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New Word – describes amount over-complexity of systems - bob_sevone_com
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YvQbzPy-Likzwpoq6mU9biWWWAsj794xqiZyoIG3WHk/edit?usp=sharing
======
bob_sevone_com
rubeosity verb
Describes the magnitude of excess complexity or “Rube Goldberg-ness” of a
device or system. Can be applied to machine or software system.
Rubeosity is measured in the logarithmic (base 2) unit of Goldbergs symbolized
by the letter gamma Ɣ.
The most direct and simple solution that effectively solves a problem, by
definition, has a rubeosity of 0Ɣ. A system that has twice the necessary
complexity to perform a task has rubeosity of 1Ɣ.
rubeosity 0Ɣ The most efficient solution 1Ɣ 2 times as complex as needed 2Ɣ 4
times 3Ɣ 8 times 4Ɣ 16 times 5Ɣ 32 times
------
bob_sevone_com
Complexity can be very subjective. Rubeosity measure the amount of over-
complexity. Something that is over-complex can be simplified and still retain
efficiency.
------
dkhenry
efficiency is such a tricky subject. What is an efficient system, take for
instance engines, some might say a very complex engine that gets the best
output per unit input is very "efficient" however others would claim a simple
two stroke engine is more "efficient" from a design perspective.
In that sense "efficient" and this metric are at odds as the more complex the
thing gets the more "efficient" it is.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: If you have access to an IDE, why would anyone use a text editor? - kamehameha
What's the rationale behind text editors like emacs/vim vs IDEs like IntelliJ/Eclipse/Netbeans?<p>I mean if you have access to an IDE, why would anyone use a text editor?<p>If there's a really obvious answer, please excuse my ignorance. Just started reading up on programming.<p>P.S. Also, can one use IntelliJ for python and ruby in addition to JAVA?
======
pookleblinky
I can't speak for all emacs users, but I wouldn't be caught dead using an
"IDE"
IDE ostensibly stands for "integrated development environment." AFAIK, not a
single IDE is as integrated, programmable, hackable, flexible, or stable as
emacs (or vim).
In Emacs, I can effortlessly open and navigate through an indefinitely large
number of files. I can take advantage of myriads of language-specific modes
for syntax highlighting, auto-completion, snippets, verification,
prettification, truly integrated compiler/interpreter environments, you name
it.
If I find I need to do some repetitious gruntwork, I can C-x ( gruntwork C-x )
it away. If this gruntwork seems excessive, I can program it into my editor
and forget about it. If I find I really need some feature or functionality, I
can pop open a _scratch_ buffer, hack it, and use it instantly. No
boilerplate, no compiling, no restarting.
These are just the tip of the iceberg, though. The overwhelming sense an emacs
or vim user experiences, is one of power. We have complete control over our
programming environment. We dictate it, hack it, and tweak it until it is
effortless. This sense of power and hackability so permeates our programming
environment, that it becomes physically painful to have to navigate a swarm of
inconsistent modal dialogues, accept some kludges and pray they get fixed, and
accept that The Developers know how best to configure our environment.
~~~
trapper
I think it would be a worthwhile project to get some of the top emacs/vim
users doing a set task (e.g. spit out a rails app, or build a small java app)
and compare them to the gold standard ide in a guided screencast setting.
It would be enlightening for the wider programming community to see some stats
about how fast each truly is. Obviously approaches could be streamlined, and
best practice could be learned by beginners from the get-go.
~~~
vorador
This is a really interesting idea.
Top emacs/vi users : please list your favourite shortcuts.
------
SwellJoe
_I mean if you have access to an IDE, why would anyone use a text editor?_
But, why would I use an IDE if I have access to a proper text editor like vim
or emacs (I use vim, but I've used emacs enough to know I could be productive
in it if vim didn't exist)? Your question makes no sense to me.
I've known a (very) few people who are productive in IDEs, but generally
speaking, the best developers I've known use either vim or emacs. I've never
experienced an IDE that didn't make me angry, so I've never spent any
significant time with one, so I don't know what the valid arguments for using
them are, though I'm sure there are some.
I'm curious about the framing of your question. What is the rationale behind
your question? When you use a big IDE do you feel more productive? Do you just
want to avoid learning how to use vim or emacs? What are you trying to achieve
here that brings up this question? Do you think an IDE will make learning to
program easier?
One of the reasons I've never used an IDE heavily is because I find them very
difficult to use and understand. They pile together a bunch of different
concepts under one roof, and assume that it fits the work I'm doing. It pretty
much never does, so I would just be using it as a big slow editor anyway. The
other reason is that whenever I've wanted something IDE-like (like completion,
or highlighting and indenting for various syntax, etc.), I've easily found a
plugin for vim to do the same job without all the extra baggage.
The answer is generally that IDEs are big, slow, cumbersome and distract from
the software you're building. If you're working in a language where the
assistive tools are a core part of the experience (Java and C# seem to fall
into this category), then maybe you should use those tools. I work in dynamic
languages, and big slow editors just get in my way, slow me down, and fight
against my own toolchain and workflow (which includes shell scripts, the shell
itself, the ability to open and edit files from anywhere, including in-place
on the server).
~~~
kamehameha
_I'm curious about the framing of your question. What is the rationale behind
your question? When you use a big IDE do you feel more productive? Do you just
want to avoid learning how to use vim or emacs? What are you trying to achieve
here that brings up this question? Do you think an IDE will make learning to
program easier?_
I am not a programmer. I have recently started to learn programming. I was
reading up on mediums to write programs in (text editors vs IDEs) and came
across all the features provided in IDEs. Which was when I became curious as
to why I see a lot more chatter about text editors like vim/emacs instead of
the other way around. That's all.
Again, I'm a beginner, so just trying learn the ins and outs. Thanks for your
help.
~~~
SwellJoe
_came across all the features provided in IDEs_
Maybe merely having a lot of features is not necessarily the most valuable
thing when writing software. I suspect most truly great developers (I'm not
one of those, but I've worked in the field long enough to know them when I see
them work) just want the tools to get the hell out of their way. Stability,
speed, predictability, consistency, generality; those are probably the most
important features for a great developer. I like those features, too, and it's
why I use vim.
Also note that I use vim for everything. I don't have to context switch when I
go from Perl, to Python, to C, to bash, to sh, to configuration files, to
HTML, to CSS, to JavaScript, to RPM spec files, to deb control/rules files,
etc. It's always the same in vim (and vim has syntax highlighting for all of
them). This is where generality has value. I don't have to think about how to
copy/paste, how to find the end of a block, or how to perform a search/replace
across the whole file or just a segment of it. It's always the same.
The greatest Java IDE in the world, whatever that is, is definitely not the
right tool for editing files on a remote server. So, I would have to switch
mental modes to use it. That would slow me down. I can use vim or emacs for
that, no problem.
And, of course, as I mentioned, there is probably no feature in any IDE for
which there isn't a parallel in vim or emacs. It is probably optional, it is
probably not pretty, and it probably requires you to learn some new key
sequences. But, it almost certainly exists, whatever it is. But, after
spending a few years with a good editor, you'll probably find that simpler but
more general solutions are superior to special purpose tools.
_Which was when I became curious as to why I see a lot more chatter about
text editors like vim/emacs instead of the other way around._
Age has it privileges. emacs and vi have been around for a _long_ time.
Assuming something is good and continues to get better, the longer it exists,
the more users it will have. emacs and vi (in the form of vim) are both
excellent and continue to get better. Thus they have a very large, very
dedicated following. Which leads to faster improvement (though in directions
that might not be immediately apparent if big IDE-style feature lists are what
you think of as "improvement"), more third party tools and support, and more
docs and examples.
You'll never hear any long-time practicioner of software development or
systems management say that learning one of the two major editors is a waste
of time. Knowing vim or emacs will very likely serve you well for the rest of
your career. Knowing an IDE might make working in one language in one
environment a little bit more awesome for year or two or three that you work
in that language in that environment.
------
ratsbane
My usual development environment for is a Macbook Pro with six terminal
windows open. The first one (Command-1 shortcut key) is a connection to the
database, the second (command-2) is Vim with program code, the third
(command-3) is library code or test scripts or whatever and the next three
(smaller, with blue backgrounds) might be showing tail -f of Apache error or
access logs or something like that. If I need to edit an image I command-tab
to the GIMP, to view a web page, command-tab to Firefox or whatever. I can
connect those windows to one or more remote boxes with ssh and not even have
to think about what machine I'm working on. It's easy to reuse those windows
for other things, close one with command-w or open new ones with command-n.
Vim does syntax highlighting and will even auto-complete if I wanted to turn
it on.
What would an IDE give me that this setup won't? To me, the setup I use IS an
integrated development environment.
I have used Visual Studio, XCode, Eclipse, etc. but whenever I do I feel slow
and inhibited because of the necessity of mouse movements (unless I want to
learn a completely different set of key shortcuts that will only work in the
IDE and not the OS) and the annoying tendency of IDEs to reformat my code or
complete blocks I'm not ready to complete.
Also, OS X and Ubuntu both allow great control over terminal window
transparencies and color schemes. I'm not aware of any other IDE that does. I
like to keep my main editing windows at 70-80% transparent so I can watch
logfiles/test scripts run in the background while I'm editing.
------
hrabago
IDEs are big, slow, rigid. Text editors are lightweight and fast. You'd have
to weigh what you get from the IDE vs. what you're giving up.
As for your other question, yes, there are ruby and python plugins for
IntelliJ. The python one seems new and immature. The ruby one should be
better. They (Jetbrains) actually just came out with a standalone Ruby IDE as
well. I think it's meant for people not already using IntelliJ, because it
wouldn't be worth paying for both products since the Ruby plugin works well
enough.
------
TallGuyShort
I use a text editor (like vim) because it's so much faster than an IDE (like
eclipse). If you use keyboard shortcuts and work quickly, you'll quickly find
that the IDE slows you down considerably.
Also, I find that IDEs hide a lot of the inner workings from you. That can be
convenient, but when you run into troubles during a build or when debugging,
I'd rather have more control, more details, and a better idea of what's going
on.
------
jdoliner
I use a text editor for all of my hacking needs (vim but emacs is good times
too). That being said I'm amazed the HN community has so much trouble
understanding the usability. Do you feel similarly when you load up into the
latest Rate My Startup: "Wow this interface is really just holding me back,
I'm completely stifled by all these buttons all over the place.This interface
should just be a blinking cursor" Of course you don't, feature discoverability
is an important feature that designers strive for. When you're competent at
programming and you really know your editor then you boot up and you know
exactly which feature you want to use and the shortcut to do it, but it's
almost impossible in vim/emacs to learn these features on the fly. In my
opinion IDE's can be a great way to learn to program particularly one's
designed with a particular language in mind. The best example of this I've
seen is DrScheme which is lightweight, intuitive and (believe it or not) does
by and large stay out of your way.
------
brianto2010
IDEs baby new programmers in such a way that they will become crutches. Text
editors (in theory) only modify the source code. All compilation and backend
work is done by the programmer with external tools. IDEs will usually hide
that work away in some button or drop down menu, so the new programmer will be
less inclined to learn how everything is run.
When I learned java, I broke away from the IDE I was given to use in class and
switched to a text editor. I read about command line tools and what a
classpath is. I doubt that I would have known about how programming works
behind-the-scenes if I hadn't broken away. Many (not all) of my classmates
haven't; they rely on the almighty 'Compile' button, don't question it, and
won't bother to learn otherwise.
------
wsprague
Because Unix IS an IDE already, with text editors like emacs or vim fitting in
nicely with scripting, make, etc, etc.
~~~
papaf
I consider the Unix command line to be my IDE too (I'm mostly a vim user).
Just last night my plane was delayed due to heavy storms in Europe and as
other peoples heavy laptops were running out of juice I still had hours left
on my netbook. The command line is a great environment on low power hardware,
it doesn't need a mouse and you don't have to wait for IDE support to start
working with a new or obscure technology.
That said, I still feel I need netbeans/jvi to do anything with Java --
personally I feel this is due to shortcomings with the language rather than a
problem with the way I normally work. In fact, I recently started playing with
Scala and, since netbeans didn't really add anything useful, I was able to go
back to vim. I feel much more productive in Scala/vim than I ever was in
Java/netbeans.
------
mannicken
And here we have another battle:
Console or GUI?
The only really good developer I know who prefers Visual Studio to Emacs is
the one who prefers TortoiseSVN to svn.exe and just dislikes command line.
However, there are two extremely good reasons to use command line (and
emacs/vim):
1\. You're typing text when coding or debugging, and going back and forth with
mouse is counterproductive and frankly, really irritating.
2\. You can automate text-based controller much more easier than a GUI-based
one.
------
cjg
I think the line between an IDE and a text editor is not that clear and
instead there is a spectrum of editing. At one end you might find Leafpad
(aimed at simple text editing) at the other end something like IntelliJ.
IntelliJ provides more code tools than Leafpad, but is more heavyweight.
So the question comes down to how many code tools do you need. If an editor
has too many then it might feel slow, too few and it might be less effective.
Many editing environments have a plugin style extension mechanism so that you
can add new tools to it if you need them, or remove them if it feels too
heavyweight.
A key difference between say emacs and IntelliJ is that IntelliJ has more
specific tools loaded by default (e.g. Java focused). Perhaps not the ones you
want, but you don't have to go to all the effort of finding them, loading them
and they all fit together well - of course there is a cost that goes with
those tools: increased CPU / memory.
When choosing one of these pieces of software it might be useful to look at
the range and power of plugins that are available, however, that's not an
inherent difference between IDE and editor.
------
noodle
load time on a text editor is much faster.
if you know exactly what you want to do, but still are doing things in code,
popping open a file in a good text editor is superior.
if you're looking to open up an IDE and sit down for a few hours' work, then
that is probably the better choice.
~~~
MichaelApproved
Sometimes I just have to make a small link change or replace a word. Text
editor opens up fast and just gets the job done.
~~~
noodle
exactly.
or, stuff like config file editing. why would i ever open up an IDE for that?
------
mahmud
When I'm on laptop battery I switch to "LispIDE", which despite the name is an
ultra-lightweight Lisp text editor for Windows. It has the absolute bare
minimum; runs a lisp process, highlights syntax, indents code, and is able to
evaluate code in the editor buffer.
I get so much done in the 2-3 hours I'm at the coffee shop, I also take
copious notes in notepad, by the time I come back home I can fire up Emacs and
cut and paste tiny little independently developed routines and classes, and
orchestrate them to a good chunky module.
I only wish I could get more mileage out of this little brain of mine for more
than 4 hours a day. I have to stimulate myself with hackish sub-projects and
chase "performance" red-herrings just to keep going.
------
brianobush
vi and emacs (I prefer emacs) are consistent and have been around for years.
IDEs come and go with passing of languages, trends, etc. With vi/emacs you
have consistency and a bug-free editor.
As a side note: I once saw UltraEdit eat a text file my co-worker was editing;
once saved as UTF-8 it blew the file away and crashed. Another reason not to
use closed-source junk.
------
projectileboy
In general, I tend to prefer using a text editor over most IDEs, which are
usually big and fat and slow, with poor usability. IntelliJ - for me - has
always been an exception. I can't comment on the Ruby or Python plugins for
IntelliJ; however, the Clojure and (my) Arc plugin work just fine. I find
working with them preferable to SLIME or TextMate or whatever else.
------
DanielBMarkham
[Cue the "all _real_ programmers use vim/emacs/etc" comments.]
I've used both. I like both. If you're new, I'd start with an IDE and lots of
online, context-sensitive help.
And an easy language.
Once you get your feet wet writing a few apps, keep challenging yourself by
moving to more complex languages and less-visual environments.
------
skwiddor
I use Acme and Plan 9 from Bell Labs, a text editing tool, I edit text. I
don't need something to do the programming for me. Acme's ability to run
commands by clicking on text is more productive than you're giving it credit
for right now. Want another menu item? Just type it into the menu bar! Use a
bunch of commands on one file regularly? keep them in the comments. Want to
pattern match text snippets and execute commands, no problem it's built in to
userland.
I won't call it an IDE because it knows nothing about the types of text you're
editing, doesn't do syntax highlighting but it can run a shell in a window,
and an HTML renderer and has an email client and a wiki editor and and and
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Can programming be less about tuning and more about playing? - julienreszka
When I compare with a musical instrument, I feel like computer programming is too much about tuning and not enough about playing.<p>I wish it was more reactive, less dull.<p>For now brain computer interfaces are still science fiction so...<p>Do you know of any piece of technology that exists today, that would help create more playfully with the computer ?
======
Liber-Abaci
Yes that technology is called Common Lisp. You hack together whatever you want
at the highest possible abstraction level, pluck out just what you changed,
and play with it by hand to test it. No writing tests, no types, no complex
syntax to learn, no limits on macros hackery, no guarantees anything will work
either but you're likely just doing it for a hobby and not in a highly complex
professional setting. I would imagine professional musicians also feel like
they're doing too much tuning and not enough playing because it's work, and
most of the material out there for programming is for/by people in the
professional industry which is probably why you don't like it just like you
wouldn't want to read professional music theory journals or studio engineering
documentation.
------
quickthrower2
You might find this talk by Brett Victor interesting:
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII#](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=PUv66718DII#)
~~~
julienreszka
Thank you that was very interesting !
------
julienreszka
Maybe programming with my voice could be fun. Is anybody using this kind of
stuff on a daily basis ?
[http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html](http://ergoemacs.org/emacs/using_voice_to_code.html)
------
thedevindevops
I always see the unit test lights turning green as 'points earned', is that
the sort of thing you mean?
~~~
matfil
Unit testing seems a lot like tuning to me. There's usually a pretty
straightforward definition of "correct" (A=440Hz...), but it's -- at best --
distantly related to the audience's experience of the performance.
~~~
thedevindevops
Okay can you clarify your analogy - what is 'playing' in programming terms?
~~~
matfil
That's a great question, and I'll admit I find it easier to define in the
negative than in the positive. And obviously, I'm not the original asker, so
it would be interesting to hear their version as well.
For me, I think that a key difference might be one of "directness". That is,
building things that directly relate to what the user experiences, rather than
following processes which you have to trust will lead to the eventual creation
of something enjoyable or valuable.
Paul Graham wrote something which, for me, does a pretty good job of capturing
how things feel when you're working in this kind of way[1], and also
explaining why there's an impedance mismatch between this and what larger
organisations tend to be looking for.
[1] [http://paulgraham.com/head.html](http://paulgraham.com/head.html)
------
nikonyrh
Which programming languages and IDEs have you used? Are they efficient at
solving your problems or do you need pay tons on attention to every tiny
detail?
I'm hinting towards functional programming ;)
------
hotdox
If you want to play programs you need to became SRE or DevOps. Guys which run
code in production. In resource-constrained environements programmers also run
their code in production.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What Does Rudy Giuliani Actually Know About Cybersecurity? - dbcooper
https://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-does-rudy-giuliani
======
pawadu
> Since 2003 ... nominally advised clients on cybersecurity, but people who
> have worked with his firm say the advice is focused more on liability
> mitigation for companies rather than implementing best security practices.
Yeah, I can see that coming handy when you work for the government...
------
wolfgke
Correct link: [http://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-does-rudy-giuliani-
act...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/what-does-rudy-giuliani-actually-
know-about-cybersecurity)
------
wattt
According to this link he knows how to 404 a Vice article.
~~~
justinlaster
Hired.
------
xster
What does HBO know about journalism?
------
thatwebdude
What does my boss actually know about development?
~~~
throwaway2016a
Unless your a VP/CTO/Director or at a very small company where you got hired
as a first developer I sure hope your boss knows development. At least a
little. At some point in the org chart there should be a buffer between tech
and non-tech (the VP, CTO, manager).
It's not unheard of at super large companies for the CTO (for example) to be
non-technical but I think those companies are making a mistake. That role
should be filled with someone who understands both sides. (having a CTO that
is ONLY technical is also a mistake)
With that said, re the article. That does't have to be Giulliani. It could be
someone working under his direction. It's just an extra layer of bureaucracy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
He Was a Hacker for the NSA and He Was Willing to Talk. I Was Willing to Listen - Kristine1975
https://theintercept.com/2016/06/28/he-was-a-hacker-for-the-nsa-and-he-was-willing-to-talk-i-was-willing-to-listen/
======
malux85
I'm going to use the name "Lamb" so as not to reveal his identity.
But here's a description of his house. Also - He's having renovations done. He
owns a dog and a cat, and he's straight and married.
I was half expecting his social security number in the next paragraph :P
~~~
peatmoss
No joke, not to mention the excerpts of his writings for internal audiences
that are presumably attributable.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Wake-Up Call - harscoat
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-wake-up-call-2010-12
======
willheim
I know far too many families that have broken up because of "Daddy who is
boring". When your kid says that you know that your wife has been thinking
that for even longer. This isn't just those in the start-up space. Microsoft,
in their WP7 "Really" ad/social commentary already summed this up perfectly.
------
TheSOB88
It's interesting how kids are so honest about their feelings. He didn't learn
this from his wife, and if you think about it it's highly likely it's
affecting their relationship as well. People should be more open with their
feelings.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Open source analog HN - kulakowka
Http://1po.st
======
kulakowka
[https://github.com/kulakowka/1post](https://github.com/kulakowka/1post)
source here
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hacker News Startups: Listing/Wiki of startups founded by HNers (not just YC) - markbao
http://hnstartups.com/
======
markbao
Hi! A bit of time ago, a guy asked for a listing of everyone's startup on HN
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=568951>
So here it is! On Sunday I spent a few hours hacking together a wiki thing in
Rails from scratch. A few things that need to be fixed, but otherwise, hope
it's useful for you.
__* Not restricted to YC. Any HN people can submit/edit.
(this comment used to be about how our VPS exploded and started OOMing.)
~~~
davidw
Wow... what wiki and VPS and settings? That's pretty bad.
~~~
markbao
I built the wiki from scratch.
There was a rogue ruby script that was running for no apparent reason, taking
up all the server resources.
~~~
davidw
> I built the wiki from scratch.
This is open source and doesn't consume a lot of resources:
<http://dedawiki.dedasys.com/>
Your layout/css is definitely nicer, though. I'm not much of a UI guy.
Also, tags or some sort of classification might be interesting...
~~~
markbao
I thought about tags. I think it might be just better/easier/less cluttered to
mention some keywords in the descriptions (which are searchable.)
If HNStartups blows up enough, I'll add them.
Thanks for the link to that wiki!
------
webwright
Nice work. Would _love_ a location field. Use case: I live in Seattle. I would
be interested to see other HN startups in Seattle. It'd also be academically
interesting to see distribution.
~~~
jonallanharper
Good call. Location would be excellent.
~~~
adrianwaj
I'd like to see an RSS feed at some point, would be great.
------
hwork
If you want to slurp in some more data about the companies already in there,
you can use the CrunchBase API: <http://groups.google.com/group/crunchbase-
api>.
------
davidw
Another place you can list your startup: your profile page on HN. Way too many
people leave that empty, with no URL, no contact information, "no nothin'".
------
jgilliam
This will be very useful. Thanks for setting it up.
------
falsestprophet
The design is very elegant. Congratulations on a job well done. And thanks for
this contribution to the community.
~~~
pxlpshr
Definitely agree, hope you continue expanding on this... overtime it would be
cool to have a section based on stats and performance, perhaps associated to a
few metrics like link-backs in google, press on blogs, tweets, etc.
~~~
falsestprophet
And one day: market capitalization
------
gojomo
Nicely done!
Ideas in no particular order: Have a master index page, with just startup
names, for seeing overall size of wiki and one-click navigation to any one
page. Offer browsing to the ordered list starting at letters other than 'A'.
Make URLs guessable (and thus also SEO-friendly). Improve disclaimer that it's
any HN user startup, not officially YC-related -- there's a small risk of
confusion, better to be ahead of it.
~~~
markbao
Great ideas, Gordon.
Master index page is an interesting idea. Not sure about how useful it might
be, since there's already search, but I'll do that soon. _Edit: done._
The alphabetical list is ordered with pagination — do you mean have links A B
C, etc. to jump?
Guessable/pretty URLs are on my list. Just didn't get around to it :) and I
tried to have a decent nonobstructing disclaimer on the side, but maybe it
needs a bit of a boost :)
Cheers and thanks! Mark
~~~
gojomo
A master name index would let viewers sense the size of the set moreso than a
reported number; see patterns in names; discover interesting names they
wouldn't know to search for (and might not page 'next, next, next' to find).
Such a view could also grow into a 'dynamic screener' -- one click to filter
view by 'official YC', geo-location, launched-yet, etc.
Yes -- I meant quick-jumps to letters. But that is really only interesting as
a way to randomly browse without blind-jumps into the page numbers.
Again, nice job!
~~~
markbao
Quick jumps might take a bit of time. For now, though:
<http://hnstartups.com/list>
~~~
gojomo
And at 7pm PT, with 199 startups listed, the surprise winning opening-syllable
is...
"Scrib"/"Skrib", with 5: Scribd, Scribnia, Scribular, Skribbls, and Skribit.
"Feed" is a close second at 4: Feedback Army, FeedFlix, Feedity, and
Feedscrub.
Then it's a 6-way tie at 2 each: Big-, Drop-, Hot-, Res(cue)-, Start-, and
Where-.
------
wensing
Don't send the like link to # -- it jumps you to the top of the page and you
lose your place.
~~~
markbao
Thanks! Fixed.
------
adrianwaj
The site can be SPAMMed. It's good start though. I could claim Google as my
startup, and someone could claim mine under anyone's username.
~~~
adrianwaj
Also, you could setup a new HN username and post to the site in the same
minute.
------
streety
It might just be me but I didn't realise that clicking on the like link was a
vote for that startup. An up arrow or a plus sign might be more clear.
~~~
knightinblue
But the 'like' tag has numbers in parentheses. People should be immediately
able to see that it's a kind of voting.
Now if there was a like/dislike system in play, well that's different.
~~~
streety
'People' are stupid. Sorry if I/we disappoint.
------
jack7890
Beautifully done. Simple, elegant, and highly useful website.
------
netsp
How do you keep this a Listing/Wiki of HN startups as opposed to a
Listing/Wiki of hnstartups?
------
adrianwaj
Can you have: for sale, an optional price, when it was launched, current
number of employees/people
Ideally there would be some verification if such data was added, whereby the
user would need to link to HNStartups from their profile and also their site.
~~~
dhimes
Maybe grab it from a pad-like file on the site- so users can update.
------
matthias
Very useful. Could you add a field for input of HN threads pertaining to each
startup?
~~~
markbao
I added "hnsearch" link to each listing that executes a SearchYC query on the
startup name.
------
rrival
Not that it applies to me but what about TechStars / etc colored indicators?
------
vaksel
I think it'll look much better if you have everything on a single page, and
make it more condensed:
i.e. something like <<<Name + link to site>>> [HNusernamelink] [HNSearch]
[[[DESCRIPTION]]]]
------
BerislavLopac
This one is my favorite: <http://hnstartups.com/startup/239> :)
------
showerst
You may want to add rel="nofollow" to your outgoing links, just to discourage
people from spamming it for a free link.
------
vorador
Btw, why all of those startups are web sites ?
Ain't there anybody who sells desktop applications ?
------
diN0bot
i can't submit a comment on the HNers page. i don't use disqus. i keep getting
an alert about "username must contain 3 characters" even though i've typed my
full diN0bot username.
------
jamroom
We've been in business for 6 years - can I still be a "startup"?
------
mapwow
don't forget the CSRF/XSRF protection...
