I made a less-tricky, less-cool thing like this[0] and I still use it on my
site today. It's really great to not have to recompile markdown or do anything
other than a git-push on text files. The fact that view-source works on yours
is super cool, though; nicely done!
[0]:
[https://github.com/haldean/docstore](https://github.com/haldean/docstore)
------
s_m
This is cool. I value pageload speed though, so I wouldn't use this myself.
------
motyar
All we need is browsers that support and render Markdown.
Good work !!
------
mplewis
This is a fantastic little toy project! Thanks for showing me. I'm thinking
about building this into something for hosting on servers with extremely
limited CPU, such as an RPi.
------
atmosx
I'm fine with octopress but if I had to change to another static site
generator I'd probably go with 'Go' due to speed improvements.
~~~
spf13
Hugo is a fully featured SSG written in Go. It's considerably faster than
other SSGs and has a very easy installation.
[http://hugo.spf13.com](http://hugo.spf13.com)
~~~
atmosx
I know spf13 :-), that's what I had in mind.
------
Istof
This is a great idea that might be useful on free hosts that only allow static
pages but I don't think that I would use it otherwise.
~~~
Istof
I would be curious to see what other uses it has
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fan-In - jsnell
https://codahale.com/fan-in/
======
draw_down
> _Like almost all interview questions, it was ultimately just a vehicle for
> my own prejudices and superstitions but it passed for clever at the time and
> no one, including myself, noticed._
Oh.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Walmart launching its own line of aggressively-priced Overpowered gaming laptops - commoner
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Walmart-is-launching-its-own-line-of-aggressively-priced-Overpowered-gaming-laptops.354171.0.html
======
gaspoweredcat
they look a lot like lenovos Y series to me, not that its a bad thing, at
least theyre understated, ive never really understood why gaming laptops have
to be designed like a boy racers subaru
~~~
qbrass
They're targeting the boy racer Subaru demographic. Surprised Alienware hasn't
just made a laptop that you can vape with.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to Quit Your Job - hunterwalk
http://www.onlyonceblog.com/2013/09/how-to-quit-your-job
======
georgemcbay
This may actually be true at Return Path, but in my nearly 20 years of
software developer experience, I've only seen a couple of companies for which
I believe this would be good advice.
At most places the common wisdom holds and you should keep your job seeking
activity a secret until you are ready to resign and give your two-weeks (at
least, I've given more than two weeks in a few cases where the circumstances
warranted it).
As soon as you even hint that you're thinking of leaving you will be seen as
"the other" and a bit of a traitor up and down the chain except perhaps by
your peers who will envy you (in most cases the things that drive you away are
likely making their job overly stressful as well).
A lot of companies (even dedicated software shops, which is kind of mind
boggling, but true IME) like to delude themselves into thinking programmers
are just human resources like box lifters and with the proper amount of
process you can just easily fit someone else into the role being vacated. They
maintain this illusion even while knowing their people are thinking about
leaving. In my experience it isn't until you make it official with a
resignation letter that they snap out of this and go into "oh shit" mode and
then attempt to offer real change. But by then it is too late, you've probably
already accepted another job and mentally prepared to leave and unless the
concessions are extremely, extremely substantial (and guaranteed somehow in
your favor) you should virtually always just stick with leaving.
~~~
jlees
At a smaller tech company (not sure how big Return Path is) it feels like so
much investment is put into each hire that they don't really have the
"replaceable parts" metaphor - and I know I'd rather know someone was unhappy
and try to fix the reasons why, than suddenly learn they were going.
I agree that the last-minute counter-offer can be way too late. (It's also
pretty unfair if you've already accepted another job - I've heard of several
cases of startups trying to hire people employed at larger companies who had
the hire fall through due to a generous counter-offer.)
~~~
slantyyz
I personally think it's always a bad idea to accept a counter-offer even if
the only reason for your departure is money.
Most of the things that drive you to leave are unlikely to change, and if you
have to quit to get the money you think you deserve, what will you have to do
to get raises in the future?
------
ianstallings
So I should tip my hand and let people know I'm looking for other
opportunities? If I'm looking for another position chances are I've already
spoken to my managers about things I'd like to see changed and they haven't
listened. Telling someone I'm looking for another job offers no strategic
advantage to me. If I get an offer and there is a counter-offer and I accept,
I'm still the guy with no loyalty to the business and seen as expendable.
Someone to be punished for daring to look outside the organization. Nothing
good can come from that. I might give you two weeks if I think it will be
honored and we can gracefully part ways.
But let me tell you a little story about giving two weeks notice. I quit a
startup this year because I wanted some things addressed and they were never
addressed. Mainly dispute over equity and control of IP I had brought to the
business from my previous startup. I laid this out in conversations, meetings,
and in emails. They knew I wanted something done. But nothing happened. So I
put my two weeks in and got an email back from the CEO almost instantly - I
wouldn't have to wait two weeks they were letting me go immediately. And he
cc'd almost everyone in the company. That's what being a nice guy gets you, a
walk out the door.
~~~
mason55
On the flip side, I had a junior dev quit without ever addressing any of his
issues with me. Even in reviews where I asked him if he had any issues and
even when I made it clear that he could come talk to me with any problems he
had.
We still had him work out his last two weeks and took him out to happy hour
his second to last night... and then his last day he never showed up to do an
exit interview and finish some handoffs.
~~~
georgemcbay
I don't know the particulars of the case you're talking about, but sometimes
even if you're working at a place that you like and you aren't actively
looking for work, other work finds you and you wind up with an offer that is
far more attractive than your current place.
This is why companies should always be proactively adjusting compensation,
perks, etc to retain the people they can't afford to lose, though very few
actually do this. In the end though, even if a company does keep up on the
retaining side there are lots of reasons (eg. more interesting technical
stack, new project instead of maintaining old one, etc) why someone who is
mostly happy may still leave a job for another.
Having said all of that, it sucks that the dev didn't show up for the last
day. I hate exit interviews, but I'll still do them.
~~~
hga
No, just no. There is _absolutely_ no upside to the employee in doing an exit
intervew; rather than going into details, Nick "Ask the Headhunter" Corcodilos
lays it out very well:
[http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/haexit.htm](http://www.asktheheadhunter.com/haexit.htm)
First graph:
" _Exit interviews fascinate me like cockroaches do. An exit interview is the
meeting a company 's human resources department has with an employee who has
been terminated or who has resigned. Like the Top Ten Stupid Interview
Questions, exit interviews are the cockroaches of the human resources world:
no one knows why they exist, no one can justify or eliminate them, and they
will likely survive into the third millennium._"
~~~
h2s
Personally, I'm glad I co-operated with my previous employer by delving into
the specific factors that led to my decision to leave. Despite the fact that I
obviously left, I really liked those people, and sometimes you go out on a
limb for people you like.
My feedback provided a written-down justification for investing in some much-
needed improvements to the way they built software. A few things tangibly
improved as a direct result, and that is valuable to me.
~~~
mason55
Likewise, as an engineering manager and not an HR drone (my company doesn't
even have HR yet), the point of my exit interview is to improve my team and
company. The hope is that a departing employee can feel a little more free
about giving feedback.
I suppose the flip side is that people will say I should be eliciting that
feedback all the time, and I do, but there's a difference between giving
feedback to your superior and your former superior.
------
tthomas48
I'm in Texas and we have at-will employment. You want super-easy hiring and
firing, that's great. But because you can fire me at the drop of a hat, I
cannot take the risk in tipping my hand. Feeding my family is more important
to me than the health of your company. I'm not going to rage quit, and I'm
going to try to change jobs when we're in a slow part of a cycle, but I cannot
discuss it before hand.
Sorry. That's just the reality of the situation. We could move back to
employment contracts and you would have a much more stable employee base. I
would openly discuss my plans for the end of my contract ahead of time. But
that would probably be _too_ stable and rigid.
~~~
ggreer
A solution could be to have a sort of tenure track for employees. Probably not
as strict as university tenure, but still enough for neither side to worry
about things changing unexpectedly.
That would let employers fire "mistake" hires (whose faults are obvious within
a couple months) while getting stability in the long-term.
~~~
CrLf
In Portugal, we have either contracts that renew yearly (where you are forced
to give a two-weeks notice) or contracts that are "permanent", where you have
to give a months' notice (under two years) or two months notice (over two
years).
For "permanent" contracts, there is a 6 months experimental period where both
the employer and the employee can terminate the contract with no notice at
all.
This gives enough time to get to know a new hire and fix any mistakes. After
that, both parties have a penalty for breaking the contract (an advance notice
for the employee, or a severance pay for the employer).
------
dpweb
Got as far as - "if you're thinking about leaving, have a conversation with
someone in management and discuss that you might be leaving".
Here's some, albeit free, advice. DO NOT do that.
------
super-serial
This is horrible. Do this if you're looking to be fired unexpectedly in the
future.
If someone gives this kind of ultimatum and the employer doesn't want to give
in, the employer will drag along the conversion while they start looking for a
replacement. I'm sure that's a wonderful thing for this CEO... he'll find a
replacement, get the naive employee to train the new guy in his role, and then
fire him first chance he gets. WIN-WIN for the CEO, huh? Well fuck that.
------
caboteria
> If you are contemplating looking around for something else, you should let
> someone know at the thinking stage.
On behalf of your employees: If you are contemplating letting people go, you
should let them know at the thinking stage. Wouldn't anything less be
hypocritical?
------
coops
I have done this the last 2 times I changed jobs. It worked out well for me
both times. If you are considered to be a valuable employee, and you have
management that is the least bit competent, you won't "just be replaced" for
looking around. Why would they trade you, an employee who has proven herself
to be valuable, for someone who just _might_ be adequate? Also consider that
we currently have a talent crunch on. No company with high standards for
engineers is able to hire as many as they would like to.
It is a great idea to tell your employer that you're looking around, because
it frees you to tell friends and former colleagues that you are looking for a
job without having to worry that your employer will find out. In my experience
you can get great job leads this way. This also gives you the opportunity to
control the job search process such that you have multiple offers available at
once, which improves your leverage.
When I do this I let every company that I am interested in know that I have a
deadline by which I need to receive a job offer or not. Typically this
deadline is my search start date + 1 month. After that I have a 2-week
negotiation window, at the end of which I will accept 0 or 1 new jobs. This
gives me a lot of leverage in soliciting counteroffers and minimizing stupid
recruiter games like exploding offers.
Do be aware that if you follow this strategy some recruiters will bitterly
resent you. This is because they know exactly what you are doing and how it
minimizes the informational asymmetry that is one of their most important
weapons.
------
general_failure
The whole post talks about how hard it is for the company and how the employee
should make it easier for the company. It doesn't work that way.
------
ams6110
I wonder if Return Path were contemplating layoffs if they would be completely
transparent and open a dialog with the target employees. Likely no, they would
do the standard approach of a surprise meeting, a box to pack your personal
items, and security supervision to the door.
~~~
Yhippa
I imagine they would drop obvious "hints". From my friends who've gotten laid
off most of them said they could "see it coming".
I am not sure if that's being transparent though.
~~~
w0rd-driven
I can attest to this in countless examples from my own life. The problem is
it's hardly quantifiable at all. It's a "feeling" that isn't always easy to
pick up on and quite frequently you can be fed wrong information to make you
think the ship is sinking when it's really just taking a new direction (that
you may or may not be or want to be a part of).
The analogy I use is rats know when to abandon a sinking ship. If you're a
pirate sailing along and see a shitload of rats jumping off your pimp ass
boat, you better be joining them lest you actually _want_ to sink with it.
That's reserved for captains (CEOs) not us regular folk.
------
crazygringo
This is ridiculous. If you're smart and not complacent, you're probably
_always_ looking around for something else, maybe not super-actively, but
possibly doing a phone interview every now and then, writing back to
recruiters, and a smart company should take that for granted, for all its
employees. The job market is a market.
You don't need any "reason" to consider other options, except for the obvious
one: there always might be something better out there, and you'll only know if
you're looking.
Your satisfaction in your current job is its own issue, and you should talk
about that with superiors/etc. whenever necessary and possible.
But there's no reason to tell your boss about a job-hunting unless you already
have an actual offer and you're contemplating taking it. Let's not hide the
fact that the job market is built on negotiation.
------
twelve40
This is bad advice. Business is business no matter how many times you claim
your team is like "family" or "friends". One place I worked at was very
friendly and supportive. One day the founders, who are still my friends and
mentors, faced an extremely lucrative acquisition offer that resulted in
firing half of the team, myself included. They announced and completed the
whole transaction in a matter of days, and I don't blame them - if they
announced too early, people would have fled or leaked the negotiations,
failing the deal of their lives. So when time comes, even the friendliest
management will not give you any warnings, why should you? There is nothing to
gain.
~~~
gaius
There's an old saying, if your boss is your friend, he's either a bad friend
or a bad boss. There's nothing wrong with partitioning your relationships into
work and play.
------
kadabra9
This arrangement sounds great, theoretically. At previous jobs I left, I
constantly thought about trying to set up this sort of open conversation with
my manager, and laying out my reasons for considering making a change.
I never did it. Not once. I conducted my search in secret, gave my notice,
thanked them for the opportunity and moved on.
At the end of the day, despite all of the assurances from my manager and my
employer about having an "open dialogue" about my concerns or reasons for
looking elsewhere, there's simply no assurance that they won't walk out of the
meeting already having me blacklisted as someone looking to jump ship. I have
to take their word for it they will work to address my concerns, and there
won't be any future resentment or even retribution. When it comes to something
like my career, I just can't afford to make that gamble.
More often than not, this isn't nearly as much about employee satisfaction,
retention and growth as it is protecting the employer from the potential
impact of an employee leaving unexpectedly.
------
ddoolin
It's not always a good idea to this. More of than not, probably. Many times if
you tell them you're going to start looking, they're going to start looking,
too. And if they find someone and you don't? Well, the potential new hire may
start to look really good while you, depending on your reasoning, are starting
to look really shitty right about then.
I've had mixed results here. The one time I did this and it was well-received,
the company was already in the middle of hiring a swatch of new people,
including some in my direct product/line. The other time, the manager/COO/CEO
didn't take it nearly so well, despite my reason for leaving having little to
do with them at all. I just got a better opportunity that I knew my employer
at the time could never offer, including a 50% pay raise (to start). I'm
pretty sure if I hadn't of found something, I'd have been out the door in any
case...
------
OhHeyItsE
Yes.
And I'm sure that you'd fully reciprocate. You know, give me a heads-up that
sales were down this quarter and you're considering laying me off? So I can be
adequately prepared? Because that would be VERY PAINFUL.
------
elicash
You should bring up the underlying _issues_ with management or HR, sure. But
this is essentially saying you've got to threaten to leave before your
concerns will be taken seriously.
------
chrisbennet
Actions Speak Louder Than Words. If you want employees to give you a heads up
before leaving, you need to foster the kind of environment where an employee
would feel comfortable giving you advanced notice.
Where I work now, the guy I replaced stuck around for a month or more to
interview people (hiring me in the process) and transition and bring me up to
speed. I'm not looking to leave but I've seen how (well) my employer treats
someone in the "I'm leaving" situation so I would feel comfortable letting my
employer know before hand.
I read a blog once where the author encouraged employers to treat past
employees as "alumni", keep open future communication and even possibly hire
them again at some point and benefit from the skills they've acquired in
meantime.
------
mattblumberg
Someone just alerted me to this thread, and WOW - there's a lot here! Instead
of responding to each individual comment, let me just note two things.
First, my post was not intended to be general advice to employees of all
companies on how to handle a situation where they're starting to look for
jobs. Of course, many environments would not respond well to that approach. My
point was just that that's how we encourage employees to handle the situation
at Return Path, and we have created a safe environment to do so. By the way,
it doesn't happen here 100% of the time either, by any stretch of the
imagination. But I wish it did. When it happens, it's better for everyone --
the company as well as the employee, who either (a) ends up staying because we
resolve some issue we weren't aware of, or (b) has a less stressful and more
graceful transition out.
