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How a Dubious Forensic Science Spread Like a Virus - shawndumas
https://features.propublica.org/blood-spatter-analysis/herbert-macdonell-forensic-evidence-judges-and-courts/
======
Cpoll
See also: The dubious accuracy of fingerprint analysis, errors and
contamination in DNA analysis, and the fortune telling that is criminal
profiling ([https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/11/12/dangerous-
mind...](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/11/12/dangerous-minds)).
------
intopieces
These kinds of issues seem to crop up so often that it really makes me doubt
the virtue of jury trials. People aren’t experts, so they can easily be fooled
by a good show. Wouldn’t it make more sense to have trials with 3 judges who
must agree to convict?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
China’s Three Gorges Dam faces severe flooding as Yangtze overflows [video] - throwaway888abc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp74CTV5m9g
======
mytailorisrich
The Yangtze is notorious for overflowing and the geography does not help. If
you visit towns along its course you are struck by the huge safety margin
between the level of the water (on a normal day) and the height of the first
buildings, and with the size of the protective dikes.
I'm sure that this has been considered when they built the Dam.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Readability and Naming Things - princeverma
http://www.codesimplicity.com/post/readability-and-naming-things/
======
akkartik
My favorite aesthetic on naming things is to try to avoid it. Evidence that
this is on the right track:
\- Refactoring is often for eliminating temporaries, or for segregating them
into their own call.
\- A more functional style leads to fewer intermediate variables.
This isn't a rule, or a metric to be optimized to the exclusion of all else.
Often the way to clean up code is to get rid of names that don't help you
read, coalescing code blobs, until new names occur to you. Then you tease out
code blobs again.
~~~
Peaker
Names are great places to put documentation. Documentation in comments isn't
as likely to stay up-to-date.
If your names are merely for binding (e.g: f(x) = .. x ..) and don't
contribute much, then getting rid of them can be helpful. In Haskell, you can
use "points-free" style to get rid of names like that. For example, you can
replace:
f x = 1 + 2 * x
With:
f = (1+) . (2*)
~~~
joe_the_user
That's a nice simple explanation of the points-free style, thanks!
But still, I don't feel like this approach would become useful unless/until
you reached the point that it could condense a two-line formula into one line
(ei, five or six applications further).
I strong suspect that in that case you'd have the kind of formula you only
grasp at a glance after you'd working with it intensively for a while.
And this gets into the realm of "write only code" - code too compressed for
anyone but it's original author to approach.
------
thinkingeric
I use an additional guideline: things that are created near where they are
used can be abbreviated more than something that is created 'far away'.
~~~
jacquesm
That's a good rule. I usually declare variables as close to their intended
scope of use as I can get them, so for instance, right inside the block where
the variable is going to be used.
The temptation then becomes to re-use the name but I avoid that to make it
easier to see which declaration belongs to which variable.
Declaring all the variables at the top of a function was a pretty hard to
break habit.
~~~
jonprins
I tend to do the same thing. Except, since JavaScript doesn't have block
scope, it all ends up at the top of the function.
Which is much more preferable than scattered around the function. Especially
due to hoisting[1].
My functions typically go in the order of:
declare variables; declare any local functions if necessary (most of the time
these eventually get refactored out to somewhere else, because they tend to be
one-off utility functions that can be abstracted); do stuff; return value.
1\. [http://www.adequatelygood.com/2010/2/JavaScript-Scoping-
and-...](http://www.adequatelygood.com/2010/2/JavaScript-Scoping-and-Hoisting)
------
jhrobert
To
if (cond) {
or not to
if( cond ){
That is the question.
I agree that spacing matters a lot. Another interesting idea is that long
lines are less readable and that whatever is at the end of a line is less
readable than what is at the beginning.
To
a = something_long +
something_else
or not to
a = something_long
+ something_else
That is another question.
Style matters, develop your own.
~~~
niccl
In the second example, I find it depends on the language. In general I prefer
the top version, but in SQL and some other languages I will usually use the
second. That's because I might well want to comment out part of the statement.
For example: select col_1 \-- , col_2 , col_3 from the_table ; With this
approach (the OP's second approach), I can easily comment out a whole line and
the rest of the statement will be syntactically correct. The alternative means
having to chase around to find the trailing comma (or 'and', or whatever).
But maybe it really only matters because of my recent 'suck it and see'
approach to SQL, where I've been exploring an unknown database, trying to find
the queries that work...
------
giberson
One subtle spacing issue I find quite annoying that I run into a lot is
leading tabs before variable names after type definition.
IE:
int anInt = 7;
String aString = "My string value";
ClassName aClass = new ClassName();
In this example it's not the bad because the typedefs are few, trivial and
short and there is actually a leader between the words (.). However, in real
code where you have longer class names used in tandem with standard types like
int or String as well has some times a dozen definitions--suddenly you wish
you had a ruler you can put on the screen.
int anInt = 7;
Service_Ups Svc = new Service_Ups();
ClassNamesCanGetLong variableNamesToo = new ClassNamesCanGetLong();
~~~
joe_the_user
Any kind of fancy formatting is bad because it takes effort to keep it
maintained and so it creates a reluctance to change that code. It also creates
an illusion of correctness through looking good.
~~~
jacquesm
There are situations where it really helps though. If you have a series of
operations that are unique enough not to be handled by a loop but that change
in subtle ways making the changes stand out is an easy way to verify that
you're doing it right.
------
juddlyon
Naming things is surprisingly difficult - we all have our own mental models.
This is an area where pair programming helps. "What should we call this?"
Side note: there's a typo in sentence one, paragraph two: "changnig" =>
"changing"
~~~
Natsu
If we're going for side notes, am I the only one who noticed that his code
would print "z is10"? I even spent a while trying to figure out if he was
being ironic somehow, after all that talk about spacing....
------
petervandijck
Good article: things that are complex should have long names, things that are
simple should have short names. Like the approach.
~~~
jacquesm
Things that have limited scope can usually get away with short names as well,
even in a slightly more complicated context.
But since the punch card went out of fashion a while ago and bits are nearly
free (screen width otoh is not) it doesn't hurt to name all your variables
descriptively.
A global variable named 'i' is likely going to get you i trouble, then again,
jQuery does most of it's magic using a single global that doesn't even have a
name...
~~~
joe_the_user
"But since the punch card went out of fashion a while ago and bits are nearly
free (screen width otoh is not) it doesn't hurt to name all your variables
descriptively."
The bits are free but there's still a mental cost to reading them.
I once rigorously used long-names for _everything_. But now, I'm working on an
algorithm where the operations are what matter, short names actually help me
grasp everything at once. As you say, these would be short local variable.
Having i, j, k be the standard indexing variable can make some situations
clearer.
~~~
jacquesm
Sure, that's fine, those are pretty close to universal.
It would actually be less readable if you suddenly started to use long names
for loop variables and such.
------
bguthrie
This article rehashes similar points to those raised by Uncle Bob in _Clean
Code_. I recommend reading that (much more comprehensive) book for anyone
who's interested in the principles behind good code--he makes all these
recommendations and more.
------
jsdalton
Reminds me of the saying (apparently attributed to Claude Debussy), "Music is
the space between the notes."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Companies are using webcams to monitor employees working from home - joeyespo
https://www.businessinsider.com/work-from-home-sneek-webcam-picture-5-minutes-monitor-video-2020-3
======
gabrielsroka
Do companies let employees know about this? What if you put a camera cover on?
I know there's no expectation of privacy at work, but this is my home. I don't
want your camera photographing my home every 5 minutes.
~~~
dhanvantharim1
Atleast these companies install the software on company laptops. I was asked
to install a much more invasive software on my personal laptops (They wanted
me as consultant) which took screenshots, logs keystrokes and pictures every 5
minutes. Needless to say I declined but clearly there are people working for
the said company who are fine with this level of invasive tools.
------
syshum
That would be hard pass for me, even if I had to live in a box under the
bridge no way I am agreeing to that for any level of income....
> there's also lots of teams out there who are good friends
nope, not even for my life long friends who pretty much know everything
embarrassing about be would I would to have this service
~~~
smabie
You wouldn't use sneek if I paid you a billion a year? Really?
------
hiharryhere
Sneek sounds like Swiggle ([https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/11/sqwiggle-makes-
working-rem...](https://techcrunch.com/2013/04/11/sqwiggle-makes-working-
remotely-less-lonely-more-awesome/))
I quite liked it back in the day. Made it easy to know if a colleague was
around to answer a chat without hassling them too much, the remote equivalent
of standing up to see if they’re at their desk or off to lunch.
Culture is everything. This article makes it sound like it’s pure spyware. If
your boss is monitoring it constantly and mandates you have it on and are
visible, sure that’s bad. For us it was a team decision and we all liked the
benefits of seeing each other.
~~~
phibz
The difference is if you stand up in an office I can probably hear you and
have some awareness of being looked at. However with this you can see my face
without me knowing you're looking.
I've been on and managed remote teams. The metric of productivity is if the
work is being done, not if you're at your desk staring at your screen.
There are lots of other ways to keep up with a team of "friends". Chat, email,
phone calls, and arranged meetings all work great.
------
Havoc
Sellotape & piece of paper does wonders
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Cisco's Layoffs Are Just the Tip of the Spear for Tech - eande
http://fortune.com/2016/08/18/expect-more-tech-layoffs/
======
niftich
This "analysis" isn't much of one, and makes little sense.
I get that the move to the cloud lessens the demand for datacenter hardware by
smaller players who run datacenters for themselves. But it doesn't depress the
demand for hardware on behalf of vendors who equip datacenters and operate
cloud platforms and the like.
Therefore, I'd fully expect positions like sales and support to decline, but
at the end of the day, hardware still has to get built, and performance
improvements and innovations still have to happen; just that the final
operator will be Amazon, Google, and Microsoft, not RandomMediumBigCorp. So
what gives?
------
bifrost
The more connected our offices are, the more equipment we need for them to
ensure things work correctly. Cisco laying off folks doesn't really disturb
me, it just points at how bloated Cisco is.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How do you find a good progra... uhh.. I mean lawyer? - diminium
Quite a lot of comments dealing with company formation or IP says "find a good lawyer".<p>If finding a good lawyer is anything like finding a good programmer, how do you find a good lawyer?<p>In this case, your the pointy haired boss who doesn't know anything about law.
======
philiphodgen
I'm a lawyer. A highly specialized lawyer. I will share what I know about this
question.
1\. This is a problem for me too. Even though I have been doing this for a
long time there are a lot of situations where I am asked for a referral and I
don't know anyone good. Sometimes I don't know anyone at all.
2\. When this occurs the first default thought is "Go to a Juggernaut Law
Factory". All of them claim to have the best people in the world in every
possible specialty. You pay through the nose. You hold your nose and hope that
the work product is adequate. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is astonishingly
good. Sometimes it's embarrassing as hell how badly the work is done. (The
same goes for hiring the Big 4 accounting firms).
3\. If you don't want to go that route, your next job is to identify your
problem as precisely as possible so you can start to find your way down the
referral chain until you find someone you want to hire.
4\. I will make reference to my specialty to give you an example, but in any
area of law the same concepts hold true.
5\. I am an international tax lawyer. I do primarily inbound (foreign money,
companies, and humans entering the United States) work. To find me it is not
sufficient to specify "tax" as your problem. That's like saying "I need some
code" in software land, I'm guessing. You need to be highly specific. "I have
a U.S. company that will sell 50% of itself to a foreign investor. My foreign
investor needs a U.S. tax advisor in order to structure the deal properly, and
I need a U.S. tax advisor to make sure I don't f--- something up for myself."
6\. For me, my next step is to start calling buddies who are lawyers and I ask
them the "who do you know" question. That is easy for me because I know a
bunch of people all over the world in my field of expertise. For you, trying
to hire a specialist, it isn't. So you start with a generalist. A generic tax
person, in my field. If the person has a sense of integrity and this is
something that is beyond them, they will decline to do your work and will
instead say "Call Fred. He does that kind of thing."
7\. Keep dialing. Get a name. Talk to that person. He/she is a statistical
sample of N = 1. My suggestion is that you pay some money here. Don't get free
advice. I might chat with you for a few minutes but if you're serious you're
going to sit down and talk serious stuff for money.
8\. I commend an interesting article to you, which I believe I found via HN
yesterday or the day before.
<http://www.datagenetics.com/blog/december32012/index.html> talks about "The
Secretary Puzzle" and how you don't need a large sample set in order to choose
the right person.
9\. What you're going to take away from that first meeting is an expert's
sense of what your problem is. DO NOT TRY TO GET AN ANSWER TO THE PROBLEM.
Just get the expert's idea of how the problem is defined. Also get some of the
insider technical jargon used to describe the problem. Words. Laws. Etc.
10\. From here on you are going to find more people. You are armed with better
information. Go ask Mr. Duck D. Go or someone else, using the jargon you have
now learned. See what that turns up. Keep dialing. Repeat your quest by
starting with a generalist and focusing in until you hit a specialist.
11\. Once you have talked to two or three people, pick the person who gave you
the best vibe. Specifically: did you understand what this person said when
he/she talked to you? Was this person a complete asshat? Is this person
accessible?
12\. Do not make your decision on price. Long ago when my hourly rate was $400
per hour, a client hired me and said "Do you know why I hire $400/hour lawyers
instead of $200/hour lawyers? Because $400/hour lawyers get things done."
13\. I'm not saying that you should hire without regard to price. I'm saying
it is a cost/benefit decision. Most people approach hiring a lawyer as a pure
cost decision. This is one of our screening metrics for who we take on as
customers (or not). If people can't see the benefit from hiring our firm, then
we don't want them. And if we can't see the benefit we can give -- and if we
can't articulate that clearly -- then we shouldn't take the job.
14\. Pro tip. For tax, at least, but I think in other areas too -- look to see
who is doing a lot of lecturing and writing. Look at the courses and seminars
on offer at www.calcpa.org, for instance, if you're interested in accounting
people in particular fields. Who is talking about your problem? (Shameless
plug: I love giving presentations on international tax topics and do a lot of
it.)
That's it. I think your analogy to finding a good programmer is apt. I'm
trying to hire a lawyer right now to work for me. I face the same problem --
how do I know that this person is competent? Will I be able to work side by
side with him/her?
/Phil.
~~~
diminium
What do you suggest to people who need a good lawyer bug have a low budget?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Blanket, an attempt at an anonymous, secure, trusted messaging app - josecastillo
https://github.com/josecastillo/blanket
======
waynerad
Does it have to use QR Codes? Any more usable way of exchanging keys? NFC?
~~~
josecastillo
You could use NFC, sure; QR codes just seemed more accessible since every
phone has a camera nowadays. But it's just 70-80 bytes you need to exchange,
any method of moving those bytes would work.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Open Guide to AWS CDK - kevinslin
https://github.com/kevinslin/open-cdk
======
kevinslin
author here - been working with the framework for the better part of the year
and have had repeated discussions about conventions and best practices. this
guide is a collection of learnings thus far. feedback and contributions
welcome :)
[https://github.com/kevinslin/open-cdk](https://github.com/kevinslin/open-cdk)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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A chatterbot using reservoir computing to process and generate natural language. - neur0mancer
Reserbot is a small project of a chatterbot using reservoir computing to process and generate natural language.<p>This project is looking for colaboration or discussion.<p>Link: https://github.com/neuromancer/reserbot<p>Also, some theoretical and technical documents are in the wiki (https://github.com/neuromancer/reserbot/wiki)<p>Thanks!
======
RiderOfGiraffes
Clickables:
<https://github.com/neuromancer/reserbot>
<https://github.com/neuromancer/reserbot/wiki>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ex-chair of FCC broadband committee gets five years in prison for fraud - howard941
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2019/06/ajit-pais-ex-advisor-gets-five-years-in-prison-for-lying-to-investors/
======
btown
Wow, pretty blatant stuff here. Forged signatures! But some of this could have
been prevented. For instance, one of the defrauded equity investors was
apparently promised a guaranteed 8% annual return, and was asked to wire money
in advance of deal documentation [0]... both of which should have immediately
been red flags.
Raw press release here. [1]
[0] Jensen complaint: [https://s3.amazonaws.com/arc-wordpress-client-
uploads/adn/wp...](https://s3.amazonaws.com/arc-wordpress-client-
uploads/adn/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/27081106/03.0-Amended-
Complaint-11-22-17.pdf)
[1] [https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-ceo-alaska-
based...](https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/former-ceo-alaska-based-fiber-
optic-cable-company-sentenced-5-years-prison-defrauding)
~~~
khawkins
This certainly begs the question as to whether she sought out the FCC position
in hopes of directing Federal money towards projects like hers. It seems like
she was desperate to cover up her fraud for 2 years, and especially around the
time she took her post in the FCC.
~~~
peterwwillis
[https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16137/begs-
the-q...](https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16137/begs-the-question-
or-raises-the-question#16138)
~~~
scott_s
We lost. You'll feel better if you give up, too.
~~~
peterwwillis
Oh I'm not trying to feel better, I'm trying to help people understand why
they say the things they say. And a lot of people don't know about rhetoric.
~~~
scott_s
I don't think what you linked has anything to do with _why_. The why is
straight-forward: what the phrase means in formal logic is not intuitive, and
how people use the phrase colloquially is intuitive.
------
midnitewarrior
I wonder how many years Ajit Pai will get when it's his turn?
~~~
zaroth
I always find its best not to defame someone, no matter how much you might
dislike them or their policies, unless you have a specific fact you want to
cite?
~~~
midnitewarrior
How about his willful undermining of the integrity of the public comment
process for the Net Neutrality regulations for starters?
He got his way aside by refusing to investigate the tens of thousands of fake
comments supporting the repeal of Net Neutrality regulations.
~~~
jjeaff
Considering that the comments are completely useless for anything except to
let the commissioner know what the public opinion is on a topic, it's not like
he actually changed any outcomes by not investigating. The comments aren't
votes.
~~~
trhway
Russian election meddling was mainly fake comments/posts on FB, Twitter, etc.
Similarly to Pai, the current administration refuses to investigate those fake
comments too. Looks like a trend :)
------
sunkensheep
Astounds me how anti-human organizations such as ALEC are granted such
influence by Republican and Democrat alike in the USA. The fraud on the other
hand, doesn't surprise me. Despite their power, these regulatory institutions
seem more captured by vested interests and partisan politics than the public
good they should be providing.
~~~
pwodhouse
ALEC is a conservative organization with 98% Republican membership.
~~~
ncmncm
That seems like a contradiction. I cannot think of any conservative policies
advanced lately by the Republican leadership.
~~~
bayareanative
No, it's not. Conservative corporate policies desire restoration of a
regressive, apartheid theocracy... think Clarence Thomas and Scalia.
~~~
ncmncm
That is hardly a conservative goal; it is radically reactionary. Actually
conservative policies would resist change, not seek it out.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: German considering hiring a US designer (remote), got some questions - codesuela
Hey HN,
I am considering hiring a US based freelance designer and have some questions about that:<p>1) I am willing to pay a reasonable but not excessive amount so I think wont be able to find someone from LA or NYC due to the cost of living there, which alternative cities/states would you suggest?<p>2) Where would you suggest I start looking? Elance, Odesk, 99 designs and designcrowd seem to be populated by Indian people providing discount services. As I am not looking for cheap but reasonably priced and skilled labor which is why I am extending my search to the US.<p>3) What would be a reasonable rate for remote work for a US based designer outside of the Bay area and NYC?<p>Any answers would be much appreciated.
======
damoncali
1) The city does not matter. At all. Go by price and portfolio quality. Don't
assume that designers in NYC and SF will automatically charge more. I used to
live in a market where developers are in demand (Austin) and now I don't
(Omaha). Guess what? My rates have gone up recently.
2) I would use google to search for "[US tech city] web designer" and browse
portfolios online. Where [US tech city] is SF, Austin, Boston, NYC, Denver,
LA, Portland, Seattle - it really doesn't matter - just pick a big city
starting with the above.
I know some folks who have had some unbelievably good luck (repeatedly) using
Odesk, even with US based designers. $300 for a website design kind of luck.
There is a bit of a hassle in finding the good, cheap designers, but at $300,
you can afford to miss a few times.
3) In my experience designers are all over the map in terms of rate, and rate
is not a good indicator of quality. I've seen decent work from $25-125/hour or
more, while most seem to settle around $85/hour. Don't be afraid of fixed
price. It _may_ cost more, but at least you know. Typically, it seems a basic
web design - an overall theme (3 to 4 pages) will cost between $1,000 and
$3,000.
4) Do not hire an agency. They are one of two things - a) very expensive b)
very expensive and very bad.
The bottom line is to ask around for referrals, and review their work. I've
yet to meet a designer who can come up with a wide variety of styles that look
good. Usually, their work has a distinct feel to it (like an artist) and
you're going to be stuck with that, so you better do your homework and like
it.
And finally, my email is in my profile - I can recommend a good one in Austin.
------
mjn
On question #2, HN has a monthly freelancer thread:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5304173>
If you're willing to put in some effort to pursue an approach with low
signal/noise-ratio, you could pick some random cities and post ads in
Craigslist's gigs section, e.g. <http://chicago.craigslist.org/web/>. That
will tend to get you a lot of small-time freelancers of varying quality, many
of them art-school students and similar. If that's what you want you can get
some great deals (at the cost of a lot of time spent filtering).
If you're looking for more established design firms, rather than Craigslist
you might just try web searches with a city name appended, for stuff like [st.
louis web design firm]. Will also require a bit of filtering to find something
you like, but from a different starting pool.
Rates _really_ vary, partly depending on what you mean by design. More
technical designers who also do some coding tend to cost more, for example.
Designers who have a good network and high visibility cost a lot more,
especially anyone whose portfolio includes big-name web properties. Since the
discovery problem is quite difficult (as you seem to be noticing), the
price/quality curve is imo very inconsistent, with some great designers
working cheaply because they don't have good networks or marketing, and some
not-so-great ones charging a lot, because they're able to bring in so much
work that they can get away with it.
------
dynabros
Dribbble.com would be a good starting point for finding a decent designer
------
hbg
Check your email @ lavabit.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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5 Top reasons why “webmasters” are doing Google’s dirty job - theoswan
http://www.ipsojobs.com/blog/2008/02/18/5-top-reasons-why-webmasters-are-doing-googles-dirty-job/
======
airhadoken
So wait, webmasters are working for Google because... Google works for them?
~~~
wmf
Maybe this post came from Soviet Russia.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Does your startup use MSFT technology? - bootload
======
bootload
_'... One thing that causes me more alarm, is that I see a lot of startups
using MSFT technology these days. See, startups give you early warnings on
trends of what people use. Something is going here. Startups are the early
warning signs of on-coming floods. ...'_
Added this after reading this article
(<http://marcf.blogspot.com/2007/05/microsofts-long-demise.html> ) from this
thread (<http://news.ycombinator.com/comments?id=214250> )
I thought the costs alone would have made this prohibitive? Unless of course
your idea involves MS apps.
~~~
nostrademons
I'm not seeing it, unless your app _has to_ use Microsoft software (eg. shell
extensions, Winsock LSPs, IE toolbars). The small college-kids-in-a-garage
startups I know tend to use Python or Ruby (or occasionally PHP). The better-
funded enterprise startups tend to use Java. Once in a while you'll see
someone using .NET, but it's usually because they _need_ to do a desktop
client.
~~~
bootload
_'... small college-kids-in-a-garage startups I know tend to use Python or
Ruby (or occasionally PHP). The better-funded enterprise startups tend to use
Java ...'_
Thats pretty much what I would have thought. Though I did run across a post
here where someone wanted to work with an exclusive MS toolset. Seems using MS
tools these days is a bit like trying to find people who remember "Get Smart"
- you just get blank stares.
~~~
gibsonf1
" _who remember "Get Smart"_ "
That was a seriously funny show!
------
SwellJoe
I haven't seen a web application built with Microsoft tools since the first
boom. But, I'm probably just not hanging out with the folks that think that
way. They must exist...right?
It just seems so counter-productive. The tools in the Open Source world are
just so much better, and so much more widely varied. One of my consulting gigs
involved lots of MS ware (desktop apps) a couple of years ago, and I was able
to look at all of the development tools via MSDN. I just don't get the mindset
that leads to Visual Studio and .Net and such.
------
sbraford
That one web-based MS-Word knockoff startup used ASP.Net (no offense intended,
they were the best in the space) - eventually they were bought by Google.
MySpace also uses "MSFT technology".
I'm personally not one to hate. If you can get your rocks off on MS tech, then
so be it. FeedBurner rocks some incredible stuff out in Java, in amazing time.
I personally wouldn't start something in anything but RoR or Python these
days.
------
gibsonf1
Not our startup.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Anna: A KVS for any scale - shalabhc
https://blog.acolyer.org/2018/03/27/anna-a-kvs-for-any-scale/
======
homarp
Earlier discussion
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16551072](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16551072)
------
laurentoget
I could not find any information about plans to release or distribute it. Did
i miss something?
~~~
ofrzeta
"Anna is a prototype and we learned a ton doing it. ... We’re now actively
working on an extended system, codename Bedrock, based on Anna. Bedrock will
provide a hands-off, cost-effective version of this design in the cloud, which
we’ll be open-sourcing and supporting more aggressively."
Not to be confused with another existing database by the same by a company
called Expensify, I guess.
------
truth_seeker
Is Bedrock going to be fully in memory or will also provide disk persistence ?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: A usable, fast Gitlab CLI written in Rust - bradwood
https://gitlab.com/bradwood/git-lab-rust
======
bradwood
I've been using GitLab for a while, and just started learning Rust, so I
thought I'd have a go at putting together a user-centric cli tool for Gitlab
as a personal project. It's still under heavy development, but is now just
about stable and functional enough to use.
Lots of work still to do, not least of which porting to BSD/MacOS, broader API
coverage, and probably some improvements on usability of what's there already.
Feedback and PRs appreciated!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Portugal's anti-euro Left banned from power - andmarios
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/11949701/AEP-Eurozone-crosses-Rubicon-as-Portugals-anti-euro-Left-banned-from-power.html
======
rkwasny
This is serious: "Democracy must take second place to the higher imperative of
euro rules and membership."
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
NSA snooping is hurting U.S. tech companies’ bottom line - Libertatea
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2013/07/25/nsa-snooping-is-hurting-u-s-tech-companies-bottom-line/?tid=rssfeed
======
junto
This doesn't surprise me. I'm hoping that a few non-US companies start to take
advantage of this faux-pas and will look to provide innovative solutions like
their US counterparts.
I'm already actively looking for alternatives to AWS and Rackspace for
clients.
There is a lot of work to do. Companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft and
Rackspace have a pretty impressive hard start in cloud computing. It isn't
just the technicalities of server provisioning and management to achieve, but
trust, billing and customer switching that will be key challenges for European
and Asian providers to achieve.
They now need to capitalise on the NSA debarcle and isolate other areas where
the US cloud provides are failing to deliver. I don't know what those failings
are, but there have to be some!
~~~
malandrew
It's just a matter of time. One of the great thing is that tools like Docker
and Vagrant give you options that allow you to keep your infrastructure
provider agnostic. We mainly lack tools to automate billing issues among
providers.
I wouldn't be surprised if you can eventually migrate your online business
from country to country on a regular basic eventually. e.g. Here's a list of
countries I want to operate in, here's what I'm willing to spend, here's how
long I want to operate continuously in one country for a set amount of time,
and here's how much redundancy I need. From there, you just let the software
perform regular migrations of your business.
------
diafygi
This is probably the most effective way to turn politicians around on the
issue. As sad as it may be, a "jobs vs. security" debate is much more
competitive in politics than "4th amendment vs. security" debate.
The more times you can fit "NSA" and "job-killing" into the same sentence, the
more politicians will start to question it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Exploit broker Zerodium ups the ante with $500k to target Signal and WhatsApp - acconrad
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/08/wanted-weaponized-exploits-that-hack-phones-will-pay-top-dollar/
======
Abishek_Muthian
Not just Signal & WhatsApp,
$500,000 - Messaging Apps RCE + LPE (SMS/MMS, iMessage, Telegram, WhatsApp,
Signal, Facebook, Viber, WeChat) .
Which I guess chat apps with > 250M MAU (except Telegram, which probably is
because of it's high usage rate in Arab countries). Looking at their
programme, they might probably approach the original vendor; but we all know
who would pay hard cash for 0 days ;)
Original Source :
[https://zerodium.com/program.html](https://zerodium.com/program.html)
~~~
jorvi
Strange that they would pay the same money for an iMessage or Viber exploit.
Those have very little market penetration compared to WhatsApp it's 90%+ (!)
~~~
secfirstmd
It's the countries that they are big in that probably make them think this
way.
For example, Viber is very popular in the Middle East, Russia, Africa, India,
parts of Asia, Ukraine, Balkans, some of the 'Stans.
------
weddpros
Say a company buys and sells insider trading information... Would it be legal?
So why is buying/selling 0 days OK?
Both are selling information that _will_ be used wrongly in the wrong hands,
the kind of information you don't want a "broker" to know about, the kind of
information you don't want a broker to find clients for.
And if there's only one potential buyer (the target), they're basically black
mailing 0 days targets: "become a client or... who knows what will happen...
maybe the NSA or hackers will buy it?"
~~~
qeternity
You are confusing two things. Buying/selling "insider info" (i.e. material non
public info) is not illegal. Acting on such info CAN be illegal under certain
circumstances, but even that is super difficult to prove. Why would
buying/selling 0days be any different? It's the usage that determines
legality. Why should buying an exploit to permit jailbreaking be illegal? Or
to permit unlocking a device (presuming local laws allow).
~~~
fauigerzigerk
_> Buying/selling "insider info" (i.e. material non public info) is not
illegal._
I doubt that. If I had non-public information that could materially impact the
price of a company's stock, I would not expect to get away with selling that
information to anonymous buyers via some shady broker.
~~~
qeternity
You should look at some of the recent failed insider trading prosecutions. If
you sell the info and expect someone to trade on it, and thus you are
benefiting from ill-gotten gains, then they MIGHT be able to prove conspiracy.
My point is that if you have MNPI and I pay you for it, and that's the end of
it, well that's not illegal. It may be a civil violation due to NDA or
something, but that's different.
~~~
fauigerzigerk
I can imagine that what you're saying is true if there was no danger to the
public.
But if someone were to trade on the knowledge that a supplier had delivered
faulty airbags to an auto manufacturer without telling that manufacturer, I
doubt this would be looked at kindly by the courts.
But I agree that the metaphor is not ideal. Selling 0day exploits to that
broker is much worse. Any seller would have to have a reasonable expectation
of aiding organised crime or terrorism.
------
mmagin
I wonder if there's a way to use civil legal proceedings to punish these
exploit-trading firms. Maybe class action lawsuit representing victims of
these exploits.
~~~
pizza
The government is gonna shutdown its own favorite means of acquiring 0days?
~~~
mrleiter
Well, be that as it may, but the judiciary is generally independent. Inferring
political meddling in courts is a rather speculative territory.
------
gcp
Firefox/TOR LCE+SBX on Linux: 100k
Chrome LCE+SBX on Linux: 80k
Interesting.
~~~
julianj
Yeah... I recently uncovered a way to bypass the tor browser bundle proxy on
some linux flavors [0]. Unfortunately, The bounty from the tor project isn't
nearly as much[1], but at least I can sleep at night.
[0] [https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-
browser-703-released](https://blog.torproject.org/blog/tor-
browser-703-released)
[1] [https://hackerone.com/torproject](https://hackerone.com/torproject)
~~~
r3bl
Good job!
If it's not a secret, how much did they pay to you? Seems like this could be
considered, at least, a medium severity, and the top bounty they gave so far
is only $500. If you don't wanna disclose that, that's perfectly
understandable. I'm just curious.
~~~
julianj
I haven't received a payment yet actually -- it is still pending.
------
w8rbt
I expect two factor authentication over cellular networks (SMS and voice
callbacks) to be commonly exploited in a year. Orgs really need to force OATH
(HOTP, TOTP) and FIDO (U2F, UAF) and begin transitioning away from cellular
two factor.
~~~
ihattendorf
The problem that I haven't seen a good answer to, is what happens when (not
if) the customer loses their 2nd factor device? If someone loses their phone,
they can still keep their same number and receive an SMS verification on their
new phone. With OATH/FIDO, that won't happen.
------
Spooks
If I was WhatsApp I would offer a larger bounty. If they get the 0 day they
could fix it before it gets into the wrong hands. I would think 500k is a drop
in a bucket for them, and give them good press that they are actively keeping
up with privacy/security of their users
~~~
fauigerzigerk
If I was WhatsApp, I would offer to compensate those who have found the
exploit for their work. If someone else buys the exploit I would sue the
broker for extortion.
~~~
tryingagainbro
_If I was WhatsApp, I would offer to compensate those who have found the
exploit for their work._
Sure, their rate is $1 million an hour :).
I could see the government jump in and pressing charges but the worst thing
Whats-app can do is piss them off.
------
CleaveIt2Beaver
Interestingly, I don't see a payout linked to Zerodium directly. What happens
if someone they do business with decides they can just grab the keys to the
castle directly? I wonder if they'd bargain, or just set another bounty on the
individual or group in question.
------
segmondy
Wish someone will offer a bounty to target Zerodium.
------
tradersam
What a world we live in. I wish humanity made this turn out differently, where
digital privacy was a human right, not something worth $100k.
~~~
bluddy
I'm not sure this isn't a "good thing", to some degree. Companies like Apple
and Google offer rewards for people who find exploits in their software, but
they have little incentive to raise the reward even as the exploits become
more and more rare, and demand more time to find. This may give them the false
impression that there are no more exploits, while in reality they just haven't
incentivized people sufficiently. This company operates on the other side (of
which I don't approve), but by pricing exploits more accurately (via supply
and demand), it forces companies to raise their prices as well to compete.
In other words, this can be seen as part of the free market incentivizing
people and companies to find and patch exploits, or for programmers to just
write safer code in general.
~~~
confounded
Couldn't the same argument be made about a thriving market in ways to break
into your house at night and kill you?
~~~
conanbatt
If your home has 250 mill people using it a month, probably.
~~~
QAPereo
More like... 250m people use a given brand of lock.
~~~
akvadrako
I wouldn't trust a lock that doesn't have a $500K bounty offered for exploits.
~~~
niij
So what do you use at your house? Watching the lock pick village videos from
defcon made me realize that there are no perfect locks.