<http://hnstartups.com/startup/64/like>
~~~
Raphael
Damn it. Don't click this link unless you want to vote for his startup! Or
vote for mine. <http://hnstartups.com/startup/100/like>
------
JeffL
Nice, but adding a startup doesn't work in Chrome. =)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A botnet is taken down in an operation by Microsoft, not the government - wglb
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/politics/microsoft-botnets-malware.html
======
ipython
I'm glad this is getting coverage, but this is nothing new to Microsoft-
they've been doing this for almost a decade (see for example
[https://www.zeuslegalnotice.com/](https://www.zeuslegalnotice.com/)). DCU has
a great reputation and they're doing great work ( _in conjunction with_ law
enforcement and legal authorities) to make life better for all of us on the
Internet.
------
INTPenis
"Not the government" ooooh. As if AV vendors have been completely idle on that
front.
I just find this article very fitting as Microsoft is right now running an ad
campaign on reddit for their security services.
------
neonate
[https://archive.md/Mbiy0](https://archive.md/Mbiy0)
------
Frost1x
I remember when some of the earlier botnets I was exposed to used IRC networks
and private/hidden channels to provide command/control interfaces to the
bots/zombies/clients. In a lot of cases, the control mechanism had no
redundancy (set to one specific network and/or server and channel).
People passed around lots of executables during those days (naively trusting
sources/friends) which usually had additional side-loading mechanisms for the
bot (sometimes from an HTTP request, sometimes FTP).
Used to grab these modified executables for plugins/game extensions/etc,
sandbox them, and identify the control IRC networks, channels, passwords and
have the networks shutdown the channels which essentially killed the botnet
from further use.
I imagine most the clients are far more resilient and sophisticated these
days. I think the largest botnet I identified and 'shut down' (obviously with
help from IRC network admins) had around a million clients on separate
networks.
Most of these were pushed on smaller relatively unknown/unpopular IRC networks
where the admins somehow didn't notice tens of thousands of clients sitting
idle on their network.
It was always a bit enjoyable to pop in one of the private password protected
control channels and start a conversation, catching someone completely off
guard who didn't expect anyone to find their little control interface. I
imagine most these were built off a known library which wasn't too
sophisticated. Most people were humorously surprised.
------
ComputerGuru
This is the norm for Microsoft... it's the exception when governments lend
their help.
------
degenerate
The article was devoid of any technical details... what exactly were they
doing to "take down" the domains? Were the domains hosted on Azure? Were they
given permission by ICANN to modify the DNS? I want details!
~~~
bskap
I don't know about this one specifically, but in the past, they've taken
advantage of the fact that a lot of these scams claim to be Windows tech
support and the like. With a creative application of US trademark laws, which
allow manufacturers to seize counterfeit goods, they got a court order
allowing them to seize the domains and computers hosting the "counterfeit"
Microsoft websites.
------
scohesc
Makes sense that a company that provides an operating system for billions of
devices around the world takes some responsibility for any criminal actions
taken on others that use said operating systems' potential exploits/bugs to
harm other financially/personally/etc... Really cool to see an article written
about it though. Makes you think that Microsoft are the good guys :P
~~~
badrabbit
Regardless if size,companies are not law enforcers. MS is also not responisble
for the OS it has already sold to customers, that OS is not their property or
concern outside of patches (fixing what they broke before sales).
I hate this idea of corporate heroes,next thing they'll let them do offensive
operations (hack the hackers without any due process or authority).
~~~
jascii
Technically MS _does_ own the OS, the end user is just granted a license to
_use_ it. They do however not own the hardware it runs on, so there _should_
be limits on what they can do, I agree that the idea that they can act as law
enforcement without limits is chilling.
~~~
tomlogic
There are limits. The article describes them waiting on a federal court order
giving them authority to execute their plan.
~~~
kova12
I also understand that they control what amounts to a substantial private
police force. Which is exactly what government must do, not Microsoft
------
tus88
Haven't they been doing this for years?
------
ChrisArchitect
eight years in the making? six million domain names? (how does one even
address/disable/send requests to registrars for that many?) Big operation on
both ends. Yikes.
------
drcongo
The present tense of the headline is so weird. Is this an NYT thing?
~~~
statictype
I love that style of writing. Neal Stephenson used it in his earlier work to
great effect.
------
ptah
why is this surprising? because they are cleaning up a mess of their own
making instead of making taxpayers foot the bill?
~~~
IntelMiner
Exactly how is this Microsoft's fault?
~~~
ptah
they produce software that is vulnerable to exploitation by criminals
~~~
IntelMiner
Human beings write code that is imperfect because people are human beings
I don't think it's particularly fair to make it out like Microsoft
intentionally writes vulnerable software
~~~
ptah
i'm not saying they do it intentionally. i am saying that they should deal
with the consequences and not let taxpayers take the downside while they take
the upside
~~~
parheric
funny... so about those 1billion android devices that are no longer offered
security updates.
I guess Google should be taking responsibility there as well?
~~~
ptah
yes, exactly! you get it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
First Draft of 300-Page Princeton Bitcoin Textbook [pdf] - roymurdock
https://d28rh4a8wq0iu5.cloudfront.net/bitcointech/readings/princeton_bitcoin_book.pdf
======
erubin
Arvind is one of my favorite profs. I look forward to reading it.
------
notroot
Boo. No mention of the [lightning network](lightning.network).
------
nolite
Wow. Is it really that hard to add in a table of contents?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Hollywood Hotels Like Sunset Tower Are Hub for Deal Making - peter123
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/business/04hotel.html?_r=1
======
xanados
This article is relevant here, I think...
<http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
So what exactly is chat.meatspac.es? - emacsbro
http://ednapiranha.com/2013/chat-meatspaces/
======
coconutrandom
It's the greatest place on ear^H^H^H the internet.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Open Letter from a Millennial: Quit Telling Us We’re Not Special - creade
http://phoenixandolivebranch.wordpress.com/2012/06/25/open-letter-from-a-millennial-quit-telling-us-were-not-special/
======
toomuchcoffee
Am I the only one who, midway through that rant, couldn't help but to sing it
along to an extended version of a certain Suicidal Tendencies song?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: SnapSlack – Send disappearing messages in Slack - saimeunt
https://snapslack.co/
======
saimeunt
Hi there!
We built SnapSlack as part of a hackathon @eFounders, it's a fun side project
that will allow you to troll your teammates without leaving any trace :p We're
looking forward to open-sourcing the whole project when we'll reach 300
signups ;) The frontend is built using the (amazing!) zeit now.sh stack
(Next.js is AWESOME). The backend uses Meteor alongside Firebase.
Best,
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Saving the right to information miracle - KeepTalking
http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article427427.ece?homepage=true
======
pragmatic
Background? I'm trying to scan it and it appears I need previous knowledge of
the Byzantine Indian legal system.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why don't sports teams use randomization? - dfranke
http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/why-dont-sports-teams-use-randomization-a-guest-post/
======
BrandonM
I would love to play poker against that guy. Bluffing should never be random,
but should be a calculated move in which you believe that the opponent has
missed whatever cards they were hoping for and has a good chance of believing
that you have the best hand. To bluff randomly is to throw away money.
~~~
eru
Actually - what you want to do is bluff randomly with very carefully
calculated probabilities.
The problem is - humans are not good at generating random bits on command.
~~~
BrandonM
Right, but in his essay, all he says is something like, "I look down at my
watch, and if the second hand is between 0 and 6, I bluff." To me, that's
totally random, and that's not the right way to go about bluffing.
~~~
eru
Who knows? Perhaps it's not optimal - but still better than human randomness.
------
Kaizyn
Maybe for an individual team, there aren't enough games in a season to allow
for a reasonable randomized test? It would make sense, perhaps, if your major
league franchise controlled enough minor league teams, to use them as guinea
pigs. The players and coaches might get a bit upset by being used like that
though.
~~~
soundsop
There are ~150 pitches/game x 162 games/season = 24,300 pitches/season in
baseball. Shouldn't a fraction of those be enough to establish randomization
as a useful strategy?
------
mhb
What makes him think that sports teams aren't doing this kind of analysis but
consider it a competitive advantage to not publicize it?
~~~
Tichy
Presumably he sees in the statistics that the teams aren't making the
decisions they should be making.
~~~
mhb
Based on what he writes in the article, it doesn't look like he has done any
investigation of his own.
Viz. "To my knowledge, no sports team in the history of humankind has ever run
a random control trial to figure out which strategies work the best. (I make
this extravagant claim in hopes of provoking you all into providing some
counterexamples.)"
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google implements “don’t be evil” into its algorithm; uses reviews for rankings - azazo
http://thenextweb.com/google/2010/12/01/google-implements-dont-be-evil-into-its-algorithm-uses-reviews-for-rankings/
======
RiderOfGiraffes
The report from Google is here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959348>
This article adds nothing.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Bill Gates-led $1B energy fund expands startup portfolio fighting climate change - edwinksl
https://qz.com/1402301/bill-gatess-1-billion-energy-fund-is-expanding-its-portfolio-of-startups-fighting-climate-change/
======
akshatrathi
I wrote this article, and I'm happy to field any questions
~~~
drited
I'm curious about why you included this sentence: 'The startups announced by
BEV so far are all North American, and most of their leadership is also
largely white and male'
I mean, isn't it enough for BEV to help fund a small sample of companies
tackling some of the most challenging problems on earth? Probability of
success in such an endeavour is already vanishingly small without adding
further constraints. Aren't investments like these best directed at the
companies with most promise, with the investors blind as to gender and race,
with equality problems tackled elsewhere (e.g. in employment regulation etc.)?
~~~
akshatrathi
It's ludicrous to think good ideas only come from North America and white
males. Carmichael Roberts agreed with me. His words were that my question felt
"piercing" because he was not at liberty to tell me about some of the
companies outside the US with diverse leadership, but he said he will soon say
more. Rodi Guidero agreed and said to look at the BEV team. It's very diverse:
[http://www.b-t.energy/ventures/team/](http://www.b-t.energy/ventures/team/)
We've tried being gender and race blind. But it's not helped us much, because
systemic biases can't simply be overcome that way. There are good ideas in all
corners, but if you want to elevate those that don't come from privileged
backgrounds you have to work harder.
~~~
drited
'It's ludicrous to think good ideas only come from North America and white
males'
That's a straw man argument because I did not assert that (and obviously
wouldn't because it would be a stupid thing to think).
Maybe he thought your question was piercing because it implied you suspected
he was racist or sexist or not concerned with gender and race bias.
Fwiw I'm from one of the excluded categories. I think they should just focus
on tackling carbon reduction as they see best fit. If they achieve their
mission it'll benefit every man, woman and child on earth. It's unreasonable
to expect them to be omniscient. They are a small fund with a small sample of
investments. Skew doesn't necessarily mean they have gender or race bias.
Elevating isn't their goal. Reducing carbon is. If we don't do that, there may
be no races left to worry about equalising.
~~~
akshatrathi
I think you can do both. If anybody has the resources to do that, BEV does.
~~~
drited
It would certainly be laudable if they could. The article was fascinating,
thanks for answering questions!
------
perfunctory
> These startups progress slowly and at great expense, earning them the
> moniker “tough tech” because they work on difficult problems that require
> fundamental breakthroughs.
I am genuinely curious if for-profit startups is the right setting for
"fundamental breakthroughs". Could the current nuclear power technology have
been invented by a startup for example?
~~~
DennisP
I guess the answer depends on which country you're talking about. The U.S.
government pioneered nuclear power but has done very little with it over the
past several decades, and has impeded private efforts. Canada has a regulatory
system friendlier to reactor startups than the U.S., and at least one molten
salt reactor company (Terrestrial Energy) is making good progress there. China
has an aggressive government program developing every type of GenIV reactor,
and Terrapower moved there after giving up on the U.S.
This article mainly covers the MIT fusion effort. For years they struggled to
keep their government funding, despite their tokamak having the most powerful
magnetic field of any in the world. They finally lost that battle, and now
private investors are stepping in. It doesn't appear that there was an
alternative.
Government can obviously throw more money but it tends to be more conservative
about what it funds. And private funding can go pretty far; it was interesting
to see that TAE (Tri Alpha Energy, an aneutronic fusion effort) is up to $800
million in funding. They started work in 1999, so long-term fundamental
research does seem to be achievable in a startup setting.
~~~
dmix
Besides, comparing the efficacy or ability of government's in 1940s wartime vs
the modern nation states is a terrible idea and is very weakly related. In
terms of pure scale, administrative top heaviness, legislative/regulatory
oversight has expanded 100x in the past century, the degree of economic
intervention, access to talent in peacetime, etc are all vastly different.
Even NASA in the peacetime 1950-60s which was so famously efficient and
effective was largely the result of talent quickly absorbed from private
industry and academia into one organization. It was a newish organization
which held many of the benefits of non-gov/private organizations, as they were
not yet fully affected by the heavy bureaucratic and political load which hits
every government agency over time.
The type of stuff that scares away the raw talent and creatives and shifts to
a system which values people who play politics and shifts power to
administrative roles over the producers.
[https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html](https://www.jerrypournelle.com/reports/jerryp/iron.html)
------
Jedd
> ... 500 million metric tons.
Or more simply, 500 million tonnes.
~~~
chottocharaii
A metric ton is substantially different to a ton in the old English
~~~
Jedd
Hence the nice people behind metric came up with the tonne.
It avoids any ambiguity -- the 5% of the planet still struggling with imperial
measurements can continue to confound each other with ton, while the rest of
us can confidently talk amongst ourselves about thousand-kg units (tonnes).
~~~
aplummer
Look I love the metric system as much as anyone, but it’s an American website
and a lot more than 5% of the readers are likely American...
~~~
Jedd
> ... but it’s an American website ...
I'm really never quite sure what that kind of claim actually means -- it's
hosted in the US (it isn't - most of the assets come from proximal CDN for
me), it's written exclusively by Americans (it isn't - they are proud of the
fact their team covers 115 countries and they have 19 languages between them),
it's targeted exclusively to Americans (it isn't - they've launched Quartz
India and Quartz Africa), or it's read mostly by Americans (it isn't - I
believe their US audience is something less than 50%), or it's owned by
Americans (it isn't - Quartz is owned by a Japanese based company), or the
person reading it is in North America and wants to believe that most other
people are too(I can't really comment on that one).
Perhaps it's just the TLD -- but even that's a pretty flimsy claim. I've got
my own .org, and I'm very much not in/owned/near/have/were American.
Anyway, there's this word tonne (which means 1000kg) and it's entirely not at
odds with ton (which doesn't).
Unlike gallon, gill, mile, nautical mile, survey foot, quart, pint, fluid
ounce, bushel -- which all vary depending which side of the pond you call home
-- the tonne is delightfully agnostic of all that madness, and should be
embraced and encouraged by sensible journals (for example Quartz) even if it
means some North Americans get a bit sensitive about their archaic measurement
systems.
------
stcredzero
_Zero Mass Water: A startup selling specialized panels that use solar power
and batteries to pull water from the air. The goal is to reduce the amount of
energy needed to access clean drinking water without geographical
limitations._
There is a lot of energy involved in the phase change of water. We've also had
dehumidifiers for over 100 years. The takeaway from that is, dehumidifiers
produce don't produce water well in arid environments.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vc7WqVMCABg)
This makes me wonder if the Gates Foundation is properly utilizing scientific
expertise.
~~~
akshatrathi
So the tech inside Zero Mass Water is not the same as dehumidifier. Instead,
they use a sophisticated absorbent to selectively capture water, heat it to
release the water, then sterilize and add minerals.
But you're right. It's the company that I was most surprised to see in the
list. The economics don't yet make sense to me.
I pushed Carmichael Roberts (BEV's head of investing) to explain. He said he
has studied water startups for years, and he really likes the tech. But more
importantly, he is very impressed by Cody's skill to sell this unit and far
wide. It's already in 16 countries.
~~~
stcredzero
_Instead, they use a sophisticated absorbent to selectively capture water,
heat it to release the water, then sterilize and add minerals._
So it's using a dessicant? Heating a saturated dessicant in an enclosed
environment can produce a hot, high humidity environment where
dehumidification is easy. That said, it will still produce the most water
someplace like San Francisco, where the humidity is high. There are places
where humidity is high and the rainfall is very low.
Apparently, Zero Mass Water is using some good engineering to get something
like a 4X efficiency increase for water extraction over existing commercial
dessicant dehumidifiers. It's possible that removing the requirement to
process large volumes of air could produce such an efficiency increase.
~~~
debatem1
Stupid question, is this targeted at producing water or is it targeted at
producing clean water where contaminated water is available?
~~~
stcredzero
It's targeted at producing water by extracting it from the air.
------
throwaway5752
Start familiarizing yourself with the term "deep adaptation".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Double-Stranded RNA Activated Caspase Oligomerizers May Treat Most Viruses - aurelian15
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/dracos-may-be-an-effective-cure-for-viral-diseases
======
awinter-py
Yikes. I'm not a biologist but just treating this as a systems problem -- if
you introduce a change that triggers apoptosis when a cell comes into contact
with viral DNA, does that mean that the virus that evolves to attack that
would make the whole body melt at once.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google Correlate by Drawing - franze
http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/draw
======
lhnz
Interesting to see what is dying: English Chinese Dictionaries, radio
stations, Altavista, lyrics, text messaging, Flash.
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:deVob01-p...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:deVob01-p_N&t=weekly#default,20)
And look what's getting more popular: Porn video sites, video sites, Facebook,
Mac computers and how to work them -- particuarly how to take screenshots:
this should be a tip-off to those of you working at Apple doing UX. ;)
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:AbjtmD0iL...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:AbjtmD0iL9w&t=weekly#default,20)
Some of the stuff you would guess was becoming less or more popular but there
is other stuff which is less obvious.
edit: This is super interesting:
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:SnghYCuBW...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:SnghYCuBWFH&t=weekly#default,90)
Looks like Hacker News is gaining popularity exponentially, too. :)
~~~
thedaveoflife
Less popular as a Google search doesn't necessarily mean less popular, in some
cases. For instance, I saw text messaging on your down trending list but that
is obviously as popular as ever. People probably just don't feel the need to
search it because it has become so ubiquitous.
~~~
lhnz
That is true: this only measures current interest levels. A decrease in the
current interest level of text messaging only means that people are not trying
to find out about it as much.
However, why did it only start trending downwards in 2008? Text messaging was
ubiquitous way before 2008.
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AdeVob01...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AdeVob01-p_N&e=text+messaging&t=weekly#default,20)
Could it be the iPhone? Could it be the iPhone facebook app? Could it be BBM?
(Or maybe I'm just reading too much into this...)
------
pud
The "comic book" link on Correlate is awesome. More sites should have
documentation like this. <http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/comic>
~~~
hasslblad
Google did this when they first launched Chrome too -
<http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html>
~~~
Lewisham
One (interesting?) thing to note is the Chrome comic was drawn by Scott
McCloud, professional comic book artist extroidinare.
The Correlate comic was drawn by Manu Cornet, who's a Googler:
<https://plus.google.com/106154493978299996445/posts>
------
joeyespo
This is fun. But apparently not "great fun" because according to this, great
fun only happened in between 2005 and 2010.
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:XfvUJGqnv...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:XfvUJGqnvo_&t=weekly)
~~~
thinkzig
Things are never as fun as they were back in the good old days. :)
------
ayanb
From the whitepaper
"Google Correlate employs a novel approximate nearest neighbor (ANN) algorithm
over millions of candidate queries in an online search tree to produce results
similar to the batch-based approach employed by Google Flu Trends but in a
fraction of a second."
\--
~~~
zerostar07
Good, so i dont have to worry i m bringing google down / google is going to
put a cap on this
------
javanix
Ok, that is way too addicting to visit during work hours.
I drew a standard bell-curve peaking in 2007 and then trailing off to zero
into 2011 and everything was either Myspace searches or Washington Mutual
credit searches.
Pretty nifty.
------
3pt14159
I did a steady growth curve followed by a steep drop off: The result is
amazing:
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:lSkySxGeo...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:lSkySxGeov3&t=weekly)
------
danvk
If you like the drawing interaction itself and want to re-use it elsewhere,
there's a self-contained version at <http://dygraphs.com/tests/drawing.html>
which also features a zoom and eraser tool.
------
notintokyo
How is this so fast? I thought to compare charts like these you have to slide
every chart over every offset to get the best match?
~~~
danvk
(I work on correlate)
The gist of why this is so fast is:
1\. For the vast majority of queries, we only need to compare hashes of the
time series, not the time series themselves.
2\. We make no attempt to detect shifted correlations. The correlations you
see are all synchronized in time.
------
kurige
1\. Take historical end-of-day market data for a stock market index fund and
graph it on Google Correlate.
2\. Find out what terms closely track said index.
3\. Set up an auto-trader that responds to changes in the search frequency for
said terms.
4\. Sit back and watch the money roll in.
~~~
sc00ter
Possibly, but apparently 5 years of USD to EUR exchange rate data most closely
correlates to searches for the king tut exibit!
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:l9QRCEVZg...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:l9QRCEVZgQT&t=weekly#)
~~~
kurige
That's awesome! Bizzare correlation, but awesome.
How did you graph the data? Did you enter the time series data manually?
~~~
sc00ter
Er - no. Downloaded from oanda.com, uploaded to google correlate.
------
anigbrowl
Correlate is great, but the hand-drawn year-by-year search is really not all
that useful - wither you have something in mind and prime your graph, or you
get the obvious things.
Monthly correlations, however, would be tremendously useful. Every industry
has its own calendar, conference season, and economic 'tides', and
understanding these is a key marketing task.
------
artursapek
Google is beginning to do things that I think are going to kick current
market-research strategies off their feet. They have most of our lives being
fed through their systems; they know what's going on in the world better than
anyone.
------
iy56
And if you visit the parent page (<http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/>),
you can search for a term and see it's graph, along with strongly correlated
queries.
------
erikig
This can be an interesting way to identify hidden yearly trends too.
Drawing a zig zag with peaks (more sawtooth than sine wave) at beginnings of
the years yields some interesting results and some things I've never even
heard of like "slapped cheek syndrome" or fifth disease.
Apparently people are also extremely curious about the carbs in a
grapefruit/orange at around the same time...
Weird.
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:xI5dDtGz4...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:xI5dDtGz4kc&t=weekly)
~~~
danshapiro
I think you're seeing new years' diet resolutions.
------
reustle
So the "web" really is a fad...
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:ie4JCwnHd...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:ie4JCwnHdHZ&t=weekly)
~~~
lachenmayer
Quite the opposite; the web is becoming so ubiquitous that no-one has to find
out more about it anymore.
------
cabirum
formatting hard drives is cool again!
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3Al7D8FQk...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3Al7D8FQkv5Y-&e=how+to+format+a+hard+drive&t=weekly)
------
boredguy8
"Free Text Messaging" is an interesting 4 year period, though it looks like
it's dead as a search term now. Is this because of Google Voice? Or did people
give up on the idea?
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:g2VSqRc0n...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:g2VSqRc0np2&t=weekly)
~~~
T-hawk
Everybody has unlimited texting on their phones now so there's no need. There
was a time when unlimited texting was rare and not all phones even had SMS, so
it was popular to use various free web-to-SMS gateways if you were at a
computer and your recipient may not be. I used AT&T's gateway in particular to
message friends for a few years before I got an SMS phone. There were also
shady ad-strewn "free texting" gateways, some acting as frontends to the
official ones, some with a Turk behind the scenes, and even some that didn't
work at all but just faked a texting interface to serve up ads.
------
geuis
I drew a random hockey stick. It kind of matches the rise of dubstep pretty
closely
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AOjXjy3O...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AOjXjy3OzFbC&e=dubstep&t=weekly)
~~~
addandsubtract
I got "youtube mp3 download" with a similar curve.
------
ColinDabritz
So it looks like 'Depression' is on the school schedule (see the spikes down
for winter break, the heavy correlation with academic topics)
[https://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=depression&...](https://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=depression&e=magnetism&t=weekly#)
I wonder how much is psychology research, and how much is side effects of
school?
Some of the coincident correlations are really funny.
[https://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=depression&...](https://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=depression&e=magnetism&t=weekly#)
It looks like OS X Lion had an unofficial mascot! (or the movie promotion
timeline matched the lion hype buildup)
------
flaviojuvenal
GIFs are coming back. I believe it is because the huge popularity of GIF
flooded Tumblrs of teenagers:
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:4voTkH47-...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:4voTkH47-PL&t=weekly)
Also, it is nice to see summer related results:
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:Rhcg3luEC...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:Rhcg3luECRt&t=weekly)
Spider Vein, according to Wikipedia, may be caused by "environmental damage
such as that caused by sun or cold exposure". And Asiatic Lily is a flower
that grows on July.
------
shazam
0.9665 correlation between "iphone" and "cancel tmobile". Amazing.
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=iphone&t...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=iphone&t=weekly&filter=iphone)
------
socialmediaking
I got this on my first draw. I was looking at things growing rapidly from 2009
on. What are the odds? <http://i.imgur.com/yYL1D.png>
------
shawndumas
brown recluse
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AiGRSgJR...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AiGRSgJRIYH9&e=brown+recluse&t=weekly)
~~~
nollidge
hockey arena
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AP3Onqn6...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id%3AP3Onqn66m-f&e=hockey+arena&t=weekly)
------
shawndumas
Bowl Championship Series
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:bg8K8Ts1o...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:bg8K8Ts1oEK&t=weekly)
------
earlyriser
Testing a yearly and incremental peak give me the "nc state basketball". I
guess something like this could give me the Oscars or Superbowl changing the
peak time:
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:nspW2uQjx...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:nspW2uQjx78&t=weekly#)
------
TomGullen
Very cool but quite useless. I guess you might be able to spot emerging trends
if you spent a bit of time on it though.
~~~
fsniper
It's not useless. It has real world academic use cases where researchers need
data which might be related. It's also documented in the comic book of this
service. Also this is a service becoming real because of a real world problem.
~~~
TomGullen
It's useful yes but the usefulness is derived from the data not people drawing
lines on a screen! I don't think the drawing a line on a screen allows for
much more data discovery .
~~~
fsniper
Yes sure. But it can be used by dataset input too.
------
ayanb
"Windows Mobile Pocket PC" , "Palm Treo Software", "Blackberry forum" and
"flash flv" all have the same curve :)
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:BbGJxKXAQ...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:BbGJxKXAQA0&t=weekly)
------
sirclueless
Hah. I did an exponential curve and sure enough there was "dropbox" at 0.9220
correlation.
~~~
frankiewarren
My exponential curve beginning in 2010 yielded "dubstep download." I guess we
know what the kids are listening to these days.
------
zerostar07
Apparently the acronym "OOMF" is hot right now:
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:lhfq3Utw3...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:lhfq3Utw3XD&t=weekly)
~~~
kubindurion
since I didn't know it is one of:
_OUT OF MY FACE_ OUT OF MY FOLLOWERS
I post it so you don't have to google ;p
------
sunspeck
The comments here suggest that many folks don't realize you can correlate to a
precise dataset, not just a hand-drawn trendline.
Click the link next to the search button. "Enter your own data" or "Edit this
data".
Anyone got a good time series?
------
lelf
Different time period gives “Oops”
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=hacker+news&...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=hacker+news&t=daily)
Frustrating.
------
jaekwon
meta hockeystick, anyone?
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:OLR9M7vEA...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:OLR9M7vEAbQ&t=weekly)
~~~
moultano
Git has apparently grown right alongside hackernews.
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=hacker+news&...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=hacker+news&t=weekly#default,30)
~~~
artursapek
"Hot gf" is trolling a lot of these time series.
------
judofyr
<http://d.pr/VHnF>
Makes me wonder if web developers finally switched to full SSL, or if browsers
stopped showing the error…
------
makepanic
really love this: "football camps"
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:Vv0RVxr9d...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:Vv0RVxr9dJK&t=weekly#)
------
shawndumas
treo!
[http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:YJ9-DbmR7...](http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/search?e=id:YJ9-DbmR7bM&t=weekly)
------
swah
I wish there was someone I could talk about this IRL.