Second, the way we run our business is around a bit of a social contract --
that is to say, a two-way street. And just as we ask employees to start a
dialog with us when they are thinking of leaving, we absolutely, 100% of the
time, are open and transparent with employees when they are in danger of being
fired (other than the occasional urgent "for cause" situation). We give people
ample opportunity to correct performance and even fit issues. In terms of
someone's question below about lay-offs, we fortunately haven't had to do
those since 2001, but if I recall, even then, we were extremely transparent
about our financial position and that we might need to cut jobs in 30 days.
Happy to jump in on other comments as well or respond individually at matt at
returnpath dot com.
------
trippy_biscuits
If a job is so bad that I see no recourse other than leaving, two weeks notice
isn't going to happen. I'll leave whenever I feel like it and I won't tell a
single soul other than HR as I walk out the door. This is my life and I decide
what happens. Now, if I don't need to vote with my feet then courtesy
certainly prevails. I don't need to tell my boss that I'm looking at other
opportunities. Now, if I happen to mention that Google called and expressed
interest in me, my boss has an opportunity to let me know my value. I can also
return the favor and let my boss know that I turned down an opportunity at
Facebook. Communication is key, but don't give up a strategic advantage by
blabbing.
------
mfringel
I have no doubt that the information in that posting, if followed, makes
operations easier at Return Path.
I can not say the same about how that would benefit any individual employee.
------
rhizome
The technique in this post doesn't account for an intrinsic people problem in
organizations: butthurt.
------
djvu9
Use "I quit" to quit your job and use whatever the author tells you to get
fired.
------
memsom
Two weeks? It's a month minimum in the UK when permanently employed, and can
be more depending on contract (I had a 3 month notice period at one job.)
Oddly, the extra 2 or so weeks really makes no difference with hand overs!
~~~
ufmace
Exactly what does the "minimum" mean here? I always wondered that. If you just
walk out the door without saying anything and don't come back, what will they
do? Are the police going to come drag you out of your home and force you to
sit at a desk? Do you get fined or something? I'm pretty sure that, everywhere
I've worked, you're free to do that if you want to, and there aren't really
any consequences besides your now-former employer being unhappy with you,
along with any other potential employers that find out.
~~~
CrLf
If you don't stay for the minimum number of days that you have to as an
advance notice, I'd say that (if the UK is similar to other EU countries)
you'd have to compensate your employer for that. And that would mean something
like paying them what they would have paid you for the number of days that you
missed, plus any damages resulting from those missing days.
This enforced by law, so if you don't pay, they would just throw you in court.
------
hawleyal
> We invest heavily in our people.
Is not the same as loyalty.
They will drop you faster than you would drop them.
------
gaius
Site is down, Google cache:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.onlyonceblog.com/2013/09/how-
to-quit-your-job&safe=off&biw=1515&bih=1017&strip=1)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Introduction CSS Modules - anthonydillon
https://css-tricks.com/introducing-sass-modules/
======
CM30
Not sure why this submission is dead, seems like web developers and hackers
would be interested in seeing how Sass now works more like modern JavaScript
frameworks with proper module imports and what not.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Michael Atiyah has died - ColinWright
https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/31190
======
nabla9
"I always want to try to understand why things work. I’m not interested in
getting a formula without knowing what it means. I always try to dig behind
the scenes, so if I have a formula, I understand why it’s there. And
understanding is a very difficult notion. People think mathematics begins when
you write down a theorem followed by a proof. That’s not the beginning, that’s
the end. For me the creative place in mathematics comes before you start to
put things down on paper, before you try to write a formula. You picture
various things, you turn them over in your mind. You’re trying to create, just
as a musician is trying to create music, or a poet. There are no rules laid
down. You have to do it your own way. But at the end, just as a composer has
to put it down on paper, you have to write things down. But the most important
stage is understanding. A proof by itself doesn’t give you understanding. You
can have a long proof and no idea at the end of why it works. But to
understand why it works, you have to have a kind of gut reaction to the thing.
You’ve got to feel it."
– Sir Michael Francis Atiyah
------
noud
Sad to hear that Michael Atiyah has died. I studied many of his papers, and I
enjoyed his classical "Introduction to commutative algebra" (which is by no
means an introduction to the field). Also I had the honor to meet him several
years ago in person. He had a kind and humble character, and by no means I
felt I was discussing mathematics with one of the best mathematicians of the
previous century. He was always lowering his level to match mine. He explained
everything clear and he gave good advice that helped my career in many ways.
Thank you, and requiescat in pace.
------
podiki
An amazing mathematician, to put it lightly. I remember learning the Atiyah-
Singer index theorem [1] and how it relates to anomalies in quantum theories,
it absolutely blew my mind. And then every time I came back to anomalies I
would rediscover this fact and be floored again, one of my favorite
physics/theory/math connections.
[1] e.g.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atiyah%E2%80%93Singer_index_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atiyah%E2%80%93Singer_index_theorem)
(though not the best for the more physics minded)
------
osrec
For anyone with an interest in maths, do give
[https://youtu.be/uMN5t3tzchI](https://youtu.be/uMN5t3tzchI) a watch
------
teilo
[https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/31190](https://www.maths.ox.ac.uk/node/31190)
[https://royalsociety.org/news/2019/01/tribute-to-former-
pres...](https://royalsociety.org/news/2019/01/tribute-to-former-president-of-
the-royal-society-sir-michael-atiyah/)
~~~
dang
Thanks, we've changed to that first link from
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Atiyah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Atiyah).
------
auggierose
That makes me sad. He came across as such a gentle and down to earth
mathematician. He truly was math nobility.
------
tobmlt
quantamagazine did a nice write up on Michael Atiyah back in 2016. They
rightly brought it back to the font page. Here is a link:
[https://www.quantamagazine.org/michael-atiyahs-
mathematical-...](https://www.quantamagazine.org/michael-atiyahs-mathematical-
dreams-20160303/)
------
devy
Wow. Sir Michael Atiyah claimed he solved Riemann hypothesis just short four
months ago.[1]
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18062092](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18062092)
~~~
arcticfox
This is a sad story, mostly about everyone deciding what the most kind way is
to treat broken work by someone whose best days are well behind them.
Interesting discussion at: [https://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/3894/is-
there-a-way-...](https://meta.mathoverflow.net/questions/3894/is-there-a-way-
to-discuss-the-correctness-of-the-proof-of-the-rh-by-atiyah-in-mo)
And mathematicians taking him seriously:
[https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2018/09/26/reading-into-
atiya...](https://rjlipton.wordpress.com/2018/09/26/reading-into-atiyahs-
proof/)
~~~
bredren
You don’t have to be a follower of a famous mathematician to find sadness in
the intellectual decline of someone.
Our ability to preserve bodies far longer than mind is a major problem for
everyone.
------
macawfish
It's sad to me that people were so hard on him for his last works. I wish
mathematics had a positive space for speculation.
~~~
SatvikBeri
I followed this reasonably closely, and I didn't see anyone in the Math
community criticize Atiyah. And Math is certainly pretty pro-speculation.
People were mostly just sad that journalists were hyping up an obvious case of
age-related cognitive decline from a brilliant Mathematician.
And to be clear, Atiyah's last work wasn't speculation – it was completely
off, in the "not even wrong" category. Unfortunately, that's pretty common as
people get older, but there's no reason to publicize it.
~~~
dooglius
>Unfortunately, that's pretty common as people get older
Are there other examples of this in Mathematicians? Nash and Godel come to
mind, but both of them had non-math-related issues.
~~~
nikofeyn
i think it is relatively common in creatively brilliant people who become
older. some people solve problems in ways that are counterintuitive and
against the grain. it takes a lot of courage to do this, especially social
courage. so for the few people that have success with this way of thinking, as
they get older, they are trying to resummon the processes they've used before.
much of that includes not listening to those who tell you you're wrong. but
some declination of mental faculties makes this a bit dangerous as the mind
isn't as sharp as it once was. although some of it may be even as simple as
they miss the attention.
this is my theory anyway.
~~~
abc_lisper
Note to self: Keep a pet-puzzle(s) that is difficult but solvable. As I grow
old, keep solving the puzzles to determine how senile I am. No need to believe
others assertions at face value.
~~~
waterhouse
Try these?
[https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/AIME_Problems...](https://artofproblemsolving.com/wiki/index.php/AIME_Problems_and_Solutions)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Spring – A library to simplify iOS animations in Swift - mattstrayer
https://github.com/MengTo/Spring
======
GreenStorm
You might want to re-think the name. To avoid confusion with
[https://spring.io/](https://spring.io/)
~~~
kyllo
Or this [https://github.com/rails/spring](https://github.com/rails/spring)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Brian Williams on Wall Street's Free Fall - david927
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRNrl-858qA
======
jsz0
After the subprime debacle I can't look at any financial institutions or
markets as being anything other than a facade for what's really going on
behind the scenes. Was the whole event just rigged to make some rich and
powerful person even richer? Maybe some trader was approached with this
mistake scenario. Billions in wealth is created and destroyed by one person
pressing a _b_ or an _m_ on a keyboard. I'm not really comfortable with our
entire society being dependent on the actions of elite traders and back room
deals.
------
brown9-2
Am I the only one who finds the coverage of this completely overblown?
Yes there are significant problems in Greece, Portugal, Europe, and the US.
But why do we continue to place more and more importance on the intra-day
movements of the Dow Index, when in the long run, the day-to-day is
irrelevant?
~~~
blantonl
You don't make or lose money in the market based on the daily start and finish
prices in the market, you make or lose money when you execute your trade,
which happens _intra-day_. The market might have "only" been down 347 points
at the end of the session, but _many_ investors bought or sold investments
when the market was down 990 points.
Coverage of this is not overblown, yesterdays events were extremely rare and
quite damaging for many investors who were forced to sell at the low _intra-
day_ points in the market (via stop-losses and margin calls)
~~~
loumf
Even so, Brian Williams compared it to 9/11 -- that's pretty over the top.
~~~
jonknee
He compared the feeling of it--no one knowing what's happening, fear/chaos,
etc. Not the after-effects.
------
ruang
Easy fix - put in more effective circuit breakers. Right now they are limited
to the indices and certain hours of the day.
<http://www.nasdaqtrader.com/trader.aspx?id=CircuitBreaker>
Make it so circuit breakers apply to individual stocks, and for all hours of
the trading day.
For example, commodities have a 'limit up':
<http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/limitup.asp>
~~~
fr0sty
easy, and perhaps a bit naive. it is possible you may cause more market
turmoil by halting only certain stocks which would push volume into ETFs,
futures, options, and other stocks in the same sectors.
The markets are very interconnected and very fast moving. 'simple' solutions
rarely work.
------
david927
With all this disinformation about a 'b' instead of an 'm', I think Brian did
a great service last night. This is about entire countries on the verge of
defaulting. That's huge. The drop yesterday was huge and it only portends
what's still to come.
This information has to get out. Anyone in the market because "it always goes
up over time," needs to get out, now.
~~~
joubert
Buy good companies when everyone's running away
~~~
goatforce5
"Baron Rothschild, an 18th century British nobleman and member of the
Rothschild banking family, is credited with saying that "The time to buy is
when there's blood in the streets.""
[http://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-
theory/08/con...](http://www.investopedia.com/articles/financial-
theory/08/contrarian-investing.asp)
------
languagedream
Shouldn't a network news anchor be more calm?
~~~
drusenko
i agree, that's absolutely irresponsible. way to personally inject a
significant amount of fear into the market where there was none necessarily
called for.
------
magoghm
It sounds like he's saying that the crash was caused by a video from Greece.
That's rather hard to believe.
~~~
sh4na
I believe his point was that the effect of looking at videos from Greece while
imagining the consequences for the economies in the rest of Europe and those
consequences spreading to the US while suddenly watching the Dow fall 1000
points was harrowing, to say the least. Not that one was caused by the other,
but that it a lot to take in in one go.
I'm sure watching the Dow fall like that while watching videos from Greece was
scary, especially to people that are already too aware of the fragile state of
the world economy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Android on a Nokia N95 captured on video - terpua
http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/18/android-on-a-nokia-n95-captured-on-video/
======
fromedome
Not convinced this is real. But fun.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
From Selling Scoops of Ice Cream to Founding ZeroCater - rguzman
http://techcrunch.com/2013/04/06/how-i-started-zerocater?query=4664
======
justin
Arram followed the advice I normally give people applying to startups for non-
technical jobs that have no relevant experience: he prepared tremendously for
his interview and actually came with real suggestions on things we should do,
and visualized himself in the position. On paper, he wasn't someone we would
have considered (his previous experience was as a security guard and ice cream
scooper with no college degree). But, out of all the candidates, Arram was the
only one who had prepared as if he had already gotten the job and was going
over first steps.
We actually ended up hiring someone else as the community manager, but I was
impressed with Arram and wanted to find a place for him at Justin.tv, so we
created the "grab bag of unwanted tasks." While he fluctuated between doing
those things well and sometimes not as well, he became a contributing member
of the team.
Because we were paying Arram not so much, I told him he should start doing the
lunch ordering for a few friends' companies for some side cash, and pretty
soon after he came to me and told me he was quitting.
Out of all the people who have "graduated" from Justin.tv, I'm most proud of
Arram. His drive to start a company is incredible, and he's done it despite
the odds. Proud to say I'm an investor in ZeroCater and I think he's going to
make me some money as well.
~~~
ultimoo
Reading inspiring stories like this makes me realize how much of
entrepreneurship is about taking risks rather than hard work. Moving to
another place with a few thousand dollars in your pocket, quitting a stable
job without a firm idea in mind, figuring things out as you go.
There may have been dozens of well prepared and hard working candidates
available that day, but probably none were out of job and interviewing for
Justin.tv at the time Arram was. There are also always tons of people working
at perfectly great jobs, but a very few of us have the gut to stop working and
forge a company built on nothing but determination to succeed.
~~~
beachstartup
> taking risks rather than hard work.
it's both. and appetite for risk is not the belief that nothing bad will
happen, it's the belief that you will be able to handle anything that happens,
no matter how bad. it's being at peace with the fact that bad things will
happen.
most people live their entire lives trying to avoid bad situations that don't
exist in reality, but rather live in their imaginations. in my opinion they
are completely delusional.
a lot of entrepreneurs have been totally broke or were poor in the past - in
my mind, this is what allows them to continually take risks. they know exactly
what it's like being broke and struggling, it's not a mystery. it has no power
over them. they simply don't care if they end up going broke. they know what
it is, and how to climb back out.
~~~
jmtame
"I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never
happened." - Mark Twain
------
jmduke
I always chuckle when I hear "MVP" in the same sentence as a RoR/node.js
stack, complicated monetization strategies and A/B testing.
A bank account and a Google Docs spreadsheet. _That's_ MVP.
~~~
ultimoo
Bang on. I would probably extend it to include the email-first startup
strategy that was posted here by Sachin of Posterous fame a while ago. Since
ZeroCater provides a physical service to companies and is located in SF Bay
Area with a uniquely high density of companies it probably doesn’t apply here,
but I can imagine some form of a computerized sign up is needed for other
MVPs.
~~~
patio11
_I can imagine some form of a computerized sign up is needed for other MVPs_
Believe it or not, services businesses did actually exist before CRM software
and online signup forms. The SF Bay Area does not have a uniquely high density
of companies. You can totally do spiritually-similar things to this.
A spiritually similar example: Appointment Reminder didn't actually exist in
summer 2010, but I had a two-page demo of it set up. I got $400 out of an ATM
when I went home to Chicago to visit, and just wandered around the Gold
Coast/Magnificent Mile region of the city looking for every hair salon and
massage therapy practice I could find. I asked them all if I they took walk-
ins and, if so, could I have 30 minutes of the owner's time for whatever the
rate was ($30 or so). In lieu of the shoulder massage/etc, I said "I'm
interested in the massage therapy industry. Would you mind if we just chatted
for half an hour about it?" And I asked about how they handled scheduling,
appointments, no-shows, etc etc. I also did a demo of my two-page AR mini-app
on the iPad and asked if they would be interested in buying it when it was
ready.