~~~
akvadrako
I use a cheap lock and don't expect it to hold up against any but the most
lazy attacks. I don't _trust_ it.
| {
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Silicon Valley isn’t just disrupting democracy–it’s replacing it - dougb5
https://qz.com/1092329/mark-zuckerberg-and-elon-musks-quest-to-turn-the-whole-world-into-a-private-utopia-for-silicon-valley/
======
neo4sure
Read it. Don't agree with it. Sounds like the same negative attack that seems
to be coordinated toward the valley. Most of the guys writing these pieces
don't understand exponential growth. We will be going towards the future
faster than they realize. If America doesn't go there China would anyway take
us there. By the way, I don't understand how these guys keep aiming at the
valley while the NRA and Oil industry and walstreet have been so much worse.
| {
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Launch HN: Charityvest (YC S20) – Employee charitable funds and gift matching - Leonidas243
Stephen, Jon, and Ashby here, the co-founders of Charityvest (<a href="https://charityvest.org" rel="nofollow">https://charityvest.org</a>). We created a modern, simple, and affordable way for companies to include charitable giving in their suite of employee benefits.<p>We give employees their own tax-deductible charitable giving fund, like an “HSA for Charity.” They can make contributions into their fund and, from their fund, support any of the 1.4M charities in the US, all on one tax receipt.<p>Using the funds, we enable companies to operate gift matching programs that run on autopilot. Each donation to a charity from an employee is matched automatically by the company in our system.<p>A company can set up a matching gift program and launch giving funds to employees in about 10 minutes of work.<p>Historically, corporate charitable giving matching programs have been administratively painful to operate. Making payments to charities, maintaining tax records, and doing due diligence on charitable compliance is taxing on HR / finance teams. The necessary software to help has historically been quite expensive and not very useful for employees beyond the matching features.<p>This is one example of an observation Stephen made after working for years as a philanthropic consultant. Consumer fintech products aren’t built to make great giving experiences for donors. Instead, they are built for buyers — e.g., nonprofits (fundraising) or corporations (gift matching) — without a ton of consideration for the everyday user experience.<p>A few years back, my wife and I made a commitment to give a portion of our income away every year, and we found it administratively painful to give regularly. The tech that nonprofits typically use hardly inspires generosity — e.g., high fees, poor user flows, and questionable information flow (like tax receipts). Giving platforms try to compensate for poor functionality with bright pictures of happy kids in developing countries, but when the technology is not a good financial experience it puts a damper on things.<p>Charityvest started when I noticed a particular opportunity with donor-advised funds, which are tax-deductible giving funds recognized by the IRS. They are growing quickly (20% CAGR), but mainly among the high-net worth demographic. We believe they are powerful tools. They enable donors to have a giving portfolio all from one place (on one tax receipt) and have full control over their payment information/frequency, etc. Most of all, they enable a donor to split the decisions of committing to give and supporting a specific organization. Excitement about each of these decisions often strikes at different times for donors—particularly those who desire to give on a budget.<p>We believe everyone should have their own charitable giving fund no matter their net worth. We’ve created technology that has democratized donor-advised funds.<p>We also believe good technology should be available for every company, big and small. Employers can offer Charityvest for $2.49 / employee / month subscription, and we charge no fees on any of the giving — charities receive 100% of the money given.<p>Lastly, we send the program administrator a fun report every month to let them know all the awesome giving their company and its employees did in one dashboard. This info can be leveraged for internal culture or external brand building.<p>We’re just launching our workplace giving product, but we’ve already built a good portfolio of trusted customers, including Eric Ries’ (author of The Lean Startup) company, LTSE. We’ve particularly seen a number of companies use us as a meaningful part of their corporate decision to join the fight for racial justice in substantive ways.<p>Our endgame is that the world becomes more generous, starting with the culture of every company. We believe giving is fundamentally good and we want to build technology that encourages more of it by making it more simple and accessible.<p>You can check out our workplace giving product at (<a href="https://charityvest.org/workplace-giving" rel="nofollow">https://charityvest.org/workplace-giving</a>). If you’re interested, we can get your company up and running in 10 minutes. Or, please feel free to forward us on to your HR leadership at your company.<p>Our giving funds are also available for free for any individual on <a href="https://charityvest.org" rel="nofollow">https://charityvest.org</a> — without gift matching and reporting. We’d invite you to check out the experience. For individuals, we make gifts of cash and stock to any charity fee-free.<p>Happy to share this with you all, and we’d love to know what you think.
======
tylermenezes
How do you do payouts to nonprofits? Are you partnering with/running your own
donor advised funds, like Benevity?
As a non-profit one of the most frustrating things is how unacceptably slow
Benevity is at paying out to nonprofits. It takes _2-3 months_ after they
receive the funds to pay them to the nonprofit. (It takes an entire month to
even show up as pending, and another month to show the details.)
This does not include time for verification, which happens annually. This is
just the timeline due to their inability to run a scalable organization. It
has gotten worse over time.
Our partners are usually surprised when I explain this timeline to them.
(Benevity has also been completely unable to consistently update our display
name across all of their partners, so we have to tell people who work at
Google to search for a different name. Support has been going to "get back to
me" on this for over a year.)
After having some experience as a non-profit, I would never choose Benevity
for a for-profit, and if you can kill them I would be very happy.
~~~
Leonidas243
This is a big point. And we ensure our payouts to nonprofits happen on a
regular basis.
We consider the innovation of our venture to be 50% compliance tech, for this
very reason. Our system automates a bunch of the charitable compliance steps
and allows us to issue payouts to nonprofits on a regular, predictable monthly
cycle. And it's scaleable.
We consider charities to be an important stakeholder and the payment getting
to the charity in a timely manner to be a meaningful piece of the donor
experience.
This is one example of historic workplace giving platforms being built only
for buyers, not other stakeholders.
~~~
mike_d
Do you hold payments or wait for minimums before mailing checks? I'm just
curious if smaller non-profits that don't have donation volume face any
downside.
~~~
Leonidas243
The minimum contribution, grant, and payment out to nonprofits are all $20, so
we never run into a situation where we wait to send payments to nonprofits.
------
boilerupnc
About 7 years ago, my team was asked to assist at a university hack-a-thon
focused on addressing inequalities, poverty and health. We wanted to bring
attention to our dev cloud platform, but had no money budgeted for prize give
aways. Out of need, we decided to try a hack ourselves. In the 3 week lead-up
to the hack-a-thon, we short-listed 4-5 approved charities that qualified for
matching employee credit. Using our dev cloud platform, we quickly stood up an
internal facing crowd-funding site explaining our goal to raise funds to
internal employees. These funds would be assigned to one of the short-listed
companies, but was as yet unassigned. During the hack-a-thon, our selected
winner was given the opportunity to pick which charity should receive the
prior raised funds. We then completed the matching funds forms for all
contributing employees and asked them to sign and submit. It was a great
experience on so many levels. We raised $800, definitely more than we would
have normally received for a hack-a-thon prize. It was matched for another
$800 by our company a few months later during the annual cycle. A children's
hospital received an unexpected $1600 for their discretionary fund (crayons,
art supplies, music, ...). We had a real-world example of how our dev platform
could bring quick value to an idea. It really got us thinking about how much
more efficient our corporate matching processes could be. I salute initiatives
like the OP.
------
emosenkis
Any chance of providing a donations API? This sort of no-fee approach would be
amazing for building all sorts of charity-focused apps, from walkathons to
nonprofit crowdfunding campaigns, public matching campaigns etc. The minimal
functionality would just be to allow a site to direct a user to a page that
allows them to complete a grant for a particular amount to a specific
nonprofit and receive a callback when the grant is submitted.
~~~
Leonidas243
We would love to build an API. We constantly have conversations about it
amongst our team. It's just a matter of priorities. Agree it would be amazing
to see people build more charity-focused apps integrated with our funds.
We are working with a few select strategic partners to help their giving via
Charityvest (that eventually would be replaced by an API). If you have an
organization who might be interested in working with us, have them reach out.
We'd love to chat with them.
------
diddid
For some reason I hate the combination of companies and charity. If a company
wants to be charitable they should pay their employees livable wages and give
them quality benefits. Everyone wants to show how charitable they are but
nobody wants the janitors to be able to support their families.
~~~
eru
Googlers for example already earn very livable wages.
(I agree that companies shouldn't do charity. But for very different reasons.
Just provide good and cheap goods and services to customers, and pay your
shareholders and employees.
Those shareholders and employees as real person can make their own decisions
on charity. No need for matching etc.
You can also consider not optimizing your taxes as aggressively, and treating
the 'excess' paymnents to government mentally as if they were charitable
giving.)
------
ninetax
> “HSA for Charity.”
Nice rebranding on DAF, which get a bad rep as a rich persons tool to avoid
taxes.
This is pretty genious
------
sna1l
How can you find out more about the specific investments that Charityvest will
be making? Our definition of highly liquid and "safe" might be different :)
Also, is there something inherent about Schwab/Fidelity/etc charitable index
funds that make the fee load so high? If you could offer this at a lower rate,
that would definitely interest me as well.
I actually just signed up for a Schwab DAF, so am certainly interested in
learning more.
~~~
Leonidas243
Today we only invest in money markets. Asset preservation is our top priority,
and we can't ever have balances down in our app. That would be a terrible
experience for our donors. So we'll only move beyond money markets with great
caution. Our platform automates so much of the aspects of processing
charitable gifts, even a small financial return is gross margin profitable for
us.
It's worth noting, we offer a free DAF because we don't offer an investment
capability for our donors today. Our DAFs currently function like checking
accounts. The investing we do of charitable assets is invisible to our users.
For any donor who doesn't think their charitable assets will sit for years
before being sent to charity, we're a great option for making giving much
easier.
~~~
sna1l
Awesome!
One thing that would be nice would be some fixed-income related products. My
goal is to build a decent principal amount and then use the interest/dividends
to continuously donate, but this might be a minority strategy.
------
oplav
DAFs at established administrators, like Fidelity/Vanguard/Schwab, rely on
brand name so that users trust the money they donate to the DAF will be
granted to the non-profits they make recommendations to.
Other than being currently connected with YC, what else can users rely on that
their donation to Charityvest will in fact be granted to the non-profit the
make the recommendation to?
~~~
Leonidas243
Trust is an important factor for us. You're right, and YC helps, but we also
have other structures that make things transparent.
The charitable assets in our app actually go into a 501c3 public charity
(Charityvest Inc), a part of our social enterprise, which has to file a Form
990 every year making its financials and board members public. We launched in
2019, so our first 990 filing is this year. We also conduct our own internal
financial audit which we plan to make public on our site. Our charitable
operations will be increasingly transparent.
We're also partnered with / backed by other significant institutions: Yale
University, The Farm at Comcast NBCUniversal, Dwolla, Plaid, Synovus Bank,
etc.
You can also follow up with any charity you grant to out of Charityvest
yourself and ask them if they receive Charityvest's grants in a timely manner.
Generally all charities will gladly confirm receipt of a donor gift.
Hope this helps!
~~~
JustARandomGuy
> _You can also follow up with any charity you grant to out of Charityvest
> yourself and ask them if they receive Charityvest 's grants in a timely
> manner. Generally all charities will gladly confirm receipt of a donor gift_
This is an important part to emphasize, and it's good practice IMO. My work
does a year end charity drive through United Way - you can donate to any
charity, but the donation has to be made through United Way to get work-
related benefits (for example, a pizza lunch for the dept, etc).
I donate to my college every year during these year end drives, but I also
book an appointment for the end of January to call up my college and verify
they've received my donation.
------
uranium
Am I reading this right, that even if it's an employer-provided plan, you
can't do paycheck withholding? That seems like a big speed-bump.
I have a DAF myself, and really love the way it separates the tax event
[donating appreciated stock] and the donations to specific charities. But if
it was all just about cash from my checking account, I'm not sure I'd find it
worth the bother--I'd just mail checks to the charities directly. Once you can
do regular automatic deposits, whether from payroll or from a user's bank
account, I think it becomes a much more compelling service. I do hope you get
there soon.
I do see that the gift-matching part can make it a valuable service even so. I
look forward to your taking on Benevity for the gift-matching part; I've found
their service and customer support to be rather poor.
~~~
Judson
I had a chat with someone working on a similar product in this space. The
problem being solved here is the _matching_ component of charitable giving
(which you mentioned).
Turns out, running a matching program at a company is pretty annoying at a
certain size. Much less monthly charity stipends, etc.
Withholding from the paycheck would certainly be a great addition in the
future, but is not necessary in the MVP to have people pay for the product.
~~~
Leonidas243
Absolutely. We have found matching programs are painful to run.
It's also a small misconception that payroll deduction giving is pre-tax.
Giving is a post tax benefit either way, so we think it's a better experience
for the donor to have control of their monthly automatic contributions rather
than having to bug their HR / finance department at their company to
increase/decrease it.
------
donor20
Great idea - we did this by hand with a normal DAF - but a lot of work.
Quick question - can you accept check donations (ie, for amounts > $10K or
so?). For larger DAF balances folks want to move / family offices / etc having
the ability to handle a check would be nice.
~~~
Leonidas243
Yes we can! Here's a quick article outlining the details.
[https://support.charityvest.org/en/articles/4142972-can-i-
do...](https://support.charityvest.org/en/articles/4142972-can-i-donate-via-
check)
------
jaykornder
I'm a CharityVest user and the product has changed my approach to giving.
I now have a monthly total giving budget which goes into CharityVest that I
can then disperse when a cause I'm passionate about comes around. I previously
would mostly do one-off contributions (with a few non-profits that I regularly
backed through their own tools) but it feels better to "budget" my total
giving.
I'm glad to say that the product has increased my overall giving and has
ensured that every dollar I've sent goes to the non-profit.
------
bryanmgreen
Can you outline what the hard benefits are of a corporation paying
$2.50/employee/month are, for the corporations and/or employees and/or
charities?
According to your website, I can set up an individual account not tied to my
employer and it's free to do so.
Can you also explain what the process looks like of connecting an individual
account to an corporate account? (ie: I have a Charityvest account and my
future employer has a corporate account)
~~~
Leonidas243
Absolutely.
Our workplace product does charitable gift matching automatically according to
rules the company sets up, and provides reporting to company leadership on all
the aggregate giving / matching / participation data across employees. A
company can see their aggregate charitable impact in a broad sense.
To your second question, the giving funds belong to each donor, but companies
can establish an affiliation with each donor's fund for the length of the
employment, which allows us to enable that company's gift matching and
reporting. It's not unlike a 401k at Vanguard for an employee—technically the
employees, but the company facilitates the benefits for the length of
employment.
So if an employee joins a company with a fund, we just add an affiliation
between the company and that user's fund (via an email address). Likewise, the
affiliation is removed when an employee leaves. Matching/reporting cease for
that donor, but the charitable dollars in the employees fund will continue to
be in their fund.
------
emosenkis
Are you working on expanding beyond US nonprofits? That would be a requirement
for competing with Benevity for customers that are multinational corporations.
~~~
Leonidas243
Eventually we can, but given our stage, we're focusing on US giving.
Our focus right now is to make the giving experience amazing for employees of
SMB and mid-market companies.
------
jakswa
My company uses this! And they provide some matching on donations, so it felt
worth it to go in and find a worthy charity.
------
chrisfrantz
How do you handle employees donating to a cause the company may not want to
associate with? For example, the NRA is a registered nonprofit but I don’t
think you’ll find many startups interested in donating to their cause.
Edit: Separately, I do think this is a worthwhile idea and I hope you succeed!
~~~
Leonidas243
Great question. We have existing customers who are doing this today—they have
guidelines for charitable organizations they don't fund.
Today, we enable the company admin to quickly cancel any grant that gets
loaded in their hopper of monthly matching grants. They can cancel any grant
from their dashboard in two taps. The employee who submitted the grant for
matching will get notified their match wasn't approved.
~~~
chrisfrantz
Got it, glad to hear you’ve thought about this. Can I also say I’m glad you’re
deciding to charge the company instead of the individual users or the
charities themselves.
Whenever I see companies targeting the nonprofit space but planning to
monetize on the nonprofit side, I’m always skeptical.
------
westurner
What a great idea!
Are there two separate donations or does it add the company's name after the
donor's name? Some way to notify recipients about the low cost of managing a
charitable donation match program with your service would be great.
Have you encountered any charitable foundations which prefer to receive
cryptoassets? Red Cross and UNICEF accept cryptocurrency donations for the
children, for example.
Do you have integration with other onboarding and HR/benefits tools on your
roadmap? As a potential employee, I would like to work for a place that
matches charitable donations, so mentioning as much in job descriptions would
be helpful.
~~~
Leonidas243
Thanks! Our matching system issues an identical grant from the fund of the
matching company. It goes out in the same grant cycle as the employee grant so
they go together.
We haven't yet encountered any charity that prefers to receive cryptoassets.
We have lots of dreams about thoughtful integrations with HR software, but we
want the experience to be excellent, and we want to keep the experience of our
existing app excellent. We'll be balancing those priorities as we grow.
~~~
westurner
> _Our matching system issues an identical grant from the fund of the matching
> company. It goes out in the same grant cycle as the employee grant so they
> go together._
So the system creates a separate transaction for the original and the matched
donation with each donor's name on the respective gift?
How do users sync which elements of their HR information with your service?
IDK what the monthly admin cost there is.
There are a few HR, benefits, contracts, and payroll YC companies with privacy
regulation compliance and APIs
[https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/?query=Payroll](https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/?query=Payroll)
[https://founderkit.com/people-and-recruiting/health-
insuranc...](https://founderkit.com/people-and-recruiting/health-
insurance/reviews)
~~~
Leonidas243
Separate data records, yes, separate payment, no. The charity receives one
consolidated check in the mail each month across all donors (one payment), and
the original donor's grant will be on the data sheet as well as the matching
grant from the company's corporate fund (separate records).
Today, users create their accounts directly with our app, and they are
affiliated with their corporation in our app via their email address. So we
don't integrate with any HR information.
Administrators of the program can add and remove employees via copying and
pasting email addresses (can add/remove many at a time). We aim to integrate
with HR systems of record in the future to make this seamless.
~~~
westurner
Thanks for clarifying.
Do you offer a CSV containing donor information to the charity?
Do you support anonymous matched donations?
Can donors specify that a donation is strongly recommended for a specific
effort?
...
3% * $1000/yr == $2.50/mo * 12mo
~~~
Leonidas243
CSV: yes if they request we’ll happily provide.
Anonymous: yes it’s an option on our grant screen
Specific efforts: yes on the grant screen we enable donors to add a “specific
need” they’d like their grant to fund.
:-)
~~~
westurner
Outstanding. CSV would be helpful for recognizing donors in e.g. annual and
ESG/CSR reports.
------
adam
This sounds great. We already use
[https://percentpledge.org](https://percentpledge.org) though. How is this
different?
~~~
Leonidas243
Percent Pledge focuses its giving on cause portfolios, and you can't give to
specific organizations.
We invite our donors to give into their own charitable fund, and support
specific organizations when they feel like a strategic opportunity has arisen.
Donors are more satisfied when they can give bigger on things they are really
passionate about.
Percent Pledge also has a 5% fee on every dollar given through them. We have
no fee. 100% of your money goes to the charities you support. We want to
eliminate fees from giving!
~~~
epa
How do you make money?
~~~
Leonidas243
In two ways: 1\. We charge a per employee per month SaaS subscription to
companies for our workplace giving product. 2\. We invest a portion of the
balances in our charitable funds (aggregated across all users) in safe, highly
liquid assets to create a financial return. The money is not restricted in any
way and is available for granting to nonprofits at any time. Robinhood uses
this same model with uninvested cash in its app.
------
ajmadesc
A bit petty but, clicking the masthead on the support page, I expected to be
directed to the homepage. Not have it reload the support page.
------
protomyth
I really don't think it's very friendly to need to create an account to see
what charities are supported.
~~~
Leonidas243
We have all 1.4M eligible US charities in the IRS database.
Some places of worship are not included as they've never filed with the IRS,
but we can add them very simply.
We can support your charity of choice as long as it's legally possible to do
so!
~~~
protomyth
Did you get your list from [https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/exempt-
organizatio...](https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/exempt-
organizations-business-master-file-extract-eo-bmf)
~~~
Leonidas243
Yes we do start with the IRS EO BMF.
------
oneyellowbrick
Love the idea! Keeping track of receipts is such a pain this tool looks like
it automates everything.
------
absaminaeem
Best work keep continue ...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Has anyone here tried ad copy in the "Does Anyone Else?" format? - klbarry
On Reddit, DAE are commonly voted to the top because people like to associate with their identity, have nostalgia, and speak their mind. Has anyone ever done this with an outside audience? For instance, using a banner ad, targeting fashion people and saying "Does anyone else think this celebrities outfit is hideous"? etc.
======
jcr
"Does anyone else think this celebrities' outfit is hideous?"
"Does anyone else think this outfit is hideous"?
"Does anyone else think this is hideous"?
"Do you think this celebrities' outfit is hideous?"
"Do you think this outfit is hideous?"
"Do you think this is hideous?"
"Is this celebrities' outfit is hideous?"
"Is this outfit is hideous?"
"Is this hideous?"
You have to answer the tough questions, "Which is more important to stress,
the affinity or the provocation?" and of course, "How to accomplish both in
effective speech?"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PGP and You - caleb_thompson
http://robots.thoughtbot.com/pgp-and-you/
======
ColinWright
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8539935](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8539935)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
YC Company stealing code from another YC Company - patriley
http://i.imgur.com/qQk2n.jpg
======
relaunched
If you've been around the internet for more than 3 months, you'll realize that
this is nothing more than a compliment to the designer.
The net is collaborative. And using a popular, common layout is a way to de-
risk an important part of your business, the customer facing part. Also, the
more familiar a page is to the user, the better. Both pages are very common,
popular grid layout that are clean and relatively easy to create, using any
number of libraries.
If Dieter Rams can take what apple did as a complement, so you everyone else.
------
priley
This is actually been posted by the founder of Politify. He's impersonating
me, Patrick Riley. Grow up, dude. Impersonation in the state of California is
illegal.
~~~
Politify
First of all, this account isn't me. Second, you're not allowed to post my
name like this. Patrick are you losing your mind?
~~~
rpm4321
It's kind of odd that you would randomly happen upon this thread otherwise.
And within 40 minutes of Patrick's post?
~~~
priley
Agreed. What's odd is how the Politify founder (who applied to YC as
WellFrankly) posted the same posting and image at exactly the same time as the
fake account that he used my name for (which he is now denying.)
This is the same Politify guy who posted fake images on Reddit, and upvoted it
using fake accounts. Sigh.
<https://www.google.com/search?q=reddit+politify+downvote>
<http://www.flipmeme.com/image/pS4gZ>
~~~
Politify
Patrick, I encourage you to look up the terms non sequitur and ad hominem.
Good thing you didn't go to law school because you're not very good at making
sense. I'd like you to remove my name from your posts.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Using Vim as a JavaScript IDE - ausjke
http://www.dotnetsurfers.com/blog/2016/02/08/using-vim-as-a-javascript-ide/
======
dozzie
Step one: install dozen of plugins, because you can't do sh*% with an editor
and command line alone.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
LCD makers in $553 million U.S. price-fixing accord - llambda
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/27/us-lcd-settlement-idUSTRE7BQ0KK20111227
======
lincolnq
Does anyone with knowledge of the industry care to estimate how much money
these companies could make using such a scheme?
Considering how often these sorts of stories pop up (once in a while -- maybe
a few times a year), and how profitable I would expect to be, I bet price-
fixing happens way more often than once in a while. I wouldn't be surprised if
it were the norm amongst big electronics manufacturers for most products.
I don't expect raising penalties to be effective at stopping this -- they're
settling anyway. It's so profitable and so hard to catch that probably most
companies would rather take the risk. If there were a better way of enforcing
it, it might work.
~~~
zapman449
The big problem is in proving the collusion. It's just as easy, and mostly
legal to send signals to your competitors through the marketplace... release a
new model with foobaz feature at a higher pricepoint, see how the competitors
react... if they add foobaz feature, and stay close to your higher pricepoint,
you're safe, and legal. If they undercut, you can undercut to match.
Just look at the price delta for those TV's with Netflix streaming vs those
without. You can't tell me it costs $300ish to add the parts to make this
work. Wireless chips cost a few cents... the screens already have a CPU in
them to handle everything, so add a few cents, or maybe $1 to add a better
CPU...
Do I have specific evidence? no.
------
nonsequ
The really funny thing is that the LCD panel business is generally horrible.
All profits must be reinvested in expensive new production lines, there's
little differentiation among makers, and everybody's been gunning for market
share in a growing market. Net net, the panel makers have made next to
nothing, _even with price-fixing_.
The current situation is even more dire. None of the LCD panel makers have
turned a profit for almost two years now as rapid LCD TV demand growth has
slowed down. I'm not saying their behavior should be condoned, but this is
kicking them while they're down.
------
icefox
Anyone know of where there is some actual data? What has the price per sq inch
of LCD been for the last decade or something? (on the same note it would be
interesting to extrapolate it to see when lcd's will suddenly be _really_
cheap like arm computers are now)
------
orijing
Without specific evidence like phone records, how could they prove illegal
collusion?
------
endtime
Am I the only one who doesn't have a problem with this? Sure, it doesn't
benefit me as the consumer, but I don't actually see why this is something the
government has a right to interfere with.
~~~
mr_luc
I always saw it as something that's not 'fair', but that helps the market win.
It's sort of the same as anti-monopoly laws. In a strict sense, maybe a
company became a monopoly legally, by offering the best product and buying out
its competition, and is acting rationally in the interest of its shareholders
-- but now the market is powerless before it, so the government breaks it up,
and the market has bargaining power again.
Most of the pragmatic policies that make our world work break down on a moral
level when you look at them too hard. We're all just trying to do what works
empirically.
~~~
endtime
>I always saw it as something that's not 'fair', but that helps the market
win.
The market wins when the price-fixing stops being worth the opportunity cost
of increased sales, or when a competitor (new or old) decides not to play
ball. Not when the government steps in to force things in a certain direction.
>Most of the pragmatic policies that make our world work break down on a moral
level when you look at them too hard. We're all just trying to do what works
empirically.
The uneasiness I feel at the implication that things can be looked at "too
hard" aside, how can one actually justify the claim that this works
empirically ("works" meaning, presumably, in this case, that a better outcome
is achieved)?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Great Startup Engineers - mdenny
http://blog.derrickko.com/great-startup-engineers
======
AngryParsley
So great startup engineers should have focus, compassion, balance,
responsibility, and openness. When would you ever _not_ desire these traits in
someone? The opposite is scatter-brained, indifferent, unbalanced,
irresponsible, and uncommunicative; all rather undesirable traits.
I'd much prefer to learn about some trade-offs. Is lacking any one of these
traits a deal-breaker? What if someone's very focused and compassionate, but a
little irresponsible?
And most importantly, how does one evaluate these traits?
~~~
calinet6
Hey, you brought up another one: not a black-and-white thinker!
Things are not only their extremes and the opposite. Hence why "balance" is
actually an extremely undervalued quality in a person, and it was very apt of
the author to call it out.
~~~
dclusin
I think your observation about thinking in black and white is a good
observation. However, you still haven't answered the OP's original question.
And adding your observation to the list, these sorts of things are still
required at large organizations.
------
greenyoda
None of the qualities mentioned here are really specific to startups. Even if
you work in a big company with lots of product managers and marketing people,
being able to focus, take responsibility and empathize with your users is key
to being a good developer. And definitely good qualities to have if you ever
want to be promoted beyond an entry-level job.
------
calinet6
I went in expecting something about dedication and ability to go the extra
mile and be a "rockstar"—but instead it was a refreshingly short and focused
list of often undervalued traits. Nice article.
------
abc_lisper
I have a problem refocusing again and again. How does one go about that? Are
there any resources that can help one with that. I am very comfortable with
focusing on one thing and getting it done, but as soon as I switch contexts, I
take a while to get up to speed.
------
hansef
Compassion is a great one, a trait I feel like we don't spend enough time
talking about as an element of success. I've worked with many extremely
talented, genuinely bright people whose business skills suffered because of a
lack of compassion and empathy: for their users, coworkers, or people they
generally (and probably correctly) considered less intelligent than
themselves. Making a conscious and genuine effort to understand someone else's
position and needs will get you MUCH further than dogmatic self-righteousness
- even if you really are right. ;)
------
alexkearns
He is missing one thing a great start-up engineer should have: a great big
chunk of equity, preferably all of it.
------
sneak
Stop blogging and add a fucking progress bar and transfer speed indicator to
your file transfer app, ffs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An Interview with OEIS's Neil Sloane - jason_s
http://www.wired.com/2015/08/meet-guy-sorts-worlds-numbers-attic/
======
jordigh
We like to include sequences that appear on IQ tests. It’s always
been one of my goals to help people do these silly tests.
Yessssss! Those damn "IQ" questions:
[http://spikedmath.com/062.html](http://spikedmath.com/062.html)
We also get them with some regularity in Freenode's ##math. It's a FAQ.
"Here's a list of numbers, what's the formula?" Sometimes we're able to send
the person to Sloane's and be done with it.
Other times...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Return and Enter Are Two Different Keys - john4532452
https://daringfireball.net/2020/07/return_and_enter
======
john4532452
slashdot discussion [https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/07/21/1539216/return-
and-en...](https://it.slashdot.org/story/20/07/21/1539216/return-and-enter-
are-two-different-keys)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A revised Lisp interpreter in Go - suzuki
http://www.oki-osk.jp/esc/golang/lisp4-en.html
======
suzuki
This is a revised port of
Lisp interpreter in Dart [http://www.oki-osk.jp/esc/dart/lisp-
en.html](http://www.oki-osk.jp/esc/dart/lisp-en.html)
Lisp interpreter in TypeScript [http://www.oki-osk.jp/esc/typescript/lisp-
en.html](http://www.oki-osk.jp/esc/typescript/lisp-en.html)
to Go with the addition of "future" and "force" which makes use of goroutines'
concurrency.
(let ((a (future (prin1 "hi"))))
(dotimes (i 20)
(princ i)
(princ " "))
(force a))
(terpri)
It is not deterministic when the word "hi" will be printed.
$ lisp-light test.l
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 "hi"16 17 18 19
$
~~~
vmorgulis
Do you use a library for the multiprecision numbers?
~~~
suzuki
No, all numbers are represented by double precision floating point numbers
(float64 in Go).
The previous version ([http://www.oki-
osk.jp/esc/golang/lisp3.html](http://www.oki-osk.jp/esc/golang/lisp3.html) in
Japanese) used Go's standard library "math/big" to represent big integers.
However, the interpreter was also big and organized into several packages. I
revised the interpreter smaller so that
1\. it can be compiled in the easiest way, and
2\. it may be comparable with the interpreter written in TypeScript.
Note that TypeScript (i.e. JavaScript effectively) represents all numbers in
float64.
By the way, as for numbers only, the first interpreter ([http://www.oki-
osk.jp/esc/golang/lisp.html](http://www.oki-osk.jp/esc/golang/lisp.html) in
Japanese) was the most powerful. It implemented mixed mode arithmetic
including arbitrary-precision _rational_ numbers with the "arith" package
([http://www.oki-osk.jp/esc/golang/arith.html](http://www.oki-
osk.jp/esc/golang/arith.html) in Japanese). However, the first interpreter was
so tiny as a Lisp that it had no macros, while it was organized into several
files.
------
amelius
How does this compare performance-wise to a compiler?
~~~
diskcat
I don't think people write lisp interpreters for performance reasons. It's
more a computer science exercise which helps you understand languages better.
------
shitgoose
at least is sounds better than kakapo:
[https://github.com/bytbox/kakapo](https://github.com/bytbox/kakapo)
------
feylikurds
Would not a JavaScript interpreter be more useful, especially considering the
wider use of it?
~~~
suzuki
It may be so. However, JavaScript (TypeScript) lacks concurrency and easy
extendability with native codes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
IPhone, MySpace, Facebook Race To Micropayments In 2009 - kleneway
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/02/iphone-myspace-facebook-race-to-micropayments-in-2009/
======
flashgordon
i think for a true micropayment system to work it has to be usable across
domains instead of just within a social network... this means the iphone,
myspace and FB have to agree to use standard (open or other wise) protocols...
without a common system all developers would see is increased transaction
costs in the long run... either that or one social network/distribution
channel has to beat all others which I dont see as a likely outcome or
alternative..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Minimum viable view library, part I - pakastin
https://freezer.js.org/minimum-viable-view-library/
======
pakastin
Hi guys! Let me know if you have any questions or comments about the post..
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
On writers, 'digital rights management', and the internet - nreece
http://stevenpoole.net/blog/free-your-mind/
======
tptacek
I think psychologically, a model that might work better for works like this: a
fixed up-front price ($5?), with a no-hassle no-questions-asked one-click
refund of all or part of the payment.
Eliminates risk for the buyer (here meaning, "whatever makes someone hesitate
to pay"), but it's harder to ask for a refund than to take something for free.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How to build a simple neural network in 9 lines of Python code - bryanrasmussen
https://medium.com/technology-invention-and-more/how-to-build-a-simple-neural-network-in-9-lines-of-python-code-cc8f23647ca1
======
matt_wulfeck
How to draw an owl in two lines of code;
import owl
owl.draw()
~~~
ggambetta
I chuckled, but I don't think the criticism is fair. The imports are for
generic math tools that aren't specific to neural networks, the most complex
one being a dot product, so I'd say there's no trickery here.
------
hprotagonist
>The human brain consists of 100 billion cells called neurons, connected
together by synapses. If sufficient synaptic inputs to a neuron fire, that
neuron will also fire. We call this process “thinking”.
86 billion neurons, with many thousands of synapses between each.
If enough action potentials from presynaptic neurons arrive within a little
enough amount of time, the postsynaptic neuron will _probably_ also fire.
We do not call this process "thinking".
------
bllguo
Yeah in general I find that cleaning the data, doing exploratory analysis,
doing sensible feature engineering, etc. are much more involved tasks than
running ML algorithm XYZ.
------
gravypod
I've often seen many fixed-input posts like this. I've been looking for
something that will allow me to train a model that will take a varying number
of inputs and produce a single output.
So for instances:
[list of 10 items] -> Some Number
[list of 500 items] -> Some Number
These items are not reducible to a single scalar value. They have too many
widely varying meanings.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?
~~~
michaf
I am not an expert, but maybe look into recurrent neural networks [0]? These
things can turn a sequence of inputs of possibly arbitrary length into a fixed
size internal representation, and can output a single value derived from this
representation.
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_neural_network](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recurrent_neural_network)
~~~
anon1253
most implementations are not arbitrary length, but instead rely on padding to
make it a fix length sequence.
------
harel
I've been meaning to do a similar exercise, and this one is very helpful.
Thanks.
------
rsrsrs86
What he calls back propagation is actually gradient descent.
~~~
majewsky
Backpropagation (as in, the training method for NNs) is an instance of
gradient descent. There are many other instances (e.g. any EM algorithm does
gradient descent, as does minimum search on a simple real function), so using
the more specific term is appropriate.
------
vonnik
for the 400th time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Hackers that perform/love stand-up comedy? - danielzarick
I've been a little curious lately if there are others of you out there that love stand-up comedy like I do? I've been trying to write more and more lately when I get a chance between school and work. Hopefully I'll get the courage to do an open mic in the next month or so.<p>What about the rest of you? Do you perform, have the ambition to, and where does that fit in with your work/startup life? And who are your favorite comedians?
======
edw519
I have written tons of stuff and performed at parties, but I still haven't
gone to an open mike. Probably for the same reason that I still don't blog.
Once I bust either of those cherries, I'll probably become addicted and never
want to do anything else.
I learned a little about the stand-up business and it ain't pretty. Most shows
have 3 acts, opener (~15 min.), feature (~30 min.) and headliner (~60 min.).
The pay is horrible ($50 to $300 for the night), you have to work your way up
from opener to feature to headliner, and the hours suck. Also, it would be
hard to do much else because you're always driving from gig to gig. Oddly, the
feature may be the best gig because the opener (who is usually also the mc)
and the headliner have to stay til the end of the night.
It's also a tough life. No matter how good you are, there are always plenty
who are better. Your material will probably get stolen, you'll survive on bar
food and alchohol, and you'll have as many highs and lows as a startup, but
with (believe it or not) a lower probability of big success.
But it still sounds like fun and feels compelling. Maybe one of these days
I'll go to an open mike.
My favorites have always been the "joke tellers", Rodney Dangerfield and Joan
Rivers.
~~~
danielzarick
Loved this response. You're exactly right about all of it. I see it as one of
those that you have to do because you can't do anything else. Same way a
musician or artist or hacker can't imagine doing anything else.
So... I guess I'll be seeing you at an open mic pretty soon so that you can
become addicted?
------
parse_tree
I love comedy, and would love to give it a try myself but (a) my sense of
humour is very unusual and there's many things I laugh at hysterically that
most people don't get, and (b) would be too nervous (sober anyways!).
An example of (a), I was at Subway the other day, and a 20-something girl was
in front of me. The guy asked what kind of cheese she wanted, and she sort of
hesitated and said "the uh, uh, the um, white triangles", which sent me into a
fit of laughter, I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard (can't
wait to go to Subway again so I can use it). But everyone I told since sort of
looked at me like "Uh, okay?". And I can imagine how well something like that
would go over in front of a crowd of strangers, told by a scared shitless
comedian at his first gig!
~~~
weaksauce
As Mitch Hedberg once said, "Drinking for the comedian is like stretching for
the athlete."
------
DanielBMarkham
I think I'm a big ham -- I love performing. Whether it's teaching, playing
music, karaoke, or goofing off, I like attention.
Not sure about open mic night, though. For some reason that sounds scary.
------
danielzarick
Above I mentioned that I am trying to perform, and have been putting it off
for about a year and a half... but here are some of my current favorites:
Louis C.K. Zack Galifianakis David Cross Patton Oswalt Daniel Tosh
And all of the "alternative" comedians who, I guess, are now becoming
mainstream.