------
tonio09
Google Correlate as well as Trends are awesome. Why is google providing these
data mining services for free to everyone? How are they making money from it?
------
clistctrl
This is seriously an awesome proof of technology, but what is a practical
purpose for it?
~~~
danberger
Apart from just being able to search by drawing (cool concept in it of
itself), the practical purpose would obviously be the reverse: looking at the
graph of any search query. But obviously they will never release that :)
~~~
omh
The main part of the correlate site lets you do this:
<http://www.google.com/trends/correlate/>
------
wavephorm
Doesn't work on an iPad.
------
knowtheory
Well. That doesn't work on an iPad.
------
schrototo
This would be infinitely more useful if it was backed by some actual _data_
instead of those utterly useless search activity patterns. Why not combine a
search like this with something like Wolfram Alpha?
What a waste...
edit: Seriously, wouldn't this be so much cooler if it gave us a new way to
explore mathematical and scientific data?
If we could draw any curve and it would present us with matching constants,
physical laws, mathematical proofs & theorems that have some correlation with
the input data, chemical and biological data points, information from
sociological studies, historical statistics...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Consumer Centric Health Care - cwan
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2009/08/consumer-centric-health-care.html
======
baran
This blog article discusses the Atlantic article "How American Healthcare
Killed My Father". One of the most thought provoking ideas was that the author
felt that the patient should be paying for the majority of their healthcare,
rather than the insurance company or government.
Example, auto insurance does pay for maintenance repairs? Home owners
insurance does not pay for refinishing your basement?
Making the end customer (the patient) the person who is paying would have
tremendous potential for increasing transparency in healthcare. This would in
turn drive down cots and increase outcomes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Where in the world is color e-paper? - kozmonaut
https://goodereader.com/blog/electronic-readers/where-in-the-world-is-color-e-paper
======
mysticmumble
I've had a different impression of ClearInk.
From [https://www.clearinkdisplays.com/clearink-and-tianma-
announc...](https://www.clearinkdisplays.com/clearink-and-tianma-announce-
mou):
> CLEARink’s ePaper 2.0 technology has been trial manufactured and tested and
> the company will _soon ship sample kits to select customers_ to commence the
> next phase of design.
> [...]
> Our partnership [...] will accelerate our product and process development
> and allow us to _serve customers in various geographies_.
And from
[https://youtu.be/TxdGdOtjMBc?t=463](https://youtu.be/TxdGdOtjMBc?t=463):
> If you're curious, you have to come and join us early 2019 and then we'll
> show you the final product.
They do seem to focus on B2B, but it doesn't look like they will just "license
their screentech" or it "might be a reality in a few years". My hopes would be
that I'd be able to buy a 10 inch reflective display with color and 30+FPS
this year. I don't need a full e-reader, just a HDMI plug.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Why does kids in China do origami at school? - punnerud
======
novia
Why do kids in America color at school?
[https://www.colorpsychology.org/10-benefits-of-coloring-
page...](https://www.colorpsychology.org/10-benefits-of-coloring-pages-for-
kids-psychology-and-development/)
Most of the reasons listed in that article can apply to origami. It's also
just a culture thing.
------
punnerud
Could be to learn grit?
------
aszantu
to learn geometry maybe?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: PHP/MySQL Data Encryption - jrsmith1279
Forgive my ignorance, but I need to store some sensitive data in a MySQL database and this data will need to be retrieved and displayed to the user at a later time. I understand the various methods for encrypting/hashing and then comparing a password against the hash, but what I really need to do for this project is to be able to decrypt the data and display it as plain text.
======
Rust
Check out <http://appwithphp.com/cryptography-and-php/> \- it's a
beginner/intermediate overview of how to implement one-way and two-way
hashing/encryption in PHP. The concepts should be transferable to other
languages though.
------
cd34
<http://us3.php.net/manual/en/book.openssl.php>
you would store a private key on the server, store the blob in mysql and
encrypt/decrypt as needed.
There are other library wrappers as well.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: GRPC-powered language drivers for Grakn - haikalpribadi
<a href="https://blog.grakn.ai/grakn-python-driver-how-to-roll-your-own-b010bbd73023" rel="nofollow">https://blog.grakn.ai/grakn-python-driver-how-to-roll-your-o...</a>
======
haikalpribadi
I'm not sure why the URL didn't get registered, but here is the article again:
[https://blog.grakn.ai/grakn-python-driver-how-to-roll-
your-o...](https://blog.grakn.ai/grakn-python-driver-how-to-roll-your-
own-b010bbd73023)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Keyset-driven paging - lukaseder
http://stackoverflow.com/a/3215973/521799
======
JulianMorrison
I've had keyset paging _fail_ for me in MySQL, once or twice in every ten
thousand rows, in a "chaser" process that was trying to keep up with a table
under heavy write load. I obtained data with holes in it; I think MySQL had
allocated the autoincrement IDs to in-progress transactions but not written
the rows.
~~~
lukaseder
But then, MySQL failed you on keeping autoincremented IDs strictly and
globally incrementing to all readers. That is not related to keyset paging. It
just happens that you chose to `ORDER BY` a non-stable ordering criteria.
In principle, you can order by any (possibly composite) key when performing
keyset paging. Actually, all I've just said is equally true for `OFFSET`
paging.
~~~
JulianMorrison
No, they were stable all right, once the writes had settled down. The trouble
is that sometimes it would write rows with an ascending ID sequence like
1
1,2
1,2,4
1,2,3,4
…and a read transaction that captured "1,2,4" would try reading the next ID >
4 and never see 3.
Evidently it allocated the ID and space for row 3 before writing it and
exposing it to the other transactions. And sometimes that turned into a race
condition.
~~~
lukaseder
Aha, I get it now. Yes, that's a little awkward. Although, 3 would re-appear
when going back again but that might be even more confusing.
But with OFFSET, you'd just have (frequently) shifting windows, right?
~~~
JulianMorrison
I was trying to stream the table entries into a "tallying" type process. And
of course it came out with the wrong numbers. Frustrating. I finally replaced
the whole "chaser" process with a repeated full table scan with SQL aggregate
functions. Wildly inefficient, but reliable.
------
schrodinger
I try to avoid using the key based paging because you're tying functionality
to an implementation detail. If you change your key generation method (start
using guids), the order may not be predictable. Or if you distribute your
database with peer to peer replication, the order of your keys may only be
consistent relative to other keys generated by the same instance. Or maybe you
add some historical records, and they've got a time stamp that's accurate, but
this sort of paging will show them in the order they were inserted.
~~~
tbarbugli
And whats the alternative for you ?
~~~
schrodinger
Order by the thing you actually care about, like a time stamp. And add an
index on that column to make it efficient. You still need to analyze the query
to determine if it's worth adding a covering index, or letting the DBMS
perform a key lookup, but that's probably beyond the scope of a comment here.
I guess it's not keyset based paging that is to be avoided, but paging based
on a surrogate key which is a meaningless value. If your key had a meaningful
value, it's a valid way of writing the query.
------
lukaseder
It is worth mentioning that "keyset driven paging" is sometimes also referred
to as the "seek method":
[http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/p7lgl/sql_pagin...](http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/p7lgl/sql_pagination_in_constant_time_using_the_seek/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Best Programming Languages to Learn to Code: 2020 Edition - studentLS
https://coding.degree/best-coding-languages/
======
mikece
While it's always fun to read articles like this what they invariably fail to
address is what the intended outcome is (to get a job? to become a better
programmer?) and taking into account where you are. If you want to get a job
in Silicon Valley then the recommended language list is going to look
different than if you're trying to get a job in Omaha. I think it's important
for someone getting into the field to BUILD THEIR NETWORK: not only
prospective colleagues but also local recruiters who aren't locked into a few
clients but who have a solid feel for the tech landscape near you. It won't
help you much if you study Python and are entry-level-ready at Django and
Flask only to learn that locally the demand is only for C# and Java.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Don’t look now, but AWS might be a billion-dollar biz - bond
http://gigaom.com/cloud/dont-look-now-but-aws-might-be-a-billion-dollar-biz/
======
InclinedPlane
Regardless of what you think about the 37 Signals folks one bit of their
advice has always struck me as being particularly insightful and powerful:
Sell your byproducts.
There are two very strong reasons to do this. First, it can be an excellent
business. You've created something to solve some problem or remove some pain
that your company is feeling, it's extremely unlikely that your company is so
unique that it's pain isn't shared by other companies. And it's unlikely your
internal tools would be of no interest or utility to other companies.
Second, internal tools are typically of terrible quality. There are various
reasons for this but it's a very common pattern due to fundamental pressures
and incentives. By selling internal tools you force them to have owners and
you force them to have a quality sufficient to be acceptable to the market.
This generally vastly increases their quality, which provides a benefit to
everyone who uses them, including you.
~~~
kkowalczyk
Except it has been reported by Amazon insiders that AWS is not a byproduct of
Amazon's other work but a very much stand alone product with it's own dev
group with little connection to devs working on Amazon proper and that Amazon
was relatively slow in adopting AWS product for implementing Amazon's internal
software.
Amazon always tried to give the impression that they use AWS but (at least in
early years) those were half-truths (i.e. statements vague enough that if you
squint at it one way you can read "Amazon's internal systems are build in AWS
services" and if you squint at it differently, they might just as well say
"AWS's servers are hosted in the same data center as Amazon's servers"; public
perception was the former and the reality was closer to the latter).
That, of course, doesn't mean that 37 Signals' advice isn't good, just that
this is not an example that confirms that advice.
~~~
pg
Yes, this is true. When I first heard about AWS I assumed Amazon was selling
excess capacity (because why would an online retailer set out to build
something like this?), but in fact, as you say, it was a completely separate
project. I've heard from people who used to work at Amazon that they don't use
AWS for much there.
~~~
jonjenk
I tend to think we use it quite a lot internally. For instance every
amazon.com web server has been running on AWS for quite a while now. You'll
find more info here.
[http://psav.mediasite.com/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=7ab95f6a5d4...](http://psav.mediasite.com/mediasite/Viewer/?peid=7ab95f6a5d4a479fa512270356a1e8a81d)
We're also building Amazon Silk on AWS. As you might guess I think it's pretty
cool too.
<http://amazonsilk.wordpress.com/>
~~~
justinchen
Great video. Got me thinking about new ways to use S3.
------
jontas
I see their stock crash today as a pretty temporary thing. I bought a lot of
shares today around 200 which I hope is close to the bottom of this decline.
AWS growth combined with their new hardware combined with the holiday season
should give them a nice boost by early next year.
~~~
pdx
I like Amazon, but with a PE of 90, I can't make myself buy them.
At some point in the future, when all their growth is behind them and they
become a value investment as opposed to a speculative investment, they need to
make me between 5% and 10% on my money if I buy the whole company. That's how
I evaluate stocks. That means a PE of 10 to 20.
In what year do we believe that Amazon will be making 5X to 9X what it's
making now, given it's current maturity? If that year is near, than, sure,
perhaps buy here. I just can't imagine that kind of growth for such a large
company.
~~~
vannevar
Current revenue growth is around 50% annually; if that continues, it will
reach the lower edge of your target (5X) in 48 months. Assuming of course it
can maintain its margins.
~~~
mikeryan
Am I missing something or don't your assumptions assume that over those same
48 months Amazon's price remains static? Note that any assumption of Amazon's
margins remain the same is kind of hard pressed. Their revenues this quarter
was 40% greater then the same quarter last year - yet their earnings were down
73%.
~~~
vannevar
The question was 'when will Amazon be making 5X what they make now?', and the
answer (at current growth rates and current margins) is 48 months. Which is
not a long time, thereby explaining the high P/E. If you think the growth will
slow substantially or the margins will shrink substantially (or both) in the
next 48 months, then the PE is too high. Otherwise, perhaps it's not so crazy
after all.
------
treeform
Not surprising, they brought cloud computing to the masses and are doing a
pretty good job at it too.
~~~
arctangent
Agreed. It would be incredibly naive to suggest that AWS is anything other
than a huge source of income for Amazon for a long time to come.
------
kjw
Can anyone think of any ways to collect data on just how big AWS really is? So
far it seems like everyone is just trying to infer based on the "other" line
of their revenues and anecdotes from the cloud community.
~~~
jontas
Their servers send an indication in the http headers: Server: Apache/2.2.21
(Amazon)
I guess you'd need to crawl the web and look for those headers. Or maybe you
could look at IP addresses? It would certainly be difficult to do with any
kind of accuracy but you could probably get some decent estimates if your
sample size was large enough.
~~~
kjw
I haven't used AWS in a while. Is there a pattern to the AWS IP addresses?
(e.g. are they using a set of specific blocks? ...that seems too simple). The
other interesting data point would be how much AWS resource is consumed by
Amazon itself. I understand that they have been moving big pieces of
infrastructure onto AWS over the past couple years.
~~~
crb
They keep a sticky post in their announcements forum with the current list.
The post as of today is <https://forums.aws.amazon.com/ann.jspa?annID=1199>,
and the forum link (in case that didn't work) is
<https://forums.aws.amazon.com/forum.jspa?forumID=30>.
(You probably have to have showdead on to see me because I'm hellbanned. I've
emailled pg to try and get this fixed, and had no response. If you happen to
see this, please check my comment history to realise that I'm not at all a
troll, and consider upvoting me on the offchance it will get my account back
into positive karma land. Thanks!)
~~~
showerst
I don't have showdead on and i see your comment just fine.
------
salem
There was an interesting comment from the stack overflow guys that they
guessed that using AWS could cost them 4x more. The evernote guys are another
high profile team that went their own way. I wonder what that says about the
margins for AWS, or is the AWS architecture not actually a more efficient use
of hardware, power etc compared to old school setups at co-lo's.
~~~
kkowalczyk
There are several reasons why AWS does (and should) cost more than a generic
solution.
1\. If you just look at the cost of bandwidth and hardware, there's no doubt
you can find cheaper solutions in the commoditized basic hosting market. AWS
solutions, however, remove a lot of manual work that goes into setup,
configuration and maintenance of servers. If you're a startup, it costs you (a
lot of) money to hire those people. It also cost you time wasted not working
on the core of your service. Up to a certain size, the fixed costs of
additional personnel heavily outweigh higher bandwidth costs. Evernote and
Stackoverflow have extremely high traffic and might have crossed the threshold
at which it's profitable for them to look for savings in hosting bill. A vast
majority of startups is not in that position.
2\. Unique services demand a premium. Most of the hosting companies provide
commoditized services. AWS is much more unique.
3\. Services higher up the stack demand a premium. The most basic hosting
service offers you a bit of physical space in their building and only give you
power for the server and network connectivity. Amazon provides a wide variety
of services on top of that. Developing those services and keeping them working
is much more costly than just ensuring power is on and network is up. They
have to charge more (they have higher costs) and they can charge more (they
provide a richer service).
4\. Ultimately, the prices are set by the market. We can't really say anything
about whether Amazon is more efficient at using hardware or power than, say,
SoftLayer, based on their prices. First, their services cost much more to
provide. Second, they are free to set their margins at whatever level they
please. They could run the service at a loss or they could charge an
outrageous premium. We don't know. People are clearly willing to pay for AWS
services so at the very least they've set the prices in a way that, given
additional benefits, is competitive with traditional server hosting.
~~~
salem
Well, I was ultimately commenting on margins. Since we agree that at scale,
DIY is cheaper, that implies to me that AWS margins are healthy. On point 2&3,
there are plenty of cloud offerings, the more you use premium features, the
more you are locking yourself into to one provider. I would say that the
greatest additional benefit over traditional hosting is low startup cost and
autoscaling. But once you're established, if you're using those premium
features, you're stuck, so your business better have high margins too.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Is anyone interested in the idea of “DevOps without containers”? - andrewstuart
Is there anyone else who would be interested in exploring the idea of DevOps without using containers?
======
cjbprime
Isn't that.. what we were all doing all the time before four years ago?
~~~
andrewstuart
I was thinking more about virtual machines instead of containers.
~~~
cjbprime
That's also what we were doing four years ago -- see the Vagrant project.
~~~
andrewstuart
Interesting. So "why not Vagrant?"
~~~
hluska
I love Vagrant for dev environments, but I'm not a huge fan of using it in
prod. I think it's just another layer of abstraction on top of the actual
metal.
In general though, I'm with you. I fell out of love with Docker a couple of
years ago and I've been a huge fan of vms since.
~~~
andrewstuart
>> I fell out of love with Docker a couple of years ago
Why?
~~~
hluska
This is purely my experience and it is based on observations that are nearly
two years old. Your mileage may vary. And since I've heard that Docker is much
more stable, I plan on giving Docker another try (though on a side project)
within the next six months.
That aside, the shortest possible answer is that Docker added significant
amounts of complexity, without providing enough utility to make that
additional cost worth it. As an example, at the time (I believe this has been
fixed), you had to make sure that every machine that would work with Docker
containers was on the exact same version of Docker. There was also significant
overhead associated with making sure that the code inside of running
containers was actually running. Finally, we found that some of the services
we ran just simply didn't work well with Docker, so our deployments quickly
became a mess of "this is Docker" and "this is raw."
Getting into Kubernetes certainly made Docker a more smooth experience, but
that opened up another side. For me, the further I went down the
Docker/Kubernetes path, the more I realized that I was implementing my own
PAAS...at several times the cost of just using someone's PAAS!
~~~
mslate
I can echo a lot of these points.
Out of curiosity--what have you fallen back to as a PaaS? What do you do now?
Also, do you recall what couldn't be dockerized and had to be ran on bare-
metal or VM? Performance-sensitive stuff, Mac OSX?
------
cimmanom
There is absolutely nothing about devops as a concept that requires or even
implies containers (or VMs).
And yeah, I wish more sources and resources out there acknowledged that.
------
soulchild37
Been using Chef script to setup servers happily for the past 3 years
------
aprdm
We do DevOps without containers in my company for the past two years. As
mentioned by others theres 0 requirement to use containers to do devops.
------
czbond
I'm interested in DevOps without operating systems or containers. Anyone else?
------
dodgyb
Isn't that serverless?
What's your angle: IDE, testing, orchestration, monitoring, billing?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Anecdotes Aren't Data - MarkMc
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2019/06/focal-point-harvard-professor-steven-pinker-says-the-truth-lies-in-the-data/
======
hhs
I’m surprised there’s no mention of how anecdotes and rhetoric fit into
storytelling. I’ve found that good, empirically-based historians tend to weave
in facts and data through stories.
------
Bostonian
"His Republican predecessor created a massive new federal department and
launched two destructive wars to protect Americans against a hazard,
terrorism, that most years kills fewer people than bee stings and lightning
strikes."
This is glib. Perhaps some of GW Bush's policies prevented a large scale
attack such as 9/11 from recurring. Many terrorist plots have been foiled
since then.
~~~
eesmith
And perhaps this rock keeps tigers away -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSVqLHghLpw)
.
A lot of the 'terrorist plots' the government has found seem more contrived
than meaningful. Eg, cases where if the government had done nothing, then it
seems likely that nothing still would have happened.
Certainly we know that funding was taken away from monitoring and
investigating white supremacist terrorism networks in the US in order to look
for external ones connected to Moslem. And we know that more people and damage
has occurred from white supremacist terrorism.
So, from an equally specious argument, perhaps some of GW Bush's policies lead
to more deaths from terrorism.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
AT&T paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to Trump attorney for Net Neutrality - nafizh
https://medium.com/@fightfortheftr/at-t-paid-200-000-to-trumps-attorney-michael-cohen-and-the-payments-stop-right-after-trump-s-3356687f4827
======
forapurpose
The linked article is a piece of advocacy on Medium. Probably the Reuters
story to which they link is a better source for HN:
[https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-daniels-
at-t/at...](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-daniels-at-t/att-
payments-to-trump-lawyer-more-than-reported-source-idUSKBN1IA2KK)
They also mention a Washington Post story, but there's no link to it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
How tech's richest plan to save themselves after the apocalypse - Kemet
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/23/tech-industry-wealth-futurism-transhumanism-singularity
======
ALittleLight
Maybe I'm just in a skeptical mood this morning, but I have a hard time
believing that a cabal of really rich CEO types are going to turn to a single
person to field technology questions ranging from crypto currency preferences
to how you manage your guards in a dystopian future.
The intro to the article has the author reviewing a wide and diverse number of
topics with these business guys for an hour. It made me curious what his
qualifications were. His website mentioned that he's a "Professor of Media
Theory and Digital Economics at CUNY/Queens". Again, not the first person I'd
turn to if I wanted to talk technology.
I just have a hard time believing the story in the beginning. The author
thought he'd be giving a presentation to an audience. Instead, he's in an hour
long counseling session with some executives. Why would they do it that way?
Why wouldn't you tell the expert what you're doing in advance and the topics
you're interested in so he'd have time to prepare? Why not talk to individual
domain experts in subjects you're curious about?
~~~
dmode
Yeah, that's the first thing I thought. Note that their questions were also
not limited to technology, but veered into philosophical questions like "how
do I maintain authority". If the author is an expert in that many fields,
probably deserves his speaking fees.
------
dk1138
I'm not wealthy. I've had these same concerns. My wife and I have looked at
locations to buy a house in an area that is least likely to be impacted by
shifting weather, has farmable land, and is isolated from the coasts to avoid
the ~1Bil+ migration once the mideast gets too hot.
There are a lot of really smart people on this site. Am I being crazy? I look
at the modern political scene and things going the opposite way of
improvement. I look at corporate endeavors to privatize vital commodities
(looking at you, Nestle and water). We are seeing each year get worse and
worse from a climate perspective, and while there are a lot of brilliant
scientists and engineers working through solutions, a lot of eager youth to
fix the sins of their elders—is it too late? Or at the very least, isn't it a
valid to think that we may be too late and plan accordingly?
For the mega-rich, how is the process different from any other time in
history? Isn't the answer to build an army?
~~~
blacksmith_tb
I am skeptical there will be an 'Event', something more like a gradual decline
seems more likely (so, more British Empire than Roman). But if there were a
complete collapse, I doubt your preparations could be really save you. Or in
other words, it isn't the apocalypse if you can survive it.
~~~
arethuza
The British Empire was at its peak in 1922 and was largely gone by the 1960s -
I think that is actually rather faster than the decline of the Roman Empire!
edit: 1992 to 1922
~~~
sp332
-
~~~
DoreenMichele
I assume they mean _18_ 92\. But, I dunno, maybe time travel is a thing, even
at the global level. ;)
------
olefoo
The thing is; there won't be a "the Event" there will only be a long emergency
and it's already in progress. Systems won't fail all at once and new temporary
systems will be built as things change.
But if these fools think that that they will be able to keep their power and
influence by doing the same things that made them wealthy they will be an
amusing and schadenfreude inducing sideshow that most people will barely
notice because they're too busy figuring out how to beat the heat.
The way to survive the transitions we are facing now is not to use today's
wealth and influence to make yourself a warlord of a post-apocalyptic desert.
It's to build cooperative societies that can make deserts bloom in difficult
places and provide shelter from the storms to come. You cannot expect to
maintain effective technologically adept societies by fear and coercion. You
must be able to offer hope and inspiration if you want assistance of any level
of cognitive complexity.
~~~
GW150914
The funny thing is really that they’ll hoard resources and power, but all of
their power will mean nothing. A warlord isn’t some clever, greedy dick, it’s
the guy who murders that dick and takes over his hoard. If you really want to
prepare for an apocalypse, be the head of one of these idiots’ private armies.
When it falls apart, you casually blow his brains out and take over.
~~~
olefoo
Keeping a private army fed, equipped and healthy is a hard problem; especially
if you cannot rely on the large scale infrastructure systems that provide all
of the advanced technology, effective medical care and civil order we take for
granted.
What you are describing is a fantasy that would collapse with the first
cholera outbreak.
------
JTbane
Pretty saddening to read- instead of spending their billions to fight climate
change, the rich have the "fuck you get mine" viewpoint. Hell, some of 'em
probably made their fortunes on coal and oil.
Then again this could just be human nature.
~~~
wolfgke
> Pretty saddening to read- instead of spending their billions to fight
> climate change
A pretty good way to fight climate change would be to mostly stop breeding,
because fewer people means less energy consumption and thus less climate
change.
~~~
tuesdayrain
Unfortunately the people who should consider breeding less will never consider
this. And anyone on HN who is conscientious enough to actually stop
reproducing because of this post will probably cause a net loss for society by
doing so.
~~~
cmiles74
AFAIK, there's no scientific basis for this argument, it strikes me as tone
deaf and possibly racist or classist. While there is some basis on which to
argue that genes may influence intelligence, it is certainly not the easiest
or most direct way to influence intelligence: education, economic and social
stability, general health, etc.
If everyone on HN stopped having children, I am sure the world would get along
just fine.
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2016/09/16/no-r...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilywillingham/2016/09/16/no-
research-has-not-established-that-you-inherited-your-intelligence-from-your-
mother/#71f3dcf76502)
~~~
darwin142
From your own source "While maybe half of our intelligence as we currently
define and measure it is inherited."
So the author admits that probably half of intelligence is inherited. Seems
obvious then that education, economic status, environment etc. while
contributing are substantially less important that genetics.
~~~
cmiles74
It sounds like you are arguing that manipulating genetics is an easier way to
encourage intelligence then education and environment. Is that really what you
are trying to say?
Because that sounds ridiculous to me.
~~~
darwin142
Really? Care to point out which part of "Seems obvious then that education,
economic status, environment etc. while contributing are substantially less
important that genetics" implies that I think manipulating genes is easier
than changing education or environment?
~~~
manicdee
The part where you claim that the easiest part to manipulate is the most
important contributor to intelligence.
~~~
darwin142
Considering I never even used the word manipulate your attempt at putting
words in my mouth is even more see through than the previous reply's.
------
OliverJones
Check out Neal Stephenson's fine novel SEVENEVES for a vision of what happens
at The Event.
Yeah, and the final few minutes of Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove.
These plutocrats are indulging themselves in a fantasy about their inherent
superiority.
------
Steltek
It's intriguing to see rich people feeling just as out of control as the rest
of the planet's population. I wonder what that really says about the current
state of society? It seems like wealth inequality really benefits no one at
all.
~~~
na85
Well, I know that I don't have the funds to preemptively build a giant
shelter, wall off some fertile land, and then store some seeds in the shelter
so that I can grow food after society collapses. I can't afford to buy a giant
container ship and ride out the apocalypse offshore by farming on the deck,
away from the angry mobs.
But I bet Thiel or Zuck could afford that.
Seems to me that wealth is a definite means to surviving "the Event".
~~~
GW150914
A giant container ship with food is just pirate bait. A walled off region full
of food is raider bait. Hoarding resources in the face of desperate people in
the absence of law and order is suicide, but these guys can’t conceive of a
future in which they don’t command some form of control and respect so they
plan this way.
The only feasible way to survive long term is either to form a large, well
armed group of raiders, or a larger, better armed community full of skilled
people who have each others’ backs, probably intermarried and interbred; clans
and tribes in other words.
~~~
na85
You might be right but I think that's entirely beside and irrelevant to my
point, which is that with money, you have a greater capacity to effect change
of any sort than without. Including in terms of prepping for the apocalypse.
~~~
GW150914
How is it irrelevant that the day after the apocalypse, when money is
meaningless and law and order are gone, all of that preparation is just free
for the taking by someone stronger? What does a CEO have to offer in that
scenario? Leadership? Lol. No. Unless their prepping isn’t all about relying
on people they pay to do things for them, they’re screwed.
Before an apocalypse they have a lot of power, but only as long as they’re
still just trying to accrue wealth. Within the system of scrabbling formevery
nickel and dime, they have power, but outside of that? For all of his massive
wealth and philanthropy, Bill Gates for example, is hardly saving the world.
------
dsabanin
I feel like this rich people paranoia can be summed up as an old adage: the
more you have, the more you are afraid to lose it.