I think only one person actually accepted my money for the interviews. I got
five-ish "Please tell me when that is ready" out of a dozen or so
conversations. No Bay Area or signup form required. (I put their emails in a
paper notebook. And lost it prior to launch. Whoopsie.)
This was _mostly_ successful for me: it confirmed that there was a market
willing to pay for AR without me needing to actually build it to demonstrate
that. (My sampling technique, which found only massage therapists/hair salons,
did sort of lead me off the rails as to who I'd eventually end up targeting
for most of the business. D'oh.)
~~~
SatvikBeri
Who did you end up targeting?
~~~
patio11
That's a long story. Suffice it to say that I have more exterminators as
clients than massage therapists -- apparently when a client forgetting an
appointment means your three employees just drove 45 minutes to get locked out
of a house that irks (and costs) more than just having to play Angry Birds
until you get a walk-in.
------
steven2012
I've been in the Valley for around 15 years, and I'm not someone that revels
in job perks. Sure everyone loves perks, but I prefer a great work
environment, and interesting work, etc, over things like snacks, X-boxes, etc.
That being said, my current employer has Zerocater and I freaking love it more
than any other perk in any job I've had. Sure, maybe 1 out of every 5 meals
isn't a winner, but I still really really love it. I wouldn't come close to
quitting my job if we couldn't afford Zerocater anymore, but I would be sorely
disappointed, because the convenience of having food brought to us, the high
quality, and the great amount of variety is something that I really
appreciate.
~~~
tomasien
Actually THIS is why I love HN, because it gives me access to data like this
comment, which while anecdotal, helps me validate my idea. My guess is that
most perks businesses offer mean NOTHING to their employees but that there are
perks out there that would.
------
pchivers
I'm not much of a sucker for inspirational stories, but this is one of the
best I've read in a long time.
------
mikecane
I had zero idea of what that company was about and only clicked on it out of
idle curiosity that it made the front of HN.
Seriously, that was one of the most inspirational things I have read.
In another thread, someone mentioned the idea of a "valuable problem." Find
one of those to solve and you will make money. And _dahyum_ what that company
solves _is_ a valuable problem and how he started was so low-tech that it
should be _embarrassing_ to everyone who thinks they must have X-Y-and-Z to
go.
Napoleon Hill said, "Start where you are with what you have." That guy did.
And _killed_ it. Good for him!
------
tomasien
It occurred to me as I was writing another comment about how much I love
ZeroCater that they might be the perfect fit for what I'm trying to build
right now. I've started validating and getting Beta customers for a
personalized perks program where people don't get a set group of company0wide
perks, but instead get them personalized to what makes them a happier and more
fulfilled person. I've been trying to figure out the catering problem, because
I don't actually want to CREATE any perks, but instead partner with people
that already fulfill things that would be considered perks. Catering is
definitely the one I have the hardest time imagining managing.
Is this an appropriate place to ask if anyone thinks ZeroCater would be
interested in being the fulfiller for catering for that system and/or they
could ask Arram or the appropriate person what they think? (email =
[email protected])
~~~
gamblor956
That idea sounds exactly like BetterWorks, a Los Angeles-based company that
shut down earlier this year. BetterWorks offered companies a way to offer
customized perks on a per employee basis by giving each employee an
"allowance" to use on whatever combination of perks they wanted.
The problem, in a nutshell, was that the idea didn't scale. They needed two
sets of salespeople: one for the customers, and one for the perks providers.
Customers were difficult to acquire because many were dubious about limited
"perks" to a small set of providers. Obviously, this meant that BW needed a
lot of perks providers. However, the perks providers were even harder to
reach, as many of them had no need to try yet another customer outreach
opportunty demanding X% for little to no work. Moreover, perks providers were
frequently not the only providers in a particular area, so discounting
competition eroded prices, lowering the income realized through this method of
customer acquisition, and thus the benefit of using BW.
~~~
tomasien
Yep, we're working on something similar to BetterWorks. I don't want to say
publicly what I think about the way that company was run, but their failure is
more validation for me (in that they were able to get the model to work at
some scale, but not the scale they wanted) rather than a warning.
My idea is about creating and managing perks that CAN scale, and using
auxiliary businesses to provide them. Since our perks are about things that
make employees happy, tangible things are only one subset of the things we're
going to offer, and all of those will be provided by large providers acting as
partners. Only some select local businesses will be offered for very specific
reasons.
------
tansey
I've heard some pretty terrible stories about the vegetarian options offered
by ZeroCater. It seems that many times they give the omnivores a full meal and
then the vegetarian meal is the same meal without the meat, meaning it
contains virtually no protein.
I'm not a vegetarian, but I am sensitive to other people's preferences. Has
the situation changed lately?
~~~
dpiers
I am the lead developer at ZeroCater, was a vegetarian for 3 of the last 4
years, and I can honestly say I that never had access to vegetarian lunch
options remotely close to the variety and quality we provide to our clients.
We currently offer 4335 vegetarian options from 190 vendors, ranging from a
Quinoa Salad with Green Apple, Crumbled Gorgonzola Blue Cheese, Candied Walnut
and Organic Baby Spinach to a Roasted Pepper and Mushroom Calzone or Green
Chile Mac & Cheese.
Our most common complaint from vegetarians isn't the lack of options; it's
that the omnivores took all of the vegetarian food before they got to it.
~~~
eli_awry
As a vegetarian fed by ZeroCater, it feels like a lot of the time the thinking
goes something like 'we have 20 meat-eaters and 3 vegetarians - let's get 20
lamb/chicken shish kebaps and 3 vegetables ones!' It sucks to have to make a
meal out of sides, and it seems like the meals are structured most of the time
such that quinoa salad or mac & cheese are perceived as being sides. And I
don't think the solution is to tell meat-eaters not to eat vegetables -
everyone deserves them. Anyway, I have to be very aggressive about getting to
the front of the line for food. Also, sometimes the vegetarian option is just
lo mein or a green salad - it rarely meets what I would consider a minimal
nutritional standard of ~10-20 grams of protein. I pack protein powder to
supplement my lunch. To be fair though, it is tasty!
~~~
ricardobeat
I'm curious, what's wrong with 20 meat/3 veg for these single-serve meals?
Most meat-eaters wouldn't be happy being forced to eat the vegetarian option,
that's bound to happen unless you provide more food than necessary. The rest
of what you said only applies to a lunch not served in individual portions.
~~~
eli_awry
Because people help themselves to food, everyone takes like 1/2 meat and then
the first six people take 1/2 veg as well. I agree, for single serving meals
like sandwiches that are not easily dividable, it makes sense to only have a
few vegetarian ones. But those meals are usually at least 60% not-meat for
meat-eaters (bread, rice, veggies, whatever). Basically every other meal is
not single serving, and the veggie entrees are seen as just another side. It's
usually family style.
------
sytelus
Very inspirational and fascinating account that is probably worth a movie and
a book on entrepreneurship. Also reminds me of the trademill quote by Will
Smith <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doqS35FfcUE>. One side note here is also
the net risk Arram actually took. He is a single guy without dependents and
health insurance to worry about. Without college degree and other specific
skills he really had little to lose in terms of other lucrative job offers on
hand, for example, compared to a Harvard PHD in CS with a wife and two
children would have. That scenario ironically simplifies lot of complexities
around for pursuing entrepreneurship.
------
roel_v
Sounds like great execution, but one thing I find remarkable that of all the
talk here of 'the internet is going to cut out out the middleman', and most
business plans being build on that, this business is basically about adding a
middle man where historically none existed (because of slim margins). Quite
neat to see it work out so well - it seems a middle man can add value, even if
that added value seems small at first sight.
------
marianne_navada
Thanks for sharing your story Arram. I'm going to be making this a required
reading for my college students. Most of the time, young people are advised to
find stability and to be level-headed about their goals, and in the process
lose their passion. This is reminder that to succeed, you need to be bold,
creative, and energetic.
------
kayz
Just to throw my 2 cents here.
My brief but meaningful interaction with Arram and the team at ZeroCater was
nothing short of exceptional. Exceptional care for their service and customer,
exceptional determination and conviction. They are an intensely likeable
people.
All the best Arram!
------
mrwhy2k
Just for the record, I remember ZeroCater's demo day and it seemed like they
were already off and running without needing to raise more money. At least
that was the feeling I got when listening in the crowd.
------
Mz
Is there a TechCrunch linky that actually works for poor souls stuck in the
Android Ghetto? I would love to read this.
------
jeremyjh
This is the kind of article that keeps me coming back to HN. Great
inspirational story!
------
michaeltsai
great story
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Understanding the Causes of Consistency Anomalies in Apache Cassandra [pdf] - luu
http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol8/p810-fan.pdf
======
arielweisberg
I think that measuring propagation delay at CL.ONE isn't very interesting
because if you care about propagation delay you also don't use CL.ONE.
That said my passion is to get everything in C* off heap and get GC pauses
down to single digit milliseconds. Old-gen pauses a handful of times a day
with pause times 30 milliseconds or so and also nothing to write home about
since it should be possible to a small old gen. All with good old CMS or G1.
From what I know it's a pretty attainable goal. The main bad actor is
memtables and fast efficient off-heap memory management for memtables is easy
because you can throw away all associated memory when the memtable is flushed.
That still wouldn't make using CL.ONE any better of an idea. GC pauses are one
of several sources of propagation delay.
------
_benedict
"For example, in Cassandra such internal activities include the flush, also
referred as minor compaction, which flushes in-memory data from the memtable
to an SSTable file on disk, and may be accompanied by a substantial GC since a
large chunk of memory becomes available for recycling."
So these researchers don't unfortunately understand the very basics of GC (or
C* for that matter). The basic findings of their paper is to be expected given
the question they asked, but the specifics of their findings should be
considered suspect given the clear lack of understanding of the technologies
they're interrogating.
------
alexnewman
5ms is a really long time
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Get email notifications for new products and sales on ASOS.com - benedictlewis
https://asostracker.uk
======
benedictlewis
This is a little side project of mine. I buy a lot of clothes from ASOS,
however often forget to check for a while and end up missing sales. This site
will send you an email notification whenever:
* New products launch for a certain search term
* Products within a search term change price
There is also a public listing of price changes [0] (only shows price changes
for searches that members are already monitoring). I've already listed several
example trackers, including one for the brand 11 Degrees [1]. Email
notifications are formatted to include a preview of the product, price, and
links to ASOS [2].
It also automatically detected products which have been sold out, and then
relisted if more stock comes in, marking them as stale. These products are
usually only available in one or two sizes, with very limited stock.
[0] [https://asostracker.uk/activity](https://asostracker.uk/activity)
[1]
[https://asostracker.uk/trackers/586c1ae510426db2d3c4a817](https://asostracker.uk/trackers/586c1ae510426db2d3c4a817)
[2] [http://i.imgur.com/tdi7n46.png](http://i.imgur.com/tdi7n46.png)
------
sconxu
Do you use their API?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Videos of simulated gravitational lenses (in French) - thibautg
http://www.epm6604b.be/lentille/film/lentille_film.html
======
thibautg
Translation:
[https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A...](https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=fr&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.epm6604b.be%2Flentille%2Ffilm%2Flentille_film.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Schneier on lock-in - brlittle
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2008/02/lockin.html?
======
davidw
The way to combat lock in as a consumer is to negotiate a good deal for
yourself _before_ you sign up and get locked in - according to Varian and
Shapiro, whose book he cites.
------
ced
> Economists Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian even proved that the value of a
> software company is the total lock-in
How much lock-in does _your_ start-up have?
~~~
xirium
Does lock-in include FUD? Does FUD include providing the best service?
I worked for a company which was insanely profitable but it had almost no
lock-in. However, the boss took it as a personal affront if you didn't have
success with the product that he designed. Therefore, it was widely regarded
that you'd have most success if you bought from that company.
------
xirium
Friends don't let friends do DRM.
~~~
marcus
I agree with one exception, DRM that is designed to keep a company's trade
secrets secret. Encountered a few startups building DRM for that purpose and I
have to say that I don't find it offensive.
Data leakage is a serious problem for many companies and DRMing its key data
is a good solution.
Although it is technologically impossible to create a bullet proof DRM and DRM
as a whole is a rotten concept, at least these things can be "fool" proof and
prevent accidental leakage.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CyanogenMod support for find my device now live - zobzu
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+CyanogenMod/posts/5gWMbGYQUah
======
zobzu
I'd also point out that:
\- AFAIK the server side code has not been made available (no interest?)
\- if the server is compromised, all devices with this service can be remote
wiped (just like with samsung, apple, etc.)
\- CM knows the location of all devices subscribing
\- you can't run your own server if you want to (fixing the above 2 issues
since those become your problem)
Until these are changed or I'm pointed out wrong, I'm personally not feeling
all that warm & fuzzy about using the service.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Classroom – One educative article in your inbox daily - hienyimba
http://classroom.ng/indexed.html
======
wingerlang
Yellow text on yellow background, is not good.
EDIT: some more
[http://i.imgur.com/ouTy5Zm.png](http://i.imgur.com/ouTy5Zm.png)
EDIT2: Even more,
[http://i.imgur.com/PmNnrBg.png](http://i.imgur.com/PmNnrBg.png)
Due to these it looks quite unprofessional.
~~~
hienyimba
yeah am working on that now. Thanks
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Amit Gupta needs you - mattangriffel
http://amitguptaneedsyou.com/
======
oconnore
_IGNORANCE:_
The concept of donating bone marrow terrifies me. I imagine a doctor drilling
into my skeleton and using a large needle to suck out the gooey stuff that
makes my blood. It sounds absolutely horrific.
If I were ever to consider doing this, someone would have to educate me to the
point where my _perceived_ safety is high. Right now I know that this probably
won't kill me, but I don't understand it enough to trust it. I imagine that I
am not the only person in this situation.
I also felt terrible writing this. My fear is absolutely petty compared to the
fear of being struck down by leukemia. Perhaps that's why I felt obligated to
share.
~~~
danielna
Hi oconnore,
I'm an Acute Mylogenous Leukemia (AML) survivor and a Level 2 ambassador with
the National Marrow Donor Program. I'd like to thank you for your honesty, as
a lack of awareness (and the resulting fear) is one of the biggest obstacles
the NMDP faces when trying to recruit donors. Your perspective really is
something that I think a lot of people feel but don't necessarily share, and I
commend you for having the courage to do so. It's a step in the right
direction for finding the right means of educating the public.
I'll try to respond to some of your questions as best I can, but please keep
in mind that I am not a doctor and while I have received volunteer training
from the NMDP, any thoughts expressed in this post are my own.
Your bone marrow is the mechanism in your body that generates blood cells.
Blood is composed of a few different parts -- red blood cells, white blood
cells, platelets and plasma. Red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body,
plasma is the liquid, platelets help in clotting to prevent bleeding and white
blood cells act as the carriers of the body's immune system.
What happened with me (and likely with Amit) is that at some point a mutation
occurred within my bone marrow so it began generating malformed white blood
cells. Instead of behaving like a normal immune system these mutated cells did
nothing but fill up my blood stream, inhibiting the growth and transport of
normal white blood cells and platelets. As a result I began to get
progressively sicker, with bruising appearing over my body. As you can imagine
this situation gets very dangerous very quickly, as doctors told me that if I
hadn't gone into the ER when I did I ran the risk of bleeding in my brain
while walking to class.
Chemotherapy was used to effectively kill off all aspects of my blood -- white
blood cells, red blood cells, platelets included. The hope here was for chemo
to wipe out as much as it could in hopes of eliminating all traces of cancer
in my bone marrow. Due to the human body's natural resiliency, after chemo
eventually the bone marrow would start to regenerate. The hope was that after
this regeneration happened no cancer cells would be reproduced.