~~~
weaksauce
I saw Zack at the UCB theater on Doug Bensons podcast taping about 3-5 years
ago and though it wasn't his "standup" he was hilarious. I wish I had the
stones to get up and do that kind of stuff. I am forever indebted to the ones
that can and can do it well.
~~~
danielzarick
That's awesome. I would kill to see him live. Out Cold, though a bad movie,
came out when I was in 7th grade and my friends and I loved it. Especially
Zach. I've been following him since then, and although I'm glad he's getting
recognition, I'm disappointed that I probably won't get to see him do standup
live anytime soon. Every chance I've had fell through.
~~~
weaksauce
It is unfortunate that the only good movie that he has done is the hangover
but I think that his rising stardom is good for his career as he will now be
able to get more leading roles where his brand of humor will be encouraged
rather than squashed. When he had his late night comedy talk show vh1 pretty
much killed any chance he had of being funny with all the things he was
forbidden to make fun of. Hopefully that changes.
------
brk
I have a lot of material written but have never formally performed. It's on my
to-do list.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Cloud sucks - rap
https://yourbunnywrote.org/2015/04/19/google-cloud/
======
mark_l_watson
It would have been nice if the article had statistics on how often GC hosted
applications are offline due to infrastructure problems compared to
competitors like Azure, AWS, etc.
BTW, if an app fits nicely into the AppEngine ecosystem, that is great. On the
other hand, I have not seen any compelling advantages to Google's VPSs, etc.
over competitors' offerings. All of them are good.
~~~
EugeneOZ
By my experience, Google's VPS are faster (it's just comment, so no metrics,
sorry) and network is more stable, compared with Linode (same performance per
$, worse network) and Digital Ocean (worse performance, stable enough
network).
But minimal price of support, $150/month, makes it expensive enough for side-
projects, and I think side-projects is the main force of adoption.
Again from my experience: I created managed VM (on Google Cloud Platform) to
test it, with "autoscale" setup. After testing, I tried to remove it, removed
successfully, but then I noticed I'm still paying for it - instance was
recreated, as I suppose, because of "autoscale". I will not pay $150 to solve
$11 issue, so I just turned off billing in that project, but I don't think
it's cool to don't have even minimal support from hosting, so I'm not sure my
next side-project will be hosted on GCP.
~~~
crb
Billing support is available to all customers for free:
[https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/3420056?hl=en&ref_to...](https://support.google.com/cloud/answer/3420056?hl=en&ref_topic=3473162)
~~~
EugeneOZ
Thanks, couldn't find it :)
------
ryanobjc
The best part of this article is the "RMS" comment. It isn't the real RMS
because he never surfs the web, only via email. So his comment is still at
least another 24 hours out.
Nevertheless, I like the whole "NSA+Google" system conspiracy theory. Funny!
~~~
ffn
I really enjoyed the RMS comment also; whoever wrote that wins the daily snark
award.
That being said, yeah, a lot of Google's paid developer facing tools are
actually quite terrible (like their Youtube api/v3 - not the iframe one, the
supposed restful data one). Which is strange because their open source stuff
tend to be pretty good. So it's like giving Google money actually makes things
worse. Especially with using their APIs, it's often felt like I'm paying
Google to punch me in the face rather than actually provide better service.
------
mdekkers
For our specific use case *.cloud sucks most of the time - AWS, Google,
Rackspace, SoftLayer - used them all, and they are either hideously expensive,
hideously slow, and a lot of the times both. when you spend over $1000 per
month on hosting, you are almost always better off leasing servers somewhere.
Your stuff is faster, you will have more freedom, less worries, and if you do
it right, more time for other things.
~~~
mooreds
I'm curious--I was of that mindset too, but how do you account for the ease
of:
* setting up/tearing down environments
* infrastructure as an API (I want a new database... Click)
* scalability (or is this a YAGNI?)
------
kbar13
i would argue that running their own network is a pro and not a con, as they
would be able to control QoS and better respond to incidents, amongst other
things
------
diminoten
In 22 days, they had a combined downtime of 188 minutes (I'm assuming the two
incidents cited were the only actual downtime incidents -- I feel like the
blogger would have linked to more if there were others).
22 days is 31680 minutes. That's a downtime ratio of 0.00593434343434, which
is, what, 2-nines availability (I'm not super well-versed in this realm, is
that the right term)?
Is that decent, given the cost?
------
eonw
cause none of those types of problems EVER happen on other clouds/networks...
right?
------
kcthota
Also it's not possible to setup SSL on Load balancer. EC2 has this support.
So on GC, just for setting up SSL we need another web server or deploy it
directly on your app server.
~~~
Veratyr
Yes it is: [https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/load-
balancing/http/ss...](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/load-
balancing/http/ssl-certificates)
It's in Alpha but it's there.
~~~
kcthota
Thanks for pointing out. I am not an alpha user so can't use it. Few months
back when I deployed, this feature didn't even exist.
------
trhway
as i expected the blog author is Russian - his site name is a pretty offensive
phrase to Russian ear. A kind of phrase one utters when heavy hummer falls on
the one's foot or when one's server crashes unexpectedly in the middle of
multi-hour job. It is kind of a joke in Russian - "an American asks his
Russian officemate why the Russian constantly mentions 'Your Bunny'"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Homeless to hacker: How the Maker Movement changed one man’s life - chinmoy
http://venturebeat.com/2013/05/16/homeless-to-hacker-how-the-maker-movement-changed-one-mans-life/
======
Blinkky
This is a very feel good type article. A couple of things have glaring red
flags for me:
"His ideas are in various stages of development and include a food delivery
service, a laser company, and a hardware accelerator program."
This tells me that he has all of these "ideas" but no actual expertise in any
of these areas. How often have you heard some "bro" say they have a great idea
in some field which they don't know anything about.
"Whatever he does next, Roth intends to hire from within the homeless
community, which he views as a hotbed of untapped talent."
I'm sure there are some very smart homeless people out there, but you need
skills in relevant technologies to be a successful worker in the type of
companies hes wants to start. Food delivery might be easy for the homeless to
pick up, Optoelectronics on the other hand not so much.
Good on the guy for learning some valuable skills, turning his life around and
helping the homeless. Lets just try and be a little bit realistic about whats
going on here though.
------
Jun8
Fantastic piece! This should be required reading in all high school (or
earlier) together with pg's essay "How to Make Wealth"
(<http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>):
Kids know, without knowing they know, that they can create wealth. If you need
to give someone a present and don't have any money, you make one. But kids are
so bad at making things that they consider home-made presents to be a
distinct, inferior, sort of thing to store-bought ones-- a mere expression of
the proverbial thought that counts. And indeed, the lumpy ashtrays we made for
our parents did not have much of a resale market.
As he points out, most everyone loses this innate understanding of creating
wealth, making stuff, as they grow older. This guy has rediscovered it.
Oc course, this would have been impossible without the enabler of shared
space, so we should have more of these.
~~~
santu11
You are totally right on this. The world needs more wealth.
The problems of poverty or homelessness can be solved by acess to products at
lower prices. We need more makers and hackers who can do that.
As we grow older, we like to conform to the societal ideals of whatever if
safe and suppress our tendency to creative seek out solutions to problems by
creating.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Coming soon: Flying car for $279k - deedub
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-04-03/a-flying-car-for-just-279-000
======
wxl
Yeah, sure.
> Dietrich says, “a pilot of one of our vehicles—once issued a use permit—can
> just drive up, swipe through the gate, taxi, and take off. You don’t even
> have to talk to anyone.”
That's bull. You're gonna have to talk to _someone_. Whether you're at the
smallest airport in the country or not, you're going to need to get on UNICOM
and state your intentions otherwise you're either going to kill yourself or
get a bunch of pilots pissed at you. And if you're at an airport of any size
you have to talk to ground control so you don't get in a crash on the ground
and then get clearance to take off so you don't get in a crash in the air.
~~~
cwmccarthy
If you live in the middle of nowhere you actually could get away from it. I
fly out of a small airport only an hour from Boston and 15 minutes from
Worcester. Not all of the planes/gliders even have radios. Also without a
ground frequency people are walking and driving onto the taxiways as these
please. If you're not flying instrument its up to the pilot to be watching for
who knows what from all directions!! Makes it interesting I suppose...
What I'm curious is how they'll deal with the possibility of a damage to the
craft. If someone opens up a car door into your wing how do you determine if
there's any significant damage to the loading surfaces (especially if there's
composites involved)...how about a tap from the car behind at the stop sign.
------
wdewind
This is a car that transforms into a plane. This is a vastly different
consumer experience, we are still no where near a flying car in the sci fi
sense (a la 5th element).
~~~
weirdcat
Actually it's just a plane that you can drive on roads. A _driving plane_
rather than _flying car_ , if you will.
------
Apocryphon
Between this and Google Glasses, today is a good day for living in the Future.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why are you making money? - jayferd
http://jayferd.us/posts/2012-02-07-why-are-you-making-money
======
mitchie_luna
When I was in grade school, life was so hard for us. There were times that my
teacher won’t allow me to take the final test because my tuition fee is not
yet paid. My family also experienced a Christmas without food on out table. I
remember my eldest brother swear that he wont allow that thing to happened to
us again.
Now, I am a fulltime office worker, a student currently taking Masteral
degree, and a part-time worker online. I am doing everything to have money.
Why? Because I don’t want to experience the hardship that we’ve been through
before. I want to give my parents a good life and let them experience to
travel, eat in a fancy restaurant, wear a signture clothes, and do the stuff
that rich people can do.
Further, I want to sponsor children and send them to school because I don’t
want them to experience the humiliating situation I have been.
I am not yet rich, still working towards that goal. If I reach it, surely, I
am not the only person who will be benefited, but the also the people around
me.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Adblock Plus offers workaround to block Facebook ads again - ailinykh
http://venturebeat.com/2016/08/11/adblock-plus-offers-workaround-to-block-facebook-ads-again/
======
parent5446
Any word on when uBlock will have it?
~~~
detaro
According to the article right now, if you use EasyList?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Game theorists offer a surprising insight into the evolution of fair play - molbioguy
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_5_111/ai_86684497/?tag=mantle_skin;content
======
nhaehnle
The game is kind of weird:
_Each player of the pair begins with a set amount of money, say $5. Each puts
any part or all of that $5 into a mutual pot, without knowing how much the
other player is investing. Then a dollar is added to the pot, and the sum is
split evenly between the two. So if both put in $5, they each wind up with
$5.50 ($5 $5 $1, divided by 2). But suppose the first player puts in $5 and
the second holds back, putting in only $4? The first player gets $5 at the end
($5 $4 $1, divided by 2), while the cheater gets $6 ($5 $4 $1, divided by 2--
plus that $1 that was held back)._
It seems to me that there isn't actually anything to be gained from
cooperation. If both players "cheat" completely (put $0 into the pool), they
still get $5.50. In that sense, the Nash equilibrium (both are cheating) is
also socially optimal. Kind of untypical for something where you want to
demonstrate the advantages of cooperation.
~~~
molbioguy
It is a weird game, but experimental situations are usually contrived. They
define cooperation as the absence of cheating. But the surprise is that people
jump at the chance to fine the cheater, even though they have to pay the same
amount as the fine:
_You can fine the cheater by taking away some money, as long as you're
willing to give up the same amount yourself. In other words, you can punish a
cheater if you're willing to pay for the opportunity._
~~~
klenwell
Another famous experiment that supports the finding that people are hyper-
sensitive toward cheating:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task#Policing_s...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wason_selection_task#Policing_social_rules)
_This experimental evidence supports the hypothesis that a Wason task proves
to be easier if the rule to be tested is one of social exchange (in order to
receive benefit X you need to fulfill condition Y) and the subject is asked to
police the rule, but is more difficult otherwise. Such a distinction, if
empirically borne out, would support the contention of evolutionary
psychologists that certain features of human psychology may be mechanisms that
have evolved, through natural selection, to solve specific problems of social
interaction, rather than expressions of general intelligence. In this case,
the module is described as a specialized cheater-detection module._
------
molbioguy
From the article by Robert Sapolsky (COPYRIGHT 2002 Natural History Magazine,
Inc.) -- seems relevant to the Jonathan's Card experiment:
_Think about how weird this is. If people were willing to be spontaneously
cooperative even if it meant a cost to themselves, this would catapult us into
a system of stable cooperation in which everyone profits. Think peace,
harmony, Lennon's "Imagine" playing as the credits roll. But people aren't
willing to do this. Establish instead a setting in which people can incur
costs to themselves by punishing cheaters, in which the punishing doesn't
bring them any direct benefit or lead to any direct civic good--and they jump
at the chance. And then, indirectly, an atmosphere of stable cooperation just
happens to emerge from a rather negative emotion: desire for revenge. And this
finding is particularly interesting, given how many of our societal
unpleasantries--perpetrated by the jerk who cuts you off in traffic on the
crowded freeway, the geek who concocts the next fifteen-minutes-of-fame
computer virus--are one-shot, perfect-stranger interactions._
------
mbateman
What difference does it make that you're playing against different people?
People engage and justify behavior based on _types_ of action.
One punishes a cheater that one will never encounter again partly on the
presumption that other people also do this to cheaters they encounter. Thus
one engages in a behavior that, if performed universally, will reduce the
likelihood that one will encounter a cheater.
This is almost exactly the same as iterated games where you play the same
person over and over and thus confront the other player's action as an
instance of a type of decision (a strategy). The fact that it isn't the same
person doesn't mean you won't think in terms of types.
Yeah, you can try to free ride and just hope that other people punish cheaters
for you and that you'll benefit without ever having to do it yourself (since
punishing incurs a cost). But if the choice is between _no one_ punishing
cheaters and _everyone_ punishing cheaters, then you choose the latter. If
you're thinking in terms of types, those are the two choices. Even if it
doesn't totally make sense in a particular context to do this, people
habitually think this way.
Human beings think in terms of types and systems of actions, and choose
actions at least partly based on what types and systems of actions they are
endorsing. These game scenarios rely on that in the same that iterated games
do. It's tit-for-tat all over again, just one level more abstract.
------
zeteo
I'm surprised that the article, while otherwise well-researched, doesn't even
mention the Zahavi Handicap Principle.
In Zahavi's view, altruism is a form of signalling: the altruist is doing so
well, they can afford to lose a good deal of material benefits. The altruist
then benefits from the high regard of the peers who witnessed the facts (e.g.
potential partners of the opposite sex).
From this perspective, the crucial step in the experiments presented is not
the punishment, but the subsequent public exposure of the in-game behavior.
~~~
jamesbritt
This makes me wonder then why some cultures frown on public displays of
altruism. Basically, do good but please don't brag about it.
~~~
Swizec
To even the playing field maybe? If you brag about how awesome you are, you're
putting the pressure on everyone else to be as awesome. Some people don't like
that ...
~~~
jamesbritt
Good point. The less-than-outstanding will look less less-desirable mate
material. But they still want the benefits of altruism. So a morality develops
that says, "Do good things for others (that includes me), but keep it to
yourself less the rest of us look bad in comparison and fail to find suitable
mates."
------
michaeldhopkins
I would put $0 in the pot and if my opponent put in more than me, I would pay
him until we were even. This beats the game because it sets a cooperative
standard while being fair immediately and also protects me. However, if my
opponent put in more and could punish me before I could even it out, I imagine
I would find it hard to "turn the other cheek." I also don't think that
putting in the full amount would create the culture I would want to exist
because such an action would be indiatinguishable from naïveté, and other than
asking for my money back and getting it I would have no power to do good once
the game ended
------
beza1e1
The wierd thing is, you could translate this insight into a ethically
questionable business idea:
A website lists the wrong doers to humiliate them. Each crime gets its own
list. Pay 5$ for "the jerk who cuts you off in traffic on the crowded freeway"
or 1000$ for "the geek who concocts the next fifteen-minutes-of-fame computer
virus" or 100,000$ for "the child molestor".
I hope this would not work out, but i fear it would.
~~~
kiba
How about catching corrupt officials in the act for 500 dollars?
Though I am sure that there is an unintended consequence somewhere in the
idea. Sometime all we can do is watch the system in action, and try to fix
it...if it let us.
For example, the US government is in a slow motion train accident that's
taking a long time to happen. It's very hard to stop the train in time and fix
the stuff that's broken.
------
MetallicCloud
> If enough of them do so--and especially if the cooperators can somehow
> quickly find one another--cooperation would soon become the better strategy.
> To use the jargon of evolutionary biologists who think about such things, it
> would drive noncooperation into extinction.
I don't think this works. Although co-operating works great for the majority,
that just means it allows a few to 'cheat' and get the biggest payoffs.
------
locopati
SuperCoorperators is an interesting book exploring these ideas
[http://www.amazon.com/Supercooperators-Mathematics-
Evolution...](http://www.amazon.com/Supercooperators-Mathematics-Evolution-
Altruism-Behaviour/dp/1847673376)
------
cschmidt
The Economist had a good article about this same topic two weeks ago. It seems
to be talking about unrelated studies.
<http://www.economist.com/node/21524698>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bret Victor: The Humane Representation of Thought [video] - maryrosecook
https://vimeo.com/115154289
======
dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8784323](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8784323)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Michael Crichton on talent: "I just work hard" - henning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0bQnqD9dLA
======
kul
If you're interested in more analysis of 'talent', read this:
[http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/21/magazines/fortune/talent_col...](http://money.cnn.com/2008/10/21/magazines/fortune/talent_colvin.fortune/index.htm)
"Why talent is overrated
It is mid-1978, and we are inside the giant Procter & Gamble headquarters in
Cincinnati, looking into a cubicle shared by a pair of 22-year-old men, fresh
out of college. Their assignment is to sell Duncan Hines brownie mix, but they
spend a lot of their time just rewriting memos. They are clearly smart - one
has just graduated from Harvard, the other from Dartmouth - but that doesn't
distinguish them from a slew of other new hires at P&G.
What does distinguish them from many of the young go-getters the company takes
on each year is that neither man is particularly filled with ambition. Neither
has any kind of career plan. Every afternoon they play waste-bin basketball
with wadded-up memos. One of them later recalls, "We were voted the two guys
probably least likely to succeed."
These two young men are of interest to us now for only one reason: They are
Jeffrey Immelt and Steven Ballmer, who before age 50 would become CEOs of two
of the world's most valuable corporations, General Electric (GE, Fortune 500)
and Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500). "
~~~
yters
I'm not getting the argument for talent being overrated. Two bright slackers
become much more successful than all their driven, but less bright, co
workers?
~~~
electromagnetic
Who cares if two slackers succeed? The whole argument is that talent is
inherently pointless. I wasn't a talented writer as a child, hell my 3rd grade
teacher told my parents I might be dyslexic and I'd need to take special needs
classes until I graduate. Before the end of the summer after I graduated I got
a job as a journalist, and at the same time my friends who in 3rd grade were
supposedly phenomenally talented in English were going to take a 2 year
introduction to English at university and then a 5 year journalism course.
I wasn't born with an uncanny writing talent, I was thought to be retarded but
I liked telling stories. So I spent a lot of my childhood from 13 years old,
when I realized that I wanted to write books for a living, practicing writing.
I read huge amounts of books to learn how different people write and taught
myself.
At 17 (I'm from the UK I graduated at 16) the editor was telling me I was the
most talented writer they had. I surprised him one day, he sent me an email at
around 6 saying one review I did wasn't how they wanted it (which was the
reason I left, the product I reviewed sucked ass but because it came from a
big company we couldn't offend them) so he said it needed changing. An hour
later I emailed him back with the entire thing rewritten the score from a 1 to
a 8. For everyone who doesn't know the review game; for example a video game
review, if it takes 10 hours to play the game it will probably take you around
20 hours to review and edit it, so getting an essentially new review in an
hour was amazing to him.
The reason why I could do a review in an hour that would take anyone else a
day to get back. Well because I'm driven. I'm sure there were more talented
people on the staff, but that doesn't mean shit when I can consistently out
perform someone 10:1.
So yes being talented will help you, but if you're a slacker you're not going
anywhere to begin with.
~~~
LPTS
Wrong. Slacking is great. You got a brain? Why not use it to figure out how
not to work. Work is for people who don't know how to get everything they want
without working. Slacking is surfing the path of least resistance and riding
it to build up incredible momentum.
One game to play with the few waking hours you have to live is to work hard to
get what you want.
I'd much rather not work hard and get what I want anyways. Relax, the
structure of the universe will catch you if you do what you want and don't
work.
------
whacked_new
Wow, awesomest thing I have seen in a while! This video just made me really,
really like Crichton. A successful person is never truly great without
humility. Thank you for submitting.
------
danw
Related reading: "The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert
Performance",
[http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracti...](http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf)
------
liuliu
I don't expect that I can work hard. I do my best to avoid the laziness. Yes,
I am only 21 and have much to learn. But my experience told me, it is not that
one work so hard to get success, instead, it is that the rest of us just too
lazy to pursuit what we really want.
~~~
josefresco
If I could tell my 21 year old self one thing it would be: Just be consistent
with your work and build upon something, it will pay off for you. Don't work
feverishly on something for months/days and then slack for months/days
expecting your hard work to pay off. It's no so much 'slow and steady wins the
race", fast and steady can win lots of races, the important part is steady.
~~~
rthomas6
My problem is trying to find which things I want to devote effort to. (I am
also 21). Right now I try to put as much effort as I can toward every part of
my life, and I usually become burnt out very quickly and get stuck in a sort
of "waiting place" for a month or two. If I could figure out some solid
priorities as far as what I really want to devote my effort to, I feel like it
would pay off a lot in the long run. Right now I'm still trying to figure out
how to do that...
~~~
13ren
This isn't a bad strategy to try, for morale, confidence and people wanting to
help you: <http://www.paulgraham.com/good.html>
------
mixmax
This is more true than most people believe. Particularly people that haven't
tried hard.
------
13ren
Another good "talent vs effort" article:
[http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-
sm...](http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-secret-to-raising-smart-kids)
------
mhartl
Each of talent, hard work, and luck is a necessary but not a sufficient
condition: achieving great success requires all three.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Panasonic's human blinkers help people concentrate in open-plan offices - bryanrasmussen
https://www.dezeen.com/2018/10/17/panasonics-wearable-blinkers-concentrate-open-plan-offices-technology/
======
ThrowawayR2
Though appropriate, since it serves much the same function, the choice of the
term blinkers seems rather unfortunate given its origin:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkers_(horse_tack)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinkers_\(horse_tack\)).
(Then again, given the number of workplaces that reportedly treat their
employees like livestock, perhaps the term is fitting after all.)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why California May Go Nuclear - Reedx
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/09/03/why-california-may-go-nuclear/
======
ixtli
Conservationists need to really make peace with the fact that the only way out
of climate change involves building a very, very strong nuclear energy
portfolio. This is difficult for people because it requires engaging in
politics because these things are only as safe as they are well maintained.
But actually, we do a surprisingly good job in America at keeping our nuclear
plants running rather well, and we should be investing in many, many more.
~~~
ajross
> Conservationists need to [...]
Nuclear boosters need to start showing numbers proving this point instead of
taking potshots on HN. Nuclear needs to be worthwhile on a balance sheet
before anyone is going to take it seriously. Even now, it's cheaper to build
out wind and solar. And the new technologies are rapidly getting cheaper.
Show numbers.
~~~
imgabe
Wind and solar, no matter how cheap, are never going to be reliable sources of
baseline power. They fluctuate, and something needs to keep producing power
when the sun isn't shining or the wind isn't blowing.
~~~
telchar
The assumption that baseline power is necessary seem like an unwarranted
assumption to me, an idea that is unquestioned because that's the way things
are done now. Maybe adequate provisioning of sufficiently uncorrelated,
variable power sources combined with some storage is enough to replace all
baseline and peak power sources. Maybe this can be done with less expense than
nuclear + peaker plants. I haven't seen any nuclear proponents defend the
necessity of the baseline power concept with an actual analysis showing that
alternatives can't work though.
~~~
imgabe
We know that having a fairly constant source of baseline power works because
that is what we are currently doing. The onus to prove that some combination
of wind solar and batteries costs less and will deliver sufficient power
across all use cases should be on the wind / solar advocates. We know nuclear
plants work because they're currently in use all over the world.
Why demand numbers from others when you can't provide any yourself?
------
dev_dull
I’ve really come around to nuclear power. I’d like to invite other HN readers
to check out the comments of acid urnNSA[1] who describes himself as “Nuclear
reactor physicist in Seattle”
> _Recall that the beauty of nuclear energy is energy density: there is 2
> million times more energy in a uranium nucleus than in any chemical 's
> electron shell. An average american can get 100% of their total primary
> energy for an entire 88 year lifetime and only use 300 grams of nuclear
> fuel. At that kind of fuel/waste footprint, it's relatively easy to have a
> low carbon footprint. And the data is in. The number is 12 gCO2-eq/kWh._”
1\.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=acidburnNSA](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=acidburnNSA)
------
siffland
We need more support for nuclear, especially research for Thorium-based
reactors. I am all for green energy, but until that can become a reality
worldwide we need something that can generate a lot of electicity with as
little waste as possible.
------
ajross
> “But we can’t make a serious dent in slowing the warming trend in the world
> without investment in nuclear power.”
That's... not really true. Cost to build out nuclear power capacity remains
much (seriously, MUCH) higher than for solar or wind.
It's true that nuclear is carbon free, really quite safe, and very useful. You
certainly don't want to be deliberately decomissioning reactors in a world
where we're still trying to get legacy coal plants off the grid. But if you're
going to spend $100M on new capacity, I want to see numbers that say this is
actually better than buying a bunch of windmill blades.
It's a similar situation to hydro power. Dams are clean in a carbon sense but
"bad" in lots of other ecological ways. No one is pushing for new dams, even
if we all tolerate the ones that are already there.
~~~
MBCook
Windmills can’t provide steady base load power all the time. They need to be
paired with some sort of storage technology.
~~~
ajross
Then show numbers for why we need nuclear for peaking capacity instead of just
using existing gas and hydro while we wait for new technologies to arrive.
Again, the problem isn't that the alternatives are perfect or that nuclear
doesn't work, it's that _nuclear power is outrageously expensive_. And no
amount of internet argumentation or industry-driven legislation is going to
change that fact.
Make it cheaper, then come back and evangelize. In the mean time, stop getting
in the way of building out cheap green power, please.
~~~
lenkite
It's difficult to provide concrete numbers here. A lot of independent research
is needed on data. All one can point is examples.
For example, it is acknowledged by many that Germany made a mistake in
shutting down their nuclear power plants since all they have done is simply
increase their reliance on coal plants. Also, their renewables share of 36%
quoted by several folks on HN also includes biomass!
[https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-climate-change-
green...](https://www.politico.eu/article/germany-climate-change-green-energy-
shift-is-more-fizzle-than-sizzle/)
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/06...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/05/06/the-
reason-renewables-cant-power-modern-civilization-is-because-they-were-never-
meant-to/#3e6e8213ea2b)
------
rconti
> As for California’s climate and environmental record, it is not nearly as
> strong as it appears. Much of the state's emissions reductions owe to a
> switch from coal to natural gas in the electricity the state imports, and
> from keeping population low by blocking new home building, a problem which
> has worsened under the governor.
Well, this is the first time I've seen it suggested that blocking new home
building is "keeping population low" (or, keeping population growth in check)
in the Golden State.
------
merpnderp
If people are terrified of global warming, going nuclear is winning the
politics on easy mode.
------
JackPoach
Highly unlikely. US is no longer able to build nuclear plans on time or within
budget. California has difficult geology and climate is highly favorable
toward other renewable sources. Why do something that's more difficult and
expensive?
------
mrweasel
Isn’t this 20 year to late? Even if you “just” want 50% of Californias
electicity to come from nuclear you’d need 4 or 5 new plant built, ideally
built yesterday. New plants will be at least 10 years away and that’s being
really optimistic.
------
simmanian
I get that nuclear is effective, but the worst case scenario for nuclear seems
vastly worse than the worst case for any other method of generating energy.
Fukushima plant has gathered 1 million tons of radioactive water they now plan
on just dumping into the ocean, and has rendered a pretty sizable area
uninhabitable. We still don't know the long term health effects of living in
areas that had been evacuated. Coupling this with all the radioactive waste we
may never know what to do with makes me personally feel that fission is a
bandaid more than a permanent solution.
------
mlacks
I really want to push for something similar in my state (Hawai’i). Where do I
start?
------
option
I am a California voter. Whom do I call/write to express my support for this?
~~~
rconti
Probably the Governor himself; the article makes it sound like he'll be the
ultimate decider (or, at least, COULD decide it on his own).
------
MichaelMoser123
I hope they dont put it in a seismically active area, Fukushima used to be in
one.
~~~
i_am_proteus
Diablo Canyon is in an area that's moderately seismically active.
It's easy to see the only lesson from Fukushima the meltdown of the Daichi
reactors, but that was due to not being designed for the tsunami (or rather,
the combination of earthquake and tsunami). The earthquake protections of
other reactors (Fukushima Daini) worked as designed.
Modern reactors are safer than older reactors.
~~~
cameldrv
The full story of Fukushima has not really been comprehensively told, at least
in English language media. I'm not really sure that new reactors would
necessarily be safer than Fukushima Daichi unit 1, because that unit had an
isolation condenser system. The IC is exactly the type of passive safety
system that is touted with new designs -- it can keep the reactor cool for a
couple of days just by turning a couple of valves, and it can operate
indefinitely if its water supply is topped off by, for example, a firetruck.
Supposedly the system automatically activated, but then was manually
deactivated by reactor personnel before the tsunami arrived to avoid shock
cooling the reactor. After the tsunami arrived, the system was not turned back
on again apparently out of confusion, but exactly what happened is still
mysterious to me.
All of that said I still think that nuclear is the safest and least
environmentally damaging method of power generation we've yet invented. Like
air travel, due to radiation's mysteriousness, it's held to a much higher
standard of safety and environmental impact than other forms of power
generation, and that has led to gross distortions in perception and regulation
that lead us to have less safety and a worse environment.
------
adventured
> Diablo generates 9% of California’s electricity and 20% of its clean,
> carbon-free electricity.
It's remarkable that one nuclear plant generates 9% of the electricity for the
entire state of California, and that they would have ever considered closing
it (unless absolutely necessary).
Build a few more of those over time and California has no power concerns for
the next 50-60 years combined with the expansion of other renewables. Even
being conservative with their current budget they could safely put a few
billion dollars per year into building new nuclear power plants.
Even better, build to surplus and begin exporting that green nuclear energy to
other states.
~~~
mdorazio
The problem is multi-fold.
1) A good size chunk of California is seismically active, which is generally a
bad idea for nuclear power plant placement.
2) Nuclear power plants require large water sources nearby for cooling. Large
chunks of California where power is actually needed are essentially deserts
without lakes or reservoirs that can be easily used for this without
environmental concerns. You could place them on the coast, but this brings its
own set of environmental problems and potential dangers.
3) Nuclear power plants are not quick to build. We're talking 5+ years to get
one up and running, even in the ridiculously optimistic estimates from
industry proponents. So you need to make the case that in 5 years when one is
running it will be better than if we had built more solar + wind + battery
over the same period of time (a solar farm can be constructed in a few months,
battery storage can be installed in weeks).
4) Nuclear waste is _not_ a solved problem, no matter what proponents tell
you. The solution right now is to just kind of keep it hanging around mostly
secured locations and hope for the best. Long-term storage proposals have
still not gone anywhere, so you're basically just hoping that nothing terrible
happens until there's political and financial will to do something about it.
5) Power requirements per capita have been mostly flat or dropping for years
in the US, and this is expected to accelerate as homeowners continue to
install their own supplemental power systems. Building more gigawatt-scale
nuclear power plants is a huge investment with a questionable ROI given this
fact.
To me, nuclear power is a solution whose time has likely already passed. It
just doesn't make much sense to install more baseload power via nuclear these
days when we have non-coal alternatives available and dropping power
requirements overall. Continued pushes for efficiency improvements, green
buildings, residential solar+battery installs, and grid-scale renewable
installs are cheaper, faster, and have less risks.
~~~
rconti
2\. Power is already shipped across the state and to neighboring states. I'm
not familiar with the capabilities to carry X amount of power between Y and Z
regions, but, in the main, this is not a major issue, unless you're speaking
of a specific limitation I'm not aware of.
5\. Power requirements per capita in CA are dropping, full stop. I don't think
homeowners installing their own supplemental power systems come into this
(much). The power generated on my roof is still power I consume, and it's
accounted for that way. Frankly, rooftop solar is a big arbitrage scheme
rather than anything like self-sufficiency. Even most home solar+battery
systems can't work in a grid disconnect scenario.
~~~
mdorazio
The article is referring to why CA might want to go nuclear, not why
neighboring states might want to do so. My points reflect that specifically.
Also, power transmission across 500+ miles to get it from a neighboring state
with nuclear-suitable sites is not insignificant (typically in the range of
1-2% per 100mi).
What data are you basing your second point off of? All the stats I've ever
seen are using electricity sales to estimate their per-capita numbers. For
example, [1]. Rooftop solar would be accounted for only as a general dip in
sales, not as a specific reduction in per-capita consumption if that makes
sense (we might be saying the same thing). This quote from [1] is relevant
here:
"Rapid growth in the adoption of small-scale solar photovoltaic (PV) systems
in states such as Hawaii and California has contributed to the recent decline
in some states’ retail electricity sales. Small-scale solar PV systems, often
installed on residential rooftops, offset the amount of electricity that
consumers need to buy from the electric grid. In 2016, residential distributed
PV generation was equivalent to 15% of electricity consumption in the
residential sector in Hawaii, 6% in California, and 3% in Arizona."
That 6% number for CA has grown in the last 3 years as well and continues to
do so. It's a bigger offset than most people think.
[1]
[https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32212](https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=32212)
~~~
rconti
Right, but you said "Large chunks of California where power is actually needed
are essentially deserts.."
My point was that power can be shipped, in-state, just as easily (more
easily?) than it can be shipped from out of state.
Here's a source that discusses maximum power _demand_
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_in_California)
I'm not sure to what extent solar offsets this, but it's worth noting that it
was in 2006, before solar was nearly as popular as it is now. Your source
discusses power _sales_ , where, I think you're right, rooftop generation
would be netted out.
In realtime demand, I think the only cancellation would be the realtime net of
production vs consumption. The all-time peak of around 2pm would be a time
with lots of solar generation, to your point, so solar during peak times would
cancel out some observed demand. Also it sounds like they did a lot of work to
time-shift power usage, rather than outright decrease it.
------
RickJWagner
A compelling argument for more nuclear power. I'm a believer.
------
mikeger
Nuclear is renewable? Not great, not terrible.
------
danschumann
Can we shoot the waste into space? Also, if you could slow down a nuclear
explosion, could you use for rocket fuel?
~~~
overcast
Sure, until that rocket fails, distributing nuclear waste over a large area.
~~~
danschumann
Mitigate risks while emphasising benefits. What if we could make it safe? What
if it was better than anything we could make otherwise?
~~~
eloff
Rockets have a disturbing tendency to blow up on a regular basis. Russia just
tried this experiment with a nuclear cruise missile, which blew up.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyonoksa_radiation_accident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyonoksa_radiation_accident)
------
searine
I don't think I'll ever forgive the environmental movement for turning their
back on nuclear technology.
Yes, there are safety concerns but the price of inaction was the climate. I
would take an accident or two over climate change any day.
~~~
ashleyn
Three Mile Island and Chernobyl were practically PR disasters for the nuclear
industry and all within ten years.
~~~
Krasnol
It doesn't stop. Recently we had a guy hooking up his Bitcoin mining rig,
whatever happened in Russia, constant under-reporting in Europe, ...
~~~
dole
The submarine incidences frighten me enough, nevermind Skyfall.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Fake News Is Unbelievably Cheap to Produce - smacktoward
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/608105/fake-news-is-unbelievably-cheap
======
CM30
Gets even cheaper if you:
1\. Remember that most people don't care about how 'well written' an article
is, and simply care that it tells them something they wanted to know about (or
reaffirms their pre existing opinions).