~~~
igolden
Right. "No one would help me protect my bunker out of respect, trust. Let's
put electric collars on all the guards and horde the food source."
------
ggg9990
I’ve read so many stories about these plans and they all have the same flaw...
nothing stops an ex-Navy SEAL from taking all of this stuff from them when
money is worth nothing (as it will be in an apocalypse)
------
nohat
What percentage of your networth is considered socially acceptable to spend on
preparing for disasters? For a billionaire buying a new zealand vacation home
is like most of us spending a couple hundred bucks on, eg a water filter,
first aid kit, and non perishable food, standard preparations that FEMA
recommends.
~~~
cmiles74
I think this is a big part of the problem. That the 1% has become so insanely
wealthy that they believe it is less expensive to prepare for the end of the
world rather than take on some the cost of preventing it. Their belief that it
would be better to start over with a small population (the 1% themselves,
obvs) then to work to improve the world as it currently stands. And, of
course, the naive belief that they can make plans robust enough they might
somehow survive "The Event".
~~~
mariushn
Playing devil's advocate: Why wouldn't the 1% plan work?
They would settle in NZ & AU, with a marine army defending against the rest of
the world, which would be busy anyway fighting for survival against one
another and climate. Use latest tech to keeps these lands habitable and self-
sustaining. Maybe even expand to a space station in 50 years.
~~~
cmiles74
I think it's just too brittle.
If we look for examples of similar bunkers, there are a couple military sites
but nothing (AFAIK) that's been inhabited long term. Their concerns about
keeping the guards on their side seems valid, that could turn out to be
intractable. If the whole world does crumble, they'll have to be able to build
everything from raw materials, including sourcing all of those raw materials.
And so on and so forth.
~~~
mariushn
We're talking about 2 small continents: entire AU & NZ, not bunkers. They can
definitely be self-sustaining.
~~~
394549
> We're talking about 2 small continents: entire AU & NZ, not bunkers. They
> can definitely be self-sustaining.
Why would the existing populations of AU & NZ consent to becoming the subjects
of some billionaire aristocracy? We're talking about millions of people formed
into actual nation states with sizable and competent militaries. Not even the
combined private security forces of 100 billionaires and 1,000 millionaires
could take control and dominate something that large. Elon Musk isn't going to
be able to wow them into submission with minisubs and beads.
------
jorblumesea
What world will you inherit, provided you survive? Short term thinking is
exactly the problem. We are all in this together, and your millions in stocks
and etfs are worth nothing if the entire world goes to shit.
Sadly Gates is the outlier, not the norm, when it comes to how you use wealth.
------
sandworm101
Fools and thier money. If they want to spend thier millions preping for the
zombie outbreak, so be it. Id rather them hire people to build bunkers than
sink those dollars into bitcoin futures.
------
carapace
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3)
> Purporting to be an investigation into the UK's contemporary "brain drain",
> Alternative 3 uncovered a plan to make the Moon and Mars habitable in the
> event of climate change and a terminal environmental catastrophe on
> Earth.[1]
> The programme was originally meant to be broadcast on April Fools' Day,
> 1977.
------
igolden
Def going to start referring to the apocalypse as "The Event" from now on.
~~~
ForHackernews
Don't think about The Event!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X888i7hzvP0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X888i7hzvP0)
------
sp332
Lots of discussion from when this was first posted on Medium.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17468558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17468558)
------
ordinaryradical
This article misses how "unbridled capitalism" has radically improved the
lives of the global poor. While I consider myself left-leaning, but it's
amazing how often left-of-center folks get this one wrong. I don't want a
corporate dystopia either, but the number of people that have been lifted out
of extreme poverty by the globalized economy is staggering.
What I think these articles truly represent is the psychic unease of the
Western middle class, which has not been helped by this revolution but has
seen their influence and social mobility wane. They realize (rightly, I think)
that their societies face an existential risk from extremely concentrated
wealth and concoct these narratives as a way of trying to signal that problem.
~~~
darwin142
So we have improved the lives of some and toxified our planet in the process,
potentially making it completely unlivable. Do you actually think that is a
good deal?
~~~
AJRF
get a grip, of course its not.
------
sunstone
Bezos' 10000 year clock would be a good place to hide a hidey hole like these
guys are planning.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Former salesman stole company property, what to do? - jamesjguthrie
Hi guys,<p>A former salesman for my company was asked to return a tablet and 3G dongle that was provided with his contract. He failed to do so, claiming it was lost in the post. He then said he would cover the costs when he got paid in June. He has not done so and now does not reply to communications.<p>What should I do now?
======
IanDrake
Small claims court, or hire a lawyer to write a nasty letter and hope he gets
scared into keeping his word, or just drop it and move on.
I'd go with small claims court. But that's just me.
------
lifeguard
If you are in the USA, there is a document you can file with your local
sheriff's office. If properly completed, deputies will track down the person,
serve a warrant to search business and home, and recover the items.
It would be better to just let the salesperson know you plan to file this
form, and ask them to make you whole. Because the deputies may seize and
search ALL the computers at the residence, then determine what is stolen. They
may find drugs/guns/illegal porn during the search and they will prosecute.
------
staunch
Just let it go.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PEP 530: Asynchronous Comprehensions in Python 3.6 - 1st1
https://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0530/
======
gigatexal
Let's make this happen.
~~~
1st1
Totally :) I'm the author of the PEP, btw. Will be glad to answer questions.
~~~
gigatexal
Can you speak a bit more how this would evaluate with generators? I mean
they're more or less lazily created to begin with what do we gain from using
async? I guess I'm curious how it works behind the scenes
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
North Korea: Could Google open up the dictatorship? - mtgx
http://www.channel4.com/news/north-korea-could-google-open-up-the-dictatorship
======
gwern
No. It's not even worth discussing, the possibility is so tiny and slim.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
HSLuv, a developer friendly perceptual color space - kuon
https://www.kuon.ch/post/2020-03-08-hsluv/
======
boulos
Interesting! I hadn't heard of HSLuv. The original writeup / blog post [1]
seems more informative though on "why" (hsluv.org is not a very interesting
landing page).
I'm a little sad (disclosure: co-author) that we didn't make oRGB [2] more
popular. Perhaps we should put some source code online?
[1] [https://www.boronine.com/2012/03/26/Color-Spaces-for-
Human-B...](https://www.boronine.com/2012/03/26/Color-Spaces-for-Human-
Beings/)
[2]
[https://www.cs.utah.edu/~bratkova/research/projects/orgb/org...](https://www.cs.utah.edu/~bratkova/research/projects/orgb/orgb.pdf)
~~~
tommysavaria
I was curious to see how oRGB worked in practice so I made some code to test
this, and uploaded to a JS fiddle:
[https://jsfiddle.net/phv7x39q/1/](https://jsfiddle.net/phv7x39q/1/)
It is a very naive implementation, more work could be put in optimizing it.
Once I got around to fiddling with it I understood what the paper explained.
I'm not new to colorspaces or matrix transformations but it is hard sometimes
to grasp the concept from the paper.
~~~
jes5199
I think you have a bug - the rotation is supposed to be in the opposite
direction if the red-green value is below zero. The paper doesn't make that
very clear.
------
leeoniya
> HSLuv is already available for many languages
btw, the JS port is not perf-optimized (it's a straight compilation from haxe
to js).
i hand-ported the C version [1] locally that avoids heap-allocating any
objects or arrays, which makes it about 40% faster. i'm hoping it gets to
replace the "official" js port at some point, but i still need to run it
through all the tests [2]. if anyone is interested in helping out with this
(i'm tight on time right now), i'll publish it.
initial benchmark of 100k random RGB triplets completes in 100ms in Chrome 80
and 60ms in Firefox 73, on a pretty average Core i5-7500T @ 2.70GHz. 1M
triplets is 680ms in chrome and 421ms in firefox. the official JS port gets
934ms in Chrome and 545ms in Firefox for 1M triplets.
For reference, a typical jpeg image contains < 300k unique colors.
[1] [https://github.com/hsluv/hsluv-c](https://github.com/hsluv/hsluv-c)
[2]
[https://github.com/hsluv/hsluv-c/blob/master/tests/scripts/s...](https://github.com/hsluv/hsluv-c/blob/master/tests/scripts/snapshot-
rev4.json)
~~~
tobr
Not sure how much help I would be, but if it’s any encouragement I would very
much appreciate a “real” JS version. I looked at the JS version of HSLUV just
the other week and was bummed that it was compiled from Haxe.
~~~
throwaway3157
> was bummed that it was compiled from Haxe
Why do you need a "real" JS version? Is it that you want to be able to
read/edit from a human-source, rather than a Haxe-compiled source (which I
assume is less legible)?
------
gravitystorm
I use HSLuv for designing our maps at Thunderforest. The map stylesheet
language we use is CartoCSS, and it has built-in support for HSLuv since 2016.
[https://cartocss.readthedocs.io/en/latest/language_elements....](https://cartocss.readthedocs.io/en/latest/language_elements.html#color)
I can really recommend using HSLuv for this kind of thing. I used to use
regular RGB values (like #f2cdaa), but it's hard to make features on the map
"a bit less blue" without accidentally changing other properties. For example,
changing #f2cdaa to #f2cd88 makes it less blue, but also darker.
So a few years ago I switched to using HSL in our stylesheets (and using the
HSL tab in the Inkscape colour picker) which makes it easier to reason about
the colour changes. But there's still some problems with HSL, as the article
describes. For example when choosing road colours, I often want to keep the
saturation and lightness the same, but when I make minor roads yellow the
change in hue really changes the perceived brightness in HSL.
So HSLuv is great for what I do, since I know that if I get the brightness and
saturation of the roads the way I want, I can mess around with the hue without
any side effects. Or if I like the colour of the forests but want them
slightly less saturated, again no side effects when I make changes.
The big drawback is that there aren't many colour pickers available in HSLuv,
mainly just the one on [https://www.hsluv.org/](https://www.hsluv.org/) . I
haven't found e.g. HSLuv colour picker plugins for Inkscape or the GIMP yet.
~~~
jpxw
The "outdoors" demo image on
[https://www.thunderforest.com/](https://www.thunderforest.com/) is literally
2 minutes away from where I grew up!
------
jordansmithnz
Tangential - this reminds me of a tricky bug I once fixed.
I had this code that lets you choose a brighter or darker variant of a color
palette, and initially bright yellow looked awfully close to white, so I
decided to do this conversion through CIELAB (similar to HSLuv). Some
unrelated code was storing these colors in the cloud using hex format, and
clients would sync these colors back and forth with the cloud.
Usually, everything worked great. I had no problems, however a couple of users
started emailing to complain that their colors had ‘disappeared’! As in - the
stored colors had become transparent. I spent at least a few hours auditing
syncing code, but found nothing.
A few weeks later I stumbled on the issue by chance: if you select dark green
(this specific color configuration only), the color would eventually become
transparent.
The thing is - some platforms (e.g. iOS) support wide color, which use RGB
values outside the 0 to 1 range. Green would go through the CIELAB brightness
conversion, and come out with a negative number for one of the RGB values.
This is OK, until you convert it to hex and send it to the cloud for
syncing... naive color -> hex conversion will freak out with negative numbers.
This got sent to the cloud, and later on, the cloud would send this back to
the client, which would use it as a source of truth (and so dark green colors
would disappear).
The fix was to write a less naive hex converter. This was a few years back,
perhaps by now most color -> hex libraries consider this case.
~~~
smohare
This sounds more like a fundamental misunderstanding of color spaces (and
gamuts) than anything.
~~~
jordansmithnz
Do you mind explaining that? If you increase the brightness of a color space
like RGB or HSL, the perceived brightness color increase is different
depending on hue.
This is why CIELAB was used, because like the linked HSLuv color space, you
can increase brightness across hues with the same perceived brightness shift.
The fact that CIELAB can covert to RGB values outside the usual range is fine,
e.g. negative values are fine in wide RGB color space.
~~~
mark-r
Wide RGB color support is almost non-existent.
~~~
jordansmithnz
Every iPhone since the iPhone 7 supports wide color RGB by default...
~~~
mark-r
It depends on how you define "wide color". Yes they use a color space with a
wider gamut, but if you're trying to display a regular JPEG image it won't
look any different.
~~~
jordansmithnz
Yep, most JPEG images might not look different, however the OS allows RGB
values outside the regular range for any color specific API. When working
directly with colors, the wide color support is still relevant (and for me,
led to the bug I described - devices prior to iPhone 7 didn’t exhibit the bug,
because the OS clamped RGB values to the standard range.).
------
Tade0
Somewhat related:
A friend of mine designed a color palette for terminals based on the Solarized
set, but with some improvements:
[https://github.com/jan-warchol/selenized](https://github.com/jan-
warchol/selenized)
------
dllu
I am a big fan of HSLuv and I use it for generating colourschemes for lidar
point clouds:
[https://daniel.lawrence.lu/public/colortransform/#0_2584_964...](https://daniel.lawrence.lu/public/colortransform/#0_2584_964_49_6_2624_722_363_10_3248_906_559_15_415_961_731)
which is used for videos such as this:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNt8D1mfwwo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNt8D1mfwwo)
~~~
pottertheotter
That's really cool! I've always wanted to map my yard and house like that, but
I imagine it would be quite expensive. I'm on a hill and it would make it so
easy to play around with landscaping ideas without having to measure a ton.
Also, it's crazy how easy it is to recognize homes from SF!
~~~
rebuilder
Photogrammetry should be accurate enough for that purpose. Just make sure to
include some reference object for scale.
A drone would probably be the best way to shoot the photos for this.
------
azhenley
I really like this. I’ve been working on a retro game for my students that
only allows for 256 colors. I was planning on using the 216 web safe colors,
but I think using a perfectly spaced out set of 256 colors using HSLuv would
be more logical.
Any other ideas?
~~~
jmiskovic
Web safe colors are completely useless for graphics. Really poor choice of
colors.
256 is far too many to pick from :) People do their best work when they are
under severe constraints. I would recommend a palette that was put together
manually without algorithms because someone made sure that colors actually fit
well together. My go to source for such project is this site:
[https://lospec.com/palette-list/](https://lospec.com/palette-list/)
------
sberder
I'm really not a specialist in color theory but have been looking for a
library that could consistently return colors for multi charts with no defined
number of lines. Most color palettes are a set size (5, 6, 8 colors) but I
currently need to chart things with an unknown number of lines. Any suggestion
from the mind hive?
~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Rotate hues with an increment of phi (1.618...). It maximizes average distance
between colors.
It is discussed at the end of the sinebow article:
[https://basecase.org/env/on-rainbows](https://basecase.org/env/on-rainbows)
~~~
mark-r
I love the Sinebow! It's a natural solution to a problem nobody ever talks
about - the colors made by combining two primaries are unnaturally bright
compared to a single primary. The way our monitors work, those colors emit
twice as many photons. That's OK for yellow because we expect it to be bright,
but magenta and cyan just look too garish.
------
monokai_nl
Colors are hard. Mixing colors is harder. Yesterday I launched a new tool [1]
to automatically create pleasing gradients aimed at web devs.
It uses ideas similar to the ones described in the article. But the hard part
with dark-to-light color gradients is determining what's a pleasing darker or
lighter variant of a color. There's a lot of subjectivity involved. You cannot
objectively determine a certain color that lies "between" two other colors.
Anyway, I hope my tool helps with quickly creating a nice CSS color gradient.
[1] [https://mybrandnewlogo.com/color-gradient-
generator](https://mybrandnewlogo.com/color-gradient-generator)
------
tobr
Maybe someone in this thread would have an answer to this question: how do you
interpolate between two colors in HSLUV? Just interpolating each parameter
doesn’t give the right result, since eg mixing two saturated complementary
colors would create an equally saturated color, rather than some shade of
gray.
Converting to CIELUV and mixing there doesn’t seem safe since I don’t think
it’s a “convex” color space; you run the risk of ending up with colors that
can’t be reproduced properly on a screen.
~~~
anchpop
You almost always want to convert to CIELAB when doing things like averaging
or interpolating colors. It is true that the sRGB gamut in CIELAB is not
convex - this is less of an issue if you can use bigger color spaces like
scRGB but that is often not the case. My advice in this case is to do as much
as you can in LAB and then clamp your output to the range of values supported
by your color space - i.e. if you get RGB(100, 300, -10) convert that to
RGB(100, 255, 0). There are more sophisticated things you can do if you have
to but this situation doesn't come up super often so it's not really worth the
trouble in most cases.
~~~
jfkebwjsbx
Why not convert to linear sRGB (with higher bits per sample) instead?
Something like what PNG supports for 16-bits. Does that give incorrect results
too compared to going through CIELAB?
~~~
anchpop
For interpolation, averaging, etc. anything based on RGB is not going to give
good results. For example, if you average pure red and pure blue, you should
get something like pure purple. But if you do that in RGB you'll get #7f007f,
a much darker color than either pure red or pure blue. If you do it with LAB,
you'll get #ca0088, which is perceptually about as bright as either of the
colors you started with.
~~~
ThJ
It helps to use linear gamma when manipulating RGB values. Linear gamma fixes
most issues with interpolating and mixing RGB values and that’s also why most
modern CG pipelines use it. It produces the most natural results.
~~~
mark-r
Yes linear gamma generates the most natural results, because that's the way
physical light combines. Gamma was a great invention for display and
transmission but it sure wrecked our ability to mix colors.
------
pansa2
Isn’t CIELUV more-or-less deprecated now, in favour of CIELAB?
Is there a reason that HSLuv is based on the former (and isn’t “HSLab”
instead)?
~~~
deltron3030
AB coordinates are a bit unintuitive, it's easier to visualize hues around a
circle and have separate values for luminance and chroma, that's why people
who work with color usually prefer LCH/HCL (Luminance, Chroma, Hue).
Chroma values in LCH differ between Hues, because each Hue has a different
potential and max value. That's where HSLuv comes in, where chroma is a
percentage value and therefore relative to the Hue, instead of an absolute
one. This gives HCL similar usage ergonmics like HSL, thus the name HSLuv.
~~~
pansa2
But it’s possible to construct an LCh color space from either CIELAB or
CIELUV. Why choose the one that’s less widely-used?
~~~
deltron3030
Sure, but chroma is absolute in LCh, which makes it hard to use for color
generation. 100% chroma in HSLuv is the highest value of a particular hue in
LCh.
------
Grustaf
Well written and very interesting article, but I think it would benefit from
being more visually pleasing, especially the palette examples! Seeing that it
deals with aesthetics....
------
0xdeadb00f
Maybe tangential, but what a great looking website!
------
qwerty456127
Green certainly looks darker than pink and blue at some point.
~~~
kuon
Yeah, it's not perfect, and I suspect we don't see colors the same way
(monitor not calibrated the same way, and even our vision might be different),
but it is "good enough" to avoid common pitfalls like having white text on
yellow.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
JPMorgan Chase CEO denounces bitcoin as ‘terrible,’ predicts its downfall - lettergram
http://rt.com/usa/chase-ceo-bitcoin-terrible-downfall-100/
======
codex
Most people don't use currency to store value. Their value is stored in stocks
(not bonds) retirement plans, real estate, gold. Those instruments have value
independent of currency. They do keep some petty cash stored in a bank,
virtualized, lent out for others to use.
------
johng
It doesn't surprise me that he predicts the downfall of bitcoin. A more apt
description is that he HOPES for the downfall of bitcoin and all other
crytocurrencies as it means that banks will lose a ton of business and control
of the money.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Psychedelic drugs reduce depressive symptoms by helping people accept emotions - InInteraction
https://www.psypost.org/2020/08/psychedelic-drugs-reduce-depressive-symptoms-by-helping-individuals-to-accept-of-their-emotions-study-suggests-57654
======
is_this_valid2
> _" The only way to handle danger is to face it. If you start getting
> frightened of it, then you make it worse; because you project onto it all
> kinds of bogeys and threats that don't exist at all._
> [...]
> _The rule for all terrors is head straight into them. When you are sailing
> in a storm, you don 't let a wave hit your boat on the side. You go bow into
> the wave and ride it. So in the same way, old folklore says, whenever you
> meet a ghost don't run away, because the ghost will capture the substance of
> your fear and will materialize itself out of your own substance and will
> kill you eventually, because it will take over all your own vitality. So
> then, whenever confronted with a ghost, walk straight into it and it will
> disappear."_
— Alan Watts
Coping skills:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coping](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coping)
Defence mechanisms § Level 4: mature:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanisms#Level_4:_ma...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defence_mechanisms#Level_4:_mature)
------
acituan
Note that this study is not a controlled trial. It is measuring 358 people
_who already were going to use psychedelics_ , before and after their use.
What is severely missing is any report on incidence of _adverse reactions_ ,
especially since they have two subsamples, one within traditional contexts and
other completely self administered, which I would guess have different
strategies on handling those. Anyone who experienced a bad trip can attest
that set & setting matters a lot, and psychedelic experiences are far from
_guaranteed_ to be curative. For example for people high in neuroticism
psychedelics can cause challenging experiences which can increase neuroticism
even further. We don't know if those populations were screened out, implicitly
or explicitly. [1]
[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5540159/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5540159/)
~~~
PragmaticPulp
Thanks for linking the actual study.
The selection bias in studies like these is massive. Including only people who
actively planned to use psychedelics is a guaranteed way to bias your results
toward people who are already true believers. People who voluntarily chose to
seek out psychedelics, despite high legal consequences for doing so, are
likely already convinced that the psychedelics will "work" for whatever goal
they're trying to achieve. Selecting these people over the internet will only
further concentrate the group toward people who enjoy discussing and
researching this topic online. In short, they optimized the test group for
maximum placebo effect.
It's fascinating to watch how internet comments will quickly tear apart any
study of prescription medication that has obvious sampling bias, lacks control
groups, and relies on self-reported information gathered from internet surveys
_except_ when the study tells people what they want to hear.
I'm all for the resurgence of proper, controlled research into psychedelics
for treating mental health issues in conjunction with therapy. Let's get to
the bottom of this and draw some scientific conclusions on the matter.
However, questionable studies like this do more harm than good for the body of
research. It may feel good to see studies that claim positive results, but the
more we build the body of research on top of obviously flawed studies like
this, the harder it is for serious researchers and lawmakers to take it
seriously.
~~~
im3w1l
Even with all the caveats it's still interesting. It suggests that if someone
is determined to use psychedelics to self-medicate their depression, you
should not try to stop them.
A priori you might think there is is a high likelihood that the drug use will
just make everything worse.
~~~
acituan
> It suggests that if someone is determined to use psychedelics to self-
> medicate their depression, you should not try to stop them.
That is precisely the bias and weakness of this study. Self-medication is
almost always a red flag; why not do it in a context of other people that know
their stuff, be it tradition, institution (therapy) or even close friends that
are mutually invested in each other's long term well-being? DIY approaches to
self-transformation are fragile; no one to hold you out of potential pitfalls,
to protect you from re-traumatization, to call you out on your self-deception.
The title of the article that it "reduces depressive _symptoms_ " is also
telling of this bias. If _symptom reduction_ was equivocal to enduring
_transformation_ , weed, cocaine and alcohol would have already healed the
entire world. Without the study measuring if the subjects transformed their
lives in a way that they were equally symptom free for the next 6 months, 1
year, 5 years, we can't conclude anything curative really took place.
Don't get me wrong, they make a theoretical link to ACT in which experiencing
of chronically difficult emotions are facilitated, which does offer
potentially huge benefits, but just like we don't use studies on
antidepressants that show symptom reduction to go shop bunch of prozac, we
shouldn't readily assume we can use this one to facilitate our own healing in
a DIY fashion either.
------
phoe-krk
Accepting emotions in their _whole_ shape and size as they are and occur is
something that I've been struggling with (and am still struggling with) since
childhood, especially since the way I've been brought up essentially repressed
expressing or even exhibiting whole classes of emotional reactions.
Psychotherapy works in my case, but is also long, painful, and tiring.
Any kind of scientific (and legal) development in other means of helping in
this matter will be beneficial for future people who will need to suffer less
after prolonged psychological stress and/or trauma.
~~~
sowbug
Working through personal issues with the help of psychedelic mushrooms will
still be emotionally painful and tiring -- that's unavoidable with this kind
of work -- but it's potentially not as long because you're communicating with
parts of yourself at the speed of thought and shared context rather than with
another person at the speed of speech.
As for legality, if you have the means to visit certain US cities¹, you can
try psychedelic mushrooms with less risk, as they have been decriminalized in
those cities. They are still not legal, but the risk of legal consequences is
smaller.
¹[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin_decriminalization_i...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybin_decriminalization_in_the_United_States)
~~~
zozbot234
> but it's potentially not as long because you're communicating with parts of
> yourself at the speed of thought and shared context rather than with another
> person at the speed of speech.
Insight meditation is another way of pursuing this, that does nicely side-step
the issue of having to rely on "mushrooms" and illegal drugs.
------
wombatmobile
From the research article:
> We conducted a prospective cohort study utilizing an online convenience
> sample of individuals with plans to use a psychedelic. Participants were
> recruited via online advertisements shared through social media (e.g.,
> Facebook, Twitter), email newsletters, and online forums (e.g., Reddit).
> Based on when they planned to use a psychedelic, individuals were sent
> emails at three key time points [i.e., 1-week prior to psychedelic use
> (baseline), as well as 2-weeks and 4-weeks post-psychedelic use] reminding
> them to complete the online surveys.
------
ineedasername
I don't think this sort of phenomenon is unique to psychedelics. Anti-anxiety
drugs (Benzos) used carefully for extreme anxiety issues can help reduce
anxiety to a manageable level. It gives a person the opportunity to learn to
manage their anxiety that would be difficult when in an extreme state. Then
reduce the dose, repeat the process, etc.
I'll reiterate though: This needs to be a careful, deliberate process
undertaken with both a pdoc to manage meds and a therapist to assist with
coping skills, along with a close eye that the process is working rather than
the drugs becoming a crutch. And it certainly won't work if the dose is high
enough to eliminate anxiety instead reducing it.
Totally masking negative emotions, be it depression, anxiety, mania, etc....
that should only rarely be an initial goal. Medication should help people
reach a state where those things are manageable, and work from there. Long
term medication is absolutely a necessary option, but should be an approach
taken when problems have been shown to be recalcitrant to various treatment
options designed to help a person overcome the root causes of their problems.
I fully understand that such a goal is often not attainable though. I'm often
frustrated by folks who say otherwise and espouse some cure-all like a keto
diet or various supplements, or plenty of other such things. It's great if it
works for a person, but they are, at their core, body-changing treatments
themselves, and just like all medications for these issues, whether or not
they work for a person is often hit or miss.
------
biophysboy
Having taken psychedlics myself, it did a couple things for me:
1) gave me a better appreciation of my body - health, pain, stress, etc
2) helped me know what I enjoy most
~~~
steve_adams_86
I’d echo that and add that it refreshes my perception of the otherwise
mundane. This is extremely helpful in allowing me to reevaluate things,
internal or external. I have a bad habit of being too sure of myself, often
pessimistically, and I suppose in a way this does reduce depression as the
study suggests. I find it lifts weights off, provides more optimism where it
was missing and less pessimism where it wasn’t helpful.
I’ve also seen it lead to trembling terror and nihilism in others so it’s very
much a YMMV kind of thing.
------
Alex3917
The headline is a pretty good summary of the situation. Although it might be
more accurate to say that psychedelic drugs help people see the
interconnectedness between good and bad things, which helps people come to
terms with difficult experiences.
~~~
steve_adams_86
For me, the ability to see that interconnectedness between good and bad
largely results from a subdued reaction to how those things make me feel. I
can think about it more, think about it differently than I normally would,
rather than shut it out and carry on.