For me, it was a waiting game: undergo chemo, wait to see if cancer
reappeared. I did this six times (2 inductive rounds, 4 consolidation rounds).
Thankfully after those first two rounds I was in the clear. I've been in
remission for a little over four years now, and I still go into the doctor for
regular blood tests.
While I'm not exactly sure of the medical reasons why bone marrow transplants
are needed, I do know that a very simplistic view of them is that they're
necessary when chemotherapy is not enough. Whether it's because the
chemotherapy is ineffective or specific DNA markers or whatever, there are
times when the body's natural bone marrow is no longer effective in producing
normal blood cells. It's a dangerous procedure for the recipient (because of
the possibility of the body rejecting the transplant) but it's not considered
in circumstances where other viable alternatives exist. It really is something
of a last resort.
For donors, joining the registry is painless and extremely simple. The NMDP
asks you to check against a preliminary health screening
([http://www.marrow.org/Join/Medical_Guidelines/Medical_Guidel...](http://www.marrow.org/Join/Medical_Guidelines/Medical_Guidelines_for_Joining_the_Registry.aspx)),
understand the commitment (<http://marrow.org/Join/Your_Commitment.aspx>), and
fill out a form with some medical/contact information to make sure that you
can be contacted in the event of a match. I read a statistic that less than
50% of those currently within the registry (1) can be contacted successfully
and (2) are willing to donate once a match is found.
(<http://www.ij.org/about/2903>) The form asks for your contact information
and the contact information of two others who do not live with you, just in
case you happen to move elsewhere at a later date. The NMDP takes privacy very
seriously, and will not solicit you or others with the contact information you
provide.
The form comes with a swab kit consisting of four cotton swabs. These swabs
are processed by the NMDP to match donors and recipients by specific DNA
markers. To register, you simply swab the inside of your cheek with each swab,
for 20 seconds each. Put the swabs back into the kit and then they're sent off
for processing. That's it; a form and four cheek swabs.
A donor's commitment when joining the registry is to be on the registry until
they're 61, although they can remove themselves from the registry at any time.
Given the specific DNA markers used to match donors and recipients,
realistically the chances are that you will never be called to donate marrow.
According to the FAQ here (<http://amitguptaneedsyou.tumblr.com/faq>), the
NMDP puts the odds at 1 in 540.
If you do one day receive a call to be a donor, there are currently two main
methods of bone marrow donation. The first, Peripheral Blood Stem Cell (PBSC)
donation, is used in over 70% of cases and is described in detail here:
[http://www.marrow.org/Registry_Members/Donation/Steps_of_Don...](http://www.marrow.org/Registry_Members/Donation/Steps_of_Donation.aspx#step2).
Another good reference is this site:
<http://helpingtami.org/asian_bone_marrow_and_pbsc.html>, which despite the
cartoonish graphics, serves as a pretty accurate representation of what PBSC
entails. You get a shot for a few days that kicks up your normal bodily
process of bone marrow production into overdrive, to the point where bone
marrow cells enter your bloodstream. You donate blood, after which bone marrow
cells are irradiated out. The blood is then put back into your body. I've
personally received the shot (called Neupogen) that is used to kick up your
bone marrow production over 30 times, as it was used following each of my
rounds of chemo. A common side effect of the drug is that it makes you a bit
achy and sore, as if you had gone on a long hike the day before. I did not
feel any significant discomfort on neupogen to the point where I couldn't go
about my day as normal.
The other procedure is extracting bone marrow from your hip bone, which is
performed under general anaesthetic. It is also depicted on the
helpingtami.org link above. 30% of bone marrow donations are performed this
way, and I believe it's usually due to restrictions of the recipient.
Receiving a bone marrow transplant can be extremely taxing on the human body,
and if a patient is too young or old for PBSC a bone marrow extraction is
requested in its place. Admittedly this process is more invasive, and as a
result donors are put to sleep. Doctors use special, hollow needles to extract
little bits of bone marrow from your hip, and because the needles are small it
does require a lot of sticks to collect enough marrow for a transplant. I've
also had this procedure done to me, albeit in a lesser volume -- it's the same
process used to perform bone marrow biopsies. I was awake for the procedure
both times and received local (vs. general) anaesthetic. Needles are needles
so there was discomfort, but it was very quick -- like a hard pinch. Patients
are sore for a few days afterwards, more so than PBSC, but recover quickly.
Donors perform a full health scan before donating in the interests of their
own well being as well as the patient, so if you're not healthy enough to
donate and recover, you will probably not be allowed to get to that point in
the first place.
When donors join the registry they commit to donating to anyone in need, not
just the person the drive is in honor of. So although a local drive may be in
honor of Amit, the power of the awareness being raised by the publicity of his
sickness is that there are people who have never heard of Amit Gupta that will
have their lives saved by his efforts, perhaps even decades from now. I know
that Amit is a very important person in the technical community, but please
remember that everyone who needs a donor is the most important person in the
world to somebody -- a parent, a sibling, a child or a best friend. In that
regard I believe that everyone who has someone in their life that they love
more than themselves can empathize with what it must be like to be powerless
to help that person in their time of greatest need.
Please consider joining the bone marrow registry. It truly is the opportunity
to save someone's life.
~~~
waltl
I have been unable to donate blood because I take Avodart. Is this the same
for donating bone marrow? I am 70 years old in good health and am a B+ blood
type [email protected]
~~~
danielna
Hi waltl, unfortunately bone marrow registration is limited to donors between
the ages of 18-60. Please see this page for more information:
[http://www.marrow.org/Join/Medical_Guidelines/Medical_Guidel...](http://www.marrow.org/Join/Medical_Guidelines/Medical_Guidelines_for_Joining_the_Registry.aspx#Age).
Thanks for your willingness to help!
------
dholowiski
Wow... unlike most things on the web, thanks for providing a way for non-USA
people to get involved! <http://amitguptaneedsyou.tumblr.com/help-around-the-
world>
------
jgrahamc
Who is Amit Gupta? That question doesn't seem to be answered on the site and
the name isn't familiar to me.
~~~
rokhayakebe
A lot of people here say he is very well known in the community and he is a
great person. My first question was why haven't those people stepped up. Maybe
there is a matching issue, I don't know. If not then they should. I would
have.
~~~
dayjah
I have. He and I won't match, but I will with someone and I look forward to
the opportunity to help someone in need.
~~~
rokhayakebe
Great person you are, Sir.
------
danielna
Hi all,
Long time reader but never posted before. If anyone here will be attending,
I'll be manning the National Marrow Donor Program booth registering donors
this Saturday, October 29 at TEDxMidAtlantic in Washington DC
(<http://tedxmidatlantic.com/>). While the booth is intended to be in Amit's
honor, I strongly encourage any minorities to join the registry, as the need
is severe across all ethnic groups. I'm an AML survivor myself (though no BMT,
chemo-only), and I can't emphasize enough that the decision to join the
registry is opening yourself up to the opportunity to literally save someone
else's life.
------
tonybgoode
Not that it will matter to the trolls, but it's worth noting:
The vast majority of championing for this cause is happening on behalf of
Amit, not by Amit himself. He was actually quite reluctant to be public about
his condition, and has only stepped forward at the encouragement of people
close to him.
While Amit is at the center of this effort, the narrative has quickly widened
to address the much larger issue of underrepresented populations in the bone
marrow database. The impact of the efforts inspired by Amit's situation will
be felt far beyond that of one person.
Even as he fights for his life undergoing intense chemotherapy and all kinds
of difficulties most of us have no appreciation for, he continues to do the
best he can to help people.
Anyone who does that deserves not just our respect and admiration, but our
attention and participation.
If anyone feels like being self righteous, they might do well to channel that
energy into doing something that helps the world instead of leaving insidious
comments on a thread.
------
rkudeshi
I applied for a kit when I first heard about this, but the kit's been sitting
on my desk for a couple days.
I just went ahead and did the swabbing. It was very simple, took only 2
minutes, and was completely non-invasive. (It was also completely free.)
If you haven't signed up yet, please do so. Even if you don't care about Amit
(I have no idea who he is), you might be able to help someone else in need.
~~~
nhangen
I did the same, but have not swabbed.
My primary concern is that of privacy. I don't really trust that a record of
my DNA/swab test won't end up somewhere it's not supposed to be.
~~~
unreal37
You leave DNA everywhere you go. Every time you sit in a chair, every time you
drink from a cup, pee in a public urinal, open a door handle ... You give
blood tests to your doctor, and don't demand to see the privacy policy of the
lab and all the handlers in between.
You worry too much. :) No one wants your DNA - and if they wanted it they
could easily get it. Take the test and possibly save a life.
Edited: to add a smiley face and improve the tone, since this was intended to
be a "don't worry be happy" message and not "you're a bad human being". Sorry
about that.
~~~
sundarurfriend
You might or might not be correct, but it's quite difficult to get your point
across with that kind of a tone. Talking in favor of someone suffering from
leukemia doesn't automatically grant you rights to spew personal insults at
someone.
~~~
cgarvey
I didn't see any personal insults, mostly just logic delivered
unapologetically.
~~~
sundarurfriend
I don't know when exactly the post was edited, but the version that was there
when I replied did contain personal insults and had a much harsher tone.
Now it's turned out to have arisen from good intentions, so all is well.
------
manish
I have registered for the test kit. I really appreciate the way amit and
friends have set up the campaign. This gives maximum chance for him to survive
and also helps other victims as well, since they might contact you if some one
else needs help. Good luck Amit, I hope you will pull through it.
------
stuntgoat
There have been some great results in the news recently regarding CAR T cells
in the treatment of Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. I think this one might be a
winner.
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2873604>
<http://penncancer.org/cart-19>
From what I understand about this treatment, blood is removed from the patient
and 'infected' with a harmless HIV virus that has been modified to attach a
molecule to T cells. This molecule binds to a receptor (CD19) on the cancer
cell, thereby creating T cells that attack the cancer cells. The treated blood
is injected back to the patient and the patients body creates more of these
cells on it's own- effectively creating an immune response to the cancer
cells.
Do you think a subset of HN readers could somehow facilitate a project that
could help the labs researching ( or planning on researching ) methods for
expanding this method of treating cancer? I would like to ( and inspire people
here to ):
1) find the available labs that can best perform the _steps_ required for this
treatment _process_. Basically, get a list of labs.
2) help expedite iterative methods for techniques that: a) speed the
development time of the specific _step(s)_, and/or b) broaden the efficacy of
the overall treatment _process_ ( ie. treat other cancers ). Basically, list
the _steps_ in the _process_ and see if there is a way to make them faster,
better.
3) create tools that allow the people and labs working on this _process_ to
communicate as efficiently as possible. Basically, learn how the different
labs work and write tools that streamline their collaborative workflow.
I have a feeling there are many smart people on this site with free time ( ie.
visiting this site often ), technical resources, and organizing skills that
could make this happen- fast. Shoot me an email with
questions/comments/complaints if you don't want to comment on this thread; I
want to help.
------
biot
Does testing from the swab kits match you up with anyone in need of bone
marrow? I have a coworker with leukemia too and I'm sure many others here know
of similar situations and it'd be great to have a resource that works for
everyone. Posting individual stories doesn't scale very well.
~~~
jey
Yes, it enters you into the National Marrow Donor Registry. Posting individual
stories works better than statistics because it motivates people _much_ more
(yet another quirk of our psychology).
~~~
raleec
"A Single Death is a Tragedy; a Million Deaths is a Statistic"
------
hugh3
If South Asians are severely under-represented in the US bone marrow donor
registry, can't we just buy bone marrow from donors in (say) India?
~~~
potatolicious
There are numerous ethical issues surrounding the commercial/free-market trade
of human organs.
Most simply:
\- There is, naturally, demand for bone marrow transplants in India. What are
the moral and ethical implications of denying someone there (of presumably
lower economic ability) a transplant so they can supply someone in the US (of
presumably much higher economic ability)? If they were swimming in an excess
of willing donors, perhaps this would be less of an issue, but I don't know
_any_ country in the world where there is a surplus of bone marrow donors.
\- What incentive structure does this create, and what does it mean for us if
we legitimize commercial organ trade? How many donations will be voluntary, or
will we see an explosion in "donations", forced upon the disenfranchised and
vulnerable?
I'd be _very_ wary of walking down the path of commercialized organ trade.
~~~
edanm
Interestingly though, this isn't "organ" trade, because the resource in
question is replenished by the body within a few weeks. So it isn't _really_
depriving anyone of anything to donate bone marrow.
------
tdfx
Call me paranoid, but can you use a slightly different name in the registry to
keep the prying hands of the state off your voluntary DNA sample? Has there
been any known cases of the police using this registry to obtain evidence for
prosecutions?
------
inuhj
Hi, im working on a bone marrow drive for Amit in Chicago. If you want to help
drop me an email (edit: I put my email in the profile).
~~~
jambo
Hi: HN doesn't support private messages, and it doesn't show your email
address by default. If you want to let people message you, you have to
explicitly put your email address in the about field in your profile (here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=inuhj> )
------
jeremymims
I joined one of the drives a week ago in New York. Swabbing your cheek is
easy, filling out the form is easy, and even though the odds are I'm not a
match for Amit, I may one day be the match for someone else.
From what I understand, the procedures for donation have gotten simpler and
less invasive all the time. Giving up a day for the chance to save someone's
life is an absolute no-brainer. Easiest decision I'll ever make.
Go get on the list.
------
johnnyjustice
Does anyone have any updates on his search?
~~~
josephmosby
I have been monitoring this for a few weeks. No luck thus far (as of 10/24).
Seth Godin has been a pretty big champion, though, and I think that helped
really get the word out there.
------
mccooscoos
I don't understand why blood, marrow, and organs have to be donated. I agree
that the concept is discussing, but in a life and death situation people
should be able to pay to "encourage" a donor.
Already there are a lot of people who go to third world countries to buy
organs. If it was legal to buy organs people wouldn't have to risk the
unsanitary operation condition.
Furthermore, seeing as giving blood or marrow is less dangerous there should
be no reason not to allow people to buy them.
------
ajtaylor
I'm not in the US, and I'm a white Caucasian, so it won't be any help to Amit.
But when the Australian Red Cross phoned me up this morning to set an
appointment to donate blood I also told them I wanted to get registered as a
bone marrow donor. Until yesterday, I had no idea they could now extract bone
marrow cells via blood. Excellent timing on both the post and the phone call!
------
6841iam
Once someone with AML gets a marrow what does their 1 year prognosis look
like? I computed cancer "yield" a year ago based on cancer data from the state
of New York, and Leukemia is (unfortunately) a pretty devastating cancer:
[http://d0j.blogspot.com/2010/05/cancer-incidence-and-
state-o...](http://d0j.blogspot.com/2010/05/cancer-incidence-and-state-of-new-
york.html)
------
jberryman
I'm boring white western European, but signed up and should get my swab kit in
2 weeks. Maybe I can help someone else.
------
param
Sad! I am south asian and I just tried to register - they refused to sign me
up as I have had hepatitis B in the past. In India, this is so common that
people don't even know they have had it (I came to know about it 10 years
after having it). I just remember having 'jaundice' once.
~~~
roshanr
If you've had jaundice as a kid in India, it was probably hepatitis A, in
which case you are allowed to join. Probably worth double checking.
~~~
param
I came to know about it after 10 years because I went to a doctor in the US
for some check up. Thanks for cross-checking though
------
allanscu
There will be a bunch of folks at FailCon in SF today. I encourage everybody
to get a test.
------
rdl
I know some other people on the list, and was looking at signing up, but got
really annoyed that all the registries seem to demand a third party or
multiple third party contact info in order to submit a sample.
~~~
extension
They do this so that they have more ways to contact you if you are a match
some day. Apparently not being able to contact matches, due to outdated
contact info, is a big problem. Like, on the order of 50%. It's still annoying
but at least it has a legit purpose.