2\. Go even further and remember that most people don't even read the article
to begin with. They just look at the title and icon on a social media site,
and share it based on that. Quite a few really lazy fake news sites don't even
write real articles. They just post attention grabbing headlines and simply
have realistic seeming gibberish on the page itself.
------
notadoc
Well obviously, making something up requires no effort or reporting or
verification. You just make something up.
It takes infinitely more resources to refute and disprove BS then it does to
produce it.
------
trendia
This article really only focuses on organized fake news campaigns directed by
a larger organization. But that's not the only source: sometimes fake news
comes from a single individual looking to score fake internet points, such as
the St. Olaf note that was fabricated by a student for a personal reason:
> ... they confronted a person of interest who confessed to writing the note.
This case was one of only two examples given in the article, and it doesn't
even support the thesis that the sources of fake news are organizations. So,
we shouldn't automatically assume that all instances of fake news or Twitter
trolls are being _paid_ to do what they do ... some people are simply trolls
because they _like_ to be trolls.
~~~
duskwuff
For that matter... could it be the case that some instances of "fake news" are
constructed by PR groups as demonstrations of their influence? If
misinformation is being sold as a product, after all, the easiest way for a
vendor to distinguish themselves is to have some samples available...
------
billmalarky
What cost? Fake News pays for itself and turns a profit.
[http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fake-news-how-partying-
mac...](http://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/fake-news-how-partying-macedonian-
teen-earns-thousands-publishing-lies-n692451)
------
2sk21
I'm reminded of a throwaway line from the book Anathem by Neal Stephenson
(well worth reading by the way)
“If you must know, they probably ran an asamocra on me.” “Asamocra?”
“Asynchronous, symmetrically anonymized, moderated open-cry repute auction."
I'll bet that Stephenson was probably inspired by the way auctions for Google
AdWords work. In any case, the idea of conducting an auction to determine
reputation of a data source is intriguing.
~~~
yrro
For those who have not read Anathen, some context may be interesting.
> “Early in the Reticulum-thousands of years ago-it became almost useless
> because it was cluttered with faulty, obsolete, or downright misleading
> information,” Sammann said.
> “Crap, you once called it,” I reminded him.
> “Yes-a technical term. So crap filtering became important. Businesses were
> built around it. Some of those businesses came up with a clever plan to make
> more money: they poisoned the well. They began to put crap on the Reticulum
> deliberately, forcing people to use their products to filter that crap back
> out. They created syndevs whose sole purpose was to spew crap into the
> Reticulum. But it had to be good crap.”
> “What is good crap?” Arsibalt asked in a politely incredulous tone.
> “Well, bad crap would be an unformatted document consisting of random
> letters. Good crap would be a beautifully typeset, well-written document
> that contained a hundred correct, verifiable sentences and one that was
> subtly false. It’s a lot harder to generate good crap. At first they had to
> hire humans to churn it out. They mostly did it by taking legitimate
> documents and inserting errors-swapping one name for another, say. __But it
> didn’t really take off until the military got interested. __”
> “As a tactic for planting misinformation in the enemy’s reticules, you
> mean,” Osa said. “This I know about. You are referring to the Artificial
> Inanity programs of the mid-First Millennium A.R.”
> “Exactly!” Sammann said. “Artificial Inanity systems of enormous
> sophistication and power were built for exactly the purpose Fraa Osa has
> mentioned. In no time at all, the praxis leaked to the commercial sector and
> spread to the Rampant Orphan Botnet Ecologies. Never mind. The point is that
> there was a sort of Dark Age on the Reticulum that lasted until my Ita
> forerunners were able to bring matters in hand.”
(Emphasis mine.)
~~~
Florin_Andrei
That book is awesome in many, many ways.
~~~
yrro
I really enjoyed it. That said, I also really enjoyed this in-depth takedown
of the novel and its ideas: [http://gmfbrown.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/why-
anathem-sucks.htm...](http://gmfbrown.blogspot.co.uk/2010/05/why-anathem-
sucks.html)
------
davidw
Reminds me of the bullshit asymmetry principle:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit#Bullshit_asymmetry_principle)
------
surge
Not just fake news, inaccurate or lazy journalism is also cheaper to produce.
It's largely the reason for mainstream distrust of MSM over time as they've
sensationalized the news and gone more for what's interesting more than
accurate. See Buzzfeed, blog style news sites, and also some of the stuff
that's been put out by WSJ and Forbes of late.
Part of that problem is that it has to be cheaper to produce so corners are
cut because of the loss of revenue in the news business. It's become cut
throat and a war for views to get pennies in advertiser revenue with slim to
no margins. It's become a case of we get what we pay for, but even the
subscription news sites with pay walls have gotten sloppy of late.
~~~
TokenDiversity
I wonder what enables them to do this with impunity though? I mean it looks
like Fox does it frequently and it recently turned out from the FBI testimony
that NYC did it on the Russia Trump connection but I don't know if they
apologized.
PS: भारतीय recently moved to Americas lol so pardon me for my ignorance of
your politics.
~~~
surge
They all kind of do it with impunity, if there is a later retraction or
correction, it's kind of too late, and they don't exactly put it on the front
page that "we got the facts surrounding this event wrong or were originally
misreported from erroneous or unverified sources".
------
aaron-lebo
You don't even have to produce fake news. If you want to drive discussion on a
topic, how much would it cost to hire people to sit at home and
comment/upvote/downvote in various portals? Those are chokepoints for
information; control them, and you can control the flow.
Correct the Record got 10 million dollars in funding last year. That goes a
looong way. It wouldn't be surprising if disinformation campaigns were
rampant.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record)
~~~
thinkingemote
Is Correct The Record primarily an anti Fake News organisation or a pro US
Democratic Party internet marketing wing?
It seems to me, as an European that the last US election got many "rustles"
"jimmied" particularly about finding reasons for why Trump got in, and more
than why Hilary didn't. one factor that is mentioned is that people believed
lies on the internet. CTR appears to me as an outsider as fighting the very
real issue of Fake News but is actually fighting for the Democrats.
I could be wrong though.
Mainly I think it's interesting (and worrying) that popularist politics is
associated with propaganda and manipulation and the those who see the lies are
minority enlightened educated people.
~~~
MichaelGG
They and Share Blue are just propaganda wings and aren't set out to provide
accurate news. Both parties were pretty shitty and it's nice to see they both
lost in their own way.
~~~
fivestar
They are left wing examples, but I know that during 2003 during the propaganda
campaign that got us the second Iraq War that there was an unacknowledged but
very real effort of the same size and scope going on initiated by the neocons.
I am absolutely certain of what I observed back then. No one--no one--would
believe me, though.
I would add that the comedian Dennis Miller was also drafted into spouting
pro-war propaganda on late night tv.
It was all very deliberate.
------
actuallyalys
This seems intuitive. Fake news relies on people's fears, assumptions and
misconceptions, so it's not like creators need to spend time actually
researching or reporting, which doubtless makes it cheaper.
This is not to say this article isn't useful—it's good to get some
confirmation. My only qualm is that someone selling a service to create fake
content is by definition untrustworthy, so the prices they list might be
unrealistically low.
------
sr2
It won't stop the army of fact-checkers debunking articles for having no
reliable sources, and denouncing them on social media. Social being both the
main distribution for fake news, and also the platform where articles are
routinely ridiculed and mocked. Something like Wales' WikiTribune[1] are a
response to fake news and propagandists, and are a welcome step to try and
address the issue. Facebook are also up in arms about this and are trying to
spot fake news either algorithmically or using a paid taskforce of highly
trained fact checkers (the mechanical turk approach). Reddit also warns users
of posts which are regarded as fake news and warns users to take them with a
pinch of salt.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikitribune](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikitribune)
~~~
ThrustVectoring
The problem is targeting and segmentation. If a hundred thousand people see
evidence for X and a hundred thousand people see a debunking that always
convinces you of not-X, the debunking doesn't matter unless it's the same
hundred thousand people. If the segment is the roughly 100M voters in America,
you'll reach one in a thousand unless you've got the same
targeting/segmentation filters.
------
crispyambulance
One hilarious exercise is to check your favorite fake news URL's in
archive.org and also try a whois lookup.
Some of these operators are incredibly sloppy using (presumably) real home
addresses. Their "origin story" on archive.org is equally sloppy-- immediately
starting with primitive, thoughtless slurs against their targets and sometimes
a glimpse into the genuine interests of the operator.
Unfortunately, these people don't have to be clever to "get the job done."
Stupid is perfectly OK, when the only way of dealing with this problem is
effectively a game of wack-a-mole.
------
sven-j
Turn the counts off. The retweet, view, like counters do not need to be
running in real time. It's a great way to program people's behaviour. And
those counts need to be regulated.
If the public is interested in news why the fuck does the public need to know
the view count?
~~~
yukisaka
Sure it's a way to control the flow of bullshit, but the folk at YouTube,
Twitter and Facebook will never do it until everything is burning. In that
sense, they are as robotic as the people who buy into the fake news.
~~~
smacktoward
But the reason they won't do it is entirely logical. They won't do it because
the counters are part of what make their services so addictive to their users.
Pushing buttons and seeing the counters go up turns their service into a kind
of video game, or slot machine -- entertainments that we know are very hard
for some personality types to put down.
What this means in practice is that, if one of the services was to
unilaterally take down these kinds of features, its users would flee to the
other services which still offer them. Addicts need to feed their addiction.
Which would be suicide for the service that did it, which is why none of them
will ever do it voluntarily.
Which in turn is where the parent's mention of regulation comes from -- when
economic pressures force companies into a race to the bottom like this,
introducing exogenous pressures like regulation can be the only way to stop
the race.
------
carsongross
True, but fake news can be quite expensively produced as well.
------
sctb
Discussion:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14552553](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14552553)
------
NietTim
I do hope no-one on here is surprised by this?
------
prophesi
Not to mention it's trivial to set up a blog using a news template with a
reputable-looking TLD.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Roadmap – nginx - twapi
http://trac.nginx.org/nginx/roadmap
======
stingraycharles
Pardon my ignorance, but what exactly should I be looking for that warrants a
frontpage of HN for this link ?
~~~
LoonyPandora
Official support for WebSockets and SPDY in nginx is big news. WebSocket
support especially, as previously it was impossible to do long-polling /
WebSocket type work in nginx without resorting to unreliable 3rd party
modules.
------
jroseattle
Hellloooooo, websockets. A nice reverse proxy to Node will be so welcome.
------
zaph0d
I am more excited about ETags support than SPDY & Websockets. Etags (when used
correctly) are extremely handy.
~~~
newman314
Please elaborate...
~~~
untog
There's a great example/explanation on the Facebook Developer blog:
<https://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/627/>
Basically, it's Last-Modified on steroids.
~~~
Vidart
In the link that you mentioned, ETags are produced and handled by application.
There are no special needs in web-server support.
~~~
untog
Right... I was assuming that the OP wanted to know what ETags are, rather than
their specific implementation in nginx.
~~~
zaph0d
Etags are useful for static assets as well.
------
dtf
Can't wait! But until then...
Has anyone been using nginx <1.3 to proxy WebSockets using the TCP proxy
module (nginx_tcp_proxy_module)? Anyone know from experience if it's a
workable solution?
~~~
istvanp
Not if you want to use port 80 for your websockets and http on the same
server. We are using haproxy to support both Node and nginx on port 80.
------
thcheetah
Looking forward to websocket reverse proxying in 1.3
------
d1mitris
I always found any information coming from the nginx website a bit too
laconic. Am I the only one?
WebSocket support is welcome.
~~~
alexchamberlain
Now you mention it, yes. Don't forget that English isn't the core developers'
native language though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google donates $6.8M to SF public transit amid bus controversy - Anechoic
http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2014/02/27/google-donates-68m-to-sf-public.html
======
MyNameIsMK
I didn't realize elementary school students like to ride MUNI all by
themselves. Publicity stunt.
~~~
andymoe
Publicity stunt, sure. But this is pretty significant for youth (up to 17
years old) who will continue to get free MUNI passes. There are something like
40 school bus routes in SF and that may seem like a lot but it's really not
when you understand that the district has 55k students and 146 schools [1].
But thanks for adding to the conversation. People like you keep me coming
back...
[1] [http://www.sfusd.edu/en/about-sfusd/sfusd-
profile.html](http://www.sfusd.edu/en/about-sfusd/sfusd-profile.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Digital Human – Terry A. Davis and Temple OS - bkq
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000b4r3
======
sysbin
I’m skeptical of my assumption but I think this person died not only from the
illness schizophrenia but because of the religion that fueled his illness. I
theorize psychiatry isn’t wanting to approach religion as bad for some people
but there is the possibility of ideology provoking delusions for people with
schizophrenia more so than normal people.
------
lethologica
There's another (lengthy) video that I watched on Terry and TempleOS recently
here [1] which was quite good. Honestly, it's such a tragic story. The guy was
clearly talented but wasn't able to ever get the help needed in order to
properly harness that talent.
[1][https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgoxQCf5Jg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UCgoxQCf5Jg)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: I would make website for you for free - udhb
I want to work on some real projects like website for your product or company or business.
I am a student and I would do it for free...<p>Thanks.
======
lsiunsuex
Student at what school / college?
What language? Framework?
Why for free? To gain experience? To add something to your resume?
What experience do you have all ready?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Insider's details about the Amazon Phone - Helvodka
Here's all I know about the Amazon Phone.<p>1- There are 2 versions, a cheap one that's being released by the end of the year with a basic software similar to the Kindle Fire software. The other version will be more expensive and feature a 3D UI but won't be released until at least next year. The screen itself is not 3D, but the front of the phone has 4 cameras placed on each corner of the phone, this is to track the user's eyes/head and move the UI to give the impression of 3D. Similar to what iOS 7 is achieving simply by using the phone's accelerometer. The advantage being that it's not based on how the phone moves, but how the head moves.<p>2- They wanted to have it launched already but had difficulties with both software and hardware, and then lots of key players left the company - a common problem at Amazon is retention, having the lowest record of any tech company.<p>3- As a result, several engineers from other products have moved to the phone team, making other products severely short staffed.<p>4- They have done testing so the software ignores other faces next to you, this is to prevent the illusion from breaking if there are many people looking at the phone.<p>5- The phone might have image recognition so users can take a picture of any object and search the Amazon.com database for similar products. This is not the barcode scan that's available already, but actual object recognition. This might allow them to sell the phone for cheaper since they'd make money off extra sales.<p>6- Current code-name for the product is "Smith".
======
Chestofdraw
Running four cameras just for a 3d UI? Isn't that going to be a huge battery
drain with little benefit?
~~~
midnitewarrior
That should also give it depth perception for recognizing objects that it
photographs. That appears to support the subsidized revenue model of the
device.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Upvote count was the "must read" buoy that helped me navigate HN - alain94040
A high upvote count meant that the comment was a "must read". It was my light that allowed me to navigate HN. And now it's gone :-(<p>Please bring it back.<p>Please.
======
pjscott
It would also be possible to bring back the red dot, on high-voted comments.
Perhaps the dot can be made bigger as the vote count increases. That would act
as a pretty effective must-read signal, I think, without compromising any of
the goals of hiding upvote count.
------
nametoremember
There's a serious amount of moaning about this subject. I don't think it helps
to fill up HN with these topics.
------
zoowar
Is there a post that lists the reason for the change?
~~~
wewyor
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2434333>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is it ok to answer these screening questions for a programming job? - igauravsehrawat
https://twitter.com/Root3d/status/916640177891680256
======
danielvf
Looks like pretty standard interview stuff. It’s just trying to get you
talking so they can see if you communicate well and if they like you.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What do you with customers' feature requests for your SaaS app? - hekker
I oftentimes get feature requests from my customers. Examples are customizing e-mails the app sents, GUI customizations ( so that they can upload their own company logo for example ), and so on.<p>Sometimes these features are useful for most other customers of the app, but it makes the app more bloated ( imagine an app that has more than a dozen settings ) so with new customers I usually tell them my app does not have the feature and try to help them to achieve the same goal using existing features. For customers that have used the app for a few years I have thought of charging them for custom changes although I don't know if that's a good idea.<p>Only for small useful features that are a big win I have actually done the implementation.<p>How do you handle customers' feature requests?
======
fbuilesv
I think I read this advice on Getting Real
(<http://gettingreal.37signals.com>) and it's been useful so far: listen to
your customers and their requests but don't do anything about it. Important
stuff will keep coming back frequently so by the time you get the 10th email
asking for custom emails you can start considering to add it as a feature.
Caveat: This works as long as you many small customers. If you have a few
large customers you can go for the customization route and just charge them a
lot to make it worth the extra effort.
------
calbear98
You can go with GetSatisfaction, Salesforce Ideas, or a similar app. The most
important thing is to let your customers know that their opinion is heard,
even if you don't implement what they want. If other customers want the same
thing, it may be important enough for you to add it. If they don't, then you
can justify that it is an isolated request.
------
ericingram
Do as Dropbox does, build a feature request forum so that customers have
visibility on what is important to others and what is being worked on.
Transparency is powerful this way. When a feature is declined by your team,
describe why in that forum.
------
debacle
> imagine an app that has more than a dozen settings
I'm surprised that there's that few. Even WordPress has tens of configuration
options out of the box, and individual templates might have tens more.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Answers On-Demand: A startup turns to small business - maverik
http://sagefront.com
======
bsears
your early access form on the front page is messed up, (the form sends to
[http://sagefront.co](http://sagefront.co) instead of
[http://sagefront.com](http://sagefront.com))
~~~
maverik
Hey, thanks a lot for letting me know that the form got screwed up. That's
pretty embarrassing. Really appreciate it.
~~~
bsears
No problem - you also may want to think about serving your site over HTTPS,
people care a lot more about that nowadays.
~~~
maverik
Good point...we need to get that set up today. Thanks!!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PDP-11 Booting - rmason
http://trmm.net/PDP-11/Booting
======
WalterBright
I had an LSI-11. It was a real sweet machine. DEC completely missed the micro
revolution - they could have owned it. So sad.
~~~
imglorp
They tried. Remember the DECMate and Rainbow and all those? Our school taught
us MACRO-11, pre-standard C, RSX-11, and Pascal on them. They aimed at the
small office and word processor crowd but were poorly marketed. They included
such dirty tricks as putting glue in the peripheral card slots of cheaper
models, to differentiate the expensive models.
[http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=468](http://www.old-
computers.com/museum/computer.asp?st=1&c=468)
~~~
flyinghamster
As I recall, DEC didn't like the idea of people formatting their own floppy
disks, either, and didn't supply a FORMAT utility, even with the version of
MS-DOS shipped with the Rainbow. The idea was that you were supposed to buy
preformatted disks from DEC instead. A major exception was that the Heathkit
H-11 (an LSI-11/23 in Heathkit form) actually could format floppies under
HT-11, its variant of RT-11.
So much potential, and they blew it all on petty BS like that.
~~~
jacquesm
It's easy enough to see the mistakes of yesteryear in hindsight but there is
plenty of similar behaviour today.
Everybody that sells objects really yearns for a subscription model and
everybody that sells objects through a subscription model would like to have a
subscription based service model, and failing that they'd like some
advertising money to go with their other offerings. And some companies want
all of those at the same time.
~~~
WalterBright
Hindsight? Everyone knew that floppy thing was a mistake the moment it was
unveiled. People actually laughed.
------
rbc
If you find getting a real PDP-11 too much trouble, consider using the SIMH
emulator:
[http://simh.trailing-edge.com](http://simh.trailing-edge.com)
SIMH does lack the visceral appeal of putting your hands on the console
though...
------
madengr
Isn't this cheating? I thought the bootloader was supposed to be input in
using the toggle switches or keypad, and only then can you boot off paper
tape. Lazy kids these days.
~~~
cafard
The old DG Nova S/330s had switches, I recall, though the only ones I ever
dealt with booted from disk or magnetic tape.
------
blt
Oh man, that 4th-to-last picture fills me with happiness. So old school. Is
that the drive head? Love the Vernier scale made out of PCBs. And the big-ass
cast iron parts. And the 1/4"-20 socket head bolts. And the ultra-sparse
through-hole PCB in the background. That picture made me so happy. Wish I had
been around back in the day to program one of the old machines.
------
Taniwha
That's not how I remember it, somewhere you have to (occasionally because it's
real core) toggle in the bootstrap using the front panel switches .....
~~~
duskwuff
Is it possible you're thinking of the PDP-8? The PDP-11 didn't have switches;
it had a keypad (shown around halfway down the page), and could also have a
boot ROM (present on this machine).
~~~
flyinghamster
Some -11s (like the 11/20, 11/35, 11/45, and 11/70) had toggle switch front
panels. The 11/34 had the octal keyboard, and some systems like the 11/44
didn't have much more than a power switch.
My high school, back in the day, had an 11/34 running RSTS/E with a bunch of
terminals hanging off it. Our classes taught BASIC-PLUS and COBOL (actually
WATBOL), but no assembler.
The biggest irony? Back in 1980, my teacher was warning us about Year 2000
issues. Some years back, when I got a RSTS/E 7.0 system (the version that my
high school had) running on SIMH, I discovered that 7.0 wasn't Y2K compliant!
------
mrintegrity
Interesting to see the origin of the UNIX "unmount" command being an actual
physical operation.
------
jesuslop
It is the machine operated by the guy recruited by Travolta in "Swordfish" in
that fancy way, with that casual scene of Halle Berry and a hacker named
Torvalds; what a salad.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How AI and copyright would work - chriskanan
https://techcrunch.com/2018/01/09/how-ai-and-copyright-would-work
======
IanDrake
Something I always wondered... if I train an AI using copyrighted material,
say Harry Potter, do I really own anything it generates?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Engineer and the Artist - catpuppet
http://blog.mathgladiator.com/2011/05/engineer-and-artist.html
======
rawsyntax
Fwiw, I'm a programmer and not attracted to artists. I think art is fine if
you want to do it, but it can be hard to make a living that way. I also don't
think going to college for art is a great idea, because that major doesn't
help you pay back the loans. Now if you can go for free that's another story
Also, programming can often be art. Think of Quine programs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Growth hacker? Bite me - dirktheman
http://www.dirktheman.com/rant/growth-hacker-bite-me/
======
patio11
A rose by any other name...
Do you believe there are short dev projects which make meaningful, compounding
improvements in core areas of concern for the business? If so, holy cow,
right? That is really, really, REALLY important to how you'd conduct your
business ("do them") and how you'd arrange a career as a dev (at the margin,
why work on anything else?)
If you don't believe that that set of projects exists or can be reliably
identified in advance, then huge levels of disdain would be warranted... if
you're very confident that you're right. The evidence is not in your favor.
------
jamiequint
This article misses the origin of the term 'growth hacker'. There are two
primary shifts that got us here:
1\. Marketing moving from being an external function to an internal function
that is embedded in the product. Thus product design, product development, and
product management skills are becoming very important skills to possess as
part of a marketing function.
2\. As marketing channels shift from being largely immeasurable to measurable
at a very detailed level the marketing function demands more understanding of
data and statistics.
Hence the term "growth hacker". Someone with product design, product
development, and product management skills who also has a solid understanding
of data and statistics, then leverages these skills to direct marketing
efforts whether internal (product driven) or external (advertising/content
driven).
~~~
Evbn
Agree with all of this except there is no evidence that the A/B testing world
as a whole knows anything correct about statistics, in the sense of being able
to profit from more sophisticated bets than "this idea seems not too bad". If
players bet real money on the probabilities they claimed, they would be
bankrupt. Contrast against the auto insurance companies and such who get this
stuff right.
------
danso
This rant seems to mostly be a slam against buzzwords in general (which is a
bias I also share)...but I don't agree with his reasoning behind the attack in
this case
> _So yeah, maybe a ‘traditional marketer’ isn’t able to come up with the
> (admittingly impressive) solution of HOW to push a listing to Craigslist,
> but you can’t just go saying that he/she can’t come up with the idea!_
I haven't followed the discussions about growth hackers, but I can imagine a
person whose skillset covers both marketing and code in a way that the whole
is greater than the sum of those two parts.
It's not just the "idea" that matters, but the understanding of how discrete
data can be usefully collected, analyzed, and disseminated. Call me skeptical,
but I don't think there are many marketers who really understand the
admittedly pedantic logistics in this...I don't mean that they need to
actually code this, but to understand that there is such a way to parse
amorphous tasks and information such that something truly useful can be done.
As an example, how many people out there merely had the idea that people like
collecting photos and displaying them in an attractive layout? How many of
those built a massive startup company from that idea?
~~~
mindcrime
_It's not just the "idea" that matters, but the understanding of how discrete
data can be usefully collected, analyzed, and disseminated. Call me skeptical,
but I don't think there are many marketers who really understand the
admittedly pedantic logistics in this...I don't mean that they need to
actually code this, but to understand that there is such a way to parse
amorphous tasks and information such that something truly useful can be done._
I think you underestimate marketers. Some of those guys & gals are practically
statisticians. Have you ever picked up a "marketing research" textbook and
skimmed through it? Serious marketers know a LOT about how to "collect,
analyze and disseminate" data.
~~~
danso
I don't disagree here. But I don't think we're talking about the same thing.
There are statisticians who are great at analysis...when the data is well
formatted and granular. These same statisticians are less attune to how you
collect and disseminate that data in different ways (a different "way" could
be: how do I automate spam Craigslist subsections at relative intervals
related to the frequency of postings in each particular subsections, and, of
course, make this spam not look like spam?)
In the science and medicine field, there are obviously many brilliant,
technical minds. Yet not all of them can properly code, which limits the
domain of their work when it comes to efficiency and scope.
~~~
mindcrime
_These same statisticians are less attune to how you collect and disseminate
that data in different ways (a different "way" could be: how do I automate
spam Craigslist subsections at relative intervals related to the frequency of
postings in each particular subsections, and, of course, make this spam not
look like spam?)_
Fair point.
------
wtvanhest
Buzz words are annoying, but sometimes they help communicate...
As companies grow, they have to hire "business people" including dedicated
marketers. One of HN's and Silicon Valley's problems is figuring out who is a
business person who can add value and who is an "idea person" has has traveled
to the valley to kill time over the next 3 years before getting a real job.
The solution is the term Growth Hacker which, while annoying actually serves
the purpose of filtering the highest production people from a huge amount of
potential marketing candidates.
I'm not sure if we will ever see the term Finance Hacker or Accounting Hacker
but I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some other terms develop.
~~~
mindcrime
Adding new terms to the lexicon _can_ be handy and is, obviously, required on
occasion. I'm still a bit skeptical that "growth hacker" really adds any value
though, especially since it seems to be somewhat amorphously defined, and it's
a label that anyone can anoint themselves with - much like "Social Media
Expert" or "SEO Expert."
Get the industry to stabilize on a clear, consistent, meaningful definition of
what a "growth hacker" really is and some criteria for being one and maybe it
becomes useful.
I mean, Growth Hacker is a shorter phrase than "marketing specialist who can
code, with specialized knowledge in product management, viral growth
strategies, and data analysis." But is that really what it means?
------
sageikosa
Even before the author mentioned this was marketing, I was telling myself
"this is marketing".
Perhaps the term "growth hacker" has arisen because "marketing" has gotten a
bad rep. In the world of 1990s software development, marketing drove features
based on market research, making developers resent the idiosyncratic nature of
the user community, and their proxy: the marketing guy (almost as much as the
sales guy who would promise something that wasn't even under development).
In the post 2000s world, every developer dreams of internet gold and striking
it rich with their idea (and a marketing guy would corrupt that), so a "growth
hacker" sounds less "evil" and more like someone a developer could work with,
even though they will likely alter the concept of the product to make it
"marketable" (ie, "pivot" the project)
~~~
mindcrime
_Perhaps the term "growth hacker" has arisen because "marketing" has gotten a
bad rep._
It only has a "bad rap" among people who are fairly clueless about what
marketing actually is, and/or people who hasty assessments based on limited
data points. So, a hacker worked for a startup where the "marketing guy" was
seen as evil, and now "marketing has a bad rap" seems to be the meme here. And
that would be silly.
Marketing is damn interesting stuff and it's absolutely crucial to a
successful business. And good marketers, like good developers, are talented,
skilled and hardworking. And, also like good developers, they're hard to find.
~~~
sageikosa
I don't disagree. That they may have acquired a bad rep (amongst developers,
or perhaps hackers) wasn't a value judgment, just an observation.
I try to separate the individuals holding a position from the position itself.
I've met great sales people, marketers, testers and subject matter experts.
I've also met bad project managers, directors, software architects, and
developers.
I think if there was any reason for general business functions to get a bad
rep in the late 1990s, it was probably due to the glut of post-Reagan-era
business school graduates, the dearth of traditional large corporate
organizations to fill them (by then, military-industrial downsizing was
underway and heavy industry was moving offshore), and the boom-time investment
craze of the early ".COM" era, leading to the ready availability of job roles
which could be absorbed (and were often demanded) by investment capital.
~~~
mindcrime
_I think if there was any reason for general business functions to get a bad
rep in the late 1990s, it was probably due to the glut of post-Reagan-era
business school graduates, the dearth of traditional large corporate
organizations to fill them..._
Yeah, that's reasonable. A lot of things definitely changed in the 80's and
bled over into the 90's. The era of "right-sizing" and "re-engineering" and
the proliferation of TLA's and buzzwords, and the breaking of that traditional
company/employee bond, definitely could have (did?) lead to some perception
changes of "business people."
That said, I think there's always been (and maybe always will be, as much as I
wish it were othewise) a gulf between the technology world and the business
world. It's like the people on each "side" don't really understand each other,
don't really _want_ to understand each other, and each underestimates the
value of the other. _sigh_
------
aginn
most growth hackers or growth pros are product managers or product editors,so
the post starts with the wrong premise.
Also, your accusations against growth hackers are titled based rather than
what they do or learning about what growth hackers do. If growth hackers
choose to identify themselves with each other in a new way, I don't think
there is an issue. Let them be. Remember, front-end engineering wasn't
considered much of a position 5 years ago. Same with UX, UI, data scientist,
etc. How about SEO specialist or direct-marketers.... Can they self-idenitfy a
new sub-division of marketing?
Adam Smith was right, people specialize as an industry expands to offer
greater value in a niche. Growth has become essential to startups. Growth
teams are becoming standard at scaling startups. Thus, growth hackers
appeared.
It is fine to express a distaste for a growth hacker by what he or she does,
seems silly to dislike them for their title. That is like saying "I hate
chocolate because of they call it "chocolate""
I must say degrading the work Sean Ellis and Andrew Chen have done by
comparing them to meaningless consultants from the dot-com era is disgusting.
Andrew Chen is one of the most brilliant viral engineers on this planet. Sean
Ellis has rocketed several companies to success and just acquired a KISS
company. I don't respect ad hominem attacks, neither should you.
~~~
mindcrime
_It is fine to express a distaste for a growth hacker by what he or she does,
seems silly to dislike them for their title._
I would say exactly the opposite. I expect the average HN reader has
tremendous respect for what "growth hackers" _DO_. But I also think that a lot
of the kickback against the term is the _perception_ (justified or not) that
it's an unnecessary, vacuous term that (ironically) is "just marketing". Or,
IOW, a fluffy title that some people have adopted to make themselves sound
more interesting.
If these folks were routinely being called Marketing Strategists or something,
I doubt there would be all this discussion about it.
------
paulsutter
The term "growth hacker":
1\. Focuses on the hybrid nature of the work. In a small team you can't have
two departments doing what one smart guy can do, and
2\. Helps purely technical people overcome bias that marketing work is the
dark side, show that it's also cool.
It's like a micro restatement of the "Copper and Tin" section of
<http://paulgraham.com/bronze.html>. Maybe not the greatest phrase of all
time, but this article seems like a bit of a personal overreaction.
------
rohansingh
This is getting cliché. I think at this point I'm now seeing more posts
railing against the use of the term "growth hacker", than I am seeing actual
uses of the term "growth hacker".
This anti-"growth hacker" sentiment isn't bold or brave anymore. It's
repetitive.
~~~
Ensorceled
I was just thinking that. Actual usage of growth hacker seems mostly "tongue
in cheek" or "for lack of a better term".
------
livestyle
Fantastic read and one that will ruffle some feathers..kudos.
I find it interesting that in Andrew Chen's famous growth hacker post he
doesn't mention the other craigslist "hack"(insert sarcasm) that was even more
important to airbnb's growth.
------
hack_edu
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.dirktheman.com/rant/growth-
hacker-bite-me/)
Site appears to have bitten the dust
------
awwstn2
Writing a bitter rant on your personal website and posting it on HN yourself =
"growth hacking"
------
calgaryeng
Isn't this largely similar to another post that was up here about a week ago?
------
lmm
My, that's the least readable site I've seen on HN in a while.
~~~
dirktheman
Font-wise? Layout wise? Although it's a Wordpress frankenstein-job, but I'm
always curious about improving the experience!
~~~
johnlensonni
It's just a big mess. Why is the background brown, but then the background of
the text black? Do you find those colours complement each other? Along with
the blue, the whole design looks really grimy and dingy.
Why are you telling me the date? I know today's date.
I don't like the battery of social network icons, you may disagree.
I also don't like the swearing. I think it's unprofessional, however also very
subjective.
Strange mix of sans and serif fonts, with no apparent reason for which is
which. "Growth Hacker? Bite me!" is serif, below that "Why the term 'growth
hacking' is just another buzz word" is sans. Below that "A rant by Dirk" which
is serif, apart from the single word "rant".
~~~
dirktheman
Thanks! I'll definetely look into it when I have the time.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bzr is dying; Emacs needs to move - __david__
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-devel/2014-01/msg00005.html
======
hyperpape
I went back and looked at the older discussion, and it doesn't paint Stallman
very well as the head of a project. He pins the question of whether to keep
using bzr not on whether it is good or whether the Emacs developers want it,
but on whether it's being "maintained".
But then he seems to define maintenance as having fixed a specific bug that's
been around for over a year, blocking a point release.
He admits that he can't follow the developers list to see if they're genuinely
doing active maintenance (reasonable enough: he has a lot on his plate), but
also won't accept the testimony of Emacs developers that the mailing list is
dead and there's no evidence of real maintenance.
When questioned, he says that there's too much at stake to abandon bzr if it
can be avoided at all. But the proposed replacement is GPL software. This is
just madness.
Refs: [http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2013-03/msg009...](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2013-03/msg00906.html).
[http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2013-03/msg008...](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2013-03/msg00870.html)
(and surrounding posts).
~~~
blumentopf
> it doesn't paint Stallman very well as the head of a project
Is this news to you?
Cf. e.g.
[http://www.jwz.org/doc/lemacs.html](http://www.jwz.org/doc/lemacs.html)
~~~
vezzy-fnord
Not to mention his insistence on GNU Hurd being based on Mach, which pretty
much ended up killing the project.
~~~
IgorPartola
That's a simplistic view. First, the GNU project is very much alive: the GNU
tools are used in a huge number of operating systems and are installed on a
staggering number of devices. I would bet that the system you are writing this
comment from is running thanks to the GNU software.
Second, it is debatable whether sticking to Hurd was a good or a bad idea
_technically_. Imagine if Stallman and co. managed to convince a good number
of developers that it was a good idea and the kernel was competitive with
Linux, BSD's, etc. If you believe you have a technically superior vision for
your product, should you compromise on it just because people who do not share
in your vision will not join you?
In the end, I think what killed the pure GNU/Hurd OS was bad PR and
absolutism. Hurd as a technical question was just a small part of that.
Remember, the debate between the Free and the Open Source guys was pretty
fierce. Today we use terms like FOSS to describe all open software, but when
Linux and Hurd were young these were different camps with opposing
philosophies, and the one that appealed to more developers won out. In
simplistic terms, you can think of this as the VHS vs Betamax debate. Can you
blame the Betamax backers for continuing to try to push it and "killing" it as
a result?
~~~
Sssnake
>the GNU tools are used in a huge number of operating systems
You mean linux? That isn't a huge number.
>and are installed on a staggering number of devices
The staggering number of devices you refer to almost exclusively run busybox
or one of the similar projects. GNU software is hugely bloated and not a good
choice for embedded systems.
>Second, it is debatable whether sticking to Hurd was a good or a bad idea
technically
No, it was fine technically. It had no developers and so nothing happened.