------
mensetmanusman
Drugs to repress emotions
Drugs to accept emotions
Drugs to create emotions
~~~
genericone
It does sound a bit bleak. Are these drugs better or worse than the
animalistic hormones locked in our bodies? Mature adults know how to handle
the surging hormones that destroy teen emotions, maybe humans can learn to
deal with drugs... but only with constant exposure, just the same as we've
done in all our adolescence.
I am in no way for or against such drugs, having not experienced any
psychedelics or behavior control drugs in my entire life. Just a philosophical
thought I had after I read your comment.
~~~
OneGuy123
I'd like to point out something: "Mature adults know how to handle the surging
hormones...."
This is not true for 99.99% of adults: proof: if adults would know how to
control "hormones" they would never experience fear, doubt, anxiety,...
Issue in most cases seems to be repressed childhood emotions.
~~~
genericone
I hope I will always be able to feel fear and doubt, and that no drug can
steal that experience from me. Just as people who can't feel physical pain are
in tremendous danger every moment of their life, without the ability to feel
fear or doubt, you would also be ignorant of danger.
Anxiety is another beast right? Anxiety is the negative reaction to fear and
doubt. Lets leave adults out, mature individuals can handle small amounts of
anxiety.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What do you strive for when you are programming? - hoodoof
======
DyslexicAtheist
"flow", which is a concept / phenomenon studied by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. It
is not just limited to software engineering: [http://blog.valbonne-
consulting.com/2014/09/24/flow-the-addi...](http://blog.valbonne-
consulting.com/2014/09/24/flow-the-addiction-behind-programming/)
~~~
afarrell
In contrast, I strive to avoid flow. I find that when I get into flow, I skip
over things and write overly-clever code.
------
angersock
To drive developers before me, and to hear the lamentations of their users--
that is what is best in life.
~~~
chao-
Hot water, good dentistry, and high coverage in unit tests.
------
greydius
My highest priority is writing code that is maintainable, so I strive for
modularity, appropriate abstractions, and comprehensive tests.
~~~
droidist2
Exactly this. Too often I see people focusing on performance as their top
concern for no good reason.
------
siscia
It depends on whom you write the code for and why.
If I write code so that other people can use it I strive for coming out with
the best API possible (for whatever definition of "best" makes sense for the
project) if I write for experiment or fun I just want to get thing done and
see if it works so I write in the most fastest way possible, if there is some
change that I need to work again with the code I try to write it in the most
maintainable way possible.
------
r2dnb
I strive for simplicity: Producing a maintainable and extendable solution
being the simplest possible solution to the problem.
Simple means both easy to understand APIs, healthy internals and judicious use
of abstractions (no overkill).
Producing a complex solution for a complex problem is by my standards mediocre
engineering.
When you focus on simplicity everything follows (and your technical skills
skyrocket because it requires to be extremely skilled to make things simple).
------
afarrell
Clarity, both on my understanding of the problem and in my understanding of my
tools.
Simplicity and readability of my code, my tests, and the notes that accompany
my code. That way someone (including my future self) can understand the
system.
And writing tests first. I've become convinced that there are very very few
cases when I can afford the luxury of _not_ insisting on writing a test first.
------
GFK_of_xmaspast
A paycheck.
~~~
SyneRyder
This made me laugh... but as a solo/indie dev, a primary concern when I'm
coding is that I'm making something valuable that customers will actually pay
for. I might really want to refactor some of my code and make it more elegant,
but that in itself provides no benefit to customers, so I have to remind
myself not to spend too much time on it. The code I write has to be something
that makes customers more money, saves them time, fixes problems, or delights
them even more than previous versions.
------
baccheion
I enjoy coming up with clean and elegant solutions. I enjoy solving the
problem, and producing code that works, works well, is fast, and is
therapeutic to read. I like everything separated out and grouped as
appropriate, I like when there isn't any unnecessary code or complexity, and I
like when the problem is solved completely, precisely, and without any
compromises.
Clear, clean (simple, compact, readable, etc, while still being correct and
complete), elegant, efficient, well-formatted, properly separated and grouped,
optimal (no unnecessary or premature optimizations), etc.
------
probinso
Minimal branching Factor and then fewest lines of code finally modularity
------
bbcbasic
Good abstractions
------
willcate
As few mistakes as possible.
------
vmorgulis
Fun!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Unlimited, free WordPress installs - joeguilmette
http://poopy.life
======
orliesaurus
Can anyone explain what this is? Is it just like a temporary Wordpress
installation?
~~~
joeguilmette
That's exactly what it is. We use this internally for customer support,
product demos, and testing/debugging. Now we're opening it up to the public.
The ridiculous domain name is to prevent people from using it in their own
product demos/support channels. Soon we'll have support for custom URLs and a
real landing page.
------
mthoms
Looks great. The template feature will come in handy.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: NFAs and DFAs - skenney26
Can anyone recommend resources for learning how to implement nondeterministic / deterministic finite automatons in lisp? I'm new to the subject and could use some clear, simple examples to wrap my head around.
======
jlouis
<http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp1.html> is a must read.
Then you should probably listen to
[http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Talks/SwineBeforePe...](http://www.cs.brown.edu/~sk/Publications/Talks/SwineBeforePerl/)
by Shriram Krishnamurthi (I've met him - He is a really cool guy). At that
point you have the ammunition and the gun loaded. You just have to fire it.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Theorists get us closer to believing time travel is possible via the [LHC] - hoag
http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/19/theorists-get-us-closer-to-believing-time-travel-is-possible-via/
======
hoag
Somebody has to make the obvious Star Trek reference here so I guess it might
as well be me: there was an episode of TNG once where the Enterprise kept
being destroyed over and over again, and the only way they were able to "tell
themselves" of impending doom was to send messages "back" informing the "new
past" about the "forthcoming future." Interesting that this article should
articulate this distinction of "messages" vs. even the _possibility_
(theoretical or otherwise) of physical human time travel.
~~~
pbhjpbhj
If you can send a signal then it's reasonable that you can send a signal that
represents a person.
It's just a small extra step to reanimate a person based on communicating
their waveform to the past. Look out for Prestige-style problems though.
/sarcasm
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A Gentle Introduction to Hypervisor Memory Introspection - patchguard
https://medium.com/@hvmi/a-gentle-introduction-to-hvmi-baa91e1571d1
======
patchguard
What HVMI is and how you can use it to monitor and/or protect your VMs.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kindle now $189 - _pius
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Wireless-Reading-Display-Generation/dp/B0015T963C
======
trebor
I got my Sony PRS-300 (no WiFi or 3G) for $115 from Woot, and I love it (never
thought I'd buy, or like, an e-reader). So, why pay for a Nook or Kindle? When
I'm out-and-about with my reader I'm, shock of all shocks, reading with it
(not buying more books).
Thoughts?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Zynga loses $15.8M in Q2, nearly half its daily users year-over-year - bentcorner
http://www.polygon.com/2013/7/25/4557406/zynga-loses-15-8m-and-nearly-half-its-daily-users
======
dakrisht
Still can't figure out, month after month, how this lousy company is still in
business. Some truly mind-blowing stuff here. Zynga folding is now expected.
Mattrick will be gone in < 90 days and then the ship will finish it's descent
into deep waters. Unfortunate for the employees who have been (and are being)
laid off. But this company has always been a model for failure. Ripping off
and blatantly copying games to monetize briefly using FB's platform and then
leveraging the temporary growth into huge VC investments to quickly cash out
and disappear is the epitome of scum leadership and vision.
This company has always been and always will be a pure scam. Period.
~~~
comrade_ogilvy
The niche is growing and will continue to grow into the foreseeable future. So
making a good profit is possible.
However the competition is heating up quickly to nuclear fusion temperatures.
_Every_ useful app or silly game on every smart phone is effectively a direct
competitor -- Zynga needs people obsessing on very certain games for hundreds
of hours, enough time to punch in real dollars on the whim.
Furthermore, this is an inherently unsticky kind of niche. Every customer will
need to be won over again in 12 months or less, as they tire of that one
charming game.
The stock is going to crater...
~~~
dakrisht
_Furthermore, this is an inherently unsticky kind of niche. Every customer
will need to be won over again in 12 months or less, as they tire of that one
charming game._
Full agree with this statement. If you look at titles like Candy Crush, sure,
they're doing amazing right now, pulling in huge numbers (users and revenue) -
but in 3-6 months - they won't be around. Retention will switch over to the
next 45th copy of Bejeweled.
It's actually a very interesting model. The same games are re-created by new
"startup" companies every few months. 1/100 hits and becomes a Top-10 item in
the app store. The game gets huge traction by leveraging FB's massive user
base, company puts together obscene numbers showing engagement, in-app
purchases, growth projections (which end up diving after a few Q's) and then
go out and raise Series-A rounds.
What I CAN'T figure out is - are VCs really this dumb to invest in companies
that won't be around in 12-18 months? Maybe they're not, maybe it's the VC
model that's flawed. Invest in 100 companies @ $1.5-3M per and 1 will go
public or get acquired and we'll make our money back. But this is an entirely
different conversation.
~~~
psuter
It's like watching fireworks and thinking "ooh I really think that purple one
is different!".
~~~
dakrisht
This is how most VC's and kids calling themselves "entrepreneurs" these days
see the world.
If I have to hear one more idiot with an app or another 56th version of a
similar service like Instagram say they're "changing the world" I might lose
it. Ha!
------
moutarde
I think that Zynga's major problem is a about changing markets: Zynga grew
rich making clones of other games and cleverly using web-based-social-
promotion via Facebook to advertise them cheaply. But now they face the same
problem that Facebook itself faces - that more users are now mobile based than
web-based - combined with the fact that much bigger companies are now _not
only_ licencing/cloning games _but also combining them with their existing IP_
which has a much bigger draw for users because of the combined marketing clout
behind it.
For example:
* Disney/Pixar now have two top free to play apps based on combining Temple Run with their existing IP. These games not only follow a proven winning formula, but they also piggy back on the movies marketing budgets to promote the games (to a much larger extent that Zynga could afford)
* Universal Pictures has cloned Temple Run Zynga style (but with much more original flair) to make their Despicable Me app game. Like Disney their massive film marketing budget drives the games success, and rather than users having to "warm up" to new characters, the lovable minions are already there for instant recognition/gratification.
* Rovio has made great strides making their original IP (Angry Birds) worthy of Disney level acclaim, but they've also heavily co-branded (via advertising and Angry Birds Star Wars) in order to increase profits.
~~~
CmonDev
Jetpack Joyride is another clone of Temple Run. And Halfbrick are not that big
and rich.
~~~
russellsprouts
If that's true, then Jetpack Joyride and Temple Run are both clones of the
helicopter game, and every 2d platformer is the same.
------
ChrisNorstrom
Ah yes, the "Shit got old" symptom.
Every startup needs to watch out for this one. Users are aquired in several
different ways, 2 main ones are:
\- Tricking users into your product or service through gimmicks, lies, or
aggressive marketing.
\- Earning users by solving their problem and selling them value.
Zynga did the former and users are getting sick of it. Other examples are
infomercial products, they sell like crazy based on promises and gimmicks and
fade away into oblivion in the mid and long term. Think back to all the things
you've seen on TV (especially exercise products and makeup brands), how many
of them are still around? Despite many of them being successful and collecting
dust in millions of homes' basements, they fizzed out.
~~~
dakrisht
[http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/96024-Zynga-CEO-
Ad...](http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/96024-Zynga-CEO-Admits-to-
Being-a-Scammer)
------
jejacks0n
I don't like the model of paying for a digital object that doesn't do anything
besides bypass a bit of code that makes the experience more laborious or time
delayed.
I personally download these games and play the shit out of them, but never
ever give them money. It becomes a different aspect of the game -- sure, I
have plenty of money to give you, but I don't think I should give it for
something to speed up the experience -- I mean, you designed the experience,
so it becomes a personal challenge until the game becomes boring -- oh, and I
never mention it to anyone else, as to remove the word of mouth part.
I happily pay for good games that don't use this mechanic and tell my friends
about how rad they are. It's how I speak with my wallet.
------
chinmoy
Marco Arment twitted this today and I wholeheartedly agree,
"It’s hard to celebrate a big company’s misfortune since it involves so many
people’s jobs, but fuck Zynga and good riddance to their profit."
------
Vivtek
It's almost as though form-over-content and superstimuli combined with an
easy-cash mentality aren't compatible with long-term profitability! What is
this world coming to!
------
hillary55
Mark Pincus has a Stasi-like scheme which is how Zynga uncovers game ideas and
other business secrets. It involves using the accounts of people under his
influence, use of false identities and phishing. Offering a job in some
company is another way he uses to have victims volunteer information or answer
questions. Not even these tricks has saved Zynga after they lost the
guaranteed traffic deal with Facebook.
Mark Pincus is unlikely to get caught, but as the CEO of a publicly traded
company, supported by Kleiner and others, he was a criminal, like Richard
Nixon but on a smaller scale.
------
jsmcgd
I find it weird how this story/event/business is positioned. Basically Zynga
is a collection of mostly similar games. All popular games follow the same
life cycle. If a game is good, people play the game. The game becomes popular.
Then people get bored of the game, and they stop playing. I feel sorry for
people, especially those at Zynga, who didn't see this.
------
jfb
I wonder about the long term viability of these sorts of pay to win games;
they seem awfully vulnerable to the whims of the platform owners, and they're
easy to paint as more like tobacco than they are to toys or video games.
Personally, I'd like to see them all crushed, their offices burnt to the grown
and sown with salt -- _Zynga delinda est_ and all that.
------
27182818284
Like a lot of people, this just makes me feel vindicated.
As someone who has actually bought Zynga games, I could post you the back-and-
forth, back-and-forth, back-and-forth, email thread I had with their tech
support over the most minor issue, but it wouldn't help anything. (Essentially
there was a minor bug in a game between me and this other player but their
only "solution" was to block the user for 3 days and then restart.)
------
likeclockwork
All those promising companies they bought have been swallowed by the beast and
now die in its belly.
Like Dextrose with their Aves engine.. that looked truly impressive then they
sell out to Zynga and who knows what crapware their innovation is now
powering.
Hopefully some of that sees the light of day again.
------
AndyKelley
Good riddance.
~~~
dakrisht
And in 24 hours, Candy Crush will announce a $100M raise at an $880M valuation
:)
The model is fucked. But I agree with you.
~~~
dj_axl
They've already raised $44 million, and probably have a near $1 billion
valuation.
[http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/01/17/how-king-com-
crushed-...](http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2013/01/17/how-king-com-crushed-
zynga/)
------
panabee
depending on the streaming quality, chromecast could help zynga port games to
the TV and create new types of gaming experiences centered around the TV
(where devices are controllers, and a laptop/desktop is the brain).
~~~
rdl
They're just basically in a holding pattern until they can do "real money
gaming", is what I thought. It's not clear that they have any particular
advantage in real money gaming over either new entrants or existing real money
gaming/gambling companies, though, especially since there seems to have been a
"brain drain" over the past 2 years.
~~~
jelled
They specifically said on the earnings call that they are no longer pursuing
real money gaming in the United States. Part of the reason why the stock
tanked so hard in after hours.
~~~
rdl
Fuck. I had options :( (part of my "buy long positions in evil companies,
especially after bad news; people underestimate the profit potential of evil
and overestimate meaningful public or government reaction" \-- generally works
well though.)
~~~
steven777400
I've considered this strategy, but it seems to not be as reliable as one might
expect. The obvious example is the BP oil spill. The stock lost half it's
value, from about $60 a share to about $30 a share, in two weeks.
However, if you didn't time the buy-in just right, you would have bought at
around $35 - $40 a share (if you bought either early or late), and today it
trades at $43.
That's the difficulty with many analysis ideas - they work great in retrospect
only, when you can see exactly when the low points are, and can believe "If I
had bought on that day, I would have made a mint." But from day-to-day,
determining "that day" is virtually impossible.
~~~
rdl
Yeah, I got into BP at 28x100, 30x200, 32x400 and got out at 45 (half each
time it hit that) -- this was before I started playing with options instead. I
intended to buy more on the way down. I was also planning to hold it
indefinitely but needed the cash to buy other stuff (it's all in a Roth, so
it's hard for me to put cash in.)
In general, though, it's not about "buying on news", it's "buying sinful
industries in general, but particularly on bad news/dips" \-- defense,
oil/coal, alcohol, etc. The other model I've used which has been far more
effectively (and less disgusting morally) is "buy products I know a lot about
and really like, as long as the company itself doesn't have serious financial
or leadership problems"; TSLA, MSA (they make the world's best body armor,
which I loved in Iraq, Paraclete), various arms manufacturers, etc.
~~~
jlgaddis
> "buying sinful industries in general, but particularly on bad news/dips"
Interesting model; haven't ever thought about it like that.
------
alexnewman
And the afterhours trading is crazy
------
wilfra
I've been betting heavily on a turnaround, adding to my position in ZNGA each
time it dipped below $3. Real money gambling I knew would be the savior and
since they weren't burning much cash any more, they just had to wait for that
to pass in the US.
Them canceling those plans - and Mattrick saying they are 'resetting' and
expect volatility to continue, makes me lose my faith. I think I'm going to
get out of the stock.
I don't know much about Mattrick so maybe he is a turnaround specialist and
what he did at EA and Microsoft was great and he will save the company - but
the business they are in is a loser. And they don't appear to be interested in
a pivot.
Sad day. I now agree with the sentiment that Zynga is a dead company.
~~~
kevingadd
Mattrick's track record with XBox One really should not inspire any
confidence. But maybe that was just an unfortunate set of circumstances
outside his control...
~~~
lotso
Mattrick's track record of the last 4 months vs. his 31 years of success in
the game industry.
------
koft
Worst companies for employees
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
W. H. Auden's syllabus will make your college courses look like a piece of cake - benbreen
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/pageviews/w-h-auden-syllabus-college-courses-piece-cake-blog-entry-1.1639980
======
dcroley
A lot of that would presumably have already been read by students taking this
class, especially the Shakespearian tragedies and Moby Dick and perhaps
Dante's Inferno.
------
bshimmin
As with other commenters, I don't think this is too bad. A quick reader could
easily get through the Shakespeare in an afternoon (and surely most people
taking this course would probably have read or seen them before anyway...),
and some of the rest are quite short.
The hardest book there, I would say, is "The Brothers Karamazov", which is a
masterpiece with a little of everything in it, but it is rather dense in the
way that Russian novels, and those by Dostoevsky in particular, tend to be.
"Moby Dick" is also quite a weighty tome, but it's not a particularly
difficult one to get through. I have no idea about the opera libretti or what
miseries having to read them might entail.
What a wonderful selection, though, regardless (and lovely to see one of T.S.
Eliot's Greek tragedies in there).
------
peapicker
I work full time+ writing software, also do some volunteering. I've read over
2000 pages of recreational reading so far this month. (admittedly, this month
I'm not reading any classics - but I do include a few big classics each year
as well). I've also had time for some movies and netflix and football games...
3000 pages in 4 months isn't too bad. Tracking my reading with Goodreads last
year, I read just over 19000 pages - about 1600 pages a month.
None of that includes technical manual / comp sci reading, either - even
though I also read plenty.
~~~
defen
It really depends on the density of the material, and why you're reading it.
700 pages of George RR Martin is not the same thing as 700 pages of Thomas
Pynchon. Furthermore, if you just want the plot you can read much more quickly
than if you are reading to appreciate the language/references/themes, as I
would expect of a college course.
~~~
peapicker
Believe me, I know. I minored in English Lit & Math.
------
andreasvc
This piece is unfortunately almost content-free. Did his course really cover
all those books? Did students actually read them?
It seems to me that this reading list goes way overboard and is more about
checking off all the greatest works. A single semester barely provides enough
time to give the typical Cliff notes coverage of all these works, let alone an
in-depth treatment. Color me unimpressed (although I would like to be proven
wrong given more details).
------
stephencanon
This is less reading than we had for my (rural public) high school AP English
class. What's the big deal?
In fairness, our teacher simply said on the first day: "AP classes are
supposed to be college classes, so we're going to do exactly the same reading
as I did in my freshman literature course at Harvard."
------
ojbyrne
This doesn't seem that excessive for a non-intro English course. For my
Shakespeare course (I believe it was 2 semesters, and it was a long time ago)
we read:
1\. Over 30 of Shakespeare's plays
2\. The Sonnets
3\. Several plays by related playwrights (Marlowe, Ben Jonson, some others).
Essentially the bulk of 3 separate collections of 6-8 plays.
------
YorkianTones
"Nevertheless, 3,000 pages of Shakespeare and Sophocles in four months still
sounds dense."
Seems reasonable. Assuming it takes you on average 2 mins to digest a page,
we're talking 100 hours total or 8 hours / week. I have taken engineering
classes with a workload of over 20 hours / week.
------
iterationx
That's more reading that was expected of me during any of my college courses
at UW Madison. I think universities used to require more from their students.
------
grandalf
The honors English "Great Books" series at the University of Michigan has
about that much reading in each semester.
------
facepalm
3000 pages in 4 months, isn't that less than 30 pages per day? Sounds doable.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Is This The Future of Advertising? - dsarle
http://www.arcticstartup.com/2014/01/24/is-this-the-future-of-advertising
======
jeremysmyth
Absolutely not.
The future of advertising, such as it is, should _absolutely not_ involve
intrusive content of _any_ kind. This includes what the article states as "It
does not give me five different messages, it gives me one message. It is
actually asking me to do something." I do not want to be asked to do anything.
I want to see what I've asked for, and no more.
Users do not want popups, inline ads, redirects, overlays, or anything that
gets in the way of the content they explicitly request. The arms race
mentioned in the article, where users constantly find ways around ads and
advertisers have to find new ways to push content to them, is going to
continue. There will always be ways around intrusive content, and finding new
ways to intrude is not going to solve the advertising problem. Rather, finding
new ways to intrude is the same thing as finding new ways to annoy potential
customers. Sure, it'll increase brand awareness, but wouldn't it be better to
do so without them thinking "Oh come on not another freaking ad" in the
process?
What _will_ work, and _has_ to work for advertising to remain relevant and
continue into the future, is to integrate marketing into content that I
explicitly request.
In practice, this means that companies should make products that are liked by
people I respect, so that when they mention it on twitter or facebook I pay
attention. This does _not_ include "share and like this", because I hate that
stuff, and it's obviously a stunt.
As a distant second place, I'm also happy to see ads that consist of well-
crafted and entertaining or educational content. This is very difficult, and
is what we know as "viral marketing". However, it's such a common trope these
days that it's easy to see a viral ad as an ad, and that feels like it's
cheating. The article says "The very best ads are very emotional and funny. If
you make advertisements that one can relate to, that changes the ads. People
will allow it." While that is true, it's also true that they're still seen as
ads, and that provides a psychological hurdle to people who have grown to
dislike advertisements for what they are.
Rather than advertise blatantly, provide some sort of supported content that I
want to go to see that _happens to include_ product placement or a
demonstration of features as an _incidental_ characteristic of the content,
rather than as the key point.
In short, to get the attention of future customers, give them content that
they want to see so much that they _explicitly request it_ , and don't intrude
on other content.
------
nkcmr
No. Advertisements are trying to be more and more subtle whilst still being
noticeable. The advertisements demoed in that video are no better than pop-
ups.
And God almighty, if I hear another startup video with a ukulele playing as
background music, I'm likely to go into a homicidal rage.
------
pwpwp
No.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Life – A timeline of important events in (your) life - cheeaun
https://github.com/cheeaun/life
======
kaeluka
kind of similar to my CV:
[http://stbr.me/blog/files/cv.pdf](http://stbr.me/blog/files/cv.pdf) (edit:
which I did in latex)
~~~
Argorak
Thats neat! Is the source available somewhere?
~~~
kaeluka
Hm, I'll try to find it and put it on github some time :) I'll update you on
that.
Thanks!
~~~
sagz
your résumé looks real good! please do share the source if you can
~~~
conmcg
Very nice, France just disappeared.
~~~
baliex
Same goes for the UK
~~~
kaeluka
old enemies ;)
------
amasad
Related: I like the timelines on Bret Vector's Bio page
[http://worrydream.com/#!/Bio](http://worrydream.com/#!/Bio)
~~~
enscr
Great design but loads slow. Wish it's as snappy as it's beautiful
~~~
hnriot
upgrade, it was near instant for me and I have a crappy dell i5 laptop running
Ubuntu
------
xutopia
I've been following Cheeaun's work for a few years now. The guy writes plugins
for various tools, always hacking away at things. It's quite entertaining to
see what he comes up with next.
~~~
mildavw
I've been using his
[http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/](http://cheeaun.github.io/hackerweb/) to
read HN on my phone for a while (is it years yet?) now. I try others as they
appear and so far continually go back to his.
~~~
yeukhon
1\. you have to click on the comment icon to actually read icons
2\. like most of the ios apps out there, there is no thread-level support. All
comments are on the same level.
~~~
mildavw
1\. I don't see a problem with it. Go to the right for the details and back to
the left for the front page. Makes sense.
2\. ??? Comments threads are collapsible and indented properly.
Are you perhaps not looking at it on a phone? Try it on an iPhone, it's great.
------
jongala
Looks nice. Also out there, if you didn't know, is Preceden, which I have
enjoyed using.
[http://www.preceden.com](http://www.preceden.com)
~~~
matt1
Preceden creator here; thank you for the mention.
Fun fact: Preceden was launched on HN almost four years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1114834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1114834)
:)
~~~
contingencies
JS has some OK solutions these days (yours was probably very early), but print
and other formats can be a hassle.
For example, I spent some time looking at TeX solutions for timelines a few
years back and found there were none with support for decent multi-page
rendering, etc.
I spent a few hours over the last few days finally improving
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Buddhist_traditions_t...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Buddhist_traditions_timeline)
too.
Conclusion: everyone loves a good timeline. Spatial reasoning is a great way
to simplify huge collections of dates and times to filter for visual trends.
Unfortunately, there's really few good tools. There probably needs to be a
standard markup language in this space.
------
bearwithclaws
Wow. This is totally cool! I like how simple your implementation is. I can see
this is not only useful as timeline of important life events, but also in
recording company milestones.
Congrates, man!
~~~
cheeaun
Thanks :) Haven't really thought of company milestones... but I guess you're
right!
~~~
bearwithclaws
My favorite part of your description:
How about Facebook timeline? Meh.
------
toddmorey
My quick web search didn't show anything without caveats, but if there's any
decent javascript that can be used to make the mouse wheel scroll the page
sideways, that would be a really nice addition.
~~~
cheeaun
I thought of that too, probably using some 'mousewheel' event, but later I
realise the page height may grow as well (with vertical scrollbar) depending
on the number of events.
~~~
markdown
I'm curious about why you chose the horizontal plane in the first place, given
that the web defaults to vertical.
~~~
cheeaun
Well uh, that's how I visualize my life timeline in my head :) A straight
horizontal path, left to right instead of top to bottom.
~~~
bgaluszka
Maybe bottom to top would be a better approach :)
------
jcutrell
I'd love to see this as a zoomable timeline, where less important events are
less visible when zoomed out, so that the timeline itself is fully visible at
100%.
Draggable timeline in a max 100% w/h window would fix the scrolling weirdness
for folks who care, and would also be usable on a touch device, but I think
the interaction should always feel full screen, regardless of where you are in
the timeline.
Love this idea, quite a lot actually.
Perhaps this is marketable to the folks at Timehop? :)
~~~
timeglider
Check out www.timeglider.com ---- a zooming timeline where importance is tied
to size/visibility of events. full disclosure: my creation.
------
cateye
Why didn't you just use this?
[https://github.com/NUKnightLab/TimelineJS](https://github.com/NUKnightLab/TimelineJS)
~~~
cheeaun
I tried to use it, but it requires exact dates. Mine is obviously over-
simplified and allows flexible (rough) dates.