------
srik
Why not go to a good private hospital somewhere in South India.
Amit probably has a better chance of finding a matching donor there and the
procedure, I'm assuming, is less expensive than over here.
------
tibbon
I just registered for a bone marrow match drive tomorrow at OSU. While I'm
100% sure I'm not a match for Amit, I hope that many people show up, and that
I'm a match for someone.
------
justinj
while i think the cause is great, i can't help but feel a little sad that it
has taken this event to spur everyone in the community to a more philanthropic
direction. many of us here are looking to become rich and successful and
forget that in many ways, we are already very wealthy.
honestly, i think it's a good time to think of all the positive things we can
do with what we have - including using our technical knowhow to make the world
a better place for those less fortunate.
------
spencerfry
Amit is a pal. One of the nicest guys you'll EVER meet. Period.
------
abbasmehdi
Just got the wife's permission and signed up, wish us luck.
------
manish_gill
Hope it works out for him.
------
paolomaffei
Isn't this a bit selfish?
------
AndrewMoffat
If this works out for him, it would be cool to see him champion other peoples'
life-threatening needs as shamelessly as he's doing his own.
~~~
AndrewMoffat
Sad to see my comment being downvoted because people disagree with it. The
point that I was making was that he's shameless about his needs. Most people
who have needs like his can't create this type of platform and exposure to be
heard.
And it is shameless. Why do I care about amit gupta, and why are all his
promotional materials centered around HIM, and not acute leukemia? People
suffer every day who can't be heard like this, is it so wrong to bring up that
uncomfortable fact?
To the people saying, "well what he's doing is good for others, too!" Yes, I
agree. But face it, he never would've done this had he never got acute
leukemia. So my original hope remains: "if this works out for him, it would be
cool to see him champion other peoples' life-threatening needs." With him
seeing the direct benefit of these efforts on his life, it would be cool if he
maybe took it a step further and continued it for others.
~~~
dminor
You keep saying "shameless" as if it's exceptional in some way. Why should he
feel shame about trying to not die?
~~~
AndrewMoffat
shameless: 2\. done without shame; without decency or _modesty_
modesty: 1\. having or showing a moderate or humble estimate of one's merits,
importance, etc.;
~~~
jbenz
A) I think modesty no longer becomes a factor when you are desperately trying
to save your own life.
B) Sure, the design is a little flashy (I think it looks great, by the way),
but I don't think he is being terribly immodest. He's not bragging about his
accomplishments, he's just trying to get people to sign up as bone marrow
donors, and he's using his personal plight as motivation.
~~~
AndrewMoffat
He's not morally wrong, I'm saying the nature of what he's doing is shameless.
Clearly this is an important issue to him, but he's vastly overestimating his
importance to everyone else. That's fine. I'm just calling it like I see it.
~~~
justcurious664
Adrew, really curious here, how would you go about if you were in his shoes?
~~~
AndrewMoffat
If I was Amit, I would've included other sufferers in the campaign, instead of
hoarding the attention all to myself. Many others could have benefited from
this massive amount of exposure.
~~~
tonybgoode
Everyone who gets swabbed is added to a national database and can be matched
to anyone else who needs a donor.
The efforts happening on his behalf are, by and large, very consciously being
done with this in mind. They are increasing awareness of underrepresented
populations in the bone marrow database and making a much larger impact.
Also, these efforts are being coordinated and implemented by volunteers on
Amit's behalf. Amit himself is not running this show. People who have better
things to do than troll the internet are.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What's been your experience with performance reviews? - raykanani99
Wondering if anyone has had good experiences with performance reviews? What's the biggest pain about them?
======
daly
Edward Deming is honored in Japan with the Deming Prize (see
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deming_Prize](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deming_Prize)).
He has a series of videos worth their weight in gold. One video is related.
Take a bucket with 50% black marbles and 50% white marbles. Give each employee
a paddle that has 25 holes arranged so they can dip the paddle into the bucket
and withdraw 25 random marbles. Each time they withdraw the paddle, count the
marbles and add the number of black marbles to the persons score.
After a while do a "performance review". Give a raise to the person with the
highest number of black marbles. Fire the person with the least number of
black marbles.
The point is rather obvious and I won't insult you with an analysis.
Managers who depend on performance reviews are simply unqualified to manage.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Poly/ML is a full implementation of Standard ML - fogus
http://polyml.org/
======
oconnor0
Interesting that tho it started as a ML-like language with a different type
system, it morphed into an implementation of ML97.
Anyone know the reasons for this? And what advantages Poly/ML brings over
SML/NJ or MLton?
------
lpgauth
I'd be curious to hear who uses SML? I learned it for a class, but never
actually used it work/projects.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Samsung patches 0-click vulnerability impacting all smartphones sold since 2014 - aspenmayer
https://www.zdnet.com/article/samsung-patches-0-click-vulnerability-impacting-all-smartphones-sold-since-2014/
======
aspenmayer
SVE-2020-16747
[https://security.samsungmobile.com/securityUpdate.smsb](https://security.samsungmobile.com/securityUpdate.smsb)
CVE-2020-8899 [https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-
bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2020-8899](https://cve.mitre.org/cgi-
bin/cvename.cgi?name=CVE-2020-8899)
From the issues page:
Q: What privileges does the attacker gain in the system after a successful
attack?
A: The vulnerable codec executes in the context of the attacked app processing
input images, so the attacker also gets the privileges of that app. In the
case of my demo, that's Samsung Messages, which has access to a variety of
personal user information: call logs, contacts, microphone, storage, SMS etc.
While not explicitly tested, I also strongly suspect that local privilege
escalation may be possible with the help of these bugs. For example, the
highly privileged System UI process may display arbitrary images supplied by
other apps in notifications, and I have observed it crash in Qmage-related
code a number of times in my experimentation.
===
Q: Have you tested any attack vectors other than MMS?
A: I haven't devised any end-to-end attacks similar to that via MMS, but as
noted in the original bug report, all apps in the system which display
untrusted images with the standard Bitmap interfaces are affected by these
issues. For example, I have confirmed that the Qmage file which is used as the
final payload to get a reverse shell via MMS, also gives the attacker remote
access when it is copied to the device's file system and opened with the
Gallery app.
===
Q: Are there any mitigations available to users against this and similar
attacks, other than updating regularly?
A: For Samsung devices, these issues are fixed in the May 2020 patch.
Generally speaking of image codecs, I am not aware of any generic mitigations
against these types of bugs. One easy way to mitigate against attackers using
exploits delivered specifically through MMS is to disable the "auto retrieve"
option for multimedia messages in the Messages app.
From Mateusz Jurczyk of Google Project Zero‘s YouTube page:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nke8Z3G4jnc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nke8Z3G4jnc)
‘This video demonstrates the exploitation of a vulnerability in the custom
Samsung Qmage image codec via MMS. The exploit proof-of-concept achieves
remote code execution with no user interaction on a Samsung Galaxy Note 10+
phone running Android 10 (February 2020 patch level).
‘Vulnerabilities in the Qmage format were reported by the Google Project Zero
team to Samsung in January 2020, and were addressed in the Samsung May 2020
Security Bulletin as SVE-2020-16747. The bugs were also collectively assigned
CVE-2020-8899.
‘For more details, see: * [https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-
zero/issues/detail?id=20...](https://bugs.chromium.org/p/project-
zero/issues/detail?id=2002) \- the original in-depth report discussing the
codec and security issues. It also includes an FAQ section outlining how the
exploit works. *
[https://github.com/googleprojectzero/SkCodecFuzz](https://github.com/googleprojectzero/SkCodecFuzz)
[currently 404] - source code of the fuzzing harness used to identify the
crashes. *
[https://security.samsungmobile.com/securityUpdate.smsb](https://security.samsungmobile.com/securityUpdate.smsb)
\- Samsung Security Updates website.’
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lee Berger has a knack for finding fossils his own way (2015) - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/issue/30/identity/the-man-who-used-facebook-to-find-an-extinct-human-species
======
DrScump
The guy to Berger's left in the photo is Professor John Hawkes, who pops up
frequently in various PBS shows (like _Nature_ ) on prehistoric and archaic
humans.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Humans can see a single photon at a time - azazqadir
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/humans-can-detect-a-single-photon-at-a-time
======
aaron695
I feel like there's something fishy going on here.
~~~
rimunroe
When I was taking a psych course in college we went over the limits of human
perception for various senses. Our prof quoted the limit for detecting light
at somewhere between one and five photons hitting the retina in otherwise
complete darkness.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How we reduced our cancellation rate by 87.5% - kareemm
http://blog.reemer.com/how-we-reduced-our-cancellation-rate-by-87-5
======
patio11
Seriously, one of the best and most actionable articles you'll read this week.
(n.b. This sort of thing _prints money_ for companies at pretty much all
sizes. Well, after you've got enough customers to worry about cancellations.)
I'll probably write something about this eventually. There are a lot of
generalizable tactics which repeatably work well. (Email engagement is
probably the highest bang for the buck, considering that you can implement it
in about an afternoon and, coming from the starting point "We send no email",
it will virtually immediately produce visible results.)
~~~
cperciva
On the topic of emails and account cancellations: When I started sending out
"Your Tarsnap account will be deleted soon" emails, the account attrition rate
dropped by 50%. The change wasn't from people who didn't realize their account
was going to be deleted -- they had received two emails already, 1 week and 2
weeks earlier -- but getting that last prompt seems to have shifted people's
default action from "do nothing" to "pay some money to make the account stay
around".
Some time later, I cut Tarsnap's account attrition rate by another ~50% by
adding a line to the "account will be deleted soon" email: _"If you've decided
to stop using Tarsnap, I'd love to know why."_ This wasn't deliberate -- I
added it for the simple reason that I really do want to get that information
-- but it seems to be causing people to stop and say "hmm, I can't think of
any good reason to not use Tarsnap, so maybe I should keep using it after
all".
~~~
enjo
Regarding that last bit:
I wonder if they feel a bit of social pressure to stay. Basically when you say
" _I'd_ love to know why" all of a sudden there is an actual person who would
be clearly harmed by their decision to leave.
~~~
polynomial
Would like to see some A/B testing with "I'd love to know why" vs. "We'd love
to know why."
~~~
cperciva
Fortunately, the number of people who let their Tarsnap accounts expire is
small enough that unless there was a huge signal it would take a very long
time to get a statistically significant result.
------
ThomPete
Great analysis and I really want to believe in this but I am a sceptic and
this:
_Interested in learning how a cohort analysis can help your business grow?
Get in touch – I work with select clients to help identify growth and
retention opportunities, and build features to realize those opportunities._
Kind of killed it for me. Now I am not sure whether I should trust the
results.
~~~
patio11
Do you routinely distrust code written by people who take money for coding, on
the grounds that it might have been written with an eye to securing work?
~~~
ThomPete
I am not sure what that comparison is supposed to prove? Care to elaborate?
I have no doubt kareemm is a fantastic at his job. I have simply seen to many
cases where a case study is used to create sales. Again nothing wrong with
that. It just kind of makes me sceptic when I see fantastic results combined
with a a sales message.
Thats just me.
~~~
daemon13
Except that we probably don't have many gym owners here :-)
------
ehsanu1
If the average time to cancel is 61 days, and they waited only 2 months since
the changes to calculate the new cancellation rates, it stands to reason that
the cancellation rate will rise over the next few months, right?
Assuming a normal distribution (probably not that accurate, but it's just a
guess), the final cancellation rate would be about double that measured until
now.
Am I missing something here?
~~~
jamiequint
The key here is that it is a cohort analysis.
So while your analysis is correct and the cancellation rate will likely rise
over time, the key thing to check when comparing a pre-change cohort to a
post-change cohort to test for improvement is that the cancellation rates at
two weeks post-signup are significantly different. Obviously its the most
ideal if you can run the tests in parallel to reduce the risk of selection
bias. However, sometimes that is not always feasible, and with a result like
85%+ improvement is not really necessary to do so in order to assume that the
control was beaten.
~~~
jmilloy
I don't really understand. Isn't the "cohort analysis" part of it how the data
about the gyms that cancelled was extracted? That shouldn't affect how you
compare the results once you've made changes. I'm also not sure I understand
what you mean by "comparing a pre-change cohort to a post-change cohort"
because we're not comparing the cohorts, we're comparing the cancellation rate
among the whole list of customers.
~~~
jamiequint
Ah, the article is actually extremely unclear. What I took his conclusion to
mean was that some cohort of gyms that had signed up post-change had lower
cancellation rates than pre-change customers. If the analysis just took into
account the overall rate across all customers is prone to all sorts of errors
(including the one you mention).
~~~
ehsanu1
My impression was that the pre-change cancellation rate was based on all
customers over the lifetime of the product (they did calculate the 61 day
average from this), whereas the post-change was only for the new customers in
the last two months (the max it could be, and the only thing it makes sense to
measure).
------
jamiequint
I'm interested in why you found Mixpanel hard to use. It satisfies every
requirement you have described out of the box and only takes minutes to set
up. Unless you wanted to process a ton of past data it probably would have
been easier for you to skip all the manual data entry excel requires.
~~~
kareemm
I haven't used Mixpanel, only Kissmetrics. I wanted to run the analysis on all
of our data and while that's doable in Kissmetrics, Excel is faster (desktop
vs latency of web app requests), more flexible (I can do what I want vs being
limited to what KM lets me do), and likely easier to get data in (import CSV
vs ...?)
~~~
StavrosK
I had the exact same problem as you, so I'm writing
<http://www.instahero.com>. It will offer everything kissmetrics etc offer,
but will give you the ability to easily program your own reports, without
having to download your data or anything like that.
Think of it like kissmetrics having an "edit the code that generates this
report" option. You can leave your email or drop me a line if you want to try
out the beta.
~~~
fab1an
I would strongly suggest you drop the "websites not using us yet" line from
your landing page. Showing their logos isn't a trick to increase conversions,
but borderline dodgy -- and people _will_ notice.
~~~
StavrosK
Ah, sorry, that was just a joke, the logos came with the theme. I'll remove
them asap, thanks.
------
bdunn
These are the sort of posts that keep me coming back to HN. Great analysis,
and as a former Crossfitter - awesome product idea!
~~~
kareemm
thanks!
------
edhallen
Great post on the usefulness of cohort analysis (or of experimentation more
broadly, which if you think about it, is exactly what cohort analysis is - it
just uses the past as a control).
One thought on ways to analyze the follow-on problem of customers canceling
after 61 days (a problem similar to what I've seen at every web company I've
ever worked at).
First, perform the same cohort analysis you’ve already done, but look at the
cancelling customers vs retained customers at day 1, day 15, day 30 and day
45, then use this analysis to figure out your triggers (things like # of
Facebook posts needed by day 15, % of profiles claimed by day 30, etc).
Once you have your triggers, you can make proactively calling / emailing
problematic customers a key part of your daily routine. While discounts might
still be the way to go, this trigger based approach is one I've seen work
well. Additionally, because you are in touch with problematic customers it
often gives you insight into what do next.
------
DanielRibeiro
Related great post written by Shopify guys a while ago:
[http://www.shopify.com/technology/4018382-defining-churn-
rat...](http://www.shopify.com/technology/4018382-defining-churn-rate-no-
really-this-actually-requires-an-entire-blog-post)
------
Smerity
Congratulations on the impressive result. It seems you have a good product but
the real change appears to be encouraging those who wouldn't use your system
properly to improve their habits.
I wish you could work out more concretely why the situation improved but with
three substantial improvements (that likely impact different customers in
different ways) that's difficult. I could imagine "drop[ping] prices by
15-60%" would help those not using your product fully for example as even if
they don't use all the features they don't feel like they're overpaying.
~~~
kareemm
Our hypothesis is that the biggest reason for the change was price. If it's a
good use of my time, I'll run another analysis in a couple months to see if I
can isolate the reasons for change.
------
Angostura
Interesting article, two issues.