Minix exists, obviously microkernels are possible.
~~~
josephlord
GNU tools were often used on other OSes too including Solaris and other
commercial Unixes but also Windows under Cygwin. Particularly GCC, make etc.
but also command line tools such as grep where the default platform versions
were often not as feature rich. I didn't use those platforms so others will
remember and know better but I don't think huge was an obviously wrong
description.
~~~
Sssnake
There is a big difference between "some people optionally could install GNU
stuff in addition to their existing tools" and "those OSes use GNU tools".
~~~
josephlord
>the GNU tools are used in a huge number of operating systems
Fair enough, I read "in" as a synonym for "on" but read in a less casual way
the difference could be important.
Even in the "in" case I think many BSD's used GCC as the default compiler
(CLANG seems to be taking over now).
------
mikro2nd
>git won the mindshare war. I regret this - I would have preferred Mercurial,
but it too is not looking real healthy these days
I confess that my perception of Mercurial is the diametric opposite of the
author's. Recently I believe I have seen a modest resurgence of interest in Hg
and increased uptake. Am I just seeing this through some peculiar VCS-warped
glasses?
I believe that much of the popularity of git stems from github making it very
easy to adopt, something that bitbucket doesn't seem to have pulled off as
well.
~~~
binarycrusader
Yep, I don't understand the author's assertions about Mercurial either.
Mercurial remains a better choice for a few use cases where git simply falls
flat.
Among game developers, in particular, because of their need to have revision
control for large assets, Mercurial seems to be more popular than git due to
the large files extension.
And realistically, perforce or other solutions appear to be even more popular
among that particular developer segment.
Personally, I use Mercurial wherever possible, but that's not because I
believe Mercurial to be technically superior, it's just because I hate git's
UI.
Perhaps among the general FOSS community git is more popular, but both git and
Mercurial have yet to met the needs of many developers.
~~~
bitwize
_Among game developers, in particular, because of their need to have revision
control for large assets, Mercurial seems to be more popular than git due to
the large files extension._
Most game devs -- I'd say even most devs in grown-up, professional shops --
use p4.
~~~
binarycrusader
Most game devs -- I'd say even most devs in grown-up, professional shops -- use p4.
Hence why I said "realistically, perforce or other solutions appear to be even
more popular among that particular developer segment." My comment you quoted
was comparing the popularity of Mercurial to Git, not p4.
Also, I'd disagree with your assertion regarding "most devs in grown-up,
professional shops". Microsoft's SourceSafe has a large following among the
corporate world. And many of the largest tech companies I'm aware of don't use
p4 primarily; they use git, mercurial, svn, cvs, SourceSafe, home-grown
solutions, etc.
~~~
voltagex_
Are that many people really using SourceSafe still? TFS is now Microsoft's
preferred solution, although I don't know what they use internally.
~~~
taspeotis
Disclaimer: I'm not a Microsoftie, just collecting some links and adding my
own opinion.
Microsoft use TFS heavily [1].
Right now I imagine most MS projects are TFS but it doesn't appear to be
mandated. Maybe for the big, internal-only stuff. ASP.NET is hosted on
CodePlex as a Git repo [2] and MEF is Hg [3].
They've just added Git support to TFS and that probably means a lot of MS
projects will migrate to Git over time.
[1]
[http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2013/08/20/t...](http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2013/08/20/tfs-
internal-usage-statistics-1st-half-cy-2013.aspx)
[2] [http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/](http://aspnetwebstack.codeplex.com/)
[3]
[https://mef.codeplex.com/SourceControl/latest#.hgignore](https://mef.codeplex.com/SourceControl/latest#.hgignore)
------
stiff
FWIW, just a few days ago I was browsing through the Emacs Bzr repository -
after a full bzr clone, that took ridiculously long as well, a simple bzr
blame takes 40-60 seconds to execute locally, and I have an SSD drive, four-
core intel i7 and 8GB of RAM. I have never seen this kind of slowness with
Git, with any repository size.
~~~
mathattack
Does this make the issue a critique of RMS's management style, or of the FSF
licensing that is unable to back out of a failed project?
~~~
justincormack
If you look at the thread, it seems to be neither, just inertia. The licensing
is fine, its GPL, no different from bzr.
~~~
drzaiusapelord
Inertia seems to fit with bad management style. Good managers should be
fighting it when it becomes cumbersome. Stop making excuses for FOSS
celebrities and start demanding better outcomes.
------
hyperpape
Well, it looks like it will happen.[1]
In light of my other comment, good for Stallman. Seems he wasn't actually so
hardheaded as it seemed.
[1] [https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2014-01/msg00...](https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2014-01/msg00014.html)
------
mickeyp
The important take-away here isn't the relative merits of each DVCS, but that
bzr is not used by anybody any more, and it is impeding the uptake of new
contributors to Emacs.
~~~
rbanffy
Compared to the decision (and ability) to contribute to Emacs, the choice of
DVCS seems to be rather unimportant.
~~~
aaronem
The impression I have is that bzr is just another roadblock between a
potentially interested novice and a patch accepted into the Emacs source.
(It's not by far the largest one, though, and while I think esr has a point, I
also think it'd be of help for some of the current Emacs developers to publish
a "How to start hacking Emacs" document, for the benefit of people like me who
would love to contribute but who have _absolutely no idea where or how to
start_.)
~~~
quotemstr
> help for some of the current Emacs developers to publish a "How to start
> hacking Emacs" documen
1\. Find thing you don't like 2\. M-x find-function RET function-to-fix RET
3\. Hack hack hack (use C-M-x or M-x eval-buffer liberally; also, read about
edebug) 4\. Make diff relative to Emacs base code 5\. Send diff to bug-gnu-
[email protected]
What I love about hacking on Emacs is that it's so easy to find the bit of
code responsible for a given feature and hack on that code in a running
editor. There's nothing like it. If I'm using Firefox and don't like the
address bar, I need to go dig through XUL, find the thing I don't like, and
restart Firefox. Emacs? You just find the function and edit it right in the
editor.
~~~
aaronem
Thank you, yes, it's not so much finding the code I need to modify that's the
problem, as understanding how any given single thing fits into the Emacs C
source as a whole. Hacking the Lisp side I don't really have a problem with --
but if I want to, for example, extend the MESSAGE primitive so that it can
check a list of messages not to emit in the minibuffer, things get very hairy,
very fast. A general overview of what's what, and where, in the C source,
would be extremely useful, and I haven't had much luck finding anything like
that in the source distribution or online. (And, yes, I have read
etc/CONTRIBUTE, etc/DEBUG, and (Info)Elisp/GNU Emacs Internals/*. And I'm
pretty sure doing what I'm talking about doing to MESSAGE would be a bad idea,
because it'd require a call up into Lisp space every time the primitive gets
called, which can be extremely frequent especially during initialization. But
I know somebody who'd like to have that functionality available, and it seemed
like a relatively simple place to start, until I tried actually doing it.)
------
TacticalCoder
Many Emacs contributors are already using Git and simply publishing everything
in Github. Most of the things in my .emacs comes from Github. Simply they're
not part of the core Emacs.
I think the issue is not only bzr vs Git. It's also, if I understand things
correctly, the super restrictive license that the core Emacs has, making every
developer sign papers and send them (by snailmail!? or are scans allowed!?)...
And if you several other contributors helping you, you must have them all sign
these papers.
I've seen at least one prolific .el Emacs author (I think the mulled/multi-
line-edit author) complain about that: saying that out of 10 people who helped
him he managed to have nine of them sign the papers and sent them to him and
couldn't contact the last one...
And eventually he simply decided to abandon getting all the signatures and
went it's own way (i.e. Github / non-core Emacs, like many do).
I'm not well versed in licenses / GPL things but I'm a long time Emacs users
and I'm definitely seeing change: now most of the newer (and great) .el files
I add to my Emacs are coming from Github.
------
davidw
The Tcl guys are in a similar situation - they use Fossil. Which by all
accounts looks pretty cool, but at this point it's "not git".
[http://www.fossil-
scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/index.wiki](http://www.fossil-
scm.org/index.html/doc/tip/www/index.wiki)
~~~
sigzero
If Tcl Core wanted to move to git, Fossil exports repos to that format. So
they really lost nothing. They have a small team of commiters as well so
Fossil works just fine for them.
~~~
mjs
Well, there's also the "social and signaling effects" of using something
that's non-git, that Eric S. Raymond articulates well: "we cannot afford to
make or adhere to choices that further cast the project as crusty, insular,
and backward-looking."
~~~
stcredzero
_Well, there 's also the "social and signaling effects" of using something
that's non-git_
The "not a field" of Computer Programming, to appropriate Alan Kay's quip, is
so broken that "social and signaling effects" swamp actual facts and
information to a degree that makes it look like Astrology. I've been watching
this for decades now -- literally.
Dynamic languages were for years after still tarred with being "slow" when
both Moore's Law and progress in JIT VMs and generational GC had make them
perfectly fine for tons of applications. If the half-life of patently false
misinformation is literally about a decade, and what passes as fact between
practitioners is less fact than school rumors, what does that say about our
"field?"
~~~
davidw
What are the actual facts in this case?
There are tons of people who use and know git. It's fast, it works pretty
well. There's some value in the fact that it's widely known and used (network
effects), probably enough that whatever takes its place will probably be not
just a bit better, but a lot better, in some way. bzr does not strike me,
offhand, as being a lot better. Is fossil?
So in this case, I think that the network effects are an important fact.
~~~
stcredzero
_What are the actual facts in this case?_
I'm talking in general. I think it's good they're going to git.
_bzr does not strike me, offhand, as being a lot better._
I never said it was better or worse. My comment is about the "field" and how
accurate its "information" is in general. Sometimes social signalling and
network effects are good. What disturbs me is that _so many of us use this as
a substitute for facts and objective analysis._
Taking social signalling and network effects into account is okay. Only going
that far and stopping is just dim laziness. (It's also behind the worst
examples of sexism and ageism in our "field.")
~~~
wonderzombie
> What disturbs me is that so many of us use this as a substitute for facts
> and objective analysis.
I think there's something to this. At a guess, people use a heuristic because
facts and objective analysis are hard. I don't mean that sarcastically— I mean
that it's difficult and complex even if you are not lazy. When people opt for
what everyone else is using, they receive the benefits of treading a well-worn
path. This isn't an excuse, but I am sympathetic. Some people are just trying
to get work done.
On the other hand, that is a poor justification for being too lazy to do the
job right. Often a problem isn't as hard or complex as it looks, and you might
just learn something while looking into it. You get the idea.
Also, +1 to your comment re: sexism and ageism.
------
popey
"most of Canonical's in-house projects have abandoned bzr for git".
Nope. Unity, Mir, Upstart, all of the new phone/tablet apps and platform tools
are on bzr on launchpad.
Not disputing the fact that git has won the war, just nitpicking that point.
------
pcx
Here is a previous discussion on emacs-devel from Mar'13
[http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2013-03/thread...](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2013-03/threads.html#00870)
Stallman's opinion on this subject - [http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2013-03/msg009...](http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/emacs-
devel/2013-03/msg00905.html)
TLDR Stallman doesn't want Emacs to give up on bzr (also a GNU project) yet.
This opinion might change now though.
~~~
thearn4
Just read the link to Stallman's opinion - side question: he signs his name
with a Dr. prefix. But did he finish graduate school at MIT?
~~~
Someone
According to
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Stallman),
he has 14 honorary doctorates and professorships.
~~~
leoc
It's considered seriously naff to title yourself Dr. on the strength of an
honorary doctorate, though — at the very least, you should add " _honoris
causa_ ". (Even with an earned doctorate you're supposed to avoid referring to
yourself as Dr. Smith, in the same way that you shouldn't introduce yourself
as Mr. or Mrs. Smith.) Not that I'd really grudge the title to RMS though,
who's done more technical hard work and innovation than many people who are
running around with earned PhDs.
------
djm_
For those wondering: Vim is currently on Mercurial @ Google Code [1]
[1] [http://www.vim.org/sources.php](http://www.vim.org/sources.php)
~~~
guns
And happily for git users, the git-hg plugin makes maintaining a git mirror of
the vim hg repo very convenient:
[https://github.com/cosmin/git-hg](https://github.com/cosmin/git-hg)
Submitting patches upstream is also not a problem as Bram Moolenaar only
accepts patch files on the dev mailing list.
------
Aqwis
Oddly, both Bazaar, Git and Mercurial were created around March/April 2005.
Why the sudden appearance of popular DVCSs around that time, and why did
Bazaar fall behind the other two in popularity?
~~~
gizmogwai
All of them emerged due to the end of license agreement for a free license of
bitkeeper for the linux kernel. Git won due mainly to Linus personnality and
the rise of "social coding" via github. Bazaar failed because, at the
beginning, it was painfully slow compare to git and mercurial. It speed has
increase over time, but bad reputation is hard to get rid of.
~~~
alok-g
>> Bazaar failed because, at the beginning, it was painfully slow compare to
git and mercurial. It speed has increase over time, but bad reputation is hard
to get rid of.
Is this an example that goes against the common advice to launch an MVP fast
to test the market (and then keep on improving)? It seems that the advice is
valid only when there is nothing for the customer to compare the to-be-
launched product to. If competing products end up launching at around the same
time as yours, the advice may turn its head on you.
~~~
jeltz
Git was also early to the market, but had a fast core and terrible user
interface. Git was used for the Linux kernel only two months after Linus had
started coding.
------
sixtypoundhound
Bzr certainly isn't dead.
git has won the mindshare war for mainstream developers, but I've found it to
be a useful FOSS alternative for developers forced to use a Windows
environment [for business-related reasons, don't laugh..it pays the bills].
Their UI is a bit more intuitive than git's for new users.
Now, if you're a hardcore Linux-stack career dev...get onto git ASAP... but
for lesser folks...bzr works just fine...
~~~
Macha
> but I've found it to be a useful FOSS alternative for developers forced to
> use a Windows environment [for business-related reasons, don't laugh..it
> pays the bills]. Their UI is a bit more intuitive than git's for new users.
However, the same also applies to Mercurial, and even though Mercurial is less
popular than Git, it still has a lot more devs who use it than Bzr.
------
harel
I'm using bzr on a large scale project and have not experienced any problems.
A full fresh branch does take a while to complete but I find it acceptable as
we're not branching the full repo from the server that often. Usually its
local branches. When using git on a similar scale project we found that we
spent a lot more time managing the source control system than we ought to.
Source control should be something you rarely worry about and requires no
'management' other then regular usage. Git was not that. Git required effort.
------
manish_gill
I had to interact with bzr last year for my GSoC project (Mailman, hosted on
Launchpad). It wasn't a pleasant experience, and got a whole lot more
complicated when I had to move a Git repo to LP.
Bazaar is bad. :(
------
dscrd
Yeah, Mercurial is a viable choice still for just about all projects, and most
of the time the simpler one.
------
rjzzleep
the most annoying thing about bzr in my opinion is it's stupid branching
model. luckily a migration to git is a oneliner.
git init ; bzr fast-export --plain | git fast-import
~~~
icebraining
_luckily a migration to git is a oneliner._
I wish. Unfortunately, not all repos we use are owned by us, and using two
VCSs is worse than sticking with bzr.
~~~
sergiosgc
Isn't it possible to track the upstream just like with svn? We use git
internally but interact with third party subversion repositories. We do it by
dedicating a branch to tracking the svn repo, use git-svn to branch and to
push the commits (after rebasing). It's not perfect but after a few hurdles at
the beginning it is now problem free.
------
midas007
Duplicate of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6999094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6999094)
~~~
ableal
Curiously, the URL seems exactly identical in both submissions, which are
almost consecutive ( ...94, ...96).
That probably means the duplicate detector has some delay on getting its past
submissions data. The rate of submissions these days seems to average one a
minute, but the delta on this pair may be different, and it is not apparent by
now.
~~~
__david__
I can't tell now that the other one is dead, but I believe it's link was http:
while this one's is https:. I use the "https everywhere" browser extension so
when I copied the URL I probably got the upgraded one. I think that explains
why the dup detector didn't catch it. I don't know why this story took off and
the other died. Maybe the headline?
~~~
ableal
You're probably right, I only looked at the path.
Thanks for the followup.
~~~
midas007
TLS FTW. (or sometimes TLS MITM FTW.)
------
codex
The entire GNU project is like a house that looked so mod in 1971, but now has
peeling paint, stained concrete, shag carpeting that smells pretty funky, and
a crazy old relative that haunts the place. "Renovation" is changing the light
bulbs and occasionally washing the stucco.
------
rmrfrmrf
It's a bummer to think of all of the real-life dollars that have been sunk
into Bzr's development, which I'm sure makes a decision like this harder. That
said, isn't this what forking is for? The people who want Git support should
code and maintain it themselves.
------
kro0ub
For those who want to learn BZR and help revive it by adopting it in your
projects, there's a nice book here: [http://www.foxebook.net/bazaar-version-
control/](http://www.foxebook.net/bazaar-version-control/)
------
tenfingers
I wished people would use software based on merits, not on popularity. That
being said, Bzr is slow, it was always slow from day 1 -- and slowness is part
of the UI experience.
~~~
rlpb
Popularity means developers, which means bugfixes and more features in the
future which projects may want to use. Switching DVCS has a cost to a project.
Thus software popularity is important.
This may be unfortunate, but this is how it is. DVCSs are by no means complete
today, and cross-pollination of features continues. An unpopular project that
has fewer developers working on it will fall behind. A project that doesn't
want to keep switching DVCS has a reasonable interest in the DVCS project's
future, since future features will come "for free".
------
Beliavsky
Do people really decide whether to contribute to an open source project based
on the version control system it uses, rather than the importance of the
project itself?
------
codex
If Emacs moves to git, can we call it by its proper name: git/Emacs?
------
crncosta
"git won the mindshare war"
Sad, but true...
~~~
mateuszf
What's so sad about it? IMHO git is awesome.
~~~
midas007
I only use git:
\- it has a lot of non-orthogonalities and non-closure operations (ie options
on one command are different or not present on other commands)
\- if the network drops, fetches and pushes have to start from scratch. For
fetches, it would be nice to save partial packs and resume them. For pushes
over crappy links, doing similar could be a potential DDoS, so setting up some
sort of rsync box is probably better.
------
bachback
wow.
please, please, you Emacs/LISP gurus out there: make a working modern package
manager and integrate the browser like lighttable does. and perhaps rewrite
emacs from scratch so that the source code makes sense in today's world not in
1980's world.
unfortunately lighttable is staying closed for much too long, but something
like it is desperately needed.
~~~
swah
I agree - Emacs has to be rewritten on top of a modern rendering engine!
~~~
saalweachter
They did. It is called 'Eclipse'.
~~~
sixthloginorso
Just not the same. Adding functionality to Eclipse is a "project". In Emacs,
it's just some code and an eval-last-sexp away.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What's your favorite code editor? - rukshn
http://tally.tl/BwG2O
======
smt88
This is way too broad. For what kind of code?
------
simonblack
joe with wordstar key-bindings <grin>
------
Joyfield
Ultraedit.
------
beyondcompute
TextMate 2
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What's so special about being a designer? - sandrobfc
It's a simple question for which I am trying to get a clear answer to: can everyone be a designer?<p>It's a fact that everyone has opinions when it comes to design - clients, partners, mothers, grandmothers, uncles, cousins, etc. However, I don't think that design is based on opinions.<p>So, apart from some technical knowledge, why is the designer the authority on design? What makes a designer different from the common mortal?
======
babygoat
designing != having opinions
My mom can't figure out google maps. If I asked her to design a better UI, her
head would explode.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A more balanced reading list? - forgotmypasswd
As an avid user of reddit and hn, I read a good amount of technical blogs. This stuff is great, but I realize now that its ALL I read. While I enjoy the posts, (and I learn a lot) I feel like I'm becoming disconnected with the average user.<p>Do you know any good blogs etc by people who don't make websites for a living?
======
frossie
_I feel like I'm becoming disconnected with the average user_
Do you mean the average user or the average person :-) ?
I read some human-interest blogs to decompress, my favourite is by a UK
paramedic and is at <http://randomreality.blogware.com/>
The problem with these kinds of blogs is that it is hard to jump in the middle
(unlike a technical blog where you can start reading at any point). The blog
format makes this worse of course- it's generally hard to start "at the
beginning". Anyway in this case the guy has written a couple of books covering
the highlights so far.
------
gcupps
I'm a huge fan of The Morning News and Arts & Letters Daily
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
60,000% growth in 7 months using Clojure and AWS - lkrubner
http://www.colinsteele.org/post/27929539434/60-000-growth-in-7-months-using-clojure-and-aws
======
lkrubner
To me, this was the big surprise, and the big revelation:
"This led to Decision Two. Because the data set is small, we can “bake in” the
entire content database into a version of our software. Yep, you read that
right. We build our software with an embedded instance of Solr and we take the
normalized, cleansed, non-relational database of hotel inventory, and jam that
in as well, when we package up the application for deployment. Egads, Colin!
That’s wrong! Data is data and code is code! We earn several benefits from
this unorthodox choice. First, we eliminate a significant point of failure - a
mismatch between code and data. Any version of software is absolutely,
positively known to work, even fetched off of disk years later, regardless of
what godawful changes have been made to our content database in the meantime.
Deployment and configuration management for differing environments becomes
trivial. Second, we achieve horizontal shared-nothing scalabilty in our user-
facing layer. That’s kinda huge. Really huge."
~~~
heretohelp
I work for a food startup (Nutrivise) and we do something similar'ish. Our
dish database is baked in and deployed as a fixture. We _should_ consider
distributing it to the frontend web servers instead though.
There are some other fun hacks, like local redis instances for caching search
space stuff.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: How to convince my coworkers to ship imperfect code? - artpi
We’ve heard mantras many times. Mark Zuckerberg urges to „Move fast and break things” ( although it’s „move fast with stable infrastructure” now. ). Reid Hoffman says, that „If you are not embarrassed with first version of your product, you are too late”. And in my company, we are buying in the adage of moving fast.<p>In the trenches, close to the code, perfectionism is chipping away at our productivity.<p>"Let’s take time to make this piece future-proof because we never get around to refactoring things later”.
The motivation is noble - save ourselves and future victims of our code some problems.
But, what I’ve seen is:
- We never get around to refactoring because we take SO MUCH time honing v1 that nobody sane gives us more time to make it better. Maybe if we shipped sooner, we could refactor later? (That is my personal experience when I just wanted to refactor)
- We spent days making some solution perfect but it turns out the whole data structure is useless and has to be thrown away because it just does not fit to overall infrastructure.
- That making perfect blocks other people from iterating on it.<p>I found out that following approach works best<p>1 Hack together an end - to - end prototype to test if all pieces can work together in the hackieshest way possible
2 Design interfaces between the pieces
3 Extract classes, libraries, etc so improvements are easy to collaborate on
4 Ship MVP to production to get user feedback
5 Introduce every non-critical part of the feature while taking user feedback into account<p>Perfectionism is something that is plaguing authors and other professionals ( Although I hate „code is poetry” adage, I do see shared struggle between coders and authors and a lot of advice can be inferred from books like „Bird By Bird” by Anne Lamot - especially concept of „shitty first draft" )<p>Soo… How do I convince my coworkers to iterate more? Ideally, I’d like to create online perfectionism-antidote.
Or am I wrong maybe?
======
artpi
I love my coworkers, they are truly the smartest people I know and I never
dreamed of such productive work environment, but these are the practices I
found to be problematic:
\- Writing tests in the sam PR introducing a library that is not yet used is
waste of time since that library will go through several revisions before
fitting in the whole project. In the meanwhile, tests are usually testing
interfaces (which is of questionable benefit) and take time to rewrite every
time lib interface needs to be adjusted
\- „Taking time” to make it „proper” . „Proper” is usually currently hyped
opinion and in our case (12 year old product) consistency is always a choice
with what we want to be consistent. I am strong believer in coding standards,
but I hate consistency with randomness. What I mean is - I’ve seen decision
made at random (because sometimes we’re exploring the unknown) and then we
force consistency with that decision never reexamining it.
\- Designing classes / libraries up front- this is the design process that
takes 0 data and turns it into binding decisions. It should be done at the
end!
\- „If we make code better, the product will be better by extension” - this is
pure BS. There is an infinity of nice things you can do with the code that DO
NOT trickle down to product experience. Rich Americans getting richer does not
trickle down to poor Americans getting richer.
\- ‚We are not some code sweat shop where we pump shitty code”. Well, we are
not and we CAN make code better AFTER it is working.
\- Perfect IS NOT set in stone. There is no 1 perfect solution. There is a
myriad of good enough ones, and I love good enough ( it has to be better than
„just working" )!
------
Eridrus
I have no solutions, only commiserations.
Is there a process that is slowing you down? Can you find a partner in crime
to help you circumvent that process? Be it a co-worker to sign off on code
reviews or a manager to shield your work?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If it has lots of comments, it’s probably buggy - fogus
http://blog.ezyang.com/2011/05/byron-cook-sla/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ezyang+%28Inside+245s%29&utm_content=Google+Reader
======
tobylane
I'm not a heavy commenter, mostly because I'm yet to work in a team, but there
are many reasons to comment a lot. Sometimes the whole readme for something
like a javascript library api is the file header. Maybe you want to make clear
what you've started/done incase others are allowed to edit it (though if you
have to point some things out you shortened too much).
~~~
ezyang
Yes, I don't think Byron was knocking API documentation in the form of
comments. My interpretation is that when someone edits clever code they don't
understand fully, they tend to add lots of comments—and that (not the
comments) is absolutely asking for lots of bugs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
About 41% of Kickstarter Projects Fail - zoowar
https://mashable.com/2012/06/12/kickstarter-failures/
======
rsingla
I think a lower goal and lower duration leading to higher success makes sense.
As the article says, the lower goal average is just more realistic which I say
resonates with people who are looking to back a project. As for duration,
well...wouldn't you want to get in on something cool before it expires?
------
joshsegall
That's surprisingly low. I would have expected more of a long tail of failures
approaching 70%. Maybe more people than expected are lowering their target to
ensure it's reached.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
No YC for you? Drinks on StyleSeat - danlevine
http://stylese.at/drinks4devs
======
citizenkeys
I'll be there, man.
Where you from Dan Levine?
~~~
danlevine
Lovely! SF Bay, born and bred...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The 3n+1 problem - denzil_correa
http://blog.racket-lang.org/2012/10/the-3n1-problem_4990.html
======
dollarpizza
Funny how now matter where they start out, just about everybody who attempts
to take on the 3x+1 problem eventually ends up in pretty much the same place:
<http://xkcd.com/710/>
~~~
DanielRibeiro
And it gets more interesting:
_In 2007, researchers Kurtz and Simon, building on earlier work by J.H.
Conway in the 1970s,[8] proved that a natural generalization of the Collatz
problem is algorithmically undecidable.[7]_
From <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collatz_conjecture>
------
kachnuv_ocasek
Interesting article. For those not familiar with the problem, it's called the
Collatz conjecture.
I'm curious how this would behave in case of the conjecture being false, i.e.
found a number that wouldn't reduce to 1 by the algorithm.
~~~
lmm
The function doesn't look to be tail-recursive, so my guess would be a stack
overflow.
Of course, if you run it and get a stack overflow, you have no way of knowing
whether the number was really a counterexample or just one that took many
steps to reach 1.
~~~
waterhouse
It would be a stack overflow, except Racket does not stack overflow--it will
grab more memory, make a bigger stack, and continue. Eventually your problem
would be "out of memory".
------
artursapek
That's funny, I just did the Collatz in Racket for a class.
------
sixothree
Sounds like a Project Euler problem.
~~~
smilliken
Open invitation: drop by the MixRank office (SoMA, SF) on Wednesday evenings
for friendly Project Euler competitions.
~~~
jboggan
I heartily recommend this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What I Learned at SXSWi 2010 - jcsalterego
http://blog.dogster.com/2010/03/17/what-we-learned-at-sxsw-2010/
======
kadavy
"The amount of data created by humans in 2009 exceeded that of all data
created by humans prior to 2009."
Wow, cool. Also nice to see a post on the front page that isn't bashing what
is overall a conference like none other.
~~~
jcsalterego
There's an Economist special feature on data which has other interesting facts
about data generation:
[http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displayStory.cfm?sto...](http://www.economist.com/specialreports/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15557443)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How Canada’s Health Care System Helped Create a Killer - fern12
https://thewalrus.ca/how-canadas-health-care-system-helped-create-a-killer/
======
52-6F-62
The Walrus is normally a magazine with high standards, and very good quality
content, but I find the headline a little misleading or at least sensational.
Canada's healthcare system is beloved, and has surely saved a far greater
number of lives than it has put at risk. That said, most would prefer it be
expanded and improved upon its current state.
Canada's healthcare system has long needed improvements in mental health
capacities. I figure that is what they're trying to explicitly illustrate
here. The result has been iterations of separate mental health institutes,
leading to driving efforts like CAMH (Centre for Addiction and Mental Health)
in Toronto. Sadly, many remote regions do not have ready access to these kinds
of resources. The northern regions of the provinces are particularly starved
for social and medical resources.
Hopefully the article will have the enlightening and impactful effect I
interpret its author having intended.
~~~
katastic
>beloved
What a strange word to apply to a medical system. I mean, really think about
it. That's like saying the "DMV is beloved". It's just a strange word usage
that makes me wonder if you're more of a "fan" of their system than an
unbiased source.
My Canadian friend I regularly play PUBG with, remarked that non-life-
threatening illnesses like a broken arm can have waiting times _measured in
months._ (Sounds like our VA.) And he lives in one of the large cities. He is
glad that nobody goes bankrupt but he would NEVER use the world "beloved" to
describe it.
"Better than the USA"\--probably, I'd easily give you that without raising my
brow. But "beloved"?... I'm sorry, I just can't get past that word. It's so
out-of-place. If this was a novel I was reading, I'd have to set the book down
for a moment and go, "Really?"
~~~
acidtoyman
"... non-life-threatening illnesses like a broken arm can have waiting times
measured in months ..."
It astounds me that people can hear stories such as this and actually believe
them. No, of course people don't wait months to get their broken arm taken
care of. I broke my foot and had it in a cast that night, and the only reason
it took as long as that was because I didn't realize at first that I'd broken
it.
~~~
katastic
My friend... lives in Canada... and his relative had to wait that long.
I'm not going to throw away his experience because it doesn't fit into
someone's worldview.
Just because you had a good experience doesn't mean he can't have a bad one.
~~~
acidtoyman
I ... am Canadian ... and have never in my life heard anything so absurd. I'm
not going to throw away a lifetime of experience because of some ridiculous
and obviously false comment on the internet.
Use your head: a society that couldn't deal with broken bones without months-
long lineups would grind to a halt. How can you seriously believe something so
ludicrous? Notice how many other Canadians are jumping in to tell you your
statement is totally untrue.
------
dleslie
> The doctors were talking about what they’d decided, and one of them was kind
> of joking about it, saying there’s no homicidal plot or something. They
> said, ‘We think Johnny just got mad at the cat because the cat scratched
> him.’
Sadly, that doctor will likely continue their practice.
------
maxxxxx
Would this have been handled better anywhere? It seems really hard to decide
when to take action. I knew a family whose autistic son regularly injured them
but they still kept him. I wouldn't have been surprised if he had killed them
at some point.
------
dafty4
Terrible article. Canadians live 2 years longer on average than Americans. And
you're telling me the US mental health system would have been more pro-active?
Come on.
"Hers was Sault Ste. Marie’s sole homicide of 2013."
How many small towns in the US can you say that of?
~~~
raisspen
Classic case of whataboutism. I didn't see anything discussing the quality of
the US mental health system. It's a Canadian website discussing a Canadian
case. It failed here and the author of the article is trying to point out
where it failed. This is an attempt to prod the system to improve.
~~~
scoggs
Definitely agree. I saw virtually no comparison to what the US does / would do
nor how America handles similar cases, etc. America was mentioned zero times
in the article (0) and United States was mentioned twice in the article (2)
and that was only to mention background information about the victim and her
family, nothing to do with health care, mental illness, violence, or anything
else to do with the editorial.
------
phkahler
I was annoyed at the way the victim was portrayed. They just kept dancing
around it.
------
oktobercrisis
Not surprising...people always slip through the cracks in Canada's healthcare
system.
~~~
kylnew
It’s not perfect but we get access to lots that an American would go out of
pocket for. The poor never even have a chance.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Wiki.js - akandiah
https://wiki.js.org/
======
Keyframe
I need one function in a wiki platform that I haven't seen so far. When I
write text, in its WYSIWYG editor, I need an ability to paste in an image (a
screenshot that I just grabbed, let's say) and for it to automatically upload
it and embed it into text. Does this support something like that?
~~~
reacharavindh
This. Thousand times this.
I have been waiting for an online wiki with the usability of Apple Notes that
I use locally on all my Apple devices. It works like a charm except that I
cannot make it public.
This is why I often take notes rather than write blog posts on my website. If
the wiki software was as easy drag and drop as Apple Notes, I’d just take
notes and they turn into publicly available wikis!
I am yet to find that tool. I would happily pay for such a tool with one
braking condition that it must be self-hostable. I will not write my content
into something like Medium or Notion where I don’t own my content.
~~~
jve
This seems like it: ImgPaste plugin for DokuWiki
[https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:imgpaste](https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugin:imgpaste)
[https://github.com/cosmocode/dokuwiki-plugin-
imgpaste](https://github.com/cosmocode/dokuwiki-plugin-imgpaste)
------
schoolornot
This is exciting. A compelling FOSS alternative to Atlassian Confluence was
sorely needed.
Mediawiki has some UX and RBAC challenges that makes it difficult to scale to
large organizations.
~~~
oneplane
Since it's AGPL it will probably never end up in the same commercial use cases
as Confluence does.
Google has some motivations written down from their lawyer department:
[https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-
policy/](https://opensource.google/docs/using/agpl-policy/)
It boils down to 'not worth the risk, do not use'.
~~~
edp
OT, as the sole copyright owner of a web application I wrote, can I license it
under the AGPL for the general public, and license it under different terms
for clients who would prefer not to use AGPL software (and possibly pay for
it) ? is dual licensing allowed by the AGPL ?
~~~
bachmeier
That's not how licensing works. If you write the software, you can release it
under any license(s) you want. The license states the terms under which you'll
let others use the software.
~~~
edp
That's what I thought but wasn't sure. Thank you (and sibling comments) for
your comment.
------
tweetle_beetle
I'm looking to launch an internal wiki and Wiki.js came out on top for my
requirements:
\- easy to use for technical and non-technical staff alike: multiple editing
options
\- third party authentication: really comprehensive offering
\- quality search: comprehensive internal and third party search offering
\- ease of maintenance: largely everything is built-in, so no
module/dependency maintenance headaches
\- user management: solid user/group management system
With internal tools you need things to stick, and fast. As much as I am fond
of mediawiki, the editing experience is a barrier to usage for many. And the
extension ecosystem, while rich and diverse, is just more of a liability than
a single installation. A quality search is also really important to adoption,
so having options there is great.
I'd been using Docsify on a small scale with authentication through GitLab to
edit, GitLab CD to build and Cloudflare Access to secure the front end. It
works really well, but the lack of user management and the editing experience
mean that it's time to move on.
It would be great to hear if this is a case of the grass always being greener
on the other side.
------
mard
I'm not impressed. Wiki.js is supposedly "built with performance in mind", but
its documentation wiki [1] is much slower than any DokuWiki site I could find
[2]. It also requires JavaScript to be enabled in the web browser.
[1]: [https://docs.requarks.io/](https://docs.requarks.io/)
[2]: [https://www.dokuwiki.org/](https://www.dokuwiki.org/)
~~~
Rotten194
I find it really frustrating that every piece of software nowadays claims to
be "blazing fast" or "built for performance", usually with no benchmarks to
back it up. Makes it really hard to tell at a glance what the strengths of a
project actually are. I honestly would be very grateful if a project up and
said "we're not the fastest, but we trade performance for a simpler codebase
and easier extensibility. If you need to do some-performance-intensive-task,
try other-package instead".