------
rollerloller
[http://www.simile-widgets.org/timeline/](http://www.simile-
widgets.org/timeline/)
------
rafeed
Neat, would be cool to add a link or hover over feature too for additional
info on a particular event. I'll try to work on it if I have time, but
hopefully someone else more capable is on it already!
------
atsaloli
Reminds me of dandelife.
[http://www.crunchbase.com/company/dandelife](http://www.crunchbase.com/company/dandelife)
This article says dandelife open sourced its software:
[http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/dandelifes-
struggles-...](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2009/01/09/dandelifes-struggles-
offer-lessons-for-start-ups/?_r=0)
------
chacham15
Why not flip it at the 45 degree axis to make it go vertically instead of
horizontally? That way we can scroll normally to see more.
~~~
Raphael
If you flip it, the text would be mirrored. Rotate.
------
namuol
Just once I'd like to see a site with a horizontal scroll that doesn't just
assume I'm using an Apple device.
------
mergy
I've used Prezi recently for this as well.
Pic >>
[https://alpha.app.net/jmergy/post/16369534/photo/1](https://alpha.app.net/jmergy/post/16369534/photo/1)
------
kfk
Nice. I would like to navigate clicking. Also, I would like to see pictures.
~~~
Heliosmaster
Everything is just a pull request away :)
~~~
atmosx
and some hours of code depending your level and experience :D
------
jcutrell
Note - here's a quick shot at how a scrollwheel modification may work:
[http://codepen.io/jcutrell/pen/jqiDK](http://codepen.io/jcutrell/pen/jqiDK)
~~~
dag11
But that then breaks natural horizontal scrolling if you're using a trackpad.
~~~
jcutrell
It's certainly not meant to be a complete solution, but it can be expanded to
include both horizontal and vertical scrolling, so that either will work.
------
meerita
Looks wonderful but the horizontal navigation goes out of control. I would
take Path's approach –if I have to mention something publicly known– to
display the important events of your life.
------
kasperset
Another similar project [http://almende.github.io/chap-links-
library/timeline.html](http://almende.github.io/chap-links-
library/timeline.html)
------
thekaleb
Now let's have a fork that uses remind[1] syntax.
[1]: [http://linux.die.net/man/1/remind](http://linux.die.net/man/1/remind)
------
kuldar
What's the simplest way to run it locally? I don't necessarily want to upload
it to gh-pages, but simply opening the html won't work either.
~~~
cheeaun
Make a copy of life.example.md, rename it to life.md, edit it. Run the page on
a local server.
~~~
filam
I didn't realize until far too recently that Python includes a built-in web
server: 1\. git clone
[https://github.com/cheeaun/life.git](https://github.com/cheeaun/life.git) 2\.
cd life 3\. python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8000 4\.
[http://localhost:8000/](http://localhost:8000/)
------
ape4
I can't handle the day/month/year syntax
~~~
becojo
Fork it.
~~~
ape4
You are right I should do something rather than just complaining. Maybe
somebody (or me) could do a patch that allows YYYY-MM-DD dates with dashes. Or
YYYY-MM to specify a month.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601)
------
techiegirl
Looks great, I wanted to something similar, glad its here now :) But as most
are saying, the horizontal view is not very user friendly!
------
baliex
That would make for a really awesome cv/resume! And what if each block could
also be a timeline of its own for more detail?
------
ereckers
Some see a timeline for your life. I see potential for a visualized scheduling
app for client projects.
Nice work and implementation.
------
createmyaccount
Looks great! Would be cool if you could somehow show everything in one screen.
Definitely trying it out.
------
tbirdz
Something else this could be useful for is in visualization of historical
events on a common timeline.
------
jspc
The DateTime syntax could be better explained: is it DDMMYYYY? Or MMDDYYYY?
~~~
Semaphor
day/month/year in the readme is pretty clear I'd say.
Though I wonder why not yyyy-mm-dd
------
yogin
very nice work! I can definitely see adding links to other Life. Linking
parent, child, partner, friends, .. you can even have companies ... would
create an interesting graph of your life
------
lzimm
hey that's like the weird website i made for my internets a few years ago!
[http://www.lzimm.com](http://www.lzimm.com)
------
cupofjoakim
This is really nice. Definitely going to make my own.
------
n1ghtmare_
Good stuff. It looks great! Will definitely use it.
------
dmak
This idea is great! I love it!
------
CGudapati
Very nice indeed!
------
ananth99
Lovely :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Lake Peigneur drains like a bathtub into a salt mine - pm24601
http://catastrophemap.org/lake-peigneur-vortex.html
======
pm24601
And this is why self-regulation is bad
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dividing Infinity – Distributed Partitioning Schemes - kiyanwang
http://eventql.io/blog/dividing-infinity-distributed-partitioning-schemes/
======
contravariant
>Within the keyspace, identifiers are well-ordered [6]. That means each ID has
a successor and a predecessor.
Minor nitpick, but really it only guarantees a successor. In particular the
natural numbers are well ordered, but 0 (or 1, depending on what convention
you're using) doesn't have a predecessor.
Edit: worse the keyspace depicted doesn't appear to be well ordered since it
doesn't seem to have a lower limit. It's possible the author meant "totally
ordered" although strictly speaking that also doesn't guarantee a predecessor
or successor.
~~~
rdtsc
> Minor nitpick, but really it only guarantees a successor.
That's from the consistent hashing chapter. That uses a ring usually
[0,2^p-1]. With p=160 if SHA is the hash algorithm. Then the predecessor of 0
is then 2^p-1.
~~~
contravariant
In that case it's still neither well ordered, or even 'ordered' in any
mathematical sense. I was merely pointing out that 'well ordered' doesn't
convey whatever it was the author was trying to say.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Indie developers..How much money are you making from your app? - mem41
<You may include total users, platform and method of making money>
I always wonder how much independent developers makes by creating apps. So far I have created just one app on Windows 8 which has 30K downloads and 100 active users and have made $0 (not monetizing).
======
valorware
We released 9th Dawn on Google Play in November of 2012. It originally cost
$1.99. There are no ads or IAPs. The first few months it was making between
$3-4k a month. Over time, that has dropped to a rather stable ~$1.5k a month.
In early 2013, we released a free expansion, made the game available on iOS,
and raised the price to $2.99, giving us a sizeable bump in sales (we made
around $11k that month from the spike). Now across all stores, we have a
relatively stable $1.5k-2k a month. We are planning on releasing the remake of
the game across all platforms and on Steam here in a couple months, so we'll
see where it goes from there. It didn't cost very much to develop, so as a
side project that we never expected would generate more than a few hundred
sales, we were quite pleased.
~~~
mem41
that's great. wish you best luck for remake.
------
chrisBob
If you are going to take it seriously you have to put some effort into the
advertising also. It is good to hear some success stories in the comments but,
the iOS store at least, is getting full.
I think I put together a decent game with unique play[1], but the paid version
gets maybe 1-2 downloads per week. I did this for fun, and never put any
effort into advertising, but I think that is about what most people see
without a good campaign backing their games. Maybe Windows 8 is young enough
that it is easier to stand out though.
[1] [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ocean-
commotion/id518629974?...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/ocean-
commotion/id518629974?mt=8)
------
arbor
I released a number of successfully apps on the App Store a few years back.
Some of my apps were featured by Apple. My apps made me a boatload of cash
($500k+) back in the App Store gold rush days.
I have not had the time to update any of my apps but I'm still passively
making around $60 a day between 13 apps on two app accounts. All of my apps
are paid (no in-app purchases / no ads).
My apps are mostly educational.
$60 a day of passive income on products I haven't touched in over two years
even surprises me.
I plan on getting back into the app game next month. I'm setting aside time to
update all of my apps and do some marketing.
~~~
mem41
that's cool. you should have continued working on it :P
------
ambiate
30,000 active users. Android. Health app that was coded in 2 hours. Ads were
great at $14-19 a day. Using the app myself, I noticed the ads interfered with
the experience. I removed them. $0 for 4 years.
I'm stopping smoking today. I plan to create an Android app every three days.
Hopefully, I can get a little side revenue coming in.
~~~
mem41
I agree that Ads kills the experience. I am working on few more apps and not
planning to add Ads (will add optional buy feature)
------
lisard
I made a cooking app, sold it in app store for $1. Got around 1000 downloads,
so it made $700 after Apple's cut. It was featured. It took me one month to
get it done. It still has around 2 downloads a week.
~~~
mem41
1k downloads event after it was featured?
------
dangrossman
These threads get a _ton_ more responses when they're about web apps, and I
usually find a new awesome SaaS thing or two run by someone here to try out.
There must be fewer native app developers on HN.
------
iosindie
iOS - 40k users in total, 4k daily active users - about $20-30 per day. Single
in app purchase to unlock features, no ads. Huge market though, we're working
to get more press and hopefully Apple will feature us :).
------
danvesma
free business app, in the store for three months, downloaded less than 200
times. withdrawn.
------
wpdevwp
I make $300 per month for music app
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why is processing a sorted array faster than an unsorted array? - suchabag
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11227809/why-is-processing-a-sorted-array-faster-than-an-unsorted-array?rq=1
======
ColinWright
Previous submissions and discussions ...
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4637196](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4637196)
<\- Most comments
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5960299](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5960299)
<\- More comments
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4167834](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4167834)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4170972](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4170972)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4185226](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4185226)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4355548](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4355548)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4964931](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4964931)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5167935](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5167935)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5666751](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5666751)
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5679080](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5679080)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Most Favorited Hacker News Submissions of All Time - tlarkworthy
https://futurice.com/blog/hacker-news-favorites
======
tlarkworthy
It's pretty interesting the top favorited articles are about learning. It's a
good list for finding curated educational resources. The top ones are really
mind blowing in execution.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Money: a chart of (almost) all of it, where it is, and what it can do - decklin
http://xkcd.com/980/huge/
======
snowwrestler
Not money, wealth. There's a big difference.
And it's not even really wealth, since it contains huge but not-real numbers
like the notional size of derivative contracts.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Online ad growth cut in half - U.S. Advertising Expenditures Declined 1.6 Percent in First Half 2008 - nickb
http://www.tns-mi.com/news/09242008.htm
======
arockwell
I'm not seeing where it says that online ad growth was cut in half. Instead,
the article implies that online ads are growing:
"For the half year, Internet display advertising expenditures increased 8.0
percent as marketers continued to expand their online programs."
~~~
fallentimes
It was supposed to grow much faster than that...well, according to the
analysts anyway.
~~~
geuis
yeah I'm calling shennigans on the title
------
fallentimes
but but but our projections models say...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Electric cars and battery swap stations - PaulMcCartney
http://www.mnn.com/green-tech/transportation/blogs/car-battery-swapping-in-israel?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter
======
casca
Car drivers have come to expect a certain level of convenience when fueling
their vehicles. The primary difficulty in the widespread adoption of electric
cars is that this level of convenience is being reduced([1]). These stations
are an interesting experiment in reducing the inconvenience, but it will be
really hard for them to reach the critical mass.
[1] Prices will come down with purely with economies of scale. This can be
enhanced through government intervention with things like higher car taxes,
parking, etc for non-electric
------
jff
Two burning questions:
1\. How much does the cost per mile work out to?
2\. Is it really that smart to start a car-fueling company called "BP"?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2008 - hhm
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/2008/
======
kurtosis
It's a shame how little Nobel gold there is to go around - so many deserving
people get left out. For every winner there's a long line of those equally
worthy IMHO.
In this case, I'm surprised they didn't give some of the prize to Goldstone.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nambu-Goldstone_boson>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pushing the Limits of Extreme Breath-Holding - uptown
https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/pushing-the-limits-of-extreme-breath-holding
======
nickpsecurity
Here's a Popular Science article I read a long time ago on this where the
author gets to experience free diving:
[https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2003-06/one-dive-
one-...](https://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2003-06/one-dive-one-breath)
Although, my first exposure to the topic was a movie called The Big Blue about
a free diver pushing himself to and past his limits. Had Jean Reno in it. Just
found out it was Luc Besson's movie, too.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82onGmBx9ZM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82onGmBx9ZM)
~~~
dmitriid
I remember holding my breath when watching that movie. Thank you for reminding
about it!
------
clort
I'm a bit confused by the breath-hold where they breathed pure oxygen. The
article claims that because they only started with oxygen in their lungs, that
is all absorbed and nothing left by the end. But, where does the carbon
dioxide go in this case? Your body is producing it, and it normally
transitions from the blood into the lungs, to be exhaled. why doesn't it do
that if there is only oxygen in there?
~~~
thope
Correct me if I'm wrong, but maybe the carbon dioxide you exhale comes from
the air you inhale. No air in, no carbon dioxide out.
~~~
jdblair
Correction:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiration_(physiology)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respiration_\(physiology\))
~~~
thope
Ok thank you, I also found a short answer[0]. It seems the carbon comes from
the conversion of glucose; that is, from food.
[0] [http://www.smh.com.au/news/big-questions/we-breath-in-
oxygen...](http://www.smh.com.au/news/big-questions/we-breath-in-oxygen-and-
breath-out-carbon-dioxide-where-does-thecarbon-come-
from/2008/06/06/1212259085199.html)
------
poster123
How is this anything other than dangerous and stupid?
~~~
xutopia
I did 3m06s in a pool, very much like those apnea competitions. I had a
spotter and people around me in case something went wrong.
For me the idea of controlling my body and mind to do such a feat felt like a
huge accomplishment. It requires fighting off reflexes, relaxing my muscles
and reducing my thoughts to the bare minimum so as to use the least oxygen
possible.
Control and determination are tested and it feels great to overcome these
things.
I stopped practicing apnea because I didn't have any data on how it could
affect my brain negatively but I still am very proud of my accomplishment.
Also before I started I couldn't swim a full lap underwater without coming up
for air but now I can do it without any problem.
~~~
xyhopguy
used to do this during swim practice. unbelievably relaxing and amazing how
far you can swim without a breath with a slow buildup. we used to go up to 4
lengths aka 100m
~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
What stroke? Seems like you'd choose a minimal stroke.
~~~
fabrice_d
If you are without fins, a long relaxed breaststroke is what you do.
------
AElsinore77
This is quite interesting -- tangentially related, is anyone aware of studies
of the long term effects of sports which include blood chokes (constricting
carotids)? These might include Judo, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, as well as modern
MMA and submission grappling. In these cases, there may be plenty of oxygen in
the blood, but the blood flow to the brain is being restricted causing loss of
consciousness.
------
tasty_freeze
One thing I find fascinating is that when you hold your breath long enough and
your body is forcing you to breath, your lungs still hold plenty of oxygen. If
you exhaled into an empty bag, then inhaled that air back into your lungs,
that reflex would be quelled for awhile. Of course after each cycle the O2
content would drop an CO2 would rise and the period of each cycle would get
shorter.
------
kazinator
The record is held by the first _homo sapiens_ who asphyxiated. Tens of
thousands of years and counting!
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
A handy Ruby interface for AWS Athena - mmateja
https://github.com/u2i/egis
======
mmateja
Together with my team at u2i ([https://www.u2i.com/](https://www.u2i.com/)) we
have recently built a wrapper for AWS Athena Ruby SDK providing a convenient,
higher-level interface for defining schemas, creating tables and executing
queries. It reduces boilerplate and repetitive code allowing you to process
large data sets easily.
Will you find it useful? Please give it a star. ;)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Assisted Fertilization by Sperm-Carrying Micromotors - bemmu
https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.nanolett.5b04221
======
bemmu
The video is viewable here if you don't feel like downloading AVI files:
[https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1260727755852795904](https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1260727755852795904)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Kissat SAT Solver - veselin
http://fmv.jku.at/kissat/
======
thechao
If anyone else is wondering how the hell to _use_ this thing... the main API
is here:
https://github.com/arminbiere/kissat/blob/master/src/kissat.h
In particular all you need to add clauses is this single API entry point:
void kissat_add (kissat * solver, int lit);
The solver consists of the conjunction of disjunctions (I hope I have that
correct — maybe the other way around? I can never remember). Variables are
assumed to be _any_ non-zero integer:
kissat_add(s, [N != 0]);
You create a clause by repeatedly calling kissat_add; the clause is terminated
by a 0. For instance if {shirt=1, tie=2}, then "!shirt or tie" is:
kissat_add(s, -1); kissat_add(s, 2); kissat_add(s, 0);
Once the solver is run, if there's a solution, you get the solution using
`kissat_val`:
kissat_val(s, 1);
kissat_val(s, 2);
I hope.
~~~
amelius
How do you interrupt the computation, e.g. when it takes too long?
~~~
mgraczyk
You could always fork the process and send SIGKILL to the child after a
timeout.
~~~
jwilk
No need to fork; you could install timer using alarm(), setitimer(), or
timer_create() and friends.
~~~
amelius
But how would you clean up the heap and restart the library?
~~~
jwilk
I think you can call kissat_terminate() from the signal handler.
------
HPsquared
To save the unwashed masses (myself included) any further internet searches,
this relates to the Boolean satisfiability problem, which according to
Wikipiedia [0] is:
"the problem of determining if there exists an interpretation that satisfies a
given Boolean formula. In other words, it asks whether the variables of a
given Boolean formula can be consistently replaced by the values TRUE or FALSE
in such a way that the formula evaluates to TRUE. If this is the case, the
formula is called satisfiable."
I originally thought it was an AI to solve college placement tests, which
would also have been cool but in a different way.
[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boolean_satisfiability_problem)
~~~
wiz21c
SAT solvers are really powerful machines. You can fit many problems in a
Boolean formula and then ask the solver to work it out. Now, the solver is not
always optimized for your task but sometimes it helps. Also, the exercise of
turning a problem into a (usually huge) Boolean formula is interesting. For
example, I solved the "find a longest path in a graph" with a SAT solver (TBH,
I quickly replaced that with a specialized solver, but, well, that was fun !)
~~~
PaulHoule
SAT is the prototypical NP-complete problem.
~~~
maweki
While it is true, if you follow current research, most people in the field
seem to be on a great hunt for hard SAT instances where no known heuristic
really helps. As of yet this hunt has not been successful.
~~~
jlokier
A hard SAT problem:
Let nonce be 32 boolean inputs, representing numbers from 0..2^32-1.
Let other_bits and difficulty be a collection of constant boolean inputs, in
the following expression.
Let f(other_bits, nonce, diff) be the boolean logic circuit used in Bitcoin
mining, for a recent candidate block.
Roughly speaking, f combines nonce with other_bits to make a bit string,
performs SHA-256 on the bit string, then SHA-256 on that, and then checks if
the leading diff number of bits are zero.
Folding in the constants, f reduces to a boolean logic circuit with 32 inputs
and 1 output, g(nonce) = result.
The SAT problem: Does there exist a value of nonce for which g(nonce) = 1?
If you can solve this quickly, you just sped up Bitcoin mining by a factor
2^32 iterations, which is a lot. You can take this further as well.
I don't know of any SAT solver heuristic which really helps with this.
~~~
nightcracker
This SAT instance is huge, which makes it hard. But you haven't shown that it
is a harder SAT instance than a random one of its size.
It's all about the difficulty vs the size of the instance.
~~~
jlokier
To the best of my knowledge, the example has no known heuristics for finding a
solution that are significantly faster than brute force.
That puts it in the hardest class of instances for its size (subject to
available knowledge), because all instances can be solved by brute force.
~~~
nightcracker
A SAT solver might very well have optimizations that make it end up running in
2^200 on average instead of what brute force would give.
The problem is, since the instance is so large, we don't know what happens. No
one has ever ran one to completion.
So no, it's not in the hardest class of instances for its size. Its difficulty
is unknown.
------
andrepd
This is very exciting! It not only has much improved performance, but it's
also clean code, easily extensible for embedding in other applications (I do
such a thing myself). Sadly I can't use it yet due to lack of incremental
solving.
------
schoen
For obscure reasons I know that this is the Finnish word for 'cats', and I
wondered if there was any connection there. Apparently the answer is yes
[https://github.com/arminbiere/kissat](https://github.com/arminbiere/kissat)
or at least the developers have already noticed this coincidence for
themselves.
------
hinkley
Are there any software development problems we should be solving with SAT
solvers instead of using heuristics?
~~~
dragontamer
Any problem that works.
IIRC: SAT Solvers regularly solve 30,000+ nodes of traveling salesman problem
in just seconds (Or something along that magnitude. I forget exactly...).
Yeah, its NP complete, but that doesn't mean its worthless.
It will take some experimentation to figure out if your problem is within the
"feasible" category of SAT solving. I don't think there's any method aside
from "try it, and if it works, be happy. If not, be sad".
If we knew which problems were easily solved with SAT-solvers, we probably
would be well on our way to proving N == NP ?? So just guess and check.
\--------------
Honestly, people may forget that brute-force solvers can be incredibly useful.
When I was playing with a hash-algorithm I was inventing (just for fun on the
side...) I searched the entire 32-bit space for the best integer that best
mixed-up the bits from input to output. The brute-force solver took only
seconds to try every 32-bit number.
We can brute-force a surprising number of "intractable" problems from our
college years. Yeah, its inefficient, but who cares if its solved in seconds
or minutes?
There's also that a^3 + b^3 == c^3 problem that was solved in a few weeks by
brute forcing every number (or something like that).
~~~
jwilk
> There's also that a^3 + b^3 == c^3 problem that was solved in a few weeks by
> brute forcing every number (or something like that).
Huh?
~~~
Tainnor
Yeah no idea, where they got that from. Fermat argued in the 1630s that this
was impossible, Euler then proved it in the 18th century.
[Actually, Fermat claimed that a^n+b^n=c^n is impossible for n>2, but the
proof for that wasn't discovered until the 1990s. It's Andrew Wiles's famous
proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.]
------
psandersen
I've been looking to get my feet wet with SAT and/or SMT solvers; can anyone
recommend any short courses that I could start with to get a practical feel
where where & how to use them? Python would be preferred.
Maybe this [https://www.coursera.org/learn/automated-reasoning-
sat](https://www.coursera.org/learn/automated-reasoning-sat) would be a good
start?
Ideally I would like to be able to take predicted outputs from ML plus
business requirements to solve allocation problems; and more pie in the sky I
would like to know enough to get inspiration for how to link a neural network
with a sat solver, such as perhaps replacing or augmenting beam search in
sequence decoding tasks.
------
gallerdude
Question: in college, I was lead to believe that a polynomial time SAT solver
would be a huge breakthrough in many fields. Why is that the case? I know 3SAT
is a reduction to NP problems, but besides that I feel like it wouldn't be
particularly useful on its own.
~~~
teraflop
If 3SAT is solvable in polynomial time, then P=NP. Which means that _any_
problem that can be solved by brute-forcing an exponential number of
possibilities (and doing a polynomial amount of checking for each) can also be
solved with an asymptotically much smaller (polynomial) amount of work.
This includes anything from complicated optimization problems, to theorem
proving, to inverting cryptographic hash functions, to any other NP algorithm
that hasn't been thought up yet.
Whether this would have any practical use would depend on the polynomial
exponents and constant factors, of course. But even in a theoretical sense it
would be very, very surprising to a lot of people if it were true.
~~~
schoen
Donald Knuth apparently believes, in a very unusual view for a computer
scientist, that P=NP but that the best algorithm has such bad exponents and
factors that it won't have relevance for our computational practices -- if
we're even able to discover it.
[https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2213858&ran...](https://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=2213858&ranMID=24808)
------
7373737373
I wonder how big of an economic impact such improved algorithms have. Must be
in the billions of dollars in the long run...
------
throwmemoney
SAT Solvers are used in software that is used in creating the very complex
Silicon Chips. Known as Formal in the semiconductor design industry.
------
ipnon
Computational logic seems to be a more popular research subject in Europe than
in the United States.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
An optimization guide for assembly programmers and compiler makers (2018) [pdf] - muricula
https://www.agner.org/optimize/microarchitecture.pdf
======
inetsee
The page containing the link to this pdf
"[https://www.agner.org/optimize/"](https://www.agner.org/optimize/") has
links to four other pdfs describing other topics on optimization.
~~~
ignoramous
Clickable and non 404:
[https://agner.org/optimize/](https://agner.org/optimize/)
~~~
inetsee
Sorry, I had forgotten that HN doesn't like quotes around links.
------
rolph
I like this site very much, its simple and old school.
Take a tour around the site for some other aspects of agners work, there is a
good treatise regarding the fundamentals of digital electronics, as well as a
proposed archetecture standard [ForwardCom]. some [as in a couple] of the
links on agners site are stale or dead but do give you the general idea what
to look for.
[https://www.agner.org/digital/digital_electronics_agner_fog....](https://www.agner.org/digital/digital_electronics_agner_fog.pdf)
[PDF]
and:
[https://forwardcom.info/](https://forwardcom.info/)
------
CalChris
There is also uops.info which has a different, more formal characterization of
latency:
[https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04610](https://arxiv.org/abs/1810.04610)
~~~
pedagand
And llvm-exegesis:
[https://llvm.org/docs/CommandGuide/llvm-
exegesis.html](https://llvm.org/docs/CommandGuide/llvm-exegesis.html)
"llvm-exegesis is a benchmarking tool that uses information available in LLVM
to measure host machine instruction characteristics like latency, throughput,
or port decomposition.
Given an LLVM opcode name and a benchmarking mode, llvm-exegesis generates a
code snippet that makes execution as serial (resp. as parallel) as possible so
that we can measure the latency (resp. inverse throughput/uop decomposition)
of the instruction. The code snippet is jitted and executed on the host
subtarget. The time taken (resp. resource usage) is measured using hardware
performance counters. The result is printed out as YAML to the standard
output.
The main goal of this tool is to automatically (in)validate the LLVM’s
TableDef scheduling models. To that end, we also provide analysis of the
results."
------
anitil
Sometimes I think I'm a 'full stack' developer, and then I read something like
this. Sure I can dabble in simple assembly, but there's always a bigger fish.
~~~
dragontamer
Heh, the people who can dabble in Assembly for a living won't be able to
(typically) setup a major Web PHP + Database and all that. Assembly
optimization is a different skill than web development, or other stuff in the
stack.
We all gotta pick our specialties. For me, low level high-performance stuff is
more of hobby project level. I got a few cool things I've learned by myself
but it isn't really what I do for a living.
~~~
fxfan
I dabbled in assembly, for a living, at a major software firm. I can still do
it after brushing up a bit. And I have no trouble setting up a pg database
with web frameworks and writing optimized code.
Web isn't some magical beast- its just rote programming.
Actual business logic is where the categorization starts.
~~~
amelius
It's all plumbing and bookkeeping.
If you want to be humbled, go to a conference on high energy physics.
~~~
freyir
They've spent their lives studying high energy physics. It's going to seem
impressive to a non-expert, but to them it's mostly plumbing and bookkeeping.
------
heyjudy
I still remember the olden days when
XOR AX,AX
was faster than
MOV AX,0
and Abrash'es book was the magnum opus of the pre-P6 era.
I guess I better throw most of those assumptions out for modern
microarchitectures.
~~~
kijiki
Probably not directly faster, but "xor %rax, %rax" is still smaller (and thus
faster if you're icache constrained) than "mov $0x0, %rax"
~~~
userbinator
It is still faster because the register renamer handles it --- ditto for "sub
reg, reg":
[https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/the-
surprising-...](https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2012/12/29/the-surprising-
subtleties-of-zeroing-a-register/)
------
cpeterso
I'm interested in seeing how the section about "Future branch prediction
methods" (page 17) will change in our post-Spectre world.
~~~
souprock
This just came up today. Anybody know the answer? The problem involves a JIT
(for opcodes, not scripting).
Chunks of code are generated. Sometimes, a chunk will need to branch to a
chunk that isn't yet generated or even allocated. Chunks can be cleared away
for various reasons like evictions to make room, so the branches to a chunk
might need to not go there anymore.