First, you changed two variables simultaneously, so its tricky to tell how
much either contributed. The cynic in me, suggests that the article _could_
actually be summarised as 'we cut our prices'.
Second, you right:
> So we improved our onboarding to help a gym owner export a CSV of their
> members’ email addresses to send to us.
Certainly in Europe, that could fall foul of data protection legislation,
you'll need to make sure that the customer has given permission for their data
to be past to 3rd parties.
------
janesvilleseo
Great article. I went to check out your site socialwod.com and was unable to
scroll on my iPhone. You may want to check your analytics to see if this
effecting a large percentage of your visitors. Keep up the great work!
~~~
kareemm
Thanks for the heads up - will take a look.
------
1123581321
Which items from your analysis made a the most difference?
~~~
kareemm
Not sure - will run another analysis in a couple months if it's important
enough to figure out.
------
philip1209
Cool. I've read about JBara, which provides a CRM plugin that aims to predict
when people are going to cancel and give you a chance to retain them.
------
RobPfeifer
I think the real takeaway here is: "Email is a better marketing channel then
Facebook"
------
mredbord
This is a good article. I have a few issues with price-reduction for existing
customers, though, that I want to highlight. I think it's fantastic that OP
got the desired results on customer churn, which was his goal - but I'd
categorize pricing changes as "gray hat" retention improvement with regard to
the overall health of his business and future revenue. Here's why:
On price specifically: In a subscription business like this one, you have to
meet a minimum utility requirement in each month that a customer is able to
cancel if you want to retain customers. Each customer's minimum utility is
different and could even be comprised of different factors/features depending
on the breadth of the product offering. But there is one factor that cuts
across all of them: price. A significant element of churn is price because the
initial purchase thrill may decrease over time and result in customer
cancellation requests at a certain point in their lifecycle. So, cutting price
is kind of an easy way to reduce churn in a subscription model...particularly
because people bought in at X and are now paying fractional X. Boom - happy
customers. Also, price-cutting is habit-forming, and the customers who
received a reduced price will come back asking for more reductions in time.
On features: Multiple times, I've seen the "get more people using our product"
as a good way to reduce churn. I won't comment on permission customer
marketing and whether or not what OP did was legal, but the results of a
feature like this are great, and seems like he added more than just this one.
He added improved functionality and invested in his product at reduced prices
- great deal!
On onboarding & cohort analysis: OP was right to focus on onboarding features
and adoption to improve stickiness among new cohorts. He would have also been
smart to raise the price for new customers if he materially improved the
product (which it sounds like he did). Over the same time period, he could
have had newer cohorts of higher paying customers, making the older ones less
important to the financials of the business. By "hiring" higher priced
customers to increasingly recent cohorts and continually "firing" older-lower-
priced customers, the balance of his revenue would have shifted to these
newer, more valuable customers over time, making the older-less-happy
customers less important to his business. That's how you really turn the crank
on a subscription business, and if your onboarding is good enough to
continually improve retention in new cohorts, you've really nailed it.
Overall, I don't mean to be overly critical of OP's choices. I aim to
highlight where optimizing for customer churn alone can harm the financials of
the business, particularly around price-cutting for existing customers. He's
doing lots and lots right with his cohort analyses, onboarding improvements,
and assumptions about churn impact of new features. However, we're in business
to make money, so these have to be balanced with the health of the business
itself.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The most advanced jail-break tool. Coming soon to all devices on iOS 13.5 - fheld
https://unc0ver.dev/
======
somada141
Huh haven’t jailbroken my iPhones since my iPhone 5 back in 2014. Back then I
feel that iOS was severely limited in functionality and jailbreaking allowed
for custom solutions to problems Apple wasn’t addressing. Since then iOS has
seen a plethora of features and I feel there’s little reason to jailbreak
anymore. Does anyone know if there’s any good reason to jailbreak anymore? Any
killer functionality that would make it worth it?
~~~
typon
Run a server on that powerful arm?
~~~
adjkant
That can't be cost efficient compared to alternatives can it?
~~~
mirekrusin
2nd hands with broken glass cost peanuts, as weird as it sounds he may be onto
something fun; ie. if you have working mic/speaker/camera you can also bump it
to cctv/whatever.
iphone cluster would be fun to see, but probably better with apple tvs.
------
nexuist
The make or break is whether this one is finally untethered or not. I miss the
days when the jailbreak community was abundant both in users and developers.
Unfortunately it seems like its days are (have been?) numbered. A shame,
because reverse engineering iOS[1] was a hell of a lot of fun.
[1] [https://github.com/GN-OS/Bloard](https://github.com/GN-OS/Bloard)
------
aloknnikhil
This includes the iPhone Xs and 11 (and presumably all A12 and A13 devices).
Was there a new exploit found on these chips? Last I checked only devices with
chips older than the A12 were vulnerable to the checkra1n exploit.
~~~
judge2020
new exploit:
> using a 0day kernel vulnerability from @Pwn20wnd
[https://twitter.com/unc0verteam/status/1263260302713524225?s...](https://twitter.com/unc0verteam/status/1263260302713524225?s=21)
------
dang
The baity title and the coming-soonness are two strikes against this
submission. Does anyone want to argue in its favor? and if so, what should we
change the title to?
~~~
mike_d
The actual news here is that an iOS 13.5 kernel 0day is going to be released
publicly. The exploit was paid for by a phone case manufacturer.
It isn't a great source, but the original tweet actually has more detail than
the website:
[https://twitter.com/unc0verTeam/status/1263260302713524225?s...](https://twitter.com/unc0verTeam/status/1263260302713524225?s=20)
Edit: I'd suggest pointing here for context -
[https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/20/jailbreak-for-all-
ios-13-5-de...](https://9to5mac.com/2020/05/20/jailbreak-for-all-
ios-13-5-devices-expected-soon-due-to-new-kernel-exploit/)
~~~
dang
Doesn't it make sense to wait until it's released?
------
RyanShook
Are iOS exploits becoming more common? Feels like a few years ago they were
rare but now they’re being released more often.
~~~
praseodym
Apparently they are, Zerodium has even stopped accepting new iOS privilege
escalation exploits:
[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/14/zerodium_ios_flaws/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/05/14/zerodium_ios_flaws/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Critical Thinking: What Is It Good For? (In Fact, What Is It?) - zzygan
http://www.csicop.org/si/show/critical_thinking_what_is_it_good_for_in_fact_what_is_it/
======
MichaelCrawford
Dave Johnson of Working Software was a direct mail marketing expert. He once
explained to me that the reason advertisements coomonly say "BUY NOW! DON'T
DELAY!" is that it results in significantly greater sales.
It's known as a "Call To Action". Without such a call to action, many people
will not know what to do after reading a direct mail offer letter.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: When did Firefox become so broken? - martokus
I don't want to sound like a rant but that's the reality for me.<p>TL;DR Been using Firefox as my main browser since 2005. Refused to move to Chrome when a lot of people did. As of today both my home and work machines default to Chrome. So what happened?<p>Earlier this year the problem started on my personal laptop. I'm based in UK and Firefox suddenly decided it will start searching in google.com rather than google.co.uk. I made sure my Google preferences say UK, my PC location is set to UK, reinstalled Firefox, nothing. IE and Chrome still search in google.co.uk. After a month of struggling I gave up and switched to Chrome.<p>I kept Firefox as my brain browser on my work PC. It was still searching in google.co.uk so all good. All good until like 2 weeks ago when opening a Google Hangout in Firefox started resulting in the browser taking up to 900Mb of RAM with 3 tabs opened (gmail, hangouts, website) and crashing. We use Google Apps at work so I spend a lot of time in hangouts... Again I struggled for 2 weeks and gave up. As of today Chrome is my default browser on all PCs.<p>What went wrong with Firefox really? I could easily blame my PC setup but I don't think so. 2 very different issues on 2 machines, yet other browsers still function normally on both of them.<p>I'm even considering the ridiculous probability of Google subtly screwing with Firefox users on random bases just to get them unnerved and switch to Chrome.<p>Is anyone else experiencing such a degradation of their Firefox experience?
======
arien
Both things you mention have to do with Google, who happens to own Chrome. Why
do you think it is a ridiculous proposition? After all, you gave in and
switched to Chrome...
I've actually done the opposite, switched back to Firefox after many years of
using Chrome. Was a bit wary, but no issues at all, runs fine in both PC and
Mac. Although I don't use hangouts on it.
~~~
robbyking
I recently switched back to Firefox, too, after almost 6 years with Chrome. In
that time it felt like the two browsers switched roles, and now Firefox is
lightweight and privacy minded, while Chrome is bloated and invasive.
I recently launched Chrome to see if an issue a website I was visiting was
experiencing was Firefox specific (they weren't), and I was really taken back
by how _old_ Chrome felt†. It lacked the "crisp" feeling Firefox has††, and
the UI (new tab screen especially) just felt stale. It was actually really
surprising.
† I was updated to the current version.
†† I understand how caching works.
~~~
theandrewbailey
> It lacked the "crisp" feeling Firefox has††, and the UI (new tab screen
> especially) just felt stale.
> †† I understand how caching works.
I'm confused. Do you mean Chrome lacked Firefox's speed? Or you simply like
Firefox's UI better?
~~~
robbyking
In my opinion, both. Chrome's new tab screen looks very out of date to me, and
both the UI and page loading feels faster on Firefox.
------
SixSigma
We call this "begging the question".
You have decided Firefox is broken. I have zero complaints about it, it is my
default browser on Android, Windows and OpenBSD, all three of which I use
daily without issue.
------
inetsee
I've been using Firefox on Linux for quite some time. My default search engine
is DuckDuckGo. I haven't had any problems with Firefox.
My wife uses Firefox on Windows 7 (she hated Windows 8, so we switched back to
Windows 7) and she had been having some problems with Firefox (can't connect
after auto-upgrade, Firefox using lots of CPU resources, etc). I finally
figured out the connection problems (it was our Norton firewall needing to be
told about the Firefox update), and doing a Firefox refresh
([https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-
reset-a...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-
ons-and-settings)) seems to have solved the excess CPU usage problems.
------
conradfr
I'm a bit in the same boat.
Firefox is better than before for me : it crashes less, less memory leak with
better cleaning.
BUT I still have to restart it regularly. At some point during the day it
becomes less responsive, closing a tab freeze the browser (during which
Windows task manager indicates that FF uses 25% of the cpu for xx seconds, may
be related to my quad core), etc.
I don't even have that much tabs (like 2/3 windows, ~20/30 tabs).
The worst offenders are GMail, Google Images (or even Imgur, lots of images
seem to kill FF) and a forum page full of Youtube videos.
Removing Adblock helped a bit but other than that I haven't find an extension
I could blame (Classic Theme Restorer was a problem though, it's fixed now).
------
justathrow2k
Isn't this question better suited for a FireFox dev/complaint forum?
------
jrm2k6
I have the same issue when it comes to the slowness. It crashes really easily,
and takes up a lot of RAM. Chrome runs just fine with the same websites. Each
time I switched to a new opened tab, it hangs, that is deeply annoying.
It might be better to open an issue on a forum/dev complaints board, but I
feel like it is always the same answers. Do a reinstall/reset to factory
settings or this kind of thing, which is not helpful as I have obviously done
it.
------
nickpsecurity
Maybe this might help:
[http://westhouseit.co.uk/tech-blog/how-to-fix-firefox-
search...](http://westhouseit.co.uk/tech-blog/how-to-fix-firefox-search-to-
use-the-local-google-search/)
------
FooNull
Fwiw, by running the firefox nightly, I've seen far fewer memory issues,
crashes, and general crappyness...
------
nautical
I disagree that its broken , have been using it on mac and linux both , works
like a charm every time .
------
jdlyga
Chrome just got a hell of a lot better and Firefox more or less stayed the
same.
------
th0waway
Have you tried the below? It helped me.
[https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-
reset-a...](https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/refresh-firefox-reset-add-
ons-and-settings)
~~~
martokus
I will! Thanks
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The AMD Fusion is not my ideal machine. - djinn
http://ghosting.posterous.com/the-amd-fusion-is-not-my-ideal-machine
======
PythonDeveloper
I have two of these machines. One is a quad-core laptop, and the other is a
dual-core E-350 server.
In both cases, the driver provided by AMD was horrific. The drivers that came
with LinuxMint and Ubuntu (not the non-free drivers, the default ones) were
fantastic and very fast.
I am very happy and run both machines on dual 24" monitors @ 1920x1200 and
they scream.
~~~
djinn
Sadly in my case, default driver does not work with HDMI and it does not
recognize my 24" monitor. The ATI official driver does recognize and it does
use 1900x1200 resolution but only with large black border.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Facebook Launches OpenID Support - Users Can Now Login With Gmail Accounts - peter123
http://www.insidefacebook.com/2009/05/18/facebook-launches-openid-support-users-can-now-login-with-a-gmail-account/
======
Alex3917
OpenID support has ruined Facebook. Please join my group 1,000,000+ strong
against OpenID.
/joke
------
tlrobinson
Hmm. I couldn't get it to link my delegated OpenID URL.
I also don't see where you're supposed to enter your OpenID URL to log in.
_edit: Why the downvote? At least explain what's wrong with my comment. I'm
really puzzled how Facebook's OpenID support is supposed to work, since it's
clearly not working for me._
~~~
bcl
Looks broken to me as well. I went to Settings->Linked Accounts->Open ID and
tried both my website (which has a openid link in it) and the direct url of my
openid and it rejects them both. They DO work, I use them all the time with
this site and others.
ETA - yep, I'm using phpMyID as well.
~~~
ben_straub
Same result; apparently phpMyID isn't supported. :P
------
dsims
Here is the Facebook Developer blog post:
[http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=246](http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=246)
I look forward to the day Facebook can totally stop managing passwords. That
means my _grandmother_ will be using OpenID.
------
blhack
I apologize for the moderate threadjack here, but I have a lot of respect for
you guys and would like your opinion on something...
How do you feel about these sorts of things (openid, I mean). I remember
microsoft trying it long long ago and it being a colossal failure. A good
friend of mine and I have a little blog/news aggregator/comment pool thing
that we're both having a bit of fun with and he keeps suggesting that we use
google connect.
To me, these sorts of things _take away_ from the community feel of places
like HN, or reddit, or wherever else...
What do you guys think? Was this a good move for facebook?
~~~
ryanvm
What Microsoft offered was the Microsoft Passport->.NET Passport->Windows Live
ID. The difference being that under their plan, Microsoft was the only
provider. Big difference.
OpenID allows people to use whichever services they want as their OpenID
providers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Proposal: Turn Waterfox 56 (a Fork of Firefox) into an Extended Support Release - greenyoda
https://www.reddit.com/r/waterfox/comments/5ysn9e/proposal_please_turn_waterfox_56_into_an_esr_and/
======
greenyoda
Note: This would provide a way to keep the old-style Firefox extensions
working after Mozilla de-supports them in Firefox 57.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why you PHP guys should learn Golang - mikespook
http://www.mikespook.com/2012/08/why-you-php-guys-should-learn-golang/
======
slurgfest
It doesn't seem to me that there is a whole lot of overlap between the virtues
or sweet spot of PHP and those of Go.
Go is not a particularly hard language for the level it's designed at (though
I'm not sure that remembering keywords is really a primary usability concern
for any language)... but if you are just trying to slap together a web app and
feel intimidated by deploy details and want to use cheap shared hosting and
plug into existing libraries as much as possible, Go is somewhere between
inconvenient and totally infeasible.
I'm not saying Go is a bad choice... there are good reasons to look at it,
particularly if you intend to work at a somewhat lower level (e.g. for
performance) and want some of Go's benefits (like the concurrency model, or
some of the benefits of static typing and compiling without so much time or
effort on managing dependencies as you would otherwise spend, etc.)
I'm saying the priorities which would make PHP attractive would tend to make
Go quite unattractive. I can certainly see how PHP programmers (like many
other programmers) can benefit from learning another language with abilities
complementary to what they already know.