------
Hamcha
docs.requarks.io, which is said to be using Wiki.js, straight up doesn't load
without Javascript, and even with Javascript enabled it's a multi-page
application that just feels slower browsing page to page than your average
10-year-old mediawiki install (probably also heavier on the backend).
Who exactly is asking for slower software?
~~~
areille
> Running on the blazing fast Node.js engine
Is Node.js that blazing-fast ?
~~~
freedomben
Surprisingly yes. It has billions of dollars or optimizations and research in
it over the years and can really fly. Of course you can write slow node code
just like you can in any language, but a single well-written node instance can
handle a lot of traffic.
~~~
sverhagen
Billions of dollars? I have no beef with Node, but that seems like a lot.
Could you elaborate?
------
aerojoe23
We needed a documentation solution at work. MY coworker had some experience
with Wiki.js. What sold me on it was that you can use markdown and it can keep
itself synced with a git repo.
This gives us plan text files that are tracked in a repo. It uses the user as
the author, so now I can "code review" edit's to our wiki.
The content of the wiki is easily cloned by cloning the git repo. It is
markdown in folders so if wiki.js dies at some point I could write a pandoc
script to turn it into web pages again, you do loose all of the cool UI
features.
------
heresie-dabord
I used a Wiki for a long time. But I try to minimise maintenance ("foist it
upon others"). I also try to resist the enthusiasm for Rube Goldberg machines
and for installing bad tooling (such as PHP).
Now that git has become ubiquitous, I prefer git with a self-hosted git-daemon
instance. git , grep , awk , and sqlite make a strong set of tools for
knowledge curation.
edit: minor grammar fix
~~~
ArtDev
Unnecessarily bashing PHP is soo 2005. Like javascript, it can be written
poorly due to its loose roots. Also just like javascript, it is a very
different language now.
That said, DocuWiki is pretty decent to get up and running quickly.
~~~
john-shaffer
I use PHP in my day job. It is by far the worst language I've ever used.
Nothing else even comes close. The language and ecosystem are so full of
footguns that you are bound to shoot yourself eventually. The OpenSSL
implementation will silently truncate the key [1][2] without even giving a
warning. The cURL lib, in 2020, still hasn't implemented a get_curl_opt
function. Sure you could wrap it if you're writing everything, but the reality
is I have to work in this nightmare ecosystem that just uses raw curl. Every
== comparison is still a potential security hole due to PHP's insane (and
inconsistent) typecasting behaviors. Sometimes a number gets cast to a string,
but a string gets cast to a number if you use it as an array key. WTF? Do I
have to wait another 15 years for PHP to become a halfway decent language?
[1]
[https://github.com/WP2Static/wp2static/pull/506](https://github.com/WP2Static/wp2static/pull/506)
[2] [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55062897/decrypt-
aes256-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55062897/decrypt-aes256-on-
python-vs-php/55063033#55063033)
~~~
heresie-dabord
> The language and ecosystem are so full of footguns
"footgun" is an excellent term. Here's an earlier use on HN, 2010:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1904960](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1904960)
~~~
kmill
I've wondered whether the term directly evolved from this sort of joke list
that was popular to pass around on the early internet:
[http://www.personal.psu.edu/sxt104/program1.html](http://www.personal.psu.edu/sxt104/program1.html)
~~~
codezero
I assume it evolved not long after guns existed, and likely grew in the
military :)
~~~
kmill
"Shooting yourself in the foot," sure, but if you look up "footgun" it seems
to only be programming slang. What I was suggesting with the above comment was
that this sort of list might have popularized the metaphor of shooting
yourself in the foot in programming, which was then was subjected to hacker-
style word manipulation.
~~~
codezero
Ah fair, yep, that's probably right.
------
oneplane
I wonder why it's AGPL and not dual-licensed or some different GPL. As it is
right now it's dead in the water for any commercial usage unless you're
manually installing the thing on a manually installed server somewhere (which
you probably aren't).
With automation you'd build images based on their images but run via your own
CI/CD with your own security scans and any additions you might need (like
additional logging infrastructure). Doing that is not possible with AGPL.
~~~
gary-kim
At least for me, the fact that it is purely licensed under the AGPL and that
the copyright is owned by multiple people makes me far more comfortable with
using it. It's a guarantee that the project will remain open source so I don't
have to worry about suddenly being in a situation where I have to migrate away
because the company or person decided that they don't want to have this be
free and open source software anymore.
I guess, to a certain extent, that's because I'm an individual, not a company,
and one that tends to open source pretty much everything they write. This is
the same licensing that I use for pretty much all my projects (AGPL with no
CLA).
~~~
mekster
> It's a guarantee that the project will remain open source
What are you talking about? They can change the license to a closed one from a
certain version in the future.
~~~
fungos
For future versions, not past versions.
~~~
hundchenkatze
I don't think any of the mainstream open-source licenses allow you to
retroactively revoke or change the license.
~~~
fungos
If they are the sole copyright owners (no external contribution) or have SLAs,
they can for any future version of the software. It is not uncommon, it is
just hard as most doesn't have SLA to do this.
~~~
cxr
> If they are the sole copyright owners (no external contribution)
That's not the scenario gary-kim laid out; you've failed to satisfy the
constraints in the premise.
~~~
fungos
Read better, I'm not replying to him. I agree with him.
~~~
cxr
_Reply_ better.
I know who you're replying to. The premise that gary-kim laid out is still the
relevant context. The hypothetical you're laying out, on the other hand, is
not relevant, it's at odds with that premise (not in "agree[ment] with him"),
and it's derailing the thread. (Which is the same reason your "future
versions, not past versions" is downvoted, for that matter.)
~~~
fungos
Right. _they_ were not meant to be Wiki.js, but ANY open source project. And
was a meant to indicate the same subject as _any_ in this reply:
> I don't think _any_ of the mainstream open-source licenses allow you to
> retroactively revoke or change the license.
My reply is in this context, not in the parent's parent which you mean as
_relevant_ context. If I wanted to include the parent context the reply would
be more specific. This was a __direct __reply to a specific message. This is a
very normal way to reply on the internet, HN is not special.
~~~
cxr
Try rewriting history if you want, but the thread goes off-topic as soon as
mekster suggests the project change the license, and your reply there only
feeds into it. And it still doesn't explain how you can claim that your
comment was meant to "agree" with gary-kim's.
> My reply is in this context, not in the parent's parent
The parent's parent at that point is... your comment, "For future versions,
not past versions," which was off-topic.
> This is a very normal way to reply on the internet
Indeed, it's common for people to lose the plot in the comments section and
then get defensive (and smug) while being wrong, e.g.:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23250829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23250829)
~~~
mekster
> mekster suggests the project change the license
When have I suggested the project change the license??? I only said it is
possible.
------
w-ll
I'd atleast expect a demo, and the homepage to be running on said wiki.
~~~
bauerd
There's a link to a demo in their README:
[https://docs.requarks.io/demo](https://docs.requarks.io/demo)
~~~
edaemon
Their demo link there didn't work when I tried it, it's looking for the non-
existent master branch. The docs site itself
([https://docs.requarks.io/](https://docs.requarks.io/)) is running on
Wiki.js, though.
------
Nuzzerino
I've been using Wiki.js for several months now on a production project (self
hosted). It has worked nearly flawlessly for me so far. No complaints. Setup
was a piece of cake too.
------
dheera
Just a minor nitpick. If there isn't an actual file called "wiki.js" that is
self-contained, I would prefer it be called WikiJS instead of "Wiki.js" to
avoid confusion. In general when I see ".js" I expect to see a single file I
can import that does something useful to my code.
------
techaddict009
Can I know what exactly this numbers are "15M+ Installations" On your home
page.
I mean thats too large number. Is this of all open source software or I am
misunderstanding something else?
~~~
jjice
I'm assuming that's for every single download, including testing. I know that
when I use a service for the first time, I do a few installs while getting
used to the software and its configuration. I'd assume they'd have no other
way to verify installs (assuming there is no telemetry).
------
yreg
Wikis are also useful for note-taking, I'm using Wiki.js to document a D&D
campaign to have some canonical reference of what actually happened in past
sessions.
~~~
pspeter3
Why did you pick Wiki.js for campaign management as opposed to something like
Notion?
~~~
jdironman
Big fan of Notion here for both documentation, task management, and general
brain dumps. Only worry I have is one day they go away and I have to migrate
off how much of a pain that would probably be. It feels locked in, maybe i am
wrong
------
gwbrooks
I keep a v2 instance running on my Windows laptop solely for taking notes and
keeping need-it-eventually information organized.
It's just enough added structure and functionality to make the whole body of
notes more useful, without having to learn a formal system or adopt someone
else's idea of what my note hierarchy should look like.
------
ddevault
Can we please not have SPA's eat wikis, too? Text-only content does not
need... (checking...) 6.3 MB of JavaScript to display (checking...) 3.3 KB of
text. Blank pages with JavaScript disabled or in non-mainstream browsers is a
really terrible experience for content so plainly simple to display.
~~~
cxr
Wikis also don't need (or indeed, even permit) cumbersome Git and PR-based
workflows just to get changes into the "wiki". Better for it to be a single-
page app that actually implements a wiki, than to provide a service that
doesn't actually support wikis but has no qualms about throwing the word
around anyway.
------
captn3m0
I've used the 1.x release, and the Mongo requirement was always a bit of a
pin. I think v2 fixes that, but I haven't yet upgraded. Anyone has feedback on
v1 vs v2?
~~~
progval
Looks like they stopped using MongoDB: [https://blog.requarks.io/the-switch-
to-rdbms/](https://blog.requarks.io/the-switch-to-rdbms/)
------
lukaszkups
Is it possible to output static-file-based wiki? (so some static HTML/CSS/js
?)
------
amq
I was looking into open source knowledge / wiki base solutions recently, and I
found [https://www.getoutline.com/](https://www.getoutline.com/) to be the
most usable.
~~~
Vaslo
10 bucks a month though...
~~~
vladvasiliu
For the hosted version.
You can host your own for free:
[https://github.com/outline/outline](https://github.com/outline/outline)
~~~
FalconSensei
then you have to pay your host
------
dvno42
I've been using 2.x since Jan and have really liked it. I'm using it in docker
with postgres iirc for a small team for infrastructure documentation. Very
markdown friendly and gets the job done while looking nice.
------
amelius
In case anyone was wondering, the dependencies are:
Node.js 10.12 or later
MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, MSSQL or SQLite3
Is it possible to install and run all of these as a non-root user?
~~~
acoard
Even better, you can run these in Docker as non-root. Security wise, while
this wouldn't make your app itself more secure, it would insulate your host OS
from getting infected. I just checked and they even have one-liner Docker
commands that do just this:
docker run -d -p 8080:3000 --name wiki --restart unless-stopped -e "DB_TYPE=postgres" -e "DB_HOST=db" -e "DB_PORT=5432" -e "DB_USER=wikijs" -e "DB_PASS=wikijsrocks" -e "DB_NAME=wiki" requarks/wiki:2
------
bobbydreamer
Like the common theme all this wiki and outline are having 3 pane window any
for Bootstrap it.
------
cptskippy
I like the way the documentation is laid out, does that conform to a standard?
------
Marioheld
Does anyone has a comparison to Bookstack?www.bookstackapp.com
------
favadi
For personal wiki, nothing beats the simplicity of tiddlywiki.
------
kinganurag
i love this platform, i will suggest this to all my friends and clients :)
------
amelius
Why is there a Linux Tux logo next to macOS?
~~~
mbrd
They are separate items in the horizontal list:
[https://wiki.js.org/img/linux.3297c180.svg](https://wiki.js.org/img/linux.3297c180.svg)
[https://wiki.js.org/img/macos.96f6d85a.svg](https://wiki.js.org/img/macos.96f6d85a.svg)
------
hombre_fatal
Slightly related PSA:
Everyone should consider running a wiki locally just for yourself. It's like
being able to organize your brain. I just got into it two days ago and
basically spent the whole weekend dumping things into it in a way I can
actually browse and revisit, like the short stories I'd written, spread out
across Notes.app and random folders.
You don't need to run WAMP, MySQL, Apache, phpmyadmin or anything. Here are
the steps for someone, like me, who hadn't checked in a while:
0\. `$ brew install php` (or equiv for your OS)
1\. Download the wiki folder and `cd` into it
2\. `$ php -S localhost:3000`
3\. Visit
[http://localhost:3000/install.php](http://localhost:3000/install.php) in your
browser
I tried DokuWiki at first (has flat file db which is cool). It's simpler, but
I ended up going with MediaWiki which is more powerful, and aside from
Wikipedia using it, I noticed most big wikis I use also use it
([https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page](https://en.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page)).
MediaWiki lets you choose Sqlite as an option, so I have one big wiki/ folder
sitting in my Dropbox folder symlinked into my iCloud folder and local fs.
Really changing my life right now. The problem with most apps is that they
just become append-only dumping grounds where your only organizational power
is to, what, create yet another tag?
My advice is to just look for the text files scattered around your computer
and note-taking apps and move them into wiki pages. As you make progress, you
will notice natural categories/namespaces emerging.
I just wish I started 10 years ago.
~~~
keithnz
I did start similar things over 10 years ago. Where I am at these days is just
text files ( markdown ) nested into folder structures. I've found this the
most sustainable for quite a few years and it's been super useful. Main thing
is, do whatever, as long as you find it easy to sustain.
~~~
zeta0134
This is what finally replaced Google Keep for my shopping list and then
eventually everything else. I use Markor and Syncthing on my phone, and a
standard text editor on my various computers. It is super nice especially to
be able to organize the directory using standard file management tools, search
using grep and friends, etc. There is something to be said for simplicity.
~~~
Geezus_42
+1 for Markor, also available on fdroid
------
jadia
I started using Wiki.js over a year ago to maintain documentation related to
system admin duties.
We run this in a docker container with SQLite database and backup the database
daily to another server.
The private and public pages feature fits perfectly to our use case. We show
system information, how-to guides and rules on the public pages and manage
sysadmin documentation with restricted access.
------
load
If it doesn't run on MediaWiki, I'm not into it.
~~~
eitland
DokuWiki used to be very much better for my use cases: easier to hack on/make
plugins for and more built in functionality and less dependencies on top if
that since it store the pages as flat files instead of using a DB.
~~~
load
Hmm. I'll go check it out.
The main thing I'm worried about with other wiki software (including Wiki.js)
is that if it's compatible with gadgets, userscripts and all of the other neat
tools already available.
It doesn't have to be MediaWiki, or even a distant relative of it. It just has
to work with them.
------
kontxt
Kontxt ([https://kontxt.io](https://kontxt.io)) could be a perfect inline
communication and engagement layer to enhance wikis and docs with inline
highlights, comments, polls, @mentions, page navigation, shareable deep links,
and permission-based sharing.
~~~
emiliovesprini
Did... did kontxt.io write this?
Oh wait yeah.
~~~
kontxt
Hello emiliovesprini! You are correct. That's actually why the username
"kontxt" was specifically selected. Decided to share here because people
exploring the wiki and documentation space might find it useful. Best regards
fellow code creator.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The “Why” of Electrolysis - nachtigall
https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2016/04/11/the-why-of-electrolysis/
======
brudgers
Two years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8349973](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8349973)
[not very good] Five years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2780952](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2780952)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: LevelStory – Manage remodel projects from start to finish - bunkat
https://levelstory.com
======
bunkat
After going through two remodels that lived up to the old adage of 50% over
time and 50% over budget, my wife and I decided that there had to be a better
way. We created LevelStory to provide more transparency in the process for
clients while at the same time reducing mistakes and increasing margins for
contractors.
I've learned a lot from these forums over the years and am excited to finally
be able to do our own Show HN. Happy to answer any questions about what it's
like doing a startup with your wife, our somewhat unusual tech stack (we bet
on Neo4j early), or advice on how to make sure you end up with a good
contractor for your next project.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What is your favorite feature of an app/web that got cancelled/modified? - tdhttt
======
maxharris
The Workspace Manager in NeXTSTEP. It didn't clutter your desktop with useless
icons, and it gave you a single, simple window with the column view and
nothing else. That holds up a lot better for today's needs than the macOS
Finder does.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
TechCrunch.com uniques down by ~60% since its AOL sale - lawlit
http://loopplus.tumblr.com/post/7759980680/techcrunch-com-daily-uniques-down-by-60-since-sale-to
======
petercooper
By the same measure, then, Hacker News is down about the same:
[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=news.ycombinator.com&...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=news.ycombinator.com&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0)
Or, more likely, these trends sites are a waste of time.
~~~
pwr
the scale is a bit bigger though, if you compare them both
[http://trends.google.com/websites?q=news.ycombinator.com%2C+...](http://trends.google.com/websites?q=news.ycombinator.com%2C+techcrunch.com&geo=all&date=ytd&sort=0)
edit: but still nothing dramatic i think
------
deckardt
Google Trends data is for search patterns, not unique visitors. It means that
fewer people now search for "techcrunch.com," which is a good thing.
~~~
lawlit
the trends are not "searches" trends, they are "web sites" trends, which gives
you an idea about daily uniques visitors to the site.
~~~
jpalmer
<http://www.google.com/intl/en/trends/about.html#1>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
CIA Didn’t Trust FBI Created Bogus Update to Steal Data and Spy on Fellow Agencies - sjreese
http://wccftech.com/cia-didnt-trust-fbi-nsa-installed-fake-updates/
======
willstrafach
Title is completely made up and not reflected in any of the published
documents. Liaison services are foreign agencies.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Philisophy of sexism? - ssivark
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2014/02/03/u-colorado-plans-change-culture-philosophy-department-found-be-sexist
======
thenerdfiles
Just called their administration ENFP.
Oh snap.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Are Social Games like Farmville, Mafia Wars evil ? - code_devil
http://socialapp.posterous.com/are-social-games-evil
======
matwood
I wondered the same thing awhile back, although the word 'evil' isn't
something I would attribute to a game like Farmville.
See my blog post on the issue, "Are Social Obligation Game Psychological
Malware?"
[http://www.thepensiveprogrammer.com/2010/05/are-social-
oblig...](http://www.thepensiveprogrammer.com/2010/05/are-social-obligation-
games.html)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
More Than 35,000 Sign Petition In Support Of Aaron Swartz - apgwoz
http://blog.demandprogress.org/2011/07/more-than-35000-sign-petition-in-support-of-aaron-swartz/
======
dlikhten
I'm sorry its a bit hard to have this knee-jerk reaction without at least
having some background into the matter. Did Aaron in fact break into any
systems? Or did he legitimately access data and then get "flagged" for knowing
too much? <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Knew_Too_Little>
~~~
shareme
no he circumvented the MIT guest system to download those JSTOR DOCs..
~~~
apgwoz
"circumvented the MIT guest system"? If by circumvented you mean, registered a
fake name, clicked accept and got an address via DHCP, then yes.
_edit_ removed the "I bet you're guilty.." and added the below:
Should Aaron have asked for permission from JSTOR first? They seem to have
asked the feds not to prosecute, they _might_ have been willing to help
originally. Maybe he should have, but JSTOR is unlikely to say "yes."
So Aaron did what _most_ of us would have done. He wrote a script to acquire
the information he wanted to--fine. Have you ever mirrored a website? It's
likely that you felt guilty doing so, and maybe even went to your local
coffeeshop to do it on their network instead. You don't want _your_ IP banned.
Aaron seems to have done basically the same thing, but instead of a
coffeeshop, which wouldn't allow him access to JSTOR, since the access is via
proxy, he went to a neighboring college campus that likely had a JSTOR
subscription.
Now, the thing that's troublesome to me is that MIT didn't stop him while he
was doing it in the first place. Surely they'd have noticed 30,000+ requests
from the same IP to a protected resource, no?
------
tghw
_Mainstream media coverage has also turned in Swartz’s favor._
Not really. The quotes they provide are either neutral at best, from decidedly
not "mainstream" media, or are just the news outlets quoting DemandProgress.
I can kind of sympathize with Aaron's goal, but I can't really get behind the
methods. If the charges in the indictment are anywhere near true, they're
pretty damning.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How your tech blog posts are ripped while you sleep - nickb
http://www.mikeduncan.com/tech-post-ripoff/
======
naxxtor
This happened to me.
I wrote a post about setting up IIS 6 and PHP (oh, my misspent youth). It was
split into 3 parts; except I never got around to writing the third part: the
copy-paste author made an attempt at writing it for me! How nice of them ;)
Shame it was full of spelling and grammar errors, and entirely devoid of any
useful information. Nice try, though.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Anybody selling their side project? - WilhelmJ
Hi,
I've been looking around on flippa etc to see whether any real web app is for sale. My reason for buying is just to experiment with various things related to running a site, do lot of trial-error and gain some confidence before being able to eventually launch my own. Unfortunately, the results you find there are sickening if you want a genuine web app that does something.<p>I know lot of people on HN own several webapps. Wondering if anybody willing to sell something? I tried to find a proper marketplace unlike flippa (i.e. without scammers) but couldn't, hence the post.
======
WilhelmJ
I just want to clarify something here, I am not an idea guy or a business guy.
I am a hacker but my specialties are systems programming in C/C++ and I am
learning web dev on the side when I get time, but haven't gone that much far.
The reason for this post was partially to motivate me as well, since its great
motivator once you get something going.
------
entropyneur
Why not just launch your own small one? What you'll want to know the most is
how to get from zero to something and buying an established site won't teach
you that.
It took me just a day to implement <http://notsharingmy.info/> and I've
learned a real lot from it (and still learning).
------
mrkmcknz
Build one yourself, or partner with someone who will build it for you.
That will give you so much more satisfaction and will also give you all the
practical trial and error testing you need!
------
mapster
Curious what you mean by "experiment with various things related to running a
site". Do you mean getting traction and paying customers, or setting up a
server?
------
easymovet
I have several systems that I'd sell but they are not doing big revenue.
Oneworldcollege.com and servercyde.com (maybe)
------
dre_lesa
or partner with me,am desperately looking for a funding partner.though I am
probably not in a location you would like.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bill on CA Governor's desk would ban mobile device searches without a warrant - tonywebster
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/09/smartphone-warrant/
======
sneak
Doesn't much matter, all mobile devices worth using are constantly sending
their data up to "the cloud", which, thanks to the USA PATRIOT Act's
provisions for National Security Letters (NSLs), the federal government can
access at any time, in real-time, without a warrant or even post-hoc judicial
review.
The time has come to leave America. No state law can change this. The fourth
has been dead for TEN YEARS next month, it is nothing short of naïve now to
believe that it will get any better.
There are lots of nice places to live in the first world where the government
hasn't gone totally insane. Move there.
~~~
ashishgandhi
Say what you say is true, where would you recommend? We can then discuss
specifics of those countries. (On a less serious note, you don't have the
Silicon Valley there, wherever there is.)
~~~
pyry
Norway is great for data privacy, however as you say, there isn't a Silicon
Valley or anything similar, even in Oslo. There are some good tech groups, and
some good university groups spread around, a good amount of design and media
organizations, and a much larger percentage of the population know what
Twitter and Facebook are and use smartphones, and youth are basically
acquainted with most 4chan memes. The biggest and most notorious tech group
really is Opera, which also accounts for a significant chunk of the country's
data traffic (Opera also operates a very huge proxy service for mobile
devices).
* Norway's Data Authority: <http://www.datatilsynet.no/templates/Page____194.aspx>
Despite what I'd consider to be a fairly (in U.S. terms) progressive
government organization that is pro-privacy, Norway has recently enacted its
own local version of the E.U. Data Retention Directive.
* EU: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive>
* Norwegian version: [http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=no&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fno.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FDatalagringsdirektivet&act=url)
So basically, even one of the better countries for data privacy still has its
own struggles.
------
dmfdmf
A state bill should be totally unnecessary. This is a constitutional right. If
we accept this bill as the norm then its no longer a "right" and just a
permission by the govt that can be rescinded at anytime.
~~~
pmh
The text[1] of the bill seems to affirm the sentiment that it's a
constitutional right; it serves to counteract a California Supreme Court
ruling:
"(e) It is the intent of the Legislature in enacting Section 1542.5 of the
Penal Code to reject as a matter of California statutory law the rule under
the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution announced by the
California Supreme Court in People v. Diaz."
[1]:
[http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_0901-0950/sb_91...](http://info.sen.ca.gov/pub/11-12/bill/sen/sb_0901-0950/sb_914_bill_20110902_enrolled.html)
------
abraham
Governor Jerry Brown
c/o State Capitol, Suite 1173
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: (916) 445-2841
Fax: (916) 558-3160
<http://gov.ca.gov/m_contact.php>
------
SurfScore
It will be interesting to see if this ends up being as abused as other warrant
searches are. What is the probable cause of searching a cell phone? Does the
guy have to have kiddie porn as his lock screen or is it enough to think he
might have a drug dealer's home address in the phone book? People's phones are
almost their second homes, and in a way I am glad that the law is catching up
with technology, but they need to be prepared for a whole nother set of issues
that come with it
------
cookiecaper
We desperately need someone to configure Android with LUKS/dm-crypt, which
theoretically shouldn't be such a huge leap since Android is based on Linux (I
know nothing about Android-specific kernel divergences, but would be
interested to know if device-mapper is badly broken in Android kernels).
Another interesting project would be a service that sits on your phone and
automatically encrypts all of the automatically synced data, so Google only
received encrypted data and your phone transparently decrypted it upon demand.
This one would probably require much deeper work than making device-mapper run
on Android Linux kernels.
I am grateful to Google for making an open, decent phone system so that this
kind of stuff is made possible. Think about the options we'd have if iOS was
the only smartphone on the market.
People need to accept that without strong encryption, any and all of their
digital storage is open to adversarial or even accidental perusal, and that
they should have no realistic expectation of privacy without correct
application of cryptographic techniques. This is true across every form of
digital storage: mobile, desktop, laptop, cloud, USB stick, etc. Encrypt or
suffer.
~~~
yaix
That is how my netbook is configured, EncFS encrypts file names and contents
before rsync sends it to a remote backup server.
On the phone, you don't need to encrypt all of the file system (for better
performance) but just the parts that hold user data.
Unlocking the screen and encrypted user data by "swiping a pattern" is not a
big thing and takes not even a second.
~~~
Confusion
A swipe pattern has such low entropy that you may as well not encrypt it.
~~~
yock
Sure, it doesn't stop a criminal, but it implies privacy that could be held up
in court against unlawful search.
------
rmc
Do we have to have the slightly emotional title of "Bill on X's Desk"?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
EFF promising intensified fight against bogus software patents - buzzblog
http://www.networkworld.com/community/blog/eff-promises-new-fight-against-software-patent-abuse
======
CamperBob
FTA: "Every piece of software released to the world without legal protections
may leave open a door for someone else to attempt to patent the same
technology (and may leave its creators more open to legal threats without a
patent to wield defensively)."
Wait, what? No, every piece of software released to the world, with _or
without_ patent protection becomes prior art. It slams the door shut on future
attempts on _anyone's_ part to patent the same technology. Even more so when
the software is released as FOSS.
On the face of it, this campaign is already sounding oddly misguided. The
_only_ way to win this game is not to play, and I'd expect EFF of all orgs to
understand that.
~~~
alttag
Prior art doesn't prohibit someone from patenting the idea ... I rather
suspect not too many patent examiners peek inside source code or the
interfaces of indie apps to check for prior art, and if a behemoth company is
going to patent someone's prior art, it's not as if they're going to submit
evidence that disproves their claim.
In short, even if it is prior art, it might still be patented, and some poor
shmoe down the road is going to have to research, find, and successfully enter
as evidence the prior art. They might just choose to settle instead.
Not playing can still suck.
~~~
CamperBob
The source code has nothing to do with the content of a patent. It _can_ be
part of a patent, but it isn't necessary. The courts don't care how you
implemented someone else's "idea," only that you did.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Open Source projects to join? - chimmychonga
Hey guys, I'm currently studying CS and I am Sophomore. I would consider my self an "ok" programmer, I'm not by any means amazing but with that being said I'm not horrible either. Is there any projects open source or other wise that you might need some help on so that I can get some real world experience and something to list on my resume as well?
======
phantom_oracle
Would you like to join my FOSS team?
I've managed to help someone else here looking to contribute to FOSS stuff.
We basically build our own OSS stuff (currently working on a blog project).
~~~
chimmychonga
yeah man, i'd be down for anything honestly. can you email me at
[email protected]
------
chimmychonga
also I'm sure it would be important to note that I am familiar with Java,
Python, C++, and am learning Perl this semester. I typically pick things up
pretty fast so learning a new language (unless its just a strange one)
wouldn't be that difficult for me.
~~~
vinchuco
Hello, I suggest you change this post's title to "Ask HN: Open Source Projects
to Join?" . You'll get more responses from the HN Community and people may
browse questions like yours more easily using the search function.
~~~
chimmychonga
thank you, this is like the second thing I've ever posted on here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Not-GraphQL library that solve the same problems that GraphQL solves - mamouri
A few weeks ago I read about an alternative design to API that is not GraphQL but it solves the problems that GraphQL solves.<p>For example, it provided pagination, filtering, etc. out of the box. The author wrote a very long blog post on the issues of the GraphQL and proposed her solution. The blog was purple.<p>I am dying here and spend a couple of hours to find it with no luck. Please help a brother out if you know what I am talking about?
======
jamesbrennan
Was it [https://www.graphiti.dev](https://www.graphiti.dev)?
~~~
mamouri
YOU ARE AWESOME! Thank you very very very much!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What are your predictions for the next 50 years? - hereiskkb
In relation to the Technological and Geo-political landscape.
======
virgilp
True story: inspired by some dude on the internet, I thought I'd try my hand
at "predictions". I made a post with my technology predictions for the next 10
or 15 years (not 50, I'm not THAT naive).
I don't have a personal website, so I placed that post on Google+, to have it
for future reference. Boy, do I suck at predictions.
~~~
gt2
What were they?
~~~
jvzr
Somehow, one involved Google+ staying alive.
------
monkeycantype
The ecosystem has collapsed, humanity's last holdout - the salesforce.com
trailhead Antarctica bunker is lifeless and silent, but hope is not lost - the
probe holding Elon Musk's semen journeys onward to alpha proxima.
------
notarized_off
The war on general purpose computing will arrive, finish quickly and be won by
the totalitarians.
Normal computers will not be permitted to produce code. All developers will
have to submit passport and dna before being allowed to work. Computers
capable of producing code will be accounted for centrally, it will be illegal
to own one without a licence.
Cash will be done away with by the following means or similar:
[https://blogs.imf.org/2019/02/05/cashing-in-how-to-make-
nega...](https://blogs.imf.org/2019/02/05/cashing-in-how-to-make-negative-
interest-rates-work/)
------
ggm
Significant dislocations of coastal population will cause shifts in
demographics and voting. Some regimes will fall because of it, the UN Charter
on refugees will be amended.
Resentment against entrenched industry shills and oligarchy will lead to extra
judicial acts of revenge. The actors behind this will not coalesce the way
religious fundamentalism has, but will be understood as a common root cause
much as luddism was.
A new small C conservatism will replace radically economic reductionism of the
Chicago school kind, massive public works and Keynesian intervention will
predominate. Low tax regimes will find the cost of corporatism in health and
lifestyle terms counter productive, extreme wealth taxes and punishments for
evasion will be international.
Literacy will not fall, but writing will be uncommon.
Google will be remembered fondly before dismemberment. Facebook will be
regarded as an aberation. Religions will compete on TV. Access to intelligent
agents (not aware ai but ubiquitous use of ai derived optimisation and machine
learning based systems) will be almost a right, where access to data is a
right, albeit only if identified. Use of VPN and data hiding will be a first
class felony in itself and linked to some kind of precrime with presumption of
innocence lost.
~~~
non-entity
> Literacy will not fall, but writing will be uncommon.
I wonder if this is already a reality for some. I can't remember the last time
I had to write more than my name.
~~~
bjourne
Think that through one more time. :)
------
CptFribble
Changing attitudes to advertisements and the upcoming generation's obsession
with "authenticity" will push all brands and ads further into "lifestyle"-type
presentation. Every furniture store and potato chip company will have social
accounts for sharing memes.
Brand loyalty will merge deeper into the human experience, and in the 50-100
year timescale few living humans will be able to conceive of brands and
products as separate from their personal identity. Boundaries between socio-
economic groups will become more strongly reinforced along product lines (I
believe this has already begun - see the Chik-fil-A/Hobby Lobby protests and
reaction, or the reaction from both sides to Nike's support of Colin
Kaepernick, and other recent corporate "woke" behavior).
Much more of the written words we consume in any form (newspaper, online
opinion articles, listicles, etc) will be secretly sponsored, written by and
for the benefit of a particular product, brand, or interest group. Even
seemingly unrelated things, like local news, will be used to manage global
brand visibility at scale as ML's ability to write comprehensibly comes into
its own and articles are produced algorithmically.
Similar algorithmic information delivery systems will be used to drive even
more granular opinion influence for things like state and county elections.
Exploitation of outdated laws and regulations, and things like gerrymandering,
will become even worse than we could have imagined as the tools to locate and
predict vote probabilities at the individual level becomes even more powerful.
------
werber
I'm hopeful for a more cooperative human centric future. I think we have the
technology to replace old systems and ideas. Things are getting better more
then they're getting worse for so many people and I really want to see that
pattern accelerate to the point all preventable disease is addressed and
access to medical care is universal, there is no risk of famine due to
technology advances in food production, there is no war, for obvious reasons.
And on the other hand, I worry that human beings will mostly be dead and areas
that are currently landlocked will be a costal town for the few remaining rich
people who have replaced the need for the lower classes by automation. But
mostly the former
~~~
perfunctory
> costal town for the few remaining rich people who have replaced the need for
> the lower classes by automation
In this scenario there will be no industry left to speak of to support the
automation. The remaining people, regardless of their initial wealth, will not
be rich.
~~~
werber
I don't really think about this in a real way. I think we are going to be ok,
but like this is my fever dream
~~~
werber
Rather nightmare
------
timonoko
Nothing of real significance will happen. I know this for a fact this because
in 1967 I wrote about 2017. Nothing become true, Finland does not have Space
Forces, cars do not fly, lasers do remove space junk from orbit etcetc.
The Lasering of space junk was part of Finland's 100 year celebration, instead
of fireworks the worn-out space-vessel "Kokko" was destroyed with lasers.
~~~
username90
You think nothing of real significance happened between 1967 and 2017? The
90's was extreme with both internet and cellphones becoming mainstream,
suddenly you no longer needed several bookshelves full of encyclopedias just
to look up information and everyone was reachable from anywhere! 2000's and
2010's where pretty lackluster in comparison as they just fleshed out the
offerings from the 90's, but we could very well have another decade similar to
the 90's again.
~~~
timonoko
I had a personal computer in 1975. And radio amateurs had a pocketable device
he could make phone calls everywhere in Finland. The coverage was probably
better than cell-phones today, because at 7 Mhz. I also had internet address
in 1985: [email protected].
Nothing much else has happened in last 30 years.
[https://www.flickr.com/photos/timonoko/102552851/in/album-72...](https://www.flickr.com/photos/timonoko/102552851/in/album-72057594100241331/)
~~~
username90
You having a computer or your friend having a cellphone didn't change the
world, internet and cellphones becoming cheap and mainstream did.
------
ronilan
It’s a little less than 50 years away by now, so the schedule is clearly
getting tight, and it is also a huge undertaking, so nothing should be taken
for granted, but given current technology, it might actually be possible for a
human to walk on the surface of the moon by July 20 2069.
------
Abishek_Muthian
Music(Songs) at-least in English language would be largely, completely machine
generated.
Reasoning: songs leading the charts are mostly written by same lyricists,
music is largely dependent on auto tunes, repetitive sections, machine
learning algorithms for audio processing is growing at a fast rate.
~~~
estomagordo
Possibly true for the horrendous muzak-like audial otyughs known as chart
music. People will never cease to make artistically meaningful music, though.
------
pgcj_poster
\- Google will continue to exist, but lose relevance to emerging companies,
similar to IBM.
\- Virtual reality headsets will replace both smartphones and desktop
computers.
\- Roe v. Wade will be overturned, but the constitution will be amended to
protect abortion rights.
\- Brexit will continue being delayed indefinitely.
\- San Francisco will start its own Navy.