One strategy is to use indirect branches. When the destination doesn't exist,
the branch goes to code that will resolve that. It's a bit like how dynamic
linkers work.
Another strategy is to replace the code. The processor may stumble a bit over
what is essentially self-modifying code, but then it eventually runs faster.
The degree to which the processor will pause is a key consideration here.
Anybody know?
BTW, if you like digging into this stuff, we're hiring.
~~~
CoolGuySteve
On a multithreaded implementation, you can do it with 2 stub functions and an
array/hash of function pointers (hereto refered to as the "table") that itself
acts as a spinlock array. Initialize the table with stub 1 and atomic write
stub 1 to the table on eviction.
stub 1) upon entry, atomic write stub 2 into the table. Then compile or
enqueue onto a compilation thread/process. At the end of compilation, atomic
write the newly compiled address to the table.
stub 2) spinlock on function pointer array entry != Stub 2 address. At end of
spinlock, call new function pointer. If you care about power consumption or
timing attacks, the spinlock can have a backoff corresponding with the speed
of your JIT compiler. This function should be able to fit into a single
cacheline, so it should usually be hot.
inlined thunk: Given a function, read address from table and call it.
The client uses the thunk to call the function address in the table without
knowing if it's compiled or not. On Intel, you shouldn't need a read fence due
to MESI rules.
The branch/fetch predictor works by hashing the address of the branch
instruction into its own lookup table. So by forcing stub 3 to be inlined,
you're relying on the hash to prefetch the correct function address and call
it directly.
You should also be able to put the JIT into a separate process that mmaps with
the NX bit set, and have the client load without the NX bit set. So it would
be difficult to exploit the JIT compiler itself (but the produced code could
still be unsafe).
You might want to cachealign the function table or pack similar chunks in the
same function table entry to prevent false sharing whenever there's an atomic
write. Also, this table is going to thrash your cache by incurring an extra
cacheline load for the trampoline that it does every time.
Anyways, that's my back of the napkin design for how to do it.
~~~
souprock
Thanks.
That is certainly a different way to think about threading. My instinct would
be to keep a separate JIT cache for each thread, keeping the threads from
stealing resources from each other but also keeping them from sharing the JIT
effort.
I think your approach is pretty much how /lib/ld-linux.so.2 deals with the
PLT. I didn't see an explanation for stub 3, but I guess you mean the part of
the JIT output that does the indirect jump. I take it that you believe the
speed advantage of a direct jump is not enough to overcome the occasional hit
caused by modifying it, with all the invalidations (icache, trace cache, etc.)
that it might cause. Being similar to the dynamic linker is probably well-
aligned with what Intel is trying to optimize for upcoming chips. OTOH, the
spectre problem might limit what Intel does.
Putting the JIT in a separate process would have to add latency. Upon hitting
a missing chunk of code, translation can't really wait. The idea is to run
modern stuff, such as a recent desktop OS, via the JIT. We do use more than
one mapping on Linux, as required to keep SE Linux happy.
~~~
CoolGuySteve
Yes, I'm assuming once code is JIT'ed, it will take a while before being
JIT'ed again. But in the meantime the caches will cover some of the trampoline
costs.
With regards to latency, if you have a dedicated JIT thread, you can read
ahead and JIT the start of all the jump/calls up to the next current ret in
parallel to executing the first chunk. Like a super fancy prefetch.
Heuristically, I think it's safe to assume that most code is local but I could
be wrong.
Also, if you load hwloc on x86-64, you can read your CPU topology at
initialization time. If hyperthreading is present (which is somewhat common),
you can set affinity for JIT threads to be on the same core as the emulated
CPUs. This will minimize read concurrency overhead since you'll be
reading/writing to the physical core's L1 almost every time. (This part is
crazy, but you _might_ even be able to get away without using atomics due to
how cache-associativity works, but I've never tried it and it might not be
guaranteed into the future.)
------
bogomipz
I've heard this individual's name come up quite a few times(it's very
distinctive)in discussions about the compiler/optimization/cpu architecture
space.
Does anyone know if this individual still teaches at the Technical University
of Denmark and if there might be any lectures of their's online?
I've been watching Onur Mutlu's CMU lectures online and this material is a
nice addition to computer architecture self-study.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Real estate (land) public records aggregator – Parcelix.com - alexu
http://www.parcelix.com/
======
alexu
I started searching for a piece of land for a cabin and I was surprised how
many clicks does it take to find county tax data. So I built this (and
companion extension for Chrome -
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/real-estate-tax-
re...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/real-estate-tax-
records-s/ngkjcmicenjkmhonhkgmlbingipjbknk))
It works great for WA, some other states/counties may have spotty coverage.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
If dead-tree books die, what will the poor read? - ColinWright
http://seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com/390067.html
======
BSeward
If disadvantaged homes can't afford ebook readers they will read on computers.
They will go to the library and get online there and read millions, billions
of free things on line, far, far in excess of what is available in a city's
second-hand stores. Much is dreck, sure, but those who really hunger for
knowledge can find it beyond what a room full of books can offer.
The selection can't be quite as grand as what will be available to people able
to pay for ebooks, but the same is true of the author of this piece and being
limited to second-hand, very affordable books.
~~~
Hyena
Because libraries are absolutely brimming with computers. In Los Angeles, the
libraries tend to have a clutch of general computers, a significant fraction
occupied by the homeless (that's what I'd, can't fault them).
~~~
BSeward
Well, sure, because they're full of books. But if libraries plan to survive in
a future without books then they'll be full of computers.
~~~
Hyena
I don't see why you'd do this, though. Readers will continue to fall in price
and the expense of providing them to the poor is partially offset by using
them for textbooks (both that we no longer need to supply them out of
"library" budgets and that we reduce textbook costs). It might be possible in
major cities to fund readers for the poor out of the liquidation of branch
library real estate in favor of wireless access points or whatever.
------
Hyena
They will borrow ebooks from the library on free readers. The cost of readers
is likely to fall far enough, and their use be ubiquitous enough (think:
schools), that providing readers will be a fairly low cost gap-filling
operation. It might even be cheaper than the public libraries themselves.
~~~
wccrawford
Because libraries are absolutely brimming with ebook readers.
Yes, this is a copy of your comment to someone else, but yours instead. You
looked to the future for yours, but not theirs.
~~~
Hyena
I'll acknowledge that I was quick and snide. However, I do not think the
future of libraries is to become banks of computers.
That would make little sense considering that the alternative would be cheaper
and provide better service.
~~~
wccrawford
The price of ebook readers is coming down all the time because the price of
computers is. It's perfectly reasonable to think that one day ebook readers
will be as cheap as (new) books are today.
But long before that, it'd be cheaper for a 'library' (if they're still called
that) to have 1000 ebook readers to loan out than 10,000 books. And it'd take
a lot less space, too.
But I'm guessing once they're that cheap, people will just own them as a
matter of course. You can already buy devices for $100 that read ebooks
perfectly fine. Thinking they'll come down to $25 isn't that wishful.
And at that point, will libraries physically exist any more? Or will they be
just an internet presence? Maybe we'll have spots around town that offer
wireless internet access for free, to make sure everyone has it... Or maybe it
really will become a commodity, and everyone will have full access to wireless
throughout the city.
~~~
Hyena
I don't know that that's the major source of price reduction. My impression
was that the price of readers was falling because the price of peripheral
equipment--displays and network chips--was falling. The price of small
computer has presumably been low for almost two decades now, if game cartidges
were any indicator.
------
ryandvm
Actually, near zero distribution costs will ensure that in the long term, the
poor are going to have access to far more literature then ever before.
------
wccrawford
Trying to solve a problem that isn't a problem yet. By the time it is a
problem, maybe ebook readers will be the cost of books et voila! No problem.
I'm seriously not worried about this, even if only for the fact that there are
billions of print books and we're not burning them. They're just sitting
there, waiting to be read.
------
jinushaun
Ebooks will drop in price. No problem. If the poor can afford $150 Nike shoes,
they can afford an ebook.
The real problem is preservation of information. Dead-tree books can't be
destroyed by magnets and EM radiation. One thousand years from now, can people
still read our documents? With dead-tree books, they can.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Show HN: Start writing documents (PDF) with HTML/Markdown, CSS, and JavaScript. - mauvm
https://github.com/documark/documark-example
======
jeroenkruis
Using Documark for my thesis. Separating content and styling with the ease of
html and css is what really did it for me.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Highly Available Block Storage - dineshp2
https://www.digitalocean.com/features/storage/
======
wiremine
Spun one up and ran some quick numbers on a 100GB volume:
root@ubuntu-1gb-nyc1-01:~# time dd if=/dev/disk/by-id/scsi-0DO_Volume_volume-
nyc1-01 of=test.dat bs=1024 count=10000000 10000000+0 records in
10000000+0 records out
10240000000 bytes (10 GB) copied, 58.0655 s, 176 MB/s
real 0m58.248s
user 0m2.608s
sys 0m41.604s
Some quick observations:
* Easy to add one when creating a droplet; by default they let you create volumes with these sizes: 100GB, 250GB, 500GB, 1000GB, 1.95TB; it's also really easy to create your own size.
* You can resize in any increments; took about 4 seconds to go from 100GB to 110GB with no downtime; you obviously need to resize/manage the mounted volume yourself.
* [Edit 1] Deleting the droplet does NOT destroy the volume. Worth keeping in mind when you spin them up/down.
* [Edit 2] Remounting an existing volume to a new droplet was quick and painless.
~~~
Thaxll
Don't use dd for those tests it's really bad, especially on VMs.
~~~
pepr
What should be used for I/O throughput tests instead?
~~~
e1ven
I usually use Bonnie++ when testing disk performance.
[http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/](http://www.coker.com.au/bonnie++/)
~~~
notacoward
The only thing worse than dd is bonnie++. Please, folks, use fio, or at least
iozone, with multiple threads and/or a queue depth greater than one.
~~~
onnoonno
Are you sure? Bonnie++ has byte-wise and block-wise tests. Yes, the byte-wise
tests are CPU bound (as expected), but I have not seen that for the block-wise
tests on any machine so far?
------
bjacobel
Reminder that just a few weeks ago DigitalOcean rolled over on one of their
customers and took down 38,000 websites after receiving a claim of
infringement from the NRA against a parody site hosted on surge.sh:
[http://motherboard.vice.com/read/nra-complaint-takes-
down-38...](http://motherboard.vice.com/read/nra-complaint-takes-
down-38000-websites)
~~~
corobo
Reminder that you have to act on abuse notifications sharpish. You're
providing a service, it's on you if you ignore abuse notifies.
"We received notice on behalf of a trademark holder that a customer of
DigitalOcean was hosting infringing content on our network. DigitalOcean
immediately notified our customer of the infringement, and the customer was
given a five day period to resolve the issue. The infringing content was not
removed within the specified period even though several notifications were
issued. Per DigitalOcean’s terms of service, a final reminder was issued to
our customer and, when no action was taken, access to the content was
disabled. The infringing content was subsequently removed by the customer and
all services were restored in less than two hours."
~~~
Someone1234
That statement is problematic, namely this:
> The infringing content was not removed within the specified period even
> though several notifications were issued.
You don't have to remove content under the DMCA, you can also file a counter-
notice which gets the content host off the hook and then the matter goes to
court[0].
But that also assumes DMCA which, if memory serves, was not in play here. It
was a trademark complaint, which DigitalOcean has no responsibility to
resolve.
Ultimately DigitalOcean's response, even with that statement, seems at odds
with how the law is actually written. The other party also claimed they did
respond to DigitalOcean, they just never removed the legal parody material
which is their right.
DigitalOcean's understanding of the NRA's rights is more expansive than the
law itself. Effectively their trademark policy is to automatically side with
the trademark holder, irrespective of fair use[1] (see page 9+).
[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_A...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act#Title_II:_Online_Copyright_Infringement_Liability_Limitation_Act)
[1]
[https://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/intellect...](https://apps.americanbar.org/litigation/committees/intellectual/roundtables/0506_outline.pdf)
~~~
franey
It's against DO's terms of service to "use the Services in violation of the
copyrights, trademarks, patents or trade secrets of third parties", which
appears to be the issue here.
[https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/terms/](https://www.digitalocean.com/legal/terms/)
~~~
kbenson
> Effectively their trademark policy is to automatically side with the
> trademark holder, irrespective of fair use[1] (see page 9+).
Did you miss that? It's not infringement if it falls under fair use. They were
not following their TOS because they did not confirm the content was
infringing a copyright
~~~
fweespeech
Expecting a hosting provider to wade into fair use waters hand-in-hand with
you is generally unwise.
The vast majority will not unless you are a large customer with your own legal
staff on retainer to provide the appropriate legalese/notices/etc.
~~~
kbenson
I don't expect that, but I do expect that a company not immediately kowtow to
an infringement request if there is some ambiguity as to whether it's
infringing.
That said, the original reporting on this and the statement from DigitalOcean
are at odds (Motherboard's update with DO's statement), and since I haven't
verified either, I'll retract any specific support for either side of this
particular instance.
~~~
fweespeech
> I don't expect that, but I do expect that a company not immediately kowtow
> to an infringement request if there is some ambiguity as to whether it's
> infringing.
That requires money for a lawyer to evaluate it. If the customer has their own
legal staff that does this and relays that opinion to the host, as well as
being large enough to cover any legal costs DO might incur, DO would be fine
with it.
You are basically saying you are entitled to using DO's legal staff and
financial resources in addition to the hosting you've paid for.
~~~
kbenson
> You are basically saying you are entitled to using DO's legal staff and
> financial resources in addition to the hosting you've paid for.
No, what I'm saying is that DO _must_ already do this to some degree if they
are handling requests, as otherwise I could send letters claiming
trademark/copyright infringement for any number of things and get many
customers shut down. If they have internal guidelines for what they do in
cases when trademark/copyright infringement, I expect they follow those. I
also expect that those policies do the minimum legally required of them.
That's not because it's cheaper and garners good will from customers (it
does), but because to do otherwise is taking sides in a legal situation
without being an appointed arbiter of the law. Not only is this excessive, but
it's anti-customer.
If DO is doing what they think they must by law, I have no problem with that,
as long as that is clearly explained. In the case we were previously talking
about, the statement from DO (at the motherboard article) is somewhat
ambiguous as to why they did what they did. _Per DigitalOcean’s terms of
service, a final reminder was issued to our customer and, when no action was
taken, access to the content was disabled._ Was the take down required by law,
or was DO overly aggressive in handling it? Without a statement as to why,
(and I think that given some people's assertion that they went beyond what was
legally required of them), their reasoning is somewhat ambiguous, and harder
to call into question. If they clearly define they enforced their TOS based on
what they believe is a legally required of them, then we can look at the law
and their actions and evaluate whether that's true, and if it's not, DO can
learn from the experience or be called out as a company that is capricious in
their execution of the law.
What it boils down to is that "We received a complaint infringement. We
enforced our TOS and shut down access to the content in question." leaves a
lot open for assumption. I would be much happier if it was "We received a
complaint infringement _and as we believe is legally required of us_ we
enforced our TOS and shut down access to the content in question." It's a
small change, but it allows customers (and critics) a much clearer view on how
DO handles situations like this, and allows for the public to make an informed
choice on whether they think DO was correct in their actions (whether they
really were legally required to do so). It's subtle, but I think it's a very,
_very_ important distinction.
------
dastbe
Don't be confused: the article makes the mistake of comparing DOs new block
storage service with other companies object stores. EBS is the competitor to
this, not S3. Same for gce persistent disks and azure drives.
Unfortunately this means the pricing comparison is just wrong.
~~~
priteshjain
Ohh
------
mwcampbell
I think this might be a mistake. Ever since Joyent's commentary on one of the
big Amazon EBS failures in 2011 [1] [2] [3], I've been suspicious of all
network-attached block storage. Then again, I haven't heard of any big EBS
failures recently; I wonder what changed.
[1]: [https://www.joyent.com/blog/on-cascading-failures-and-
amazon...](https://www.joyent.com/blog/on-cascading-failures-and-amazons-
elastic-block-store)
[2]: [https://www.joyent.com/blog/magical-block-store-when-
abstrac...](https://www.joyent.com/blog/magical-block-store-when-abstractions-
fail-us)
[3]: [https://www.joyent.com/blog/network-storage-in-the-cloud-
del...](https://www.joyent.com/blog/network-storage-in-the-cloud-delicious-
but-deadly)
~~~
boulos
Network block storage isn't inherently broken, the initial EBS implementation
was frankly just unreliable.
We've not had anything like those dark days with Persistent Disk. It's still
true that having your storage across the network opens you to _networking_
failures taking out your storage, but the gain in durability and maintenance
pays for it (in our case, live migration would just be crazy with local
spinning disks, we tried it didn't work).
Disclaimer: I work on GCE, and we want your business ;)
~~~
ngrilly
> in our case, live migration would just be crazy with local spinning disks,
> we tried it didn't work
It looks like Exoscale does live migrations with locally attached SSDs.
~~~
regularfry
Then they'll run into the same problem anyone does doing that: migrating
reasonably-sized block devices across a reasonable network takes an
unreasonable length of time.
Been there, done that, don't want to sit staring at consoles waiting for live
disc migrations ever again.
~~~
ngrilly
My guess is that they live migrate VMs only before a planned maintenance.
Let's say they use a 10 Gbps network, and they use only 1 Gbps of bandwidth
for migrating data, then migrating a 200 GB disk would take something like 1
hour, which sounds OK. Can you share some details about your experience?
~~~
regularfry
You're missing a subtlety: it's a _live_ migration. You've also got to migrate
the data the VM's writing while the migration is going on. Depending on how
your network's set up, it might well be possible for the VM to saturate out
the migration process. Plus this won't only be planned maintenance, it'll be
to get off dodgy hardware, too, including spannered RAID controllers where you
_really_ don't want to risk hanging around. Add in that you're likely going to
be moving sets of discs at once (so possibly a couple of TB at a time), rather
than individually, and you're very quickly looking at spending a day (or a
night) at a time watching in case there's a network blip which means you need
to restart any of them. This does not lend itself to a peaceful, happy
existence.
It doesn't take doing this very often to make you realise that this is
fundamentally backwards: you want the disc data already present on more than
one storage server so that if one goes pop, you're not stuffed. Once you've
done _that_ , you can make the observation that hardware RAID is no longer
necessary, and save yourself a layer of complexity.
~~~
ngrilly
Thanks a lot for your detailed answer. I understand your arguments, but Google
Compute Engine Local SSDs support live migration [1], which seems to prove
it's possible, despite the difficulties. Any advice about this?
[1]
[https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks/#data_persistenc...](https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks/#data_persistence_on_local_ssds)
~~~
regularfry
Yeah, it's possible. Just not pleasant. What they're doing (and how unpleasant
it is to operate) will depend on exactly what they mean by:
> Your instance might experience a short period of decreased performance
and how tolerant they are of unplanned reboots. I suspect what it means is
that they'll throttle your VM (or maybe pause your IO) so it can't interfere
with finalising the migration.
That being said, this is Google. They've probably thrown more man-hours at
this than anyone else would think sane. I'll note that this is in the context
of automatic migration away from "maintenance events" (whatever that covers) -
it sounds like they think they've automated away a lot of the reasons we were
having to keep an eye on things, but they're still vulnerable to hardware
failure (obviously).
------
Mister_Snuggles
This is EXACTLY the thing that I need for one of my droplets! I love how there
is nothing "special" about it - it's just a disk that you can attach to a
droplet. I'm sure that under the hood there's some kind of magic going on, but
it looks like it's nicely abstracted away. This is what I hoped block storage
would turn out to be - here's a block device, use it like one.
As soon as this rolls out to the region I've got that droplet in, I'm going to
pull the trigger on it. I might even spend the effort to migrate my droplet to
a supported region just to get this.
~~~
mikeash
Same here. My $5/month droplet is sufficient for all my needs, except it's a
bit limiting on storage. $2/month for an extra 20GB, doubling my storage,
would be great. I don't want to migrate anything and I don't care about more
CPU or RAM, I just want more space!
~~~
hashmp
Totally agree, this was their main limitation. Glad they have now solved it.
------
3pt14159
I have been asking for non-SSD on DO for a long time now. My heart jumped when
I saw the HN title, only to be dashed on the rocks.
What are us data nerds supposed to do? We want to take 10 terabytes, run a
batch process on it, keep the 20TB, then continue with about 5GB of working
data until the next month's terabyte comes in, then we want to batch through
the 21TB. Right now the price slider doesn't even go up to 21TB, and clicking
on the "need more storage button" doesn't go anywhere, but I'm assuming it
would be $2100 / month which is more than 3x as expensive than vanilla S3.
~~~
Veratyr
You're looking at the wrong market.
At Hetzner, you can rent a dedicated server with 2x3TB drives for about
$25/month ($0.005/GB, to scale to multiple servers, use Ceph) and a few larger
machines for under $100. At OVH you can buy object storage for around 1c/GB
and rent a few dedicated servers for less than $100/month, or use their cloud.
If you go to the _really_ low end, time4vps will give you a 1TB VPS for
2EUR/month, if you pay for 2 years (and they give you 4x the storage as
bandwidth).
I don't work for any of these companies but I have services with all of them.
~~~
3pt14159
Yeah, but I like the DO per hour billing, design, and API. Other than their
insecure-by-default SSH key thing,
[https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocea...](https://digitalocean.uservoice.com/forums/136585-digitalocean/suggestions/9307569-return-
the-droplet-s-ssh-public-key-as-part-of-api) that is.
~~~
happyslobro
How many hours does it take to load 10TB and then reduce it to 5GB? ;)
~~~
3pt14159
Actually because I use the DO API and lots of small instances that work
together, not that long. Right now I use S3, which blows because I hate the S3
cli and API, so I would love a better solution.
~~~
tedmiston
Not sure if it's _much_ better for you use case, but Backblaze introduced an
S3 competitor called B2 a few months ago.
Price calculation is straightforward:
\- $0.005/GB/month for storage
\- $0.05/GB download
\- $0.004 per 10k downloads
There is a base free tier as well.
[https://www.backblaze.com/b2/](https://www.backblaze.com/b2/)
~~~
3pt14159
Wow thanks for this! I'll definitely use these guys in the future.
------
misframer
It's the same price as AWS's General Purpose SSD EBS volumes.
[https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/pricing/](https://aws.amazon.com/ebs/pricing/)
~~~
hashmp
Yep.... Digital Ocean is much more competitive for instances though and out
going bandwidth.
~~~
eropple
At the cost of significantly worse networking (VPC is _fantastic_ ), no object
storage mechanism, no equivalent to IAM for instance permissioning, and no
autoscaling (seriously? in 2016? I had to go look to make sure I wasn't
misremembering--that they recommend something like DOProxy should make the lot
of them faintly embarrassed).
DigitalOcean may have some value at the basement level of compute, but as a
professional in this area there is literally no situation where I would use
DigitalOcean right now because I value my time. AWS is already laughably
cheap, the tooling is overwhelmingly superior, the resources available are
better, and you aren't duct-taping together half-solutions and reinventing
every wheel. (This is less an endorsement of AWS and more an endorsement of
Not DigitalOcean; GCE is more than fine, Azure has some ugly bits around
autoscaling that I don't like but you can get by.)
------
andybak
This helps me with a nicer deployment setup. I was always keen on 'rebuild
from scratch' rather than 'update stuff and hope you're idempotent and have
captured all changes' but transitory data was always the problem. Now I can
start building a new updated droplet and the only downtime will be that needed
to detach and reattach the block storage containing the db etc.
Anyone see a flaw in this? (I know there are other ways to achieve similar
benefits - my files could be on S3 and the database could be a separate
droplet etc but these introduced various drawbacks and added complexity)
~~~
Jedd
> Anyone see a flaw in this?
Perhaps not a flaw, but some issues with your setup are implied.
If you're rebuilding from scratch _because_ you're not sure that you can
update things, then you're probably in need of a configuration management tool
(I'm a big fan of saltstack[1], mostly because I don't like Ruby or DSL's, but
there's lots of options out there[2])
If you're worried you're going to lose transitory data, it _sounds_ like you
don't have a trusted and tested backup/archival/recovery process in place. So
having it stored on a single EBS / DO BS / etc means you're still exposed. If
you're rebuilding and rolling data over, in this scenario, I'd be copying,
rather than relocating, any precarious data repositories.
[1] [https://saltstack.com/](https://saltstack.com/) [2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-
source_conf...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_open-
source_configuration_management_software)
~~~
vidarh
I tend to avoid those config management tools other than for basic
bootstrapping exactly because while you can use those too to recreate from
scratch, when you don't do that, you leave the door open for undocumented,
unknown state, since most of them basically take a system in an unknown-but-
hopefully-mostly-consistent state and try to bring them to a known state.
But they'll only be in a known state in that case if your setup is extremely
comprehensive.
In practice I've seen too many config management tools where long running
servers have ended up in unknown states because changes have been applied, and
subsequently changes have either been made outside of the toolchain, or
changes have been done to the config in ways that doesn't let the tool know
what has changed, or the tools simply doesn't have a way of comparing machine
states without comprehensively enumerating everything on the server (e.g.
people running Ansible playbooks that adds X, subsequently removing the
requirement X from the playbook, and going about without considering whether
or not X will interact with Y which they've added later).
As a result, I see rebuilding from scratch as largely orthogonal to whether or
not you use a configuration management tool or e.g. build VM images that you
replace wholesale, or whatever you do: You should rebuild from scratch
regularly, as coupled with a test-suite it's the only realistic way of knowing
whether or not you've left anything out of your build process.
My biggest caveat with config management systems is that they tend to end up
encouraging live changes to a setup, instead of a build-test-deploy cycle.
Sometimes that's necessary, but to me that's a last resort.
~~~
brazzledazzle
I actually agree with your overall point but generally speaking if someone is
making changes outside of your standardized toolchain you have a human
problem. Emergencies aside, you use those tools for a reason. Straddling the
fence is almost the worst of both worlds.
~~~
vidarh
Agreed. But in my experience, the easier you make going outside the process
the easier it becomes to invent excuses for why it is ok. A lot of my job
involves making the right thing to do the path of least resistance, because
when it isn't, because humans overall tend to be the cause of a whole lot more
of the problems than the servers.
------
skrowl
I like their straight forward pricing. $0.10 USD per GB per month. No IOPS
limits.
That said, how do you prevent a rogue droplet from going crazy and hogging up
all of the SSD I/O?
~~~
zbjornson
Unless I missed it, I saw "no need for complicated formulas to determine the
overall cost for transactions or IOPs limit," which I do not read as "no IOPS
limit." I was looking but could not find any word on performance.
~~~
brianwawok
I read it as they either silently limit you, or have a free for all and let
the traffic duke it out for iops.
------
happyslobro
Setup: find it's name, format and mount it, as if you were adding an SSD to a
desktop.
[https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-
use-...](https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-block-
storage-on-digitalocean)
------
koolba
This has been a much requested feature and I'm sure it will be very popular.
I'm still reminded of this quote though:
" _He was a bold man that first ran a production database on a brand new block
storage service!_ "
------
johnwheeler
I love how DO focuses on what matters the most: Inexpensive VMs and scalable
block storage.
If I had to pick two, those would be them!
~~~
brianwawok
Well except being 4 years late to the block storage game? Seems they have an
uphill fight. Aws and gce match them on low end droplet price and offer much
more. No local ssd but not sure what % of apps really need local ssd. DO
effectively forces you to pay for local ssd for all of your servers.
~~~
velodrome
Well, they beat Linode..
With DO, at least there is an additional option available for users.
With GCE and AWS, the outbound bandwidth is expensive. 1TB = $90 (AWS, GCE) vs
1TB included (Linode, DO).
~~~
e12e
This. I'm always a little confused by how people even evaluate the big three
clouds, with prices per request and all bandwidth "not included". It's so
strange coming from cheap dedicated servers with typically 10tb
bandwidth/month "included". I mean, what do people _do_ in the cloud that
requires 100gb of storage, and insignificant transfer?