~~~
andrewfelix
Agreed. I was interested up until this point... _"Your PHP scripts will be
evaluated by SAPI components: web server module, PHP-fpm or CLI. All needed
for PHP deploying is a SAPI environment."_
What? Sorry but I know nothing about deployment. Should I? In the past I've
only used PHP to solve simple problems.
~~~
Mikushi
You don't necessarily need to know about the SAPI, but what he says is true.
Any environment (Apache, Lighttpd, FPM, CLI, ...) that runs PHP, is built on
top of the SAPI provided by the Zend Engine.
That's interesting stuff, but not on the "must know" list.
------
vhf
How can you possibly write an article telling PHP programmers to develop in
Golang instead without writing anything about web programming in Golang ?
Why do people use PHP mostly ? For web development.
_Why PHP guys should learn Golang_ should at least tell PHP guys if it's
possible to do web development in Golang, and how, and show them how it's
better suited (without telling them only "it's a better language").
~~~
reedlaw
Last line of the article:
> This is my writing exercise. If you find any grammatical or spelling error,
> plz tell me!
Also notice that it's a predominately Chinese blog.
~~~
vhf
Well, thanks for pointing this out, although I think it should be possible,
for a Chinese author who's not very fluent in written English, to write about
Golang in a web dev perspective.
I don't really care about the author's English skills, I'm no grammar nazi.
------
erangalp
No offense to the writer, but it seems to me he doesn't really understand web
development. In 99.9% of web applications, the bottleneck for scaling is the
database and not the language. Web application processes are generally not CPU
intensive and are short lived, something PHP handles very nicely.
On the other hand, PHP has a huge list of existing resources, libraries and
excellent documentation and community.
Look over at the language used by the largest sites on the Internet, and
compare the number that use PHP to the number that use Go. Not saying Go can't
handle those applications, but obviously PHP was used in scale effectively on
many occasions, while Go hasn't proved anything yet.
~~~
thirsteh
It powers YouTube, among other things: <http://code.google.com/p/vitess/>
Go documentation is very good, the standard library is extensive, and it has a
very active community, but it does lack certain libraries that web developers
might find attractive, e.g. a comprehensive ORM.
Insinuating PHP is better because it's deployed in more places is silly.
~~~
erangalp
Stop reading between the lines, I didn't say PHP was better as a language.
What I was saying was that trying to convert PHP developers into Go
programmers with those kind of arguments shows a basic lack of understanding
of how web applications work, or what is the real strength of PHP.
~~~
thirsteh
Most web developers who read Hacker News don't host their stuff with a hosting
provider that doesn't even provide shell. With Go you just need to be able to
execute a binary.
You sounded a lot like Go hasn't proved it's viable for "web scale." It has.
Is it as widely deployed? Of course not, it's new.
I'm not sure what strength of PHP you're referring to--I'm assuming the
ubiquity with shared hosting providers--but it's not even that great of a
language to interface with databases, which was your example before.
Not arguing for Go particularly, just arguing against PHP. Its ubiquity is
basically all it has going for it, but yes, that's a big deal.
~~~
erangalp
Again, you assumed wrong. Makes me wonder what your actual experience with PHP
is. The strength of PHP is its focus on the web environment through features
and functions that make it simpler to develop in that environment, that have
be implemented in code on most other languages. In addition, the huge amount
of available mature libraries for a variety of purposes and the large
community that supports it, is something I really find hard to believe Go can
compete with. Saving development time with mature code is much more important
than learning a language that doesn't provide much tangible benefits for the
web environment.
~~~
thirsteh
I've used PHP for 15 years. You keep making these "I-know-better-because-I-
use-PHP" statements, but ironically you probably have never even touched Go.
Give it a try. Don't be the guy who hates anything that's new.
("Poor library support" is a terrible argument for PHP vs. Python, Ruby, or
even functional languages with respect to web development too.)
~~~
erangalp
You're the one who's doing the hating my friend... you keep finding hidden
messages in what I write and generally piling up on PHP without good reason. I
never said anything bad about Go, or bad library support in other languages,
just not agreeing with the article on comparing PHP to it where PHP is (in my
humble opinion) a very strong option already.
~~~
thirsteh
I pile up on PHP because it's a shitty language, and basically the only
argument for using it nowadays is that it's relatively ubiquitous among budget
shared hosting providers. I don't think I ever tried to hide that I hate it.
Now you're twisting your own words.
------
alttag
Maybe I missed it, but the things that would convince me are a) a large,
strong community, b) extensive documentation, and c) code examples in the
article.
Seeing no references to any of these, I don't find the article terribly
persuasive.
~~~
genwin
Examples for Golang _are_ sparse compared to PHP-land. The books help a lot on
that. Other than that I haven't had an issue with finding stuff online. The
official documentation is extensive when you know how to look for it (namely,
"golang <package name>". Hopefully in the future the official documentation
will have many more examples.
------
stratos2
Oh good yet more comments about why PHP is trash and how your intelligence and
social status are dictated by what language you are using. I almost don't
click on posts about programming languages any more. Yet here i am,
commenting..
~~~
martswite
I primarily develop using PHP. I read the first few lines of this article, got
to this 'PHP is easy to learn. Golang is as easy as PHP!' and basically read,
'Hey thicko PHP guy, you could probably learn to use this language, cos its
simple enough for your addled brain'.
The immediate feeling of condescension turned me off.
~~~
alinajaf
Let's try this with me...
The original: "PHP is easy to learn. Golang is as easy as PHP!"
Some str_replaces:
"Ruby is easy to learn. Golang is as easy as Ruby!"
"Clojure is easy to learn. Golang is as easy as Clojure!"
"Python is easy to learn. Golang is as easy as Python!"
Hmm, I'm still not feeling offended. Are you sure this might not be some sort
of inferiority complex at play? I think a lot of PHP developers get needlessly
offended whenever we talk about PHP, positive or negative.
~~~
martswite
I'm pretty sure it's not an inferiority complex, im in no way precious over
the language that I develop in. I just don't agree with the inference that
developers that use PHP do so because they aren't smart enough to use other
more complex languages.
The particular line of the article I quoted however does, to me, infer that
php developers can only learn simple languages.
------
languagehacker
I can't really blame the guy for the off-the-wall tone and and the straight-up
poor grammar and spelling, because I'm guessing English isn't his first
language. Kudos for trying.
But some of his reasons that Go may be better or more useful than PHP don't
really stick. You can deploy a PHP web application using the PHAR format,
which is a lot like just moving a file into a folder. And static variable
typing isn't really a requirement for a successful language if you're
adequately validating input and the like.
Also, a PHP programmer would have an easier time learning another scripting
language compared to another compiled language, regardless of the overhead of
configuring a development environment.
Things that would make me consider Go would include ease of deployment,
significant speed improvements, fantastic libraries for the kinds of things I
want to get done, or smart under-the-hood concurrency that I don't personally
have to worry about coding. Go could have all these things, and I've have no
idea from this post.
------
genwin
Already sold! For my first web 2.0 project I started with PHP and, being a bit
disappointed with its performance, switched to Golang. Among other things I
didn't want to have to do ifs with parentheses or use semicolons. Those seemed
superfluous. Then I discovered Go, and it doesn't need those things and it's
way faster. A lot more benefits too. Definitely a steeper learning curve than
PHP initially but should be well worth the effort. I'll still use PHP or
Python where they make more sense.
------
Afal
> But why you PHP guys should learn Golang? Just because it is cool! Ja, I’m
> kidding, but it is true.
I stopped reading here.
I don't know. Skimming over this blogpost made me think "Why should I use
go?". I'm not even a PHP guy and this isn't even convincing me. What hope do
they have to convince a PHP guy.
I didn't see any code. Sure there's a link to the "A Tour of Go" but if I was
a PHP guy I would be confused by the syntax. No semicolons? Ok that may be an
advantage (I'm also fairly sure you can add semicolons to Go and it wouldn't
care).
I dunno, there wasn't enough here explaining why I should use Golang instead
of PHP. I didn't like the way it was formatted. I didn't like the rhetoric.
I am one of those strange people who prefers to watch videos of a language or
a web tool working and found [http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/fosdem-
video/2011/maintracks/go...](http://ftp.heanet.ie/mirrors/fosdem-
video/2011/maintracks/golang.xvid.avi) which seems to go through some of
Golang's features. It's a little longer than that blogpost but it's a little
better with convincing me to use Golang.
------
a_macgregor
Hmm, found nothing in the article to really validate the claim that PHP
developers should learn GO.
It might be a cool language, but the main reason php developers use PHP in the
first place is Web Development; the article doesn't even mention the
possibility of using GO for web development.
There aren't any code samples on the article either; why is GO so good ? what
does the syntax looks like? _Don't just tell, SHOW_
I prefer to invest my time learning languages like ruby or python.
------
pan69
Where can I get managed Golang hosting for $4.95 a month?
~~~
luriel
You can get managed Go hosting for $0 a month:
<https://developers.google.com/appengine/docs/go/overview>
~~~
genwin
I love Go, so it's a shame I can't trust its initial creator, Google, for
hosting. Too many stories about accounts unilaterally yanked and prices jacked
up 3X+ overnight.
------
pjmlp
With a JVM or .NET language they would be better served than with Go.
Given the available communities, performance of current JIT and GC systems,
tools, libraries and distribution mechanisms.
If they prefer to go VM free, there are commercial native compilers for JVM
and MSIL bytecodes.
For those with VM phobia, D, OCaml, SBCL, Haskell, Rust offer native code
compilation by default, with 2012 set of language abstractions.
------
rickmb
So basically the argument is that if you are the "when all you have is a
hammer everything looks like a nail" kind of developer, you should use Go as
hammer instead of PHP.
I don't think so.
Not to mention the unfounded and insulting assumption that "you PHP guys" are
all the "everything looks like nail" kind of people. Methinks the author is
projecting too much.
------
LeafStorm
Great idea! Now how drunk do I need to get Systems so they will actually
install Go on our servers? Because I'm sure that they would just love giving
several thousand students, staff, and faculty the ability to run arbitrary
machine code!
~~~
aaronblohowiak
If you can't let arbitrary machine code run on your system, you are "doing it
wrong." *nix was designed as multi-tenant from the get-go. also, they would
not need to install Go on the servers, as the binaries are completely self-
contained.
------
tszming
Most of the benefits he explained in the post also apply to Java (e.g. easy to
use, GC, type system & concurrency).
IMHO, if a programmer only know PHP and want to explore, I would suggest
Java/Scala/Python/Ruby as the next language instead of Go.
~~~
luriel
Java and Go's type systems are very different, Go's is much more lightweight,
had implicit interfaces (aka "static duck typing") and has an improved form of
composition instead of inheritance.
And concurrency in Go compared to Java is like day and night.
Then there is the simplicity and clarity of the standard libraries, and so on.
~~~
tszming
The difference between Go and Java is one issue which I have no interest to
argue, but if you read the whole article in detail and will find `most of the
features` he discussed are already provided by Java.
1\. Golang is a compiled language with a static type system. You have no
chance to confuse veriable types
2\. You must have already felt some powerlessness to PHP. It dosen’t have
concurrent mechanism build-in..
3\. Golang has GC, there is no need to care about memory management
4\. Golang is also a C family’s programming language. Eh… with a litte syntax
difference.
and more..
------
snogglethorpe
Hmm, reduced to begging for users in the streets?
Oh well, I suppose at least it's more popular than Dart... _ducks_
------
mseepgood
I don't think that PHP programmers are capable of learning something new.
Otherwise they would have left PHP for any other language long time ago.
~~~
slurgfest
Nah...
Even if we supposed that PHP beginners all outgrew it after one year, there
are enough people always picking it up that you would still always have PHP
programmers, until there was enough of a cultural shift that people stopped
picking it up. (Unlikely since PHP's virtues or apparent virtues to newbies
are many, and whatever its problems it is still a viable way to build things)
Second, even if PHP is a relatively bad tool in some important ways - if you
actively push your abilities as you log many hours, your knowledge will
improve. And without specific numbers, PHP is certainly among the most popular
languages for web work (if not the single most popular one). So we can expect
there are a large number of people who have grown up in PHP and have therefore
gained some level of technical maturity even if they are using a bad tool
(actually, struggling successfully with bad tools might help develop certain
muscles useful in areas like maintenance coding).
People are PHP programmers not because they are stupid, but because that is
what first worked for them and they haven't had the time or reason to change
yet, or it's where their job is, or because they just have bad taste ;)
(that's a joke, I do mean to say that matters of taste are involved though)
~~~
jtreminio
Really, don't feed these trolls that pop up in every single thread that has to
do with PHP.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Using Blockchain to Short Circuit Recidivism - RBBronson123
Last summer, I announced the launch of 70MillionJobs, a YC for-profit platform for helping Americans with criminal records find jobs. We've grown our community of active job-seekers to over a million, and have placed hundreds of people in jobs.
Today, I'd like to share that we're launching an ICO in support of our mission.<p>Corporate America has millions of unfilled jobs, yet they have a negative bias towards hiring people with criminal records. Millions of formerly incarcerated men and women desperately need a job, yet the jobs generally available are frequently awful, paying minimum wage.<p>Utilizing blockchain technology, we've developed a program that incentivizes companies to hire those with records while simultaneously incentivizing these folks to accept and retain employment, and avoid re-arrest, thereby tackling recidivism head-on.<p>Our 70M Coin unlocks this potential in an elegant and efficient manner (we believe). For accredited investors, the White Paper is available at 70MCoin.com. Questions? Contact [email protected]
======
actuallyrizzn
Mark Hopkins, CTO here. Happy as well to answer any technology questions.
WP Link: [http://www.70mcoin.com/assets/Whitepaper-
compressed-4eee04cb...](http://www.70mcoin.com/assets/Whitepaper-
compressed-4eee04cb4ced96fbf87db2a0e31758efd0ddec6e75d3763f15f4fb8a11e52409.pdf)
------
Josh70M
Co-author of whitepaper here, welcome any feedback and thoughts! Or questions!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: 6502 or Z80? - qwertyuiop924
Pretty self-explanatory, really.<p>The grandfather of ARM, or the cousin of x86?<p>Speccy or BBC?<p>The chip that made the Apple //, or the one behind your terminal?<p>CP/M, or 1000 BASIC variants?<p>Which one would you pick? And why?<p>Oh, and no saying that you pick the 6809. We'd all love a 6809, but they weren't common at the time, and Rochester isn't selling in small quantites now, AFAIK. Besides, it's so much nicer that everyone else would agree with you, which takes the fun out of things.
======
LarryMade2
6502, mainly because it was affordable (~$25 in 1975 vs at least $175 for
other chips in the day) Thus it truly spurred the home and hobbyist computer
revolution.
It also performed quite well for its speed with most instructions completing
in 1-3 cycles, many CPUs of higher clock rates weren't as efficient as the
6502.
------
Gibbon1
I have to say the 6502 notable because it was introduced at a price point that
enabled a whole bunch of new products. otherwise it was a weird little uP with
an odd somewhat limiting instruction set.
------
BillBohan
I'd go with the Z80. Otherwise you might end up spending a lot of time
figuring out how to do something that could be done with one or two Z80
instructions.
------
nanis
Z80. I found it so much easier to program (while hand-assembling using a
printed opcode table) back in the 80s. Also, ZX Spectrum all the way ;-)
~~~
stevekemp
I also got started writing assembly by looking up opcodes in the back of the
orange-book which came bundled with my 48k Spectrum. Writing programs on
paper, and filling in the offsets for (relative) jumps once complete.
Happily the format of z80 and Intel assembly were very similar, so I didn't
find it hard to move to PC-stuff when I arrived at university. (Not a surprise
given where the Zilog developers came from.)
Z80 was the first assembly language I wrote in, and even if I mostly just
hacked games for infinite lives I had a lot of fun doing so. Cracking
protections on tape-based games was a challenge without the internet, but the
lessons learned eventually applied to PC-stuff when I discovered +fravia.