\- White people will become a minority in the United States, but a majority in
Japan.
\- Cranston, Rhode Island exceed Paris, France in tourists/year, but not in
total revenue from tourism.
\- A saintly king[1] will take control of France, conquer Greece, and convert
the entire world to Catholicism.
\- The Higgs Boson particle will remain undiscovered.
\- Ohio will become a Marxist-Leninist one-party state.
\- The Jewish Messiah will arrive, and construct the 3rd temple. It will be
converted into a Walmart due to lack of attendance.
\- The Scandinavian language will split into three mutually unintelligible
dialects: Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian. In Iceland, everyone will just speak
English.
\- North and South Korea will be re-united, but subsequently re-partitioned
into East and West Korea due to partisan violence.
\- Harvard and MIT will be combined into a single institution, which will
exclusively grant degrees in "Religious Studies," "Computer Engineering," and
"Religious Studies And Computer Engineering."
\- London, Chicago, and several other major cities will cease to exist.
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Roman_Emperor#Catholic_tr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Roman_Emperor#Catholic_tradition)
------
tyzerdak
More regulations More border between authocratic countries and western More
military budgets, less economy grow More brainwashed people More monopolies in
hi-tech, although it won't be monopoly but in fact 99% will go to 1-5
companies. More protectonism, less global economic grow Oil will be slowly
going down in price. Although not that much for authocratic regime fall, they
just become more and more authocratic. But at least it should make them eat
themselves. Slowly percentage of retarded people will grow in such countries
as money flow from oil decreases. And clever people will immigrate to west.
Elon musk will make some cash on tourists to the moon but nothing
revolutional. Maybe they will make some hotel on moon for rich people to have
fun.
------
jdkee
Authoritarian states win against democracies.
~~~
mcv
This is clearly the big struggle of today. Will democracies survive in the
face of rising authoritarianism?
------
jacknews
Real dairy only comes from hobby farms - artificial milk is at least as good,
and tuned for it's final use as drinking milk, cream, cheese, etc, and
different health needs.
Many juices and even some pulps, flours etc, are also largely made using
engineered yeasts and bacteria. Fruit is reserved for eating directly, or
adding as an additive to gain a 'made with real fruit' label.
Similarly most real meat is more a speciality food, reserved for steaks,
roasts, ribs, etc, anything processed (minced beef, chicken fillets, soups,
curries, pies, sausages) is made using artificial meat. Much pasture is
reforested.
------
kalesh
We might have a cure to most diseases available to all or only a few would be
able to afford good healthcare & rest will have shorter lifespans.
Economic inequality would increase manifolds. There will be less poverty but a
whole lot of people struggling for basic healthcare & jobs.
Automation, Robots & AI will be an integral part of society.
Virtual worlds might be as important as real ones. Virtual real estate might
be worth more than physical real estate.
People will be dumber as no real problems or creative jobs to work on.
E-sports might be more popular than actual sport.
Some cities might be lost due to sea leval rise.
------
bkohlmann
In 50 years time, someone on this list will be mostly (or at least
directionally) right in their predictions. If they are still alive, they will
be lauded as a savant and sage. The more outlandish the 2019 prediction was,
if correct, the more recognition they will receive.
And thus all we will actually learn in 50 years time is that human nature
changes very little. We will still retrospectively reward success based on
chance alone, not distinctive insight.
In short, statistics will continue to be an underappreciated practice.
------
vfc1
I think a lot of applications will be built without the need for developers,
significantly reducing the number of professional developers needed.
Also, testing will be fully AI automated, other than some initial
configuration there won't be the need to write tests manually.
Anything that can be done by robots and AI will be done by robots and AI.
Things like driving, house cleaning and cooking (at least for restaurants)
will be fully done by robots.
~~~
lotsofpulp
I’ll take the opposite side of that prediction - driving, cooking, and
cleaning will be part of the jobs that people compete to get, as the data
entry and middle management jobs get wiped out.
I don’t think anything that involves physical variations (I.e. manual labor in
differing environments) will be automated for a long time.
------
Balgair
Tech: CRISPR-CAS9 and better bioengineering. It's slow going stuff, but hot
damn, is it ever powerful. By definition it plays well with itself. The 'cross
products' are tough to deal with, thus the slow going part, but when it does
mesh, man oh man!
Geo-Political: Africa's rise. ~2.5 Billion people are going to be born in
Africa in the next 50 years. By 2050, the median wage for a family in Africa
is going to be ~$65k/yr (in 2010 dollars). Most families will have 2 kids or
less there. Africa is transitioning from stage 1-2 into stage 3-4. From
walking and bicycles to cars and planes. Those markets and those young people
will be very thirsty for better goods, services, education, financial
planning, democratic representation, etc. Generally, the center of global
trade is going to shift from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean and the people
that ring the old monsoon markets. Addis Abba's already has a metro system
that serves ~700k people a day. The bullet train from Nairobi to Mombassa is
already going ~300km/hr. Kenya already has a ~600MW geothermal power station
(~1/3 of Hoover Dam). Nigeria's Eko Atlantic project is ~half done with
reclaiming ~200 Manhattan's worth of land area from the Atlantic Ocean. It's
'Great Wall of Africa' is mostly done now and is proofed to the worst climate
change can throw at it, due in part to the 8 weather satellites that Nigeria
has currently in orbit. Africa is going to be where a young, vibrant, well
educated, culturally diverse, middle class is trying to make it's mark and
improve the lives of their children. It is most assuredly not a place of
'shit-hole countries', and The Import-Export Bank of China knows this. The
West should know to shelve the racism, and fast, for the good of it's geo-
political future and it's pocket-book.
------
void_ita
1) developers won't be needed anymore ([https://medium.com/thron-tech/as-a-
service-offering-is-chang...](https://medium.com/thron-tech/as-a-service-
offering-is-changing-what-a-developer-is-ce56c653b041)) 2) population decline
will be huge, but not for the reasons most ppl talk about. It will be because
we will reach a "good enough" sex robot and that will end most physical
relationships between sexes 3) there will be just one or two languages in the
whole world, with a huge loss in diversity from a culture standpoint 4) we
will be augmented with tech and bio implants to enhance our perceptions
(better sight and hearing). Genetical imperfection will be only for poor
people 5) cars will be disappearing in favor of "transportation pods" that
will act as "transport-as-a-service" elements. 6) HUGE wars will arise because
of the crisis in capitalims. Work won't be a reason to get a salary anymore,
this will lead to the biggest social crisis ever and many more... but i'll
stop here :D
~~~
bksenior
Ive long said that a good enough/affordable sex robot is more dangerous to the
western civilization than literally any weapon of mass destruction.
~~~
majewsky
I want a scifi novel where those "good enough sex robots" end up being dropped
into foreign countries as a weapon of mass depopulation.
------
tomjen3
For the US:
With lab-grown meat agriculture has mostly collapsed, since most of it was
either meat or food for meat production.
Most small cities are essentially dead, at least in terms of opportunities to
improve ones life, since there are no jobs for low skilled workers. Those jobs
were mostly meat plants or trucking and transport is done with automated
trucks. There were other jobs but those where mostly in support of those jobs,
or incidental to peoples life.
High Skilled workers have moved to the cities, but most of their income is
eaten up by rent. Those who got there earlier and got a reasonably affordable
place to live are making a lot of money.
Both suffer a lot less because things have continued to get cheaper -- you
don't need to travel the world with good enough 3d glasses, most things we
have physically today are available in "phones" (though nobody knows why they
are called that anymore, as nobody use them to make old style phone calls).
Without meat production, most oil-based transport and most stuff the
environment is doing okay. It helps that not too many babies are being born
(turns out, 3d porn is just that much nicer).
On an international scene things are looking much better: most of the world
has cached up to the standard of living the US had in 1980, with the exception
of basket case countries that are essentially still basket cases (North Korea,
Eritrea). China has court up with the US and are beginning to face the same
problems the US had, though somewhat dampened by the lack of freedom. Despite
this, they have had to find make work projects for their people, and have had
to grant more and more freedom to stay in power.
In short the world will be a lot freer, a lot more equal, but inside countries
there will be a lot less hope and those countries will be much less equal.
------
estomagordo
Since at least medieval times, civilization as a whole has tended to move
towards freer, more democratic societies - almost without any meaningful,
lengthy changes. This is particularly true since the industrial revolution.
(Correct me if I'm wrong above.)
Given this, I find it hard to believe that future societies would somehow
become more oppressive. Rather, I think true democracy will have reached
virtually, if not practically, all of the world. Menial tasks have largely
become automated. Most people are well fed, secure and have access to
education and information. Brick and mortar stores (be they for clothing,
groceries or anything else) are largely a thing of luxury.
Speaking of education, most societies do not emphasize a traditional
educational path involving 3-5 years at universities like they do now. Higher
institutions now play a larger role but the benefits of technology in
information diffusion and communication now means we have more meaningful and
regarded ways of acquiring knowledge in other places, in other periods of life
and at different paces.
~~~
badpun
> Since at least medieval times, civilization as a whole has tended to move
> towards freer, more democratic societies - almost without any meaningful,
> lengthy changes. This is particularly true since the industrial revolution.
> (Correct me if I'm wrong above.)
This is a very Eurocentric view. In the rest of the world, this mostly wasn't
(and still isn't) the case.
~~~
estomagordo
Yeah, I realize I'm being rather eurocentric. The setbacks have been longer
and more plentiful in Africa and Asia, but I maintain that the trend is also
true there.
~~~
badpun
Where exactly? I'd say that democracies took root only in places (such as
India, Japan) which were conquered and then organized by western countries.
Other than that, not so much.
~~~
estomagordo
I don't know of any African countries where the people's democratic freedoms
are much more prevalent today than they were centuries ago.
------
matthewfelgate
- All transport is electric and self-driving
- Most meat is made artificially or non-meat substitutes
- New world order will be USA-India-Japan-Iran Vs China-Russia-Vietnam. (Europe to stay neutral)
- Home robots doing chores
- Lots of jobs have been automated leading to change in work
- Maximum workweek hours reduced to 4-days or flexible working
- Trips to the moon as regular as satellite launches and ISS trips are today
- Underground (and undersea( road tunnels connecting most of the world
- Advances in tracking and objective measurement of *everything* (Health, happiness etc)
- World energy needs mostly run off renewable resources (wind, solar, hydro)
- Borderless travel for most people across most countries
- Spread and establishment of liberal democracy across most countries
- World population more stable
------
davex
I agree on most of the arguments in the book "The Sovereign Individual" on
what will most probably happen in the next decades. Summary:
[https://www.nateliason.com/notes/sovereign-
individual](https://www.nateliason.com/notes/sovereign-individual)
~~~
distances
I managed to read the summary. Sounded like blockchain-sovereign citizen
crossover fanfic.
~~~
davex
the book was written in 1999, far before a blockchain existed
------
solresol
\- Demographic projections say that we'll be reaching "peak human" where
depopulation starts happening, and the urbanisation of humanity should be just
about finished. So that should end real estate as being a valuable investment;
it becomes a liability where liveable accommodation goes derelict because
there's no-one to live in it.
\- If we have fusion power, even if the reactor is the size of a battleship,
every country's military will have a space program.
\- Transportation continues to become cheaper, faster and more autonomous.
There's no point in owning anything any more because you can rent it and have
it delivered as quickly as you could get it out of a cupboard. You just pay a
flat monthly fee depending on what levels of luxury you want, and that
entitles you to whatever you need.
------
nostrademons
After Second American Civil War of 2025 and the following Drone Wars across
the globe, the nation-state system will fall. It'll be replaced by a mix of
city-states near the coasts and corporate territories in the hinterlands, with
the two existing in an uneasy tension.
Several city-states (notably SFBay, NYC DC, Pearl River, Amsterdam, Venice,
Florida, and Houston) will be wiped off the map, either by the Drone Wars or
by rising sea levels and increasingly violent storms. Also, regions like the
American Midwest, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and the
Bengal/Burma/Myanmar area will be severely depopulated as regional conflicts
and border skirmishes lead to the near-extinction of the local populace from
drone cleansing efforts. Sub-Saharan Africa (now split between the Corporate
States of Alcoa, DeBeers, and BP) will still be populated, but not by
Africans. The Corporate State of ExxonMobil in Northern Athabasca will be a
rising power, as will be the Corporate States of Monsanto in Canada and
Russia. The City States of Barrow, Cambridge Bay, Taloyoak, and Fort Ross will
be rising economic powers on the Arctic Ocean, as will be there lesser-
populated equivalents in Siberia. The Corporate State of SpaceX will just be
establishing the first Mars colony.
Standards of living for the survivors will be high. The near complete
destruction of existing infrastructure in the Drone Wars will allow surviving
cities to rebuild with more modern technology; in particular, the widespread
adoption of robotics in that conflict means that most daily transportation and
logistic problems are taken care of by machines. Everything is electrified,
powered by renewable solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal sources. The severe
depopulation in the Drone Wars means that the survivors are able to bargain
for higher wages and better working conditions, and many Corporate States are
run as egalitarian worker collectives (albeit at the cost of oppressing or
exterminating the native populations they displace). City States face
continued inequality, though, as they struggle to care for skill-less refugees
that were not killed in the Drone Wars.
------
mutant_rvalue2
Food gets expensive, everything else gets cheap. No jobs. High skilled
freelances paying huge amounts of money. Everyone has a bot, and bots are more
popular than cars. Cars become just fun. Temporary public service grants
minimal food. Almost no crime, everything is tracked. Web become VR and too
deep to have a human guide, google VR guide is the most popular. Google and
Facebook become gov in some territories. A wide range of variety of electronic
devices in sizes and formats, weareable. And.... bots are not that smart yet,
not like a money machine. But smart enough to play anything together. PRO
CPU/GPUS's only in the cloud for rent.
------
oicu812
The best book I've read on this topic is Homo Deus: A Brief History of
Tomorrow. [1]
It really got me thinking about the next 50 years now that famine, disease and
war are all manageable. The next 50 years will have super human AI, billions
of superfluous people and eternal life for the privileged few. [2]
[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Homo-Deus-Brief-History-Tomorrow-
dp-0...](https://www.amazon.com/Homo-Deus-Brief-History-Tomorrow-
dp-0062464310/dp/0062464310/)
[2] [https://www.getabstract.com/en/summary/homo-
deus/28074](https://www.getabstract.com/en/summary/homo-deus/28074)
~~~
ChristianGeek
The best movie on this topic is “Idiocracy,” a fantastic documentary.
------
xorand
Started as a joke here on HN, there is a series of predictions based on a
numerical correspondence between the intervals [1436,+\infty) and
[1969,+\infty), where:
\- 1436 is the invention of the printing press and
\- 1969 is the start of the ARPANET.
Many of them are postdictions (to validate the correspondence) but the funny
thing is that the series ends in the year 2024, where there is a sort of
singularity, because the interval [1436,1969] maps to [1969,2024].
[https://mbuliga.github.io/gutenberg-
net.html](https://mbuliga.github.io/gutenberg-net.html)
------
crusty511
50 years seems to medium term predictions, which is near impossible to
predict.
For everything else.
[https://www.futuretimeline.net/](https://www.futuretimeline.net/)
------
geowwy
WRT technology, I expect a technological plateau within our lifetime.
In geo-politics, USA will not be the sole superpower anymore:
* China will continue to regain its historical prominence/prestige
* EU will seek more and more independence from the US
* Turkey will look to form its own union of states in the Eastern Mediterranean (kind of a neo-byzantine/neo-ottoman empire)
* Brazil and India will continue to do well
* Russia and Iran's future not so certain
I think the transition will _probably_ be relatively smooth, but we'll have to
wait and see.
------
ramblerman
\- VR will make it, and become commonplace
\- Deep fake ai type technology will allow for quasi automatic generation of
landscapes, castles and people making creating your own video game or movie a
matter of story writing, and letting the computer fill in the details.
\- China's growth will slow down drastically as more and more reach the middle
class.
\- Most middle eastern dictatorships will get into trouble with the loss of
oil money.
\- South America grows as a market, and becomes more stable
------
bobbydreamer
World will get hotter, ice will melt. Sea water conversion to drinking water
will become major project.
Air conditioner/purifier business will grow.
Artificial foods will give rise to new diseases. Cancers will rise.
Cars will be detachables.
More loners than ever.
Real estates will boom in VR.
------
newyankee
China US cold war at some point of time ? In 5 - 10 years China may become
powerful enough to be able to bully all nations bar US to pursue its
interests. Economic colonisation of weaker states in Africa and elsewhere
(e.g. Pakistan) by China will lead to interesting geopolitical scenarios.
~~~
jjakque
My forecast for near future geopolitics is grim as collateral damages will
happen in most countries, first world or not, west or not.
I am also pessimistic about open initiatives (open source, open data, open
standards etc) as benefiters will exponentially overweight contributors, to a
point contributors will sick of people eating free lunches. It may also become
more and more illegal to disclose security risks and software vulnerabilities.
------
fergie
The coming population decline crisis
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/27/what-goes-
up-p...](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/27/what-goes-up-
population-crisis-wrong-fertility-rates-decline)
------
Felz
Be careful trying to forecast that far into the future. Historically, most
people have ended up very wrong.
------
olalonde
I predict human level AI will come about. What comes after I'm not sure but I
tend to be optimistic.
~~~
davidmichael4u
I feel the "I, Robot" film became a true
------
_nalply
There's a joke about weather forecast: "Kräht der Hahn auf dem Mist wird es
morgen schön oder nicht" (If the cock is crowing on the midden weather will be
either fine tomorrow or not). In this vein, my prediction:
Humans are mostly extinct or they are on their way to paradise.
------
jakeogh
Traditional society management via myth will fail (the 3 NYC CD's will be
common knowledge).
The 1st and 2nd Amendments will be further adopted outside the United States.
Open, non-DRM 3D printers will be as common as a 2D printer is today in the
US.
Personal wayback machines will be standard computing kit.
Cash will still exist.
------
neverminder
* SpaceX will land people on Mars and establish a base.
* VR will take off and evolve into some Matrix-like form.
* Electric energy will push out oil from most sectors.
* Gene manipulation will take off big time.
* None of the above will happen because accelerating global warming will cause the 3rd world war.
------
Animats
\- The Great Dieoff near the equator. Large parts of India and the Middle East
become uninhabitable. Hundreds of millions die. The countries further from the
equator do not let them in. World population will be lower than it is now.
Most of the dieoff will be older people.
\- US loses Miami and New Orleans to sea level rise, but otherwise does OK.
\- "Machines should think, people should work" \- computers will be doing many
management jobs, including direct supervision. Physical robots will still be
niche.
\- More strongmen. Types like Putin, Netanyahu, Li Keqiang, and Trump will be
the new normal.
\- Intense surveillance, with behavioral tracking and evaluation, is the new
normal. Government and business will cooperate in this.
\- Energy will not be a problem. Some materials will be more expensive, but no
mined material exhaustion in the next 50 years. Except for water.
\- Food will only be a problem where water is a problem.
\- Many antibiotics will stop working. There will be alternatives in the
developed world, but they will cost more and be more complicated and custom.
~~~
methusala8
-Large parts of India and the Middle East become uninhabitable
Any particular data/research to support this particular assertion?
~~~
KnightOfWords
Certainly not within 50 years, but this is based on projected wet-bulb
temperatures around the equator. The limit for human survivability is the
equivalent of 35C at 100% humidity.
"A sustained wet-bulb temperature exceeding 35 °C (95 °F) is likely to be
fatal even to fit and healthy people, unclothed in the shade next to a fan; at
this temperature our bodies switch from shedding heat to the environment, to
gaining heat from it. Thus 35 °C (95 °F) is the threshold beyond which the
body is no longer able to adequately cool itself. A study by NOAA from 2013
concluded that heat stress will reduce labor capacity considerably under
current emissions scenarios.
A 2010 study concluded that under a worst-case scenario for global warming
with temperatures 12 °C (22 °F) higher than 2007, the wet-bulb temperature
limit for humans could be exceeded around much of the world in future
centuries. A 2015 study concluded that parts of the globe could become
uninhabitable. An example of the threshold at which the human body is no
longer able to cool itself and begins to overheat is a humidity level of 50%
and a high heat of 46 °C (115 °F), as this would indicate a wet-bulb
temperature of 35 °C (95 °F)."
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Wet-
bulb_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Wet-
bulb_temperature_and_health)
------
Gerthak
You'll have a guaranteed next World War considering the current decouplings
and many countries exiting from international treaties that provide
stabilisation.
I have no idea what will be the the post-war order so impossible to predict.
------
sethammons
My Grandma went from riding a horse to town to space travel, the internet, and
smart TVs.
I'd love to see that kind of expansion, but I mostly expect to see the end of
Trick or Treating.
------
Abishek_Muthian
Many genetic mutations for new born could be predicted even before conceiving
and plausible remedial measures could be taken during early development of the
fetus.
------
KozmoNau7
Massive unrest due to climate change, leading to waves of mass immigration,
humanitarian disasters, atrocities, genocide and a rise in authoritarianism.
All because of our greed.
~~~
yamrzou
Sadly, I agree.
Let me quote
[https://collapseos.org/why.html](https://collapseos.org/why.html) here :
“I expect our global supply chain to collapse before we reach 2030. With this
collapse, we won't be able to produce most of our electronics because it
depends on a very complex supply chain that we won't be able to achieve again
for decades (ever?).”
And a related discussion :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21183805](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21183805)
I might disagree with the given date, but I think some sort of industrial
collapse will probably happen in the next century, basically because the earth
has finite resources, and we have been consuming them at an unprecedented rate
in the human history. Added to the climate change, it will lead to a massive
unrest that we are not ready to deal with.
~~~
usrusr
Rebuilding computing could really turn out surprisingly difficult: the first
time "we" did it, hardware manufacturing was bootstrapped by the type of
customer epitomized by "world market for about five computers" and then gently
followed the price/demand curve until we reached cheap smartphones. If it had
to be repeated, all the potential customers on the beginner-friendly end of
said curve will have access to vastly superior legacy hardware. The kind of
customer that was amongst the first who could afford computers in the original
ramp-up would be the last who could afford increasingly rare remnant hardware
after a supply chain collapse (the same problem that makes it impossible to
bootstrap a domestic _anything_ industry when you don't already have one, all
the deep-pocketed buyers can afford superior imports). Basically "Saddam's
PlayStation 2 supercomputer" turned reality.
------
daman
Euthanasia will become legal worldwide, and legally supported suicide for non-
medical reasons will increase suicide rates by a 10x or higher factor.
------
notelonmusk
Self-driving cats
------
Jaruzel
Nothing will change significantly over the next 50 years, despite people
constantly predicting otherwise.
My personal take is that we've reached peak humanity. Without some large shock
to the global eco-system there will be no significant progress in anything
meaningful. The 20th century only resulted in major advances in many fields of
research due to two world wars. War is the driver for change.
If you want a better human race, have another war.
------
komoreba
We will talk a lot about the weather.
------
RickJWagner
Programming will still exist.
And people will be forecasting the demise of programming, coming soon.
------
davidmichael4u
AI, bot or robots these 3 can rule every human.
------
sys_64738
The Soviets will walk on Mars within 20 years.
------
dvh
No permanent human base beyond leo.
------
architect
My predictions have a tendency to come true. Consider yourselves privileged to
have received this information years in advance
Things that won't happen:
\- There will NEVER be a 3rd "World War" with major countries rolling tanks
across each others borders and millions dead. There will be lots of conflict
though, but never a direct confrontation between major nations like u.s.
china, Russia, etc
\- There will also never be a nuclear attack on a live target. The worst that
could ever happen would be a "test" deterrent on uninhabited land and even
that is highly doubtful
\- Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies will not be adopted by the mainstream on a
large scale such that you could use it to buy groceries, pay rent, pay for
everyday expenses, etc
\- But they will also not disappear. Cryptocurrencies are here to stay
\- There won't be any major youth cultural movement such as punks in the 70s,
skinheads, hippies, ravers, etc. Big concerts and events will slowly become
smaller/fizzle out. These movements of the past were driven by the children of
factory workers and working classes. Deindustrialization is causing the
decline of youth culture
\- Cold fusion
\- "Room temperature" superconductors
\- Manned Moon landing. Not in 2024, 34, or in our lifetime (sorry)
\- Manned Mars landing. This one will ESPECIALLY not happen! And even if it
did, nobody is going to believe it
\- "Storm Area 51" or any similar such event. Wont happen
\- "Aliens" won't come
\- Massive decline in national sports. People will not associate themselves
with any particular sports team. For similar reasons which made youth music
movements disappear, people will also lose interest in soccer, basketball,
etc. FIFA, NBA, UEFA and others will be riddled with scandal after scandal
\- +11bn. We have only so much planet to go around. Something will give...
Things that will happen:
\- Costs of living will continue to rise, driven primarily by housing costs.
Both, buying and renting, will continue to go up indefinitely making not just
owning a home, but even sleeping inside a building with 4 solid walls
increasingly unaffordable for a large majority of the population. First in
western countries such as the u.s. and Europe, but also increasingly in places
such as Asia and South America and many other places in the world
\- As a consequence, cities will become thinly populated by a minority who can
still afford to live in them and their servants, while large number of
buildings, well maintained on the outside, will deteriorate on the inside.
\- Empty luxury towers will be dotting cities all over the world with
automatic light switches to make them appear occupied at night
\- Van living will become BIG BUSINESS!!
\- Major car manufacturers will be too stupid/bureaucratic to pick up (heh) on
the opportunity
\- People will adopt. Having a nicely fitted van/rv will be the new "middle
class"
\- If you hope that there will be another "burst" of the housing bubble, good
luck. Things in history never happen twice. Maybe its time to get comfortable
in your tent!
\- Gym memberships will continue to go up
\- The US dollar/Euro will continue to rise against most other currencies for
quite some time. No hyperinflation any time soon
\- Continued decline in fossil fuel production
\- "Digital Nomad" places such as Bali, Chiang Mai, etc will become VERY
popular. Even more so than they are today
\- Many new places like that will arise all around the world. The famous
Nomadlist is just an indication of what's to come
\- Nation states will disappear. People will be divided into two major groups:
Those who can adjust to a world in with the geography of your birth will no
longer carry relevance to how you conduct your life. And those who will fail
to adjust to a new narrative in which nationality no longer plays a role. This
second group will be the Left Behinds. Many of them will become violent
against the first and amongst each other. You can already see this happening
with the (futile) rise of nationalism around the world. These people can't
adopt, and will be wiped out
\- Record cold winters
\- Extreme heat wave summers
\- Collapse of food production in many parts of the world at least during some
periods with all the nasty consequences
\- Continued decline in birth rates. World wide
\- Splintering of the "United" States of America. Numerous groups fighting to
claim the title, with others fighting to reject it
\- Transition of the U.S and Europe from 1st world to 3rd world
\- Save havens will emerge around the world who will accept refugees from the
Declining West who were smart enough to foresee these developments in advance.
The future won't be bad for those who can see what's coming
I also have some more predictions about the decline of the nations state.
These are rather dark and involve things such as alliances between the deep
state and street gangs. "Law enforcement" becoming criminals and turning
against their own population etc. But that's enough for now, you get the
picture...
------
hntddt1
Detroit:Become Human
------
sneak
Sadly, war.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Compare Your Title to the Pros - amunategui
https://www.viralml.com/title-analyzer
======
amunategui
Let me know if anybody had a chance to try this out - if you are a writer or
blogger, does this analysis make sense? thanks! @amunategui
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ejecta – A Fast, Open Source JavaScript, Canvas and Audio Implementation for iOS - hising
http://impactjs.com/ejecta
======
pcwalton
One of the coolest things I learned from the original blog post [1] on Ejecta
was a trick that the library uses for drawing polygons on the GPU in OpenGL
without triangulating them first [2]. It's one of the coolest graphics
programming tricks I've ever seen and when I understood how it worked my mind
was blown.
[1]:
[http://phoboslab.org/log/2012/09/ejecta](http://phoboslab.org/log/2012/09/ejecta)
[2]:
[http://www.glprogramming.com/red/chapter14.html#name13](http://www.glprogramming.com/red/chapter14.html#name13)
~~~
phoboslab
With a bit more trickery, you can even implement the Non-Zero fill rule
(Canvas2D default), instead of the simpler Even-Odd rule. Ejecta now supports
both:
[https://github.com/phoboslab/Ejecta/blob/master/Source/Eject...](https://github.com/phoboslab/Ejecta/blob/master/Source/Ejecta/EJCanvas/2D/EJPath.mm#L361-L396)
~~~
mattdesl
Could I also use this technique to clip a scene to the path of a complex
polygon?
How does it hold up with many overlapping shapes of varying color; wouldn't it
lead to far more state changes and ultimately much greater fill-rate?
And what are your thoughts on using this for font rendering?
This looks brilliant. Thanks for the info.
------
RyanZAG
Would be nice to see some benchmarks. I can't see how this could be faster
than just running it in Safari. In Safari you get access to far faster
javascript jit than you do in the embedded app js engine. The app itself just
translates the javascript canvas calls into objc calls to the core graphics..
which is what safari's canvas does anyway? Is the extra level of indirection
through safari enough to compensate for slower jit? Plus it's a lot harder to
compile this than it is to put a js game on the web.
Needs benchmarks to be able to make any decisions.
~~~
phoboslab
(Ejecta dev here)
Ejecta uses OpenGL ES 2 for Canvas, not Core Graphics.
The default demo that comes with Ejecta[1] runs with 60fps on the iPhone4S.
Just try it in Mobile Safari. Even Desktop Browsers struggle with this. Of
course it's a contrived benchmark, but it still makes a point, I think :)
There are also a lot of other reason to use Ejecta. If you _want_ to
distribute your App in the AppStore, the alternative is to use a WebView
framework such as PhoneGap, which can't use JIT either. That said, the raw
JavaScript performance is rarely the bottleneck for games - most of the time,
drawing is.
[1] [http://phoboslab.org/crap/bezier/](http://phoboslab.org/crap/bezier/)
~~~
mamcx
Hi, sorry to hijack the thread. What JS chart tool play well with ejecta in
iOS? You know?
------
hopfog
Ejecta is awesome. So is ImpactJS. Dominic (the creator) is experimenting with
making Ejecta cross-platform so hopefully we will see an Android version soon.
------
camus2
The JavaScriptCore API is private on iOS,
which means you're not allowed to link to it.
Ejecta therefore comes bundled with its
own version of the library to circumvent these
restrictions.
So you are basically using another VM(a second javascript core) in an IOS app.
Isnt it forbidden to do so,running VMs in IOS apps?
A better approach would be to do like TITANIUM ,except that you expose a
CANVAS like API,so that your javascript canvas framework is compatible with it
=> less work,and no trick that would make your app kicked out of the store
once the scheme is busted.
~~~
Rafert
No, it isn't. It would make the likes of Xamarin and RubyMotion impossible.
You're confused with the fact that App Store policies do not allow downloading
and running new executable code.
~~~
camus2
I thought Xamarin and RM compiled to objc.
~~~
Revex
Yeah, I am pretty sure that Xamarin compiles down to Obj-C on the iPhone, but
on Android it includes a VM in java that runs .net (mono).
~~~
acemarke
Close. According to [http://xamarin.com/how-it-works](http://xamarin.com/how-
it-works) , they do Ahead-Of-Time compilation to go straight to ARM binaries
for iOS.
------
adrnsly
I use Ejecta for almost all my prototyping, super easy to make changes during
a meeting to do live iteration testing.
------
checker659
Why not use v8 and make the runtime run "everywhere"?
Edit: Sorry, just realised the development is done in Objective-C.
~~~
phoboslab
v8 also doesn't have an interpreter mode, just a compiler. On iOS you can't
allocate writable+executable memory, so you can't use v8.
As I mentioned in another thread, I currently have a toy project that
implements most of the Canvas2D API in plain C. Maybe this will amount to
something some day.
~~~
checker659
AFAIK, you can turn off JIT compilation in v8, isn't that true?
~~~
sanxiyn
No, you can't turn off JIT compilation in V8. V8 has no not-JIT execution
engine.
------
al2o3cr
Looks cool, but "works out of the box except for controls" is pretty much
"doesn't work out of the box" for games...
------
adamnemecek
It's not really a "JavaScript implementation" when it appears to be just a
wrapper around JavaScriptCore, innit bruv.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
VERSUS IO Aims To Compare Anything - urgeio
http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/18/versus-io-aims-to-compare-anything-has-its-fanboy-filter-dialled-high/
======
Xavura
Absolutely love the "show original size" feature, very cool. Tested out with
my phone and it is for all intents and purposes exact.
------
brandoncapecci
Make careful note of the word "aims" in this article title. They compare
mobile devices and... well, that's it so far.
~~~
swalsh
Of course one could hop in a time machine and say "Make careful note of the
word "aims", Amazon aims to sell everything. Today they only sell books"
Its good to start an ambitious idea in a niche.
~~~
brandoncapecci
Making the transition from selling books to selling other goods seems is
generally more simple than the transition from comparing one type of product
versus to comparing anything. As the article mentions, these tools have
existed for awhile and the quality has always degraded the more universal they
become. Obviously I didn't expect too many avenues of comparisons but I also
didn't expect just one...
------
amirmansour
Kinda like the prettier <http://atfight.me>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How I manage my e-books - input_sh
https://input.sh/how-i-manage-my-ebooks/
======
gumboshoes
"Hoarded about 500 of them" I'm happy for you and your books but from this
book hoarder's perspective, that is a small number.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
I create fake videos. Here’s why people even believe the obvious ones - Vaslo
https://www.fastcompany.com/90404007/i-create-fake-videos-heres-why-people-believe-even-the-obvious-ones
======
ZeroGravitas
This stuff is like spam but worse.
It's like if someone else could send your money to a Nigerian prince, so you
can't just defend yourself, you need to defend everyone, even the people who
believe the prince and think you're trying to stop then getting rich.
------
duskhacker
> That fear is founded on the longstanding principle that seeing is believing.
> But it seems as though that old axiom may not be true anymore
This was never true.
First, one is not “seeing” a thing when it is witnessed through a medium. One
is witnessing a representation, not the thing. Seeing in the axiom above
means, for lack of a better term, “eyeballing”.
Further, any magician will tell you that eyeballing something doesn’t mean
you’re seeing what you think you’re seeing.
I have a hard time relating to this whole “omg, deep fakes horrible” thing,
I’m in my 50’s and I relate to the author’s son’s outlook more closely.
I have a counter to that axiom from modified old country wisdom: “Don’t
believe anything you hear and only half of what you eyeball”
------
ssivark
Better to link to the original source: [https://theconversation.com/i-create-
manipulated-images-and-...](https://theconversation.com/i-create-manipulated-
images-and-videos-but-quality-may-not-matter-much-120404)
------
cbanek
> But we’ve found that a key element of the battle between truth and
> propaganda has nothing to do with technology. It has to do with how people
> are much more likely to accept something if it confirms their beliefs.
So true (and not just because I believed this before I read it).
------
ionwake
Any github repos so I can have a play?
------
kaushikt
This is horrible. Are they news providers who call on these fake or say
altered videos validating the source and truth?
~~~
casion
The problem is the chain of truth. Maybe you can prove that someone said
something, but not that they believe it or even if it's objectively true.
Then you have disputes of validation. A party wanting to retract reality can
present their own convincing fake and chain of custody of validation. It only
take a few smart attacks on a central validator for the "attacker" to seed
reasonable doubt.
The real solution is to trust nothing and always be ready to admit that you
may be incorrect (given sufficient rational evidence to your contrary).
~~~
sjiiehwba873
But thats what some of the bad actors want. For you to trust nothing. So even
when you see real news, which portrays them in a bad light, you won't believe
it.