------
aibottle
Thank god! Highly Available Block Storage. From Digital Ocean. Great! Now I
can finally store all the 300mb/s streaming in on my server. Oh wait. I
cannot, because DO cancelled the service again. Bummer.
~~~
cheapsteak
Cancelled which service?
------
cgag
Sweet. This makes digitalocean much more appealing as a potential substrate
for a kubernetes cluster.
~~~
pstadler
I just migrated my Kubernetes/Rancher stack from NYC2 to NYC1 in order to use
block storage. Eager to see whether this plays well with GlusterFS.
------
Mister_Snuggles
I can't wait for this to roll out to more regions.
This is EXACTLY the thing I need for some stuff I'm working on!
------
ozy23378
Going to perform some very basic DD i/o benchmarks using:
[https://haydenjames.io/web-host-doesnt-want-read-
benchmark-v...](https://haydenjames.io/web-host-doesnt-want-read-benchmark-
vps/)
Will post results.
------
scurvy
What's the backend? Ceph?
~~~
marcstreeter
Ceph is not block storage -- ceph is _object storage_
~~~
vruiz
It's actually both, and a file system.
~~~
marcstreeter
Oh I guess I thought ceph was all about _eventual_ consistency. I didn't know
it was strongly consistent like what I expect from block storage.
------
mrmondo
How is it taking huge cloud providers so long to catch up with things we do
self hosted every day? It obviously has to be well engineered, yet it's
relatively simple. Woefully poor performance too.
------
simos
Some early benchmarks about the new block storage,
[https://simos.info/blog/trying-out-lxd-containers-on-
ubuntu-...](https://simos.info/blog/trying-out-lxd-containers-on-ubuntu-on-
digitalocean-with-block-storage/)
I did not get good speeds and I am wondering why that may be...
~~~
zbjornson
> The immediate benefits are that the latency is much lower with the new block
> storage
I think you might have misread the units: locally attached 50105 us (50 ms) vs
block 546 ms.
The throughput numbers are on par with AWS and GCP block storage. This seems
reasonable aside from the high latency.
------
drtse4
A bit pricey for the long term but great if you just need to add some disk
space to your vm and don't need the other improvements more expensive vms give
you.
I use DO mostly to compile stuff on Linux when i don't have access to a
physical server, and storage size is always a problem.
~~~
marcstreeter
The purpose of the block storage in this instance isn't about giving your
vm/droplet more space. It's separation. That way any data that's on that
device can be attached to another vm/droplet. It probably would be more cost
effective just to upgrade the vm/droplet if space were a concern. It's at
least how we've marketed the same feature for the past year or two via
Codero's portal. Not to say I don't like how DO has entered the space: keeping
it simple.
~~~
walkertraylor
Exactly! It's about having an easy upgrade path, generally reducing the amount
of work for common operations, and for more flexibility engineering your cloud
architecture. It's nice that it happens to be SSD, but highest performance or
lowest cost per GB isn't necessarily the only cost saving factor.
This a main reason I still use Amazon AWS: I can create an instance and if it
doesn't perform, upgrade it until it does. Then when I'm finished, kill the
instance and save the volume. Next time I need it, just create the instance
for the job, perhaps at spot pricing, then kill it again.
~~~
drtse4
What you describe was already possible on DO using snapshots (that can be
stored for free), and that's what I usually do too.
------
daveguy
Edit3: Remountable/movable flexible storage for DO instances is what this
gives you and it's kind of pricey. The comparison to B2 is not valid. Leaving
the original mess for posterity.
\---
TWENTY times (edit) the price as B2 from Backblaze ($.10 vs $.005 per GB per
month). It is one of the more expensive ones. But that gets you two things:
* (moot See edit 2) SSD! (significant iops improvement)
* (moot See edit 2) No transactional costs! (not sure if just between digital ocean instances, but they say none)
Improved performance and no transaction costs MAY (edit) be worth it for some
applications.
Edit1: made it an order of magnitude cheaper in my head after looking at
backblaze. It is no where close to the same price. Thank you for the catch,
scq!
Edit2: and I'm just all kinds of off on this. Block not object storage.
Essentially storage you can mount and move between digitalocean instances.
That makes no transaction costs moot. You still have to get data out of the
instance.
Thank you all for quickly catching how backwards this post was! I need coffee.
~~~
crb
B2 is blob storage, like Google Cloud Storage or Amazon S3. What they have
launched is SSD block storage, like Google persistent disks or Amazon EBS.
(The TechCrunch article also got this confused.)
~~~
askmike
> Amazon EBS.
Not more like amazon EFS?
~~~
boynamedsue
No. EFS is NFS in the cloud which is NAS.
------
happyslobro
I don't suppose DO or anyone else is already working on an Ansible addon for
this?
------
lamarkia
I benchmarked the new block storage and it is not that faster than the virtio
disk.
~~~
daveguy
Um. Can you provide context? What virtio setup? How much faster? How are you
accessing each? This is the reason benchmarks are often worse than useless.
------
fweespeech
$.10/GB block storage is too expensive.
[https://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/rpn-
san](https://www.online.net/en/dedicated-server/rpn-san)
There are several places you can get ~5 TB for +/-10% of the 1TB price at DO.
DO is offering a SAN at Object Store prices. :/
~~~
tomschlick
So is that service. You linked to the non SSD version. Their SSD version is
$0.12/GB
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: What job to get after failed startup? - tway13521
Been working on an app startup for a while, and while I'm not 100% convinced it has failed, financially I'm in a spot where I can't really continue.<p>I'm at a bit of a loss as to what kind of job to pursue next. I have a very broad and deep set of skills. On the technical side, this includes: full stack dev, hardcore machine learning / applied math stuff, finance and algorithmic trading.<p>On the nontechnical side, I've now acquired all kinds of experience that comes from conceiving and building a product from scratch.<p>I can go back to do something technical or finance-y but that seems a bit limiting after being responsible for literally everything on my product. But I'm mostly interested in maximizing my economic outcome and would only consider things that pay at least 200k/yr.<p>Any suggestions of things that could be a good match aside from data science or finance stuff? I have no idea what's out there and my network is essentially zero. I didn't have investors for this so pursuing a soft landing via that route is not an option.
======
davismwfl
Honestly it seems like you are out of touch with the market and with what is
reasonable. $200k for devs is not impossible, but I would not call it common
either and more rarely have I seen a salary around $200k. Usually I see more
like mid 100's with RSU's and/or performance bonuses that can push you up to
the high 100's or possibly over $200k.
Finance is your best place to try and get a comp package that is in that
range, but even then it will be in specific markets and depending where you
are you may need to relocate etc. That may not be an issue for you, but $200k
in NYC is different then $200k in Austin Tx, or North Carolina etc. You can
live very comfortably on quite a bit less then $200k in most markets,
excluding maybe SF and NYC. If your expenses are such that you require that
level of income then you are in a bit of a bind without a network to fall back
on.
Generally, people that get to these levels almost always do it through a
network of contacts, and even in finance they typically have a good network to
rely on and a track record of proof to go with it.
I'd love to hear any details to the contrary, specifically by someone who has
done it or has first hand knowledge.
Edit: One point, you didn't limit your comment to dev roles. BizDev, marketing
and sales roles can also be other methods, but again, without a network or a
proven track record in those fields you will be hard pressed to get an offer
in that range. You may work up to that range within a few years, but you won't
start there generally.
------
brad0
I'll be blunt and say there's no way you're gonna get 200k with no network and
avoiding finance.
Finance is the only place I can think of that you'd be able to pull 200k and
that would only be with a lot of contacts.
~~~
sharemywin
Sales but only if your really good.
------
Kinnard
You could get a job and keep working on your startup . . . but it sounds like
it's not really your thing. How long have you been working on it?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Pandora's Plan To Annoy Users Into Becoming Paid Subscribers - apompliano
http://anthonypompliano.com/2013/05/24/pandora-is-intentionally-annoying-users-with-non-relevant-ads/
======
kintamanimatt
> In the past I’ve had divorce lawyers and daycares solicit me. How that is
> related to Beastie Boys and Bruce Springsteen is escaping me.
People that listen to that kind of music are probably male and married with
kids, reminiscing of the time when they were single and childfree while
commuting to their cubicle.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Stalker Fear Over Phone App - DanielBMarkham
http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/2872019/Stalker-fear-over-facial-recognition-phone-app.html#ixzz0gsypsBQg
======
junklight
Ah - an almost perfect example of UK Tabloid reporting:
Moral panic over something that doesn't yet exist, and even if it does work is
only going to give access to information people have chosen to make available.
But lets not let facts get in the way of fearing the internet.
------
JamieEi
Face recognition is a _really_ hard problem
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Dell: No, our laptops don't smell like cat urine - uladzislau
http://www.engadget.com/2013/10/30/dell-laptops-dont-smell-like-urine/?ncid=rss_truncated
======
Turing_Machine
No, they aren't. They're denying that the smell _is_ cat urine (or any other
kind of urine). They're admitting that the smell is there.
Bad headline even for Engadget.
------
wesleyac
I like how they think the problem is that it smells like _cat piss_.
The problem is that it _smells_ like cat piss.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Six cars aced new pedestrian detection tests - Tomte
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/10/six-cars-that-could-prevent-you-from-hitting-a-pedestrian/
======
bryanlarsen
Virtually eliminating pedestrian fatalities could be quite simple, but we
don't do it because it would inconvenience people: Set a 30 km/h (18 mph)
speed limit everywhere but controlled-access freeways, and enforce it
strictly. At 30km/h a car-pedestrian collision is almost always non-fatal[1],
and at that speed cars can stop almost instantaneously.
1:
[https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_...](https://nacto.org/docs/usdg/relationship_between_speed_risk_fatal_injury_pedestrians_and_car_occupants_richards.pdf)
~~~
dragontamer
That means halving the bandwidth of all inner-city roads (that are
traditionally at 35mph+)
If a road used to carry 1000-cars per hour, it will only carry 500-cars per
hour if you drop the speed limit from 35 -> 18\. Effectively doubling the
length of time for congestion.
You can get around this by building twice as many roads I guess, but cities
don't really have any more room.
~~~
bryanlarsen
If there are 2 seconds of distance between cars at 36mph and 2 seconds of
distance between cars at 18mph then the road has exactly the same capacity at
both speeds.
Also, the constraint on street capacity is intersections in the vast majority
of cases. Until you remove intersections nothing else really else matters.
~~~
dragontamer
I don't think people are "timing" their cars, and are instead driving at "car-
lengths" worth of distance between the person in front of them
If you instead assume 1-car lengths worth of distance at both 36mph and 18mph,
the road capacity shrinks dramatically between the two speeds.
~~~
carlmr
If that is true, most congestion on my way to work is after an accident. Not
having that accident at 30kph is much more likely than not having it at twice
the speed, giving the same distance to react and brake.
------
why-oh-why
I’m a fan of Tesla but when you see that their system is not a bit better than
the competition (they’re all failing in low light conditions), I don’t know
how they can claim autonomous driving “coming soon.” Especially after Uber’s
death you’d think that this specific condition would be given extremely high
priority.
~~~
raaaaraaaa2
They recognize much more objects on the road but major problem is to do not
cause a lot of false alarms. e.g. You don't really want to drive car which
decided that plastic bag on the highway is reason for emergency braking, on
the other hand is that really plastic bag or some drunk person who is sleeping
on the road...
I remember when Volvo introduced IntelliSafe technology few years ago that car
was totally "paranoid" and it was beeping all the time -> most of drivers
deactivated that system.
~~~
mellosouls
If it's confused between a plastic bag and a human, it _hasn 't_ recognised
it.
~~~
bryanlarsen
It didn't recognize a plastic bag as a human, it recognized a plastic bag as
an unknown object. A solid object the size of a plastic bag could cause a
major accident.
------
jwr
> "in most cases avoided hitting the pedestrian"
I am not sure if this result merits the use of the word "aced" in the title.
~~~
thaumasiotes
I think it's fair to say that whether you hit the pedestrian is more or less
irrelevant to your score on a pedestrian _detection_ test.
~~~
coldtea
Well, it's not irrelevant to a " _timely_ pedestrian detection" test, which is
what actually matters in self-driving cars...
------
djaychela
I think the interesting thing in that article is the stat that pedestrian
fatalities reached their lowest in 2009, and have been increasing since. Is it
really (as I've heard and read) that it's because people are on their phones
and walking out into the road? I've definitely seen people do this in front of
me, but I know that's merely anecdotal.
~~~
griffinheart
I remember reading an article on hn that the rise of SUV's and their design is
related to the increase of fatalities.
Like, compare a pedestrian collision where the car has a lower and more
aerodynamic front vs the wall that is a SUV's front.
~~~
benologist
SUVs are higher and hitting people in the head / chest -
[https://www.aarp.org/auto/driver-safety/info-2018/suv-
pedest...](https://www.aarp.org/auto/driver-safety/info-2018/suv-pedestrian-
dangers.html)
------
raaaaraaaa2
Audi A4 and Subaru Outback aced 3 years ago in similar test (ADAC, Germany) :
[https://www.adac.de/infotestrat/tests/assistenzsysteme/fussg...](https://www.adac.de/infotestrat/tests/assistenzsysteme/fussgaengererkennung_2016/default.aspx?ComponentId=270750&SourcePageId=31956)
Audi A4 has single monochrome camera (+well tuned image recognition HW/SW) and
Eyesight system from Subaru has two cameras and it's already used for ~5
years.
------
stunt
Basically none of them are good enough for a real world scenario in a busy
city. But they may save life on some scenarios which is good.
They can achieve a huge safety improvement by forcing speed limit. But somehow
car manufacturers don’t want to implement it.
~~~
donkeyd
> They can achieve a huge safety improvement by forcing speed limit. But
> somehow car manufacturers don’t want to implement it.
I've had multiple cars that show the current speed limit on the dash. Some
based on GPS, others based on visual recognition. None of them have been
correct 100% of the time. I wouldn't want my car to slow me down on a highway
because it misinterprets a sign or because their data isn't up-to-date, or
because the GPS is glitching and thinks I'm driving on a side road.
It's a really simple solution in theory, but in practice it doesn't seem
feasible yet.
------
specialbat
How about a device that pedestrians could optionally carry that would
broadcast their presence to all vehicles
------
pen2l
With the news about Uber and Tesla accidents, it’s been making me wonder: why
not equip these cars with one more sensor: an infrared camera. Combining
thermal information with extant information will be a great boon in making
intelligent decisions, no?
~~~
jcims
I 100% agree but I would bet the issue is unit cost for the hardware. Anything
with reasonable resolution is going to be in the four digit dollar range per
sensor.
~~~
darkerside
This seems totally reasonable for an actual damn autopilot
------
jonplackett
Interesting that Tesla, with what I would have assumed to be a much more
sophisticated system didn’t do as well.
Anyone care to have a guess why?
~~~
davidgould
The pedestrian detection and automatic emergency braking systems are separate
from autopilot. They are always on, even if autopilot is not in use. As I
understand it, they are different code, more conventional and similar to the
systems in other cars, where autopilot is a grand research project/extended
beta. As with most things Tesla they are likely to improve over time with OTA
updates.
------
cryptozeus
the Audi A4, BMW 3 series, Subaru Outback, Mercedes-Benz C-Class, Nissan
Maxima, and Volvo S60.
------
ryanlol
I have to turn the pedestrian detection off every time I drive past the local
school. Why? The kids figured out that it's really easy to make new cars
emergency brake by just pretending to walk onto the road.
People suck.
~~~
evancaine
people suck or kids will be kids?
~~~
ryanlol
Same thing I guess? It's humans sabotaging a safety feature intended to
protect them.
~~~
Tade0
Kids don't know any better yet.
That being said I would probably lose my temper as well when faced with such a
situation.
~~~
avar
When I'm dropping off my kids and other kids run in my way I usually just stop
to chat or play with them, but I'm doing this when walking or on a bicycle.
I guess if I wore a 2-ton suit of power armor I'd just be pissed off instead
:)
~~~
ryanlol
The main problem here is that the 2-ton suit of power armor doesn't really
care about what's behind it when it slams the brakes for a pedestrian, you
would probably be pretty upset if you were biking behind me when this happens.
I think it's a great thing that the car prioritizes pedestrian safety, but
it's very unfortunate that people would abuse this.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Flappy Bird ported to e cig - kelukelugames
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KvQ6K8ariWs
======
bifrost
This is kind of hillarious and kind of terrible.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Samsung Kills Off the Galaxy Note 7 Smartphone - olegious
http://nyti.ms/2dTV6Uf
======
gus_massa
[The [http://nyti.ms](http://nyti.ms) shortened URL are autokilled, remember
to post the [http://www.nytimes.com](http://www.nytimes.com) version next
time.]
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Validity Acquires Return Path, the Leader in Email Deliverability - marcbradshaw
https://www.validity.com/blog/validity-return-path-announcement/
======
verisimilitudes
>Today is a very big day – both for Validity – and for leading brands that
rely on email as a mission critical platform for engaging with customers.
Remember when email was ''dark social''?
>What we particularly love about the work that Return Path has been doing for
the last 20 years is the trust they’ve established with the leading Internet
and Email Service Providers around the globe, and for the thousands of
customers who have embraced Return Path as a must-have solution for digital
marketing success.
So, what, malicious email filters are a feature now, because businesses can
negotiate their way around them and then sell access?
>When we talk with sales and marketing professionals evaluating our solutions,
we hear time and time again a desire for higher fidelity interaction with
customers. They are seeking a greater trust that the effort they’re making
will result in an effective digital marketing campaign.
That means tracking.
>From there, customers can use Return Path to gain rich analytics that make
their digital campaigns run flawlessly. What was the placement of that email
within the recipient’s mailbox and did the recipient interact with it? If so,
how? And how does that interaction, compared to other competitive campaigns,
help our customers gain actionable intelligence? The sky’s the limit.
How the Hell are they collecting this information? Does this company have
agreements with these major providers that permit them to accumulate this?
What do they do when someone uses the real email protocols to collect their
mailbox and then view it in a dedicated reader?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google as magical learning machine - tirnene
http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n19/daniel-soar/it-knows
======
ShawnJG
On June 6, 2015 at 3:23 PM Google became self-aware and immediately destroyed
Skynet. Very interesting to see how Google works. They could very easily
become evil. Here's hoping they stay on the straight and narrow. Its strength
lies in its multipronged positive feedback loop. But while it may be easier to
thwart incremental advances from competing companies as was the case in the
GPS kerfuffle, unlike with most industries a giant leap forward overnight can
happen in the Internet age. That would easily put them in a negative feedback
loop which they may not be able to recover from. That's what's best about the
Internet, there is very little distance between a good idea and implementation
to consumption by the masses. The roadside is littered with previously high-
value tech companies who were devalued overnight by a competing idea.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Quick Q - stu_utterguy
Hey, I don't know much about computers but I'm interested in learning how to make great web pages, Web 2.0 Apps,and Facebook Apps. Right now, I have been brushing up on C++ and Pascal (languages I have previously learned). Basically what is the right progression for me to develop the skills for the aforementioned?
======
willarson
Web development requires small slices of dozens of skills. You need to be able
to design web-pages (CSS, HTML, a personal design aesthetic). You need to be
able to interface between your pages and your server (web frameworks ease the
pain of this: Django (Python), Ruby On Rails (Ruby), Seaside (Squeak), Lift
(Scala), and others in Scheme, Common Lisp, Java, etc). You (will probably)
need to be able to add interactivity to your projects: javascript/ajax or
Flash (or, theoretically, Silverlight). You will need to interact with
databases to create persistent data (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQLite), or at least
learn how to use an ORM (object-relational mapping, used to create a simpler
interface to interact with databases without using Structured Query Language).
If you are seriously devoted to developing a web applications, I would
consider trying Django. It is a full development stack (it will help you with
templates for your html, views to populate the templates, an ORM to control
your database, etc), and I found it more intuitive than Ruby-on-Rails.
However, given the wide number of skills involved in web programming, I would
strongly consider focusing on one aspect and becoming proficient at that.
Specializing means you can more quickly become an asset (to a team), but will
also develop skills you would need to develop anyway to develop quality web
applications.
Although many web applications seem stupidly simple, there is still a huge
amount of time and effort being spent invisibly: testing for cross-browser
compliance, designing and building a system that scales horizontally,
designing your website to appeal to customers, setting up your production
hosting, cleaning and escaping all incoming data to prevent various security
exploits, creating a caching framework to avoid hitting your database if
possible (slow), designing your overall system to perform quickly, and the
list never ends: there is always something else.
This is the joy of web programming, and also the reason that it is hard to do
well. Don't be discouraged, just realize that it isn't simple, and get to
work. :)
------
sabhishek
C++, Pascal will be of little help I'm afraid. Web developement can be broadly
categoriesed into points as below, that you might want to learn.
Server side : PHP, JSP,ASP,Ruby. Presentation/Client side scripting :
HTML,CSS,Javascript Backend: MySql, Oracle etc.
I suggest you to start a project and learn while you code, learning curve may
be high for you depending on the level of exp you have.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Ask HN: Ways to kill clickbait? - throwaway13337
It's not just on Facebook. Clickbait is killing journalism in main stream media, on video sites, and importantly search results. It's shaping our information consumption is a huge way towards the negative.<p>Clickbait is not just in the title, but can also be suggestive pictures and other deceptive presentation.<p>A big reason clickbait works so well is that people's clicks reenforce the algorithms that determine if something is relevant.<p>Is there a way to solve this as technologists? HN has done a lot with moderation. Is there a generic solution to apply? Meta-moderation? Devaluing clicks? Moderated search engines? Curated?<p>Are there success stories of mitigating it?
======
DrScump
Make it no longer profitable.
Facebook gladly serves up utterly phony sports/celebrity "news" ads complete
with bogus ESPN.com or People.com displayed URLs (by right-clicking on the URL
you can see where clicks _really_ go, e.g. ufcheatnews, vovnianko, xlvitrin).
They'll keep serving them up until Disney or other trademark owners sue the
hell out of them.
I will never, ever buy anything with any connection to a Facebook ad. Even if
I see something I can't live without, I'll navigate there with a native URL on
a different browser.
------
drdeca
browser extension that, if one clicks the back button shortly after starting
to view a page, sends a message that the url is more likely to be of poor
quality ?
just a spitball idea.
------
PaulHoule
All you need is this one weird trick.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
GUI vs CLI: Operation vs Expression - mef
http://blog.vivekhaldar.com/post/8950163616/gui-vs-cli-operation-vs-expression
======
ugh
"Expression" as the author defines it seems to be very narrow. Users of
Photoshop or InDesign or Illustrator or Maya or Logic or Premiere Pro most
definitly do express themselves, even though they are operating a GUI. GUIs
are widely used for expression. Does the author want to suggest that CLIs
would better serve the needs of all who want to express themselves?
~~~
rmc
_Users of Photoshop or InDesign or Illustrator or Maya or Logic or Premiere
Pro most definitly do express themselves_
But in those programmes, the GUI is more like a keyboard of a CLI than the
actual programme. The GUI controls are used as tools to use on the main area,
the drawing area. A graphical programme like photoshop presents you with a
massive empty whitespace for you to draw in. It doesn't tell you where to
draw, or what colour to draw. It allows you choose any colour you want. Once
you paint some red, you can then paint any other colour.
In this way the programmes you list confirm the "unbounded, "lack of
constrains" and "newbie unfriendlyness" of the CLI.
A newbie doesn't know what commands to type into bash, and they don't know
what colours to put down first in photoshop.
~~~
ugh
I don’t understand. You also seem to think that the author picked a horrible
analogy?
~~~
rmc
No, I think the analogy is apt. I think you're looking too shallowly and only
looking at GUI/CLI, and thinking that Photoshop, being a GUI, fits into that
world. Whereas Photoshop has more in common with CLI tools than many GUI
programmes.
~~~
ugh
Wow. Just wow. What a completely absurd redefinition of what is a CLI and what
is a GUI. No true Scotsman, anyone?
It is just not an apt analogy if it requires you to claim that Photoshop is
more CLI than GUI. That’s so freaking absurd.
Well, I guess I should have picked up on that when reading your last paragraph
where you imply that everything that’s hard to use is also a CLI.
~~~
burgerbrain
Have you ever seen a professional autocad user? How would you define that? A
blurred line between the terms CLI and GUI is not a True Scottsman. It's an
observable reality.
~~~
ugh
I’m quite confused. Everyone seems to disagree with me by vehemently agreeing
with me. As you yourself say: Expression is not reserved for CLIs. GUIs can
allow for it, too.
I’m not trying to bring down CLIs here. What I don’t like, though, is how the
author of the article tries to bring down GUIs to prop up CLIs. That’s just
not necessary. GUIs are used by so many people to express themselves and it’s
patently absurd to claim otherwise.
~~~
burgerbrain
Basically I am disagreeing with the validity of the discussion in general.
There aren't agreed upon meanings for either term, so there isn't much point
in going forward.
------
ArbitraryLimits
Are we really having the GUI vs CLI holy war on HN? Here's how to deal with
this question.
1) Design a nice DSL to express whatever it is you want your users to be able
to command.
2) When you build the GUI, have all the gestures correspond to a particular
DSL expression.
3) Add a shell where the user can type arbitrary expressions in your DSL (and
for that matter, load files with DSL commands and execute them).
You're done. People who want a GUI have one, people who want a CLI have one,
and there's a nice clean upgrade path from the GUI to the CLI. In fact, that's
where this approach really shines: when a GUI user decides he needs to
automate something, you can give him a single clear expression to type for
each gesture he's used to making, and at first he'll probably just memorize
those and use your product in exactly the same way with the CLI as with the
GUI. Once he gets used to the CLI itself, he'll probably start tweaking the
basic expressions you gave him and eventually feel comfortable enough to write
his own. It's a nice security blanket for people who are basically learning to
program to have a set of magic spells they're confident they can use no matter
what.
~~~
tikhonj
This is basically exactly what Emacs does--every single GUI action, be it a
keyboard shortcut, a menu item, a mouse click or even a touch gesture[1] maps
directly and very unsubtly to an elisp function. This means you can go from
just using Emacs like a normal text editor do doing really complicated things
with elisp in a relatively straightforward way.
[1]: <https://github.com/greboide/emacs-gestures>
Coincidentally, I don't see how Emacs is a CLI program, even if it does have a
text-only mode: the text-only mode just draws the GUI elements with text the
way other programs draw them with pixels. Of course, it's a tool heavily
optimized for power users, but that's a different story.
~~~
ArbitraryLimits
Invoking emacs from the command line is my go-to method to format code that
I've generated from another program.
------
Cushman
Not to overstretch the metaphor, but it's not that black and white. Something
as simple-seeming as manual shifting on your car can change your experience of
driving completely, making you much more aware and attentive of what's really
going on between your ass and the road. It makes you a real part of the
vehicle's decision making process. (The description I like is "It's like
having a conversation with your car.")
And that from what seems like a trivial change, just a single extra degree of
freedom; one that most find just an annoyance. To bring it back around, it's
possible to bridge the gap, providing a powerful _and_ easy-to-use interface.
But it will probably mean a lot of your users asking rightly, "But couldn't
you just do that for me?"
The appropriate answer is something like, "Yeah. I could also just go to the
store and get your groceries for you, and you'd never have to leave the house.
Do you want to be cargo, or do you want to _drive_?"
------
zokier
Funny that as an example of unbounded UI he shows _GUI_ version of Emacs.
Overall I feel that his division between GUI and CLI is rather arbitrary.
------
unwind
I like this, never thought of it that way.
If you're missing this aspect, musical instruments (to take one example that I
sometimes wonder about) can easily seem designed to be "hard" to use. Compare
a computer keyboard, with its