(Though we don't talk about that kind of thing any more ;)
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Man, all of us 2000s kids really missed out on this sort of thing. It was hard
to get into programming, much less assembler: nobody even knew how.
I eventually picked up a "For Dummies" book that taught be the basics, and
worked my way up from there. First Python, then a touch of Ruby, and then some
Scheme, and a bit of C. I picked up shell and Unix along the way.
------
BraveNewCurency
> 6502 or Z80?
It really depends on what you want.
The Z80 is more "corporate". There were lots of embedded systems built with a
Z80 at the heart. People used it to get a lot of stuff DONE.
6502 is more of a hackable computer. Because it was used in the Apple ][,
there were lots of people trying lots of strange experiments. Some were
incredibly good, years ahead of their time. There are games in 64K that were
more fun than most bloated multi-GB games on consoles today.
This dichotomy exists to this day. (Search "Visual Z80" vs "Visual 6502" and
compare the depth of understanding and/or passion.)
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Yeah, the modern 6502 community is way more active than the Z80 community
(which is kept afloat by GG, MS, GB/CGB, and Speccy hackers. OTOH, they have
better tools: give me sdcc or WLA DX over cc65 or xa any day (and yes, WLA
works with either chip, but it came from the GB/GG community, and those were
the first chips it supported)).
I'm thinking of starting with the Z80 if I build an SBC, though: It may not be
as cool, or popular, or have as elegant in instruction set, but it's a heck of
a lot easier to program (especially for a novice asm programmer like me).
------
cweagans
Z80. Mainly because there are still some interesting devices that you can have
some fun with that still use them: Gameboy & TI-83 calculators.
~~~
eb0la
Amstrad and Spectrum personal computers also had Z80 inside.
I remember struggling with LDIR/LDDR instructions with Amsost devpac
assembler...
Btw. We called that machine code programming back in the 80s.
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Really? many commenters here are talking about actually entering raw hex (and
calculating branch offsets by hand (!)).
~~~
eb0la
In my case the pain pointi was loading the assembler from tape drive for about
5 minutes.
Fortunately the assembler did the offset calculation for me.
If you coded something in basic with some machine code, you had to type a lot
of DATA statements in decimal or hex. This was then read and POKE'd in memory
and CALLed from basic.
Quite tedious.
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Yeah, but a lot of people actually didn't have assemblers at the time.
------
johnnycarcin
I wish I could give 100 votes (as I get downvotes ha) to this ask! I love
hearing old "war stories".
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Thanks. ;-)
------
caseymarquis
Don't have any experience with the 6502, but I was able to pick up z80
assembly syntax pretty easily. Very user friendly in my opinion, but I've met
people who swear it's terrible and awkward in comparison to their preferred
instruction set, so ymmv.
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Compared to the 6809 or the m68k, it's awkward as all hell. Compared to the
6502, it's still awkward.
Comparing Z80 assembler to 6502 assembler is like comparing CL to Scheme. The
Z80 gets some things Right that the 6502 doesn't, but the 6502 does the Right
Thing more often, and is very elegant and minimal. However, the Z80 has a ton
of useful building blocks that the 6502 sacrifices to keep that elegance.
I prefer Scheme to CL, but I think I like Z80 better than 6502. Go figure...
~~~
caseymarquis
I'm working on likely the last product we'll ever make with z80 based
assembly, so hopefully I'll be trying some alternatives in the next year or
so. Thanks for the comparison.
~~~
qwertyuiop924
Huh, really? What's the product?
------
networked
A highly relevant older story and discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763274](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763274).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is there any fan/body cooling hacks or gadgets you know? - mc_hammer
Is there any body cooling/fan hacks or gadgets you know?<p>2016, 1:30 am, its like 85 degrees in my hotel room.<p>is there any way to cool off or any small portable fan i can buy for travel that will cool me somewhat better than a tiny portable fan? or a lifehack? or a way to build a sweet ass cooling system for cheap?
======
TurnipTheBeet
Some folks at MIT developed a "body heatsink" a few years back.
[http://www.wired.com/2013/10/an-ingenious-wristband-that-
kee...](http://www.wired.com/2013/10/an-ingenious-wristband-that-keeps-your-
body-at-the-perfect-temperature-no-ac-required/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Developers guide to Garage48 hackatron - gryner
http://martingryner.com/developers-guide-to-garage48-hackatron/
======
webjuice
nice!!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Which code review tool do you use in your project/startup? - symbolepro
e.g. Codacy, CodeClimate, or some other tool (reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tools_for_code_review)<p>Also tell what do you like/dislike about that tool?
And how many people are there in your team who use the tool?
======
korzonek
To be fully open and honest I'm one of the founders of
[https://codebeat.co](https://codebeat.co).
codebeat is an automated code review for the web and mobile.
What languages do you use in your project?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
After 36 years as a paid product, the Micro-Cap Circuit Simulator is now free - lightlyused
http://www.spectrum-soft.com/download/download.shtm
======
garganzol
The website says that the company was closed.
Does anyone have an insight on why Spectrum Software is now closed?
P.S. The man behind the company, Andy Thompson, seems to be an excessively
humble person. He left a lot of details in the mist. However, all these
details are priceless to us mere humans. Memoirs? A blog? 39 years in business
is not a small feat.
~~~
rubidium
Perhaps his humility is the most important lesson to learn, esp. in the
dominant culture of tech today.
~~~
CoolGuySteve
And maybe the true payments were the friends he made along the way...
There needs to be a name for this kind of dead end aphorism thinking.
~~~
justwalt
Cliche? Cheese?
“The true payments,” haha.
------
nrclark
This is very exciting! Especially the SPICE model library. Microcap's
libraries have lots of SPICE models that I haven't seen anywhere else. Being
able to grab them will be awesome, even if I wind up using them with LTSPICE.
~~~
willis936
I’m not familiar with microcap, but I am familiar with LTSpice. If they’re
both free SPICE GUIs, surely microcap must be better than LTSpice. I can’t
imagine any interface worse than LTSpice.
~~~
madengr
More than just GUIs, rather SPICE compatible simulators. LTSpice has macro
models for most LT parts, that would not be compatible with MC. Likewise MC
probably has models that are not compatible with LTSpice.
Now I wish LTSpice would take MC GUI and features, and implement it with their
simulator. They should have bought it.
------
lsiebert
I really hope someone mirrors this on github or something, because there is no
guarantee that a website for a closed company will be around for any length of
time.
I lost some important records because yahoo shut down it's group archive last
year (and banned the archive team from saving stuff wtf), and it's been on my
mind lately.
~~~
betamaxthetape
We (ArchiveTeam) are still trying to archive portions of Yahoo Groups (our
methods have changed a bit since Yahoo turned off the web archive in December,
but the data isn't deleted until Jan 31).
What's the name of the group?
------
macintux
40 years isn’t bad for a small software shop. I hope Mr. Thompson is satisfied
with how things turned out.
Anyone here use the software?
~~~
madengr
I used this in 1991 as an EE undergrad. I initially used it on my 8086, 4.77
MHz XT. It took several minutes to simulate a simple common emitter amp. I
don’t remember if I had an 8087 FPU.
I then bought a 486DX, 50 MHz and the same simulation was finished before the
mouse button lifted.
Fun times. Microcap was really cool at the time as it was the only GUI based
SPICE, and the student version was under $50.
Nowadays I use LTSpice specifically since LT makes good switching regulators,
and only develops those models for LTSpice. Otherwise I use Microwave Office.
MC still looks much more polished than LTSpice, at least the GUI. Schematic
entry in LTSpice is still abysmal.
~~~
m0xte
Yes also LTspice has some horrible clunk and bugs in it.
------
gowld
How does this compare to modern circuit simulators?
[https://www.tinkercad.com/](https://www.tinkercad.com/) (Web)
[http://www.virtualbreadboard.com/](http://www.virtualbreadboard.com/)
(Windows)
~~~
madengr
It doesn’t. Those are not professional level simulators.
MC is a modern simulator, and professional level. I assume the guy is
retiring. You are not going to be simulating large ICs, but it’s still plenty
good for other stuff.
------
emmanueloga_
There's so pretty much seemingly unique proprietary software. A while ago I
found this awesome logic minimizer called "logic Friday". [1] I don't think
there's a free or open source version of a tool like this.
I have an idea that the "espresso" algorithm could be used to minimize not
only electronic circuits but general boolean expressions for any programming
language... I think it would do for a useful refactoring tool.
1:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20131022051516/http://www.sontra...](https://web.archive.org/web/20131022051516/http://www.sontrak.com/screenshots.html)
~~~
Gracana
I like Helmut Neemann's _Digital_ :
[https://github.com/hneemann/Digital](https://github.com/hneemann/Digital)
It simulates logic, supports automated testing, simulates and analyses
combinatorial and sequential logic, comes with a large library of components
(generic stuff, specific 7400 logic, displays and memories, etc), it can
output VHDL or Verilog, and it can export JEDEC files for GALs.
~~~
emmanueloga_
Looks great, I'll give it a try! Looks like it implements a different
minimization algorithm [1].
1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine%E2%80%93McCluskey_algori...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quine%E2%80%93McCluskey_algorithm)
~~~
TimTheTinker
Quine McCluskey is equivalent to using Karnaugh maps. Both are basic digital
logic minimization workflows, and are taught in any course covering digital
logic or CS-focused discrete math.
------
peter_retief
I have never heard of this, is it appropriate to ask if anyone could describe
it in one sentence?
~~~
scaryclam
It's software for simulating circuits.
~~~
peter_retief
At the moment I use Linux (Didn't see any Linux ports?) with ngSpice, I
haven't found ngSpice that useful though
~~~
forgotpwd16
Micro-Cap is Windows-only software (it runs on Linux via Wine though) and
perhaps more accessible than your current (which probably is "make circuits
somewhere, generate netlist, simulate with ngspice, analyze somewhere else")
workflow as it has an integrated schematic editor. The most powerful Linux
alternative to Micro-Cap et al is probably KiCad.
~~~
peter_retief
Thanks, I will stick to KiCad and ngspice (when I need it) I am a hobbyist and
dont have complicated needs. Not a fan of Wine.
------
forgotpwd16
_Free as in beer._ It will have been ever better if it had been released as
free software.
------
scrumper
Is this good for analog stuff, at least as effective as LTSpice?
I've been using the latter on a Mac for simulating vacuum tube (UK: valve)
circuits with some success and a very large amount of frustration. I would
love something a little less actively user-hostile...
~~~
compumike
What makes LTSpice seem so "actively user-hostile" to you?
(Founder of [https://www.circuitlab.com/](https://www.circuitlab.com/) (YC
W13), an analog circuit simulator that many universities have now started
using.)
~~~
scrumper
I didn't grow up with it, so coming at it from a perspective of someone who's
gotten used to modern software, it's remarkably hard to learn.
The interface is weird. Placement of components isn't so bad but when you want
to do stuff like move them or rotate, you fall into this strange mode system
that's unlike any other software I've ever used.
Including models is done by writing arcane text commands on the diagram. And
also by setting parameters in a hidden window on the component diagram itself.
Models != visual components.
Sometimes I have to set the model designator for a component in the UI twice
before it'll "take". That's hostile!
Finickity pin alignment on custom/3rd party components sometimes leads to open
circuits when they look closed.
The parameter/settings windows are cryptic.
The wire drawing tool is really nice though.
It's obviously better than writing a setlist in TextEdit but I've found the
learning curve very steep, with all the underlying complexity of Spice
exposed. The fairly prehistoric interface paradigm that means that any muscle
memory and expectations from using any other graphical software just don't
help. In fact, they hurt.
I tried your thing when I was looking for circuit design software. I liked it.
It didn't have any vacuum tube models at the time (not that I blame you, it's
niche) and so I couldn't use it for what I needed.
~~~
compumike
Those all make sense. Thanks!
~~~
scrumper
Happy to help. I'll keep an eye on Circuitlab too - thanks for the reminder of
that.
------
ngcc_hk
Open source possible?
~~~
fizixer
ngspice
------
modo_mario
Any chance of it becoming FOSS?
------
extra__tofu
Wow, used this extensively in my undergrad. Always used the free version. I
remember occasionally running into the "too many nodes" error. Thanks to the
creator for releasing the full version for free. I'm sure many EE undergrads
will be grateful.
------
znpy
It seems to be working with Wine under GNU/Linux.
I'll try it better when I get home.
------
anonymou2
free as in free beer
------
dang
I pinched the title from
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20495077](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20495077)
since it's more informative. If this is inaccurate, please let us know.
(Submitted title was "Micro-Cap User Downloads – Now Free".)
------
monoideism
I'd love to try it out, but I'm not downloading an executable from an `http`
URL.
Edit: I hope the downvotes are because it supports `https` (just not by
default, thanks to progman32 for correcting me) and not because you think that
not wanting to download an executable over an open connection is an
unreasonable thing.
~~~
onion2k
How is downloading a executable over https safer? It mitigates man-in-the-
middle attacks that could modify the compressed artefact on the fly, but
that's possibly the least likely attack on a download imaginable. It's _far_
more likely that an attacker would try to replace the file on the server (that
way they can also change and documentation around the file, like the reported
MD5/SHA hash you might use to check the file is correct). Why would you
happily download that over https?
If you're security conscious enough to not download random executables over
http then you really should be aware that it's 99% as dangerous to download
them over _any_ link.
~~~
blincoln
On most networks, anyone else on the same subnet as your IP can hijack your
connection using ARP spoofing and send you whatever they want if you're
connecting over Http instead of HTTPS. That's usually a lot easier to pull off
than compromising the server and replacing the content there.
~~~
ta999999171
Something to think about for anyone still putting Google and Amazon devices on
the same WiFi network as their phone and other PCs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Made in NY Fellowships for Media Tech Startups - johnnymatson
http://nymediacenter.com/2015/08/apply-for-the-made-in-ny-fellowships/
======
johnnymatson
The Made in NY Media Center by IFP partnered with The Mayor’s Office of Media
and Entertainment to offer TEN one-year Made in NY Fellowships to NYC based
individuals, small businesses, and non-profit organizations from varied Media
+ Tech backgrounds in order to recognize that different experiences,
perspectives, and cultures are critical to advancements in innovation and
creativity.
Made in NY Fellows will receive a 12 month Incubator Membership at the Made in
NY Media Center by IFP, mentorship by industry leaders and knowledgeable IFP
staff, access to IFP classes, networking events, facilities and more.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Pentagon’s Bottomless Money Pit - joveian
https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/pentagon-budget-mystery-807276/
======
avinium
Incredibly illuminating. I'm not an American, but anyone who decries
government waste should be forced to read it.
Sure, money gets wasted on benefits programs and other government departments.
But - if the article is true - these are _dwarfed_ by the absolutely galactic
amounts of money that seemingly disappear into the US military black hole. The
amounts are staggering. Any discussion about government waste which does not
include wasted defence spending is intellectually hypocritical.
Given how political it is, the problem won't be easily solved. But surely this
is the type of challenge that has a technical solution (and no - a military-
wide ERP does _not_ qualify). I guess there were some vaguely promising ideas
around blockchain-based solutions; presumably these died on the vine for the
same political reasons that shared ERP systems wouldn't work - the solution
can't assume cooperation between branches/departments.
------
nwrk
A must read!
"In the first, the Air Force accidentally loaded six nuclear weapons in a B-52
and flew them across the country, unbeknownst to the crew. In the other, the
services sent nuclear nose cones by mistake to Taiwan, which had asked for
helicopter batteries."
"“What kind of an organization,” Andy asks, “doesn’t keep track of $20 billion
in inventory?”
------
cascom
On the one hand this is appalling. However, if I A. wanted to obscure the the
size shape and scale of covert programs, and B. Had little faith in the
ability to secure such a spralling inventory system for adversaries, this
might be the solution
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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