We need to put our trust in something. But be careful about what we trust. And
always be prepared to change our minds when were proven wrong.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Reducing a node Docker image from 2.4GB to less than 100MB - jlengrand
https://lengrand.fr/reducing-dockers-image-size-while-creating-an-offline-version-of-carbon-now-sh/
======
dastx
Why use an image from a possibly unknown individual when you can simply do:
FROM: alpine
RUN apk add --no-cache mode
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
'System safeguards' lacking in Tesla crash on autopilot: NTSB - rgbrenner
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-tesla-autopilot/system-safeguards-lacking-in-tesla-crash-on-autopilot-ntsb-idUSKCN1BN1QP
======
rgbrenner
This seems to be the accident :
[https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/HW...](https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/AccidentReports/Pages/HWY16FH018-preliminary.aspx)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mitochondria may hold keys to anxiety and mental health - jger15
https://www.quantamagazine.org/mitochondria-may-hold-keys-to-anxiety-and-mental-health-20200810/
======
wombatmobile
> The organelles are ancient invaders — the remnants of symbiotic bacteria
> that integrated themselves into host cells about 2 billion years ago and
> specialized for energy production.
That's accepted as scientific orthodoxy now, but it wasn't always. In the
1960's, evolutionary biologist Lyn Margulis proposed the theory that cell
organelles such as mitochondria and chloroplasts were once independent
bacteria, which combined through symbiotic mergers of bacteria to evolve into
eukaryotic cells. Ernst Mayr called this "perhaps the most important and
dramatic event in the history of life".
Throughout her career, Margulis' work could arouse intense objection. One
grant application elicited the response, "Your research is crap, do not bother
to apply again", and her formative paper, "On the Origin of Mitosing Cells",
appeared in 1967 after being rejected by about fifteen journals.
In 2002, Discover magazine recognized Margulis as one of the 50 most important
women in science.
In 1995, Richard Dawkins said, "I greatly admire Lynn Margulis's sheer courage
and stamina in sticking by the endosymbiosis theory, and carrying it through
from being an unorthodoxy to an orthodoxy. I'm referring to the theory that
the eukaryotic cell is a symbiotic union of primitive prokaryotic cells. This
is one of the great achievements of twentieth-century evolutionary biology,
and I greatly admire her for it."
~~~
msla
Sadly, these days Lynn Margulis is better known for her AIDS crankery:
> Margulis said that "the set of symptoms, or syndrome, presented by
> syphilitics overlaps completely with another syndrome: AIDS," and also noted
> that Kary Mullis[a] said that "he went looking for a reference
> substantiating that HIV causes AIDS and discovered, 'There is no such
> document.' "
> This provoked a widespread supposition that Margulis had been an "AIDS
> denialist." Notably Jerry Coyne reacted on his Why Evolution is True blog
> against his interpretation that Margulis believed "that AIDS is really
> syphilis, not viral in origin at all."[50] Seth Kalichman, a social
> psychologist who studies behavioral and social aspects of AIDS, cited her
> 2009 paper as an example of AIDS denialism "flourishing",[51] and asserted
> that her "endorsement of HIV/AIDS denialism defies understanding."[52]
Also: 9/11 crankery!
> Margulis argued that the September 11 attacks were a "false-flag operation,
> which has been used to justify the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as
> unprecedented assaults on ... civil liberties." She claimed that there was
> "overwhelming evidence that the three buildings [of the World Trade Center]
> collapsed by controlled demolition."[5]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Margulis)
~~~
wombatmobile
The complication with (incorrectly) labeling Margulis "an AIDS denialist",
msla, is that you then make her responsible for a whole collection of
unsubstantiated tropes that are targeted by that label. That's unwarranted,
because Margulis was doing something quite opposite to "AIDS denialism";
Margulis, an esteemed scientist, was proposing an alternative causative factor
that may explain AIDS, which isn't HIV, or more precisely, which isn't HIV in
isolation.
This fascinating discussion will make your jaw drop
[https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/discover-
inter...](https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/discover-interview-
lynn-margulis-says-shes-not-controversial-shes-right)
~~~
msla
> Margulis, an esteemed scientist, was proposing an alternative causative
> factor that may explain AIDS, which isn't HIV, or more precisely, which
> isn't HIV in isolation.
She's not esteemed in the field of what causes AIDS. She's esteemed in a
different sub-field. In terms of AIDS, the actual _experts_ have come to the
conclusion she's wrong, and one thing we should all have learned by now is
that our ignorance is not equal to the knowledge of experts.
> This fascinating discussion will make your jaw drop
Not for the reasons you think it would, though.
~~~
coldtea
> _She 's not esteemed in the field of what causes AIDS. She's esteemed in a
> different sub-field. In terms of AIDS, the actual experts have come to the
> conclusion she's wrong, and one thing we should all have learned by now is
> that our ignorance is not equal to the knowledge of experts._
The history of science also told us by now that experts are stubborn, and
sometimes they have to first die, for the next generation to accept another
theory.
It has also taught us that important new discoveries more often than not come
not from established experts in a field, but by people from another sub-field
or another field all together...
It has also taught us that scientists should continue challenging prevailing
hypotheses all the time, because that's part and parcel of doing science...
~~~
jkhdigital
Exactly. An “expert” is a skilled practitioner of some domain of human
endeavor; a scientist is a truth-seeker. Expertise is orthogonal to scientific
truth.
~~~
msla
> Expertise is orthogonal to scientific truth.
Expertise is the result of successful scientific seeking.
------
podgaj
I am disabled with Anxiety and Mood Disorder and chronic fatigue/depression.
Typical "Bipolar" presentation. It runs in my family on my mothers side. We
also have a history of early (45 years old) heart disease.
So I knew this was mitochondrial but it was revealed when I received my
genome. We have issues with our electron transport chain; Complex I (ND1 and
ND4) and Complex III (MT-CYB).
So diet and lifestyle was crucial in getting me off all of my meds, and I was
on a lot. High dose riboflavin was a huge help.
Getting complex I to work well helps with the heart since it increases NAD.
Also getting enough ubiquinone from diet helps. I get it mostly from seafood
like Salmon and Liver. I might try and take a CoQ10 supplement soon. But the
fact that we make it endogenously makes me think it is not needed. Statins
will stop the production of CoQ10 by lowering FPPP production which is why
they fail to help people with Heart Disease.
Balancing the flow and the oxidative stress from the mitochondrial electron
transport chain is crucial.
~~~
slfnflctd
> Statins will stop the production of CoQ10 by lowering FPPP production which
> is why they fail to help people with Heart Disease
I would like to know more about this. I've been on a statin for several years
and feel like my energy has dropped through the floor in that time. I also
feel like I have a 'statin hangover' when I wake up in the morning (I usually
take it with my supper). This could all be correlation, and aside from
cholesterol levels I haven't been diagnosed with heart disease. But I would
like to know more, because I hate taking this stuff and really don't like the
idea of being on it the rest of my life.
~~~
podgaj
This is pretty much all you need to know:
[https://ubiquinol.org/sites/default/files/statins.gif](https://ubiquinol.org/sites/default/files/statins.gif)
The thinking on cholesterol and heart disease is changing rapidly and there
really is no strong evidence high cholesterol before a heart attack leads to
any bad outcomes. After a heart attack, statins are ok.
But like we see, side effects. My doc wanted me on them but they gave my
mother horrible myopathy so I passed. My HDL was really low until I took out
all plant oils and eat fats pretty much only from fish and olive oil. Now my
HDL in mid range normal. This is becasue the omega 3 helps with reverse
cholesterol transport.
But again, this is me and my genetics. We have Saami (Inuit) heritage which is
why I think i need this diet.
------
tgv
The article does not really warrant the title. The best evidence seems to be
"a meta-analysis of 23 studies on mitochondria and anxiety: 19 demonstrated
“significant adverse effects of psychological stress on mitochondria”", but
that's the other way around. And there are of course many factors associated
with anxiety and other mental health issues that do not seem related to
mitochondria.
Nobody is going to deny that a badly functioning component in your body can
affect your mental health, and some of the mechanisms sound interesting, but
not enough to call mitochondria the "key to anxiety and mental health". It's
more like: an easily overlooked factor that can contribute.
------
aantix
I'm surprised that the role of Magnesium isn't discussed as well.
"Mitochondrial Mg2+ homeostasis decides cellular energy metabolism and
vulnerability to stress"
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4960558/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4960558/)
Anecdotally, I've been taking Magnesium l-threonate and it's probably the
least anxious I've ever been in my entire life (I'm 42).
The only thing comparable was Lexapro, but I always had a love/hate
relationship because of the side effects.
~~~
scrozier
Your opening line made me laugh inappropriately. When I was in grad school in
molecular biophysics, someone asked, “if I fall asleep during a talk, and wake
up just in time for questions, what question can I ask, to look smart,
regardless of the topic of the talk?” The answer? “What was the magnesium
concentration?”
~~~
DoofusOfDeath
I recall a similar story regarding (iirc) programming language type theory:
"How does it handle recursion?"
------
vwat
This guy theorized that autism is caused by a problem with ATP and
mitochondria. He did a trial of an old, obscure drug that blocks ATP receptors
(for signaling, not metabolism) on young ASD patients and there was noticeable
improvement in their symptoms. More studies are underway.
[http://naviauxlab.ucsd.edu/science-item/autism-
research/](http://naviauxlab.ucsd.edu/science-item/autism-research/)
~~~
fasteo
>>> obscure drug that blocks ATP receptors
In case you are wondering, Suramin[1] is the drug
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suramin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suramin)
------
sradman
For those, like me, who find this article too pseudo-sciencey, the paper
_Psychological Stress and Mitochondria: A Conceptual Framework_ [1] lays the
foundation I was missing:
> It is also interesting to note in the context of stress regulation that all
> steroid hormones, including glucocorticoids and sex hormones, are
> synthesized in a process that is regulated by, and occurs in mitochondria,
> further linking mitochondrial biology to stress signaling.
Stress in this sense refers to all biological stressors such as physical
exertion. Mitochondria, therefore, are not only central to energy production
but also to stress response. This is simply how the system works.
[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5901651/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5901651/)
------
WantonQuantum
Presumably it's not the mitochondrial DNA itself that is causing the problem
but rather chromosomal DNA (or some combination). If it were only
mitochondrial DNA then it would be strongly heritable from the mother's side,
which is not what we see.
~~~
sjg007
Ha.. my mom is super anxious as was her mom.. and me.. yep!
~~~
WantonQuantum
Yes, I definitely got my depression from my mother's side of the family. But
as far as I'm aware, after controlling for environmental factors (such as
amount of time spent with each parent, etc) there's no detectable bias toward
maternal inheritance.
------
koeng
Fun fact: we still can’t genetically transform human mitochondria, and we’ve
tried for _decades_
~~~
peteretep
What would it mean to “genetically transform” a human mitochondria, and why
are have we been trying to for decades?
~~~
koeng
Add new DNA into the human mitochondria. If you could do that, you unlock a
massive amount of science around how mitochondria function, kinda similar to
“what I cannot create I do not understand.
From an engineer’s perspective, mitochondria are kinda the equivalent to
virtual machines running on normal computers, as little “virtual cells” within
cells. Their genomes are so stripped down that you can do some wild things
with them.
~~~
est31
> If you could do that, you unlock a massive amount of science around how
> mitochondria function
Note that 99% of the proteins contained in mitochondria are [coded] in the
nucleus, only 1% is [coded] in the mitochondrial chromosome. It's extremely
small, only containing 37 genes of which most are related to translation (but
of course translation requires far more, e.g. elongation factors).
[https://www.nature.com/articles/nrm2959](https://www.nature.com/articles/nrm2959)
~~~
reubenswartz
I get what you're saying, but I think you have a typo in there. Most of the
proteins in the mitochondria are coded by nuclear DNA, but the proteins
themselves end up in the mitochondria.
~~~
est31
Thanks! Edited.
------
Symmetry
Mitochondria are really one of our cells' most under appreciated organelles
and the consequences of them being "the powerhouse" are a lot more profound
than you might think. I highly recommend Nick Lane's book on them, _Power,
Sex, Suicide: Mitochondria and the meaning of life_ , which explores the
consequences of the biochemistry, population genetics, of mitochondria for how
animals live in general. It's far more interesting than biochemistry has any
right to be, along with his other books.
~~~
reubenswartz
Yes and his book "The Vital Question", which covers some of the same ground.
Highly recommend.
------
zwkrt
One day we will have a full biological understanding of anxiety and mental
health, at which point people will no longer need to change the world around
them.
~~~
Kaze404
I don't understand the connection.
~~~
rexpop
Although "all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer,
while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms
to which they are accustomed," organisms have been known to alter our
environments to suit our needs, rather than suffer them even to our deaths.
For example, when it rains I often open an umbrella.
Perhaps with the right anti-depressant cocktail, I wouldn't bother.
~~~
wahern
Based on what I've seen in nature films regarding how great apes (chimpanzees,
orangutans, etc) react to rain, and the extreme aversion to being rained on
that I've anecdotally seen in several different cultures, I have a suspicion
that an aversion to rain--particularly to unwanted/unexpected rain--might be
not only instinctual but peculiar and specific, similar to our aversions to
spiders and snakes. Or maybe not, but it has definitely stood out to me.
------
nayeem-rahman
the power house of the cell
~~~
Terr_
Exactly what I thought of when they said:
> “They’re the chief executive organelle of the cell.”
Which IMO sounds odd, given that Mitochondria are seldom described as having
much "decision making" power.
~~~
Symmetry
Well, they do start the process of triggering apoptosis or cell suicide, for
instance.
------
techbio
Realizing mitochondria were the "powerhouse" due to a voltage gradient created
by chemically transforming ATP to ADP across a membrane gave me a eureka
moment about how small such a mechanism can be, and how powerful in great
numbers.
------
dr_dshiv
Here is one of my favorite videos of mitochondrial transport, in vivo:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5IxkI6tkn0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x5IxkI6tkn0)
Apparently, there is a whole economy for transporting microchondria within
dendrites. More mitochondria in an area of the dendrites allows for faster
growth and responsiveness to input.
(There is another time-lapse video I've seen before of mitochondrial
transport, but I'm frustrated that my own browsing history isn't making it
easier to find. Are there tools that help make ones own browsing history more
useful/accessible?)
------
starfallg
> In 1924, this man Boris Mikhaylovich Kozo-Polyansky wrote a book called
> Symbiogenesis: A New Principle of Evolution, in which he reconciled Darwin’s
> natural selection as the eliminator and symbiogenesis as the innovator.
TIL that evolution is a GAN.
------
itsmarsu
Assuming the title is true, that'd make mitochondria the powerhouse of the
self.
------
myvii
I wonder if there's a connection to Nicotinamide Riboside (NR)
supplementation.
NR is a precursor to NAD+, which has been shown to improve mitochondrial
function especially under stress.
NAD+ is one of those molecules used in a ton of metabolic processes and over a
lifespan NAD+ avalability declines. This decline is linked to numerous age-
related diseases. There's a bit of research showing NAD+ supplementation
contributes to anti-aging effects.
NR is easy to take, well-tolerated, and a cheap precursor for NAD+. There are
IV clinics that have NAD+ infusions, but they cost like $500. On the other
hand, you can get a month's supply of NR for around $50 (Thorne's ResveraCel).
------
thelazydogsback
I recommend this book:
"Mitochondria and the Future of Medicine: The Key to Understanding Disease,
Chronic Illness, Aging, and Life Itself"
\-- by Lee Know
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1603587675](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1603587675)
~~~
rl3
> _Lee Know, ND, is a licensed naturopathic doctor based out of Canada, and
> the recipient of several awards. Known by his peers to be a strategic and
> forward-thinking entrepreneur and researcher, he has held positions as
> medical advisor, scientific evaluator, and director of research and
> development for major organizations. Besides managing Scientific Affairs for
> his own company, he also currently serves as a consultant to the natural-
> health-products and dietary-supplements industries, and serves on the
> editorial advisory board for Canada 's most-read natural health magazine._
At least he's honest about his lack of medical expertise and conflict of
interest.
~~~
thelazydogsback
And? Do you have any particular problems with any actual insights in the book?
Do you think the medical industry is forward-thinking or adverse to new ways
of thinking in general? I don't want this guy removing my appendix, but there
are many cases of people outside or peripheral to a domain without
qualifications that make a huge impact on a particular area and lead the way
for more research -- and we are all aware of the medical establishment's lack
of proper training when it comes to nutrition.
~~~
rl3
The problem I have is they're attempting to sound authoritative via way of
medical and scientific expertise while in fact having none, in addition to
having a financial interest in pushing supplements. It severely impugns the
credibility of the book.
> _Do you think the medical industry is forward-thinking or adverse to new
> ways of thinking in general?_
Both. It's so vast that sweeping generalizations don't really apply.
> _... but there are many cases of people outside or peripheral to a domain
> without qualifications that make a huge impact on a particular area and lead
> the way for more research ..._
Sure, but an ND with ties to the supplement industry ain't that.
> _... and we are all aware of the medical establishment 's lack of proper
> training when it comes to nutrition._
You could even argue the medically-recommended low-fat diet craze was one of
the largest health disasters in modern history. Unfortunately it doesn't make
this guy any more correct or rigorous in his opinions.
Please understand this isn't a personal attack. I take supplements and
aggressively fast every day precisely because I largely believe in the
mitochondrial theory of aging. For all I know, everything in the book could be
factually correct and not misconstrued. It doesn't change the fact the author
is presenting themselves as a medical expert.
------
m0zg
Whenever I see "X may hold keys to Y", I always augment it with "or it may
not". In fact "may not" is the more likely outcome because if it did come
anywhere close to "holding" the keys the headline would be affirmative.
It's a variant of Betteridge's law, if you will.
------
hoka-one-one
Ok Ray Peat
------
layoutIfNeeded
Hm, but I was told it’s only in my head!
------
peteretep
Completely left-field comment:
> Carmen Sandi recalls the skepticism she faced at first. A behavioral
> neuroscientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, she
> had followed a hunch
I feel like people use “radical ideas” like this to justify whatever their
bullshit of the day is, and generally ignore the fact that they almost always
come from experts in their respective fields.
| {
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How Hackers Protect Themselves From Getting Hacked - giZm0
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/20/hackers-security-tips_n_2333527.html
======
giZm0
These are some pretty obvious advice, but some of the links provided is good
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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The Problem with Twitter Maps - lambtron
http://www.languagejones.com/blog-1/2014/12/24/the-problem-with-twitter-maps
======
datahipster
> Spatial statistics aren't the same as regular statistics
I've always been frustrated with the gap between statistics and spatial
statistics. For example, some of the methodologies with conducting hot-spot
analysis is somewhat misleading, especially to uninformed geospatial analysts.
For example, Esri [0] implements this first by conducting geospatial
aggregation, then calculating z-scores based on Gaussian assumptions, then
generates a corresponding "p-value" to extract "statistically significant
areas" that are coined "hot spots". At that point, an analyst typically color-
codes those p-values showing regions with low p-values as "extreme" areas of
interest. I'm really curious if there's any empirical or anecdotal research
that validates this methodology.
There are some attempts to try and normalize sampled data. Location Quotient
[1] (and Standardized Location Quotient), for example, compares a local
measure to a global measure. However, this too has Gaussian assumptions and
doesn't properly account for variance in the data.
I would definitely love to see a hierarchical Bayesian spatial model that
takes into account a geospatial prior (such as the overall density of tweets)
allowing you to solve for the posterior of cluster centers. Has anyone seen
this done before?
[0]
[http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//0...](http://resources.arcgis.com/en/help/main/10.1/index.html#//005p00000010000000)
[1]
[http://www.bea.gov/faq/index.cfm?faq_id=478](http://www.bea.gov/faq/index.cfm?faq_id=478)
| {
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Why Yammer is moving away from Scala - DanielRibeiro
https://gist.github.com/1406271
======
johnbender
I've been playing around inside the closure-compiler in my free time recently
and the thing that struck me most after years of working in other languages
(Ruby, JavaScript, C#) is that Java is a relatively simple language. I have
yet to find myself spending any significant amount of time wondering at what a
given snippet of code does.
[edit] I should note that I don't have much to compare the closure-compiler
too, so it might be that this is the result of a very small sample set.
------
syncerr
Yammer should move thier client away from Air. Gabble too.
~~~
bhc3
Why move away from Air? Serious question, want to understand its issues.
~~~
pbreit
One explanation: "Shortchanging Your Business with User-Hostile Platforms"
<http://al3x.net/2011/01/15/user-hostile-platforms.html>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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Hydrogel process developed at Stanford creates transparent brain - theoutlander
http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2013/april/clarity.html
======
robot
This is a very impressive (yet simple) methodology in that before this there
was no understanding of where certain neurons were projecting in the brain,
due to the fat tissue blocking any imaging possibilities. After this many
connections were uncovered that were not well understood for years.
------
hodder
<http://longbets.org/1/>
"Second, this phenomenon of ongoing exponential growth through a cascade of
S-curves is far broader than computation. We see the same double exponential
growth in a wide range of technologies, including communication technologies
(wired and wireless), biological technologies (e.g., DNA base-pair
sequencing), miniaturization, and of particular importance to the software of
intelligence, brain reverse engineering (e.g., brain scanning, neuronal and
brain region modeling)." -Kurzweil
------
jmatthis
A video explaining and showing the technique:
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c-NMfp13Uug>
------
solox3
Whole organ decellularization is not new - we've had transparent heart ECMs
for quite some time. By loading the brain here with monomers, they kill the
organ, whereas you can still use the transparent heart if you reload it with
cells. Similar thing, different purposes.
~~~
RVijay007
Just to clarify, this is not whole organ decellularization. The brain tissue,
with it's neurons, glia, ECM, are left all in tact, along with their proteins,
mRNA, etc.
Now, instead of having to slice the brain into micrometer slices just to
understand architecture at a localized level, you can understand the
architecture of the whole brain's network down to the cellular level, as well
as do both immunohistochemistry and in-situ hybridization to probe what kind
of proteins and molecular markers are present throughout the brain. This is
nothing short of a revolution in experimental technique not only for
neuroscience, but all of pathology.
------
slacka
This is huge for the fields of AI and Neuroscience. I would gladly donate my
brain( preferably when I'm done with it) to give neuroscientists a map of the
human brain. This map would be a great first step to creating strong AI.
------
kragen
Summary: infuse brain with hydrogel monomers, polymerize to form permeable
polymer matrix, remove lipids with vigorous electrophoresis, bingo,
transparent brain.
------
ritonlajoie
do you think they are going to try to do it on a live mouse brain?
------
graycat
Boy, sounds like that process would result in one super Excedrin headache
number 195,455,223,391. Go ahead. I'll give up my place in line. You first!
| {
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Freakonomics: Do We Need a 37-Cent Coin? - cwan
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/06/do-we-need-a-37-cent-coin/
======
kakooljay
Interesting post (I love Steven Levitt) but there's a _great_ lesson for
developers here: Efficiency is only one consideration. What about _usability?_
Do you really want to wait in line at McDonald's or Starbucks while someone
(maybe a high school dropout) counts on his fingers to make change in 71 & 37
cent coins? The overhead here (an extra coin in your pocket) is well worth the
added convenience. Aggregated over the whole economy, those extra seconds
would literally be worth billions of dollars a year..
~~~
rglullis
How about a lesson for lateral thinking? I'd still prefer to do _without_ the
coins and go for a all-virtual, all-plastic system. Efficiency _and_
Usability.
~~~
ynniv
Dropping hard currency raises the bar to entry and kills a lot of low end
business. No more street vendors, cash only local business, friendly card
games or bets, informal services, or convenient tips. It would also give the
plastic channel immense power over businesses. You might not use cash very
often, but dropping it altogether would not be a good idea.
~~~
rglullis
I have serious doubt about "killing a lot of low end business". I'd imagine
that we'd start seeing lots of alternate, local currencies. Card games and
bets would probably have other medium of exchange (poker chips) or in-kind
value (a 12-pack of beer).
~~~
hughprime
Probably. Hell, we could all just start using Euros (or whatever) for cash,
and then exchange our Euros for plastic-only US dollars at changing booths
(which would suddenly become a lot more common).
This, of course, doesn't make life any easier for anyone, except the jerks who
already use cards for everything (aka the jerks I always get stuck behind in
line while I wait for their little receipt to print and get signed).
------
gojomo
Obama economic advisor Austan Goolsbee once recommended eliminating the 1-cent
penny -- by having the government declare pennies by fiat to be the new 5-cent
nickel:
<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/01/business/01scenes.html>
It's quite a neat idea, getting rid of the current seignorage loss and
inefficiency of 1-cent pennies, without incurring the wrath of the penny
materials lobby -- or even worse, voters with giant penny jars.
Given the reasoning here, perhaps pennies should become 3-cent pieces.
Rebasing small coins to be worth more isn't quite dropping cash from
helicopters, but it should still have a mildly stimulative and redistributive
effect. Something for everyone!
~~~
dfranke
I love this idea. Not so much because of its efficiency, but because it'll
make so many people say "Wait, you can _do_ that?". Too many people haven't
internalized what having a fiat currency really means. Having the government
flex its muscle in this manner would be a fantastic civics lesson.
~~~
albertsun
I'm not sure it would really succeed. For a long time after the change many
people would still refuse to accept a penny as 5 cents. Vending machines, toll
booths and the like would all also have to be reworked.
~~~
dfranke
Vending machine manufacturers are used to this, I suspect. They go through it
every time the design of the currency changes.
------
psyklic
There are many different (and perhaps more practical) criteria than average
coins per transaction. For instance, I don't like a lot of coins in my pocket
at once. And, I always want to get _rid_ of coins when I use them! So, what
are the least number of coins I can carry to guarantee that I come back with
at _most_ the number of coins I started with (after change is given)?
On the other hand, sometimes I _only_ carry coins to get rid of them! With the
current system, I need to carry nine coins to guarantee exact change -- what
system maximally reduces this?
------
ieure
“Do you know what this country needs today? A seven-cent nickel. Yessiree,
we've been using the five-cent nickel in this country since 1492. Now, why not
give the seven-cent nickel a chance? If that works out, next year we could
have an eight-cent nickel. Think what that would mean. You could go to a
newsstand, buy a three-cent newspaper and get the same nickel back again. One
nickel carefully used would last a family a lifetime!”
\- Groucho Marx, “Animal Crackers.”
------
manifold
That's all fine and dandy in theoretical world, but I'd dispute that the
probability of a transaction resulting in value v is uniform. I'd guess that
there's some fairly prominent banding due to psychogical pricing at or just
under 'round' figures.
~~~
uiohnuipb
Exactly - in the real world you only need 99c and 1c coins.
~~~
tedunangst
In the real world they charge sales tax.
~~~
uiohnuipb
That's a perculiarly American problem - everybody else factors tax into the
sticker price.
It's only America that seems to add it at the register. I assume it's to take
advantage the famously high level of math education among Americans who can
easily add 4.5% state and 1.8% city sales tax to a coffee in their head.
~~~
tedunangst
For an article in an American paper about the American currency, I don't think
the problem is that peculiar.
------
tjic
> 2\. Probability of a transaction resulting in value v is uniform from
> [0,99].
Totally false:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law>
Benford's law, also called the first-digit law, states that in lists of
numbers from many (but not all) real-life sources of data, the leading digit
is distributed in a specific, non-uniform way.
~~~
mitko
Benford's law is about the first digit of the number, it has nothing to do
with the current problem. The pennies are the two last digits.
However, IMO the assumption you quoted is indeed false but due to other
reason:
In real life, prices are not uniformly distributed because usually they are
rounded to multiple of 5 cents or commonly they are .99 or .89 or s.th. like
that.
I am wondering what happens if we put non-uniform prior on the probability of
the pennies.
Another flaw in this research is forgeting that we often are getting change
back. So maybe problem is to find combination not only to give exactly money,
but giving and receiving change back. For example:
Using 1,5,10,20,50 you can make exact 4c only by 1,1,1,1, (4 coins). But
getting change you can do 5, -1 (2 coins).
~~~
noodle
while i agree with the premise that the prices aren't uniformly distributed, i
think its less of an issue than people think.
there are undoubtedly uneven humps that favor certain areas. but i think that
the actual result of real life retail transactions is a more level curve than
you would expect due to things like multiple, varied item purchases and the
possible inclusion of various types of sales tax.
------
karzeem
On the subject of coin usability, I'd say one requirement is that any coin
denomination should divide cleanly into 100. Surprising that they left that
out.
~~~
Timothee
I completely agree. What do you do when you have 3 37-cent coins?
Theoretically, it wouldn't change much for the end-user if s/he was always
trying to use the coins they already have (which probably doesn't happen that
much). But for banks, stores and everything else, it would be a mess, because
there's no easy way to put the coins in rolls of "easy" values of a round
number of dollars.
------
zhyder
An alternative definition of efficiency is total number of coins you need to
carry in your pocket to cover a single transaction of 1..99 cents.
Interestingly all the good 4-coin solutions in the article, including (1, 3,
11, 37) as well as our current (1, 5, 10, 25), require a total of 10 coins.
There are 12 other 4-coin solutions, (1, 3, 9, 25) being the most reasonable
looking, that only require a total of 9 coins.
------
sethg
According to Wikipedia (I haven't bothered to check the math), a ternary
currency system would maximize the likelihood that a customer would get exact
change.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balanced_ternary>
So I think we should eliminate the penny; issue three-cent, nine-cent, and
twenty-seven-cent coins; and redefine the dollar to equal eighty-one cents.
------
raquo
How about a coin that is worth 1/3000th of a US dollar? That's what we have in
Russia :) Yes, it is as useless as it sounds.
By the way, the real price distributions are far from uniform. You mostly
encounter .99, .49, etc.
Also, in Russia some retail chains do not deal with pennies - the prices are
mostly with pennies, but at checkout any pennies in the _total sum_ are
chopped off automatically.
------
jperras
An older but more thorough analysis may be found here:
<http://discovermagazine.com/2003/oct/featscienceof>
------
sandrogerbini
Ignoring the extreme inconvenience, this might be an interesting way to tackle
our nation's (U.S.) problem of students with poor performance in mathematics.
------
techiferous
10-cent coin. Dollar coin. Banknotes for $5+. Done.
------
ankeshk
Why only restrict to 4 coins? Why do pennies have to be removed? Why not just
add the 3 cent coin to the mix?
1,3,5,10,25.
| {
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HORNET: High-speed Onion Routing at the Network Layer - sp332
http://arxiv.org/abs/1507.05724v1
======
nickpsecurity
Interesting research. We won't know how impressive it is until the kinds of
people that break Tor give it a thorough analysis. Otherwise, it might be a
scheme that simply _de-anonymizes_ users faster than the competition. I'll add
that combining anonymity and performance seems to be one of the hardest
security problems to get right with so much left to learn. So, I don't trust
anything that does that, including Tor.
Asynchronous, non-real-time schemes that look like vanilla web traffic are the
best. Especially using covert channels. However, my method is to do face-to-
face with possible and otherwise use burner PC's, LiveCD's, and random Wifi
hotspots. Tor or proxies optionally as extra layer of difficulty depending on
what I'm doing.
~~~
xoa
>I'll add that combining anonymity and performance seems to be one of the
hardest security problems to get right with so much left to learn.
A certain penalty in both available bandwidth and latency seems unavoidable in
any distributed onion anonymization system, but one _practical_ issue may
actually be something that I think doesn't get brought up nearly often enough
in this context: a plain and simple lack of _raw_ bandwidth. In other words,
more practical anonymity would be yet another emergent benefit/application of
near universal FTTH gigabit+ class connections. While some applications can
use as much bandwidth and as low latency as it's possible to provide, many
popular, commonly used ones on the present Internet instead have a value
beyond which there are few further benefits. One of the hungrier applicatinos
for example is streaming video, but once someone is stably hitting ~50-100
Mbps they're already at what a full quality Blu-ray would offer, even without
H.265, and with H.265 even 4K is going to look pretty great.
So if a given anonymity network had an overall overhead of 90%, or even 95%,
well that's certainly significant. But at the same time if someone has 1 Gbps
to throw at it, then even 5-10% remaining would still result in more
_effective_ bandwidth available then large percentages of the population have
raw right now, and more importantly enough for most of the current popular web
applications. It would also have additional implications for the health and
participation rates of the anonymity network, particular given that fiber
links are symmetrical. These networks in general needs significant donations
of bandwidth on the part of users to work effectively. When many, if not most
users don't have that much available period then that can be tough: for
somebody stuck on a 6/1 ADSL link giving up even a few hundred kbps could be
painful. Whereas with an abundance, many if not most users would never even
notice having 500+ Mbps serving as relay capacity at all times. This would
further improve the overall value of the network, encouraging further use, and
creating a virtuous circle.
Doing more with less is certainly very important, but no one should lose sight
of how much in computer science has come from just plain having more.
Anonymity networks would be best if they weren't "anonymity networks" per se,
but rather simply "the network", as in what most people could use to
accomplish anything on the Internet they'd want to. Ubiquitous encryption has
been aided by better coding, but the most significant boost has come from
having an abundance of computing resources, to the point where the overhead of
encryption simply is irrelevant to the vast majority of users vs the benefits
to security. An abundance of (symmetrical) bandwidth could enable a similar
leap forward in anonymity online. It's another reason why we should really be
pushing hard for major last mile information infrastructure improvements, and
it's so unfortunate that the USA in particular has grossly underinvested and
allowed companies to set the agenda there (unlike with electricity, phones and
roads, which received major national pushes to the ultimate benefit of the
whole country).
~~~
the8472
> One of the hungrier applicatinos for example is streaming video, but once
> someone is stably hitting ~50-100 Mbps they're already at what a full
> quality Blu-ray would offer, even without H.265, and with H.265 even 4K is
> going to look pretty great.
When more bandwidth gets deployed someone will roll out more bandwidth-
consuming video.
near and mid term: 4k, 3D, 10bit, 4:4:4, 60fps, lossless sound
long term: 120fps, 8k, light field 3D
~~~
nickpsecurity
And that's not opinion: that's a fact of life in tech that repeats endlessly.
Induced demand, Jevons paradox, Parkinson's law... the principle shows up
endlessly.
Now, what effect it would have on a 1Gbit anonymity network is anyone's guess.
All the streaming and web apps on my network don't really impact its normal
performance because they're much slower than it. So, this concern might not
affect what the other commenter proposes in practice.
------
Systemic33
If those figures (93Gb/s) are right and represents a real-world scenario, and
not a lab test, then it's really impressive.
The following quote from the article highlights the difference between HORNET
and Tor:
"Unlike onion routing protocols that use global re-routing through overlay
networks (e.g., Tor [23] and I2P [47]), HORNET uses short paths created by the
underlying network architecture to reduce la- tency, and is therefore bound by
the network’s physical intercon- nection and ISP relationships. This is an
unavoidable constraint for onion routing protocols built into the network
layer [29, 42]."
~~~
travjones
So does that mean that traffic on HORNET is viewable by one's ISP? (Sorry if
this is a noob question)
~~~
JulianMorrison
They would see that you were communicating (because by necessity, all your
stuff passes through them) but not who to, because they couldn't strip off the
next layer of the onion. Much like Tor.
~~~
travjones
Thanks, Julian.
------
sudioStudio64
Its interesting that TOR takes a circuit based approach and these guys use a
packet based approach... its the same thing that happened in telecom over a
decade ago. (its analogous, anyway)
------
dredmorbius
One thing I suspect widespread use of onion routing will need are compatible
anonymous reputation systems. I'd _really_ like to see work in this area.
I'm aware of two proposed systems, both largely academic: FAUST and Fair
Anonymity:
[https://gnunet.org/node/1704](https://gnunet.org/node/1704)
[http://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.4707v1.pdf](http://arxiv.org/pdf/1412.4707v1.pdf)
One idea is that older (and still trustworthy) tokens become reliable and more
valuable, encouraging parties to 1) keep their tokens for a long time and 2)
behave themselves. As I recall, both operate with the concept of a token
server. In the case of FAUST, tokens are requested unblinded (that is, from a
non-Tor IP), but are anonymous and cannot be associated with the requestor
after the fact.
If there's other or more recent work, I'd really like to hear about them.
------
cbsmith
I'm going to have to look at this closely. My first thought here is that it
seems impossible to get high performance without leaking at least some form of
sub-channel signaling about communications, but I don't yet understand the
real "trick" behind HORNET.
------
DonGateley
What stands in the way of deployment of this for general usage? Invention,
disclosure, coding or what?
------
dang
Url changed from [https://www.dailydot.com/politics/hornet-tor-anonymity-
netwo...](https://www.dailydot.com/politics/hornet-tor-anonymity-network),
which summarizes it and embeds it, yet doesn't link to it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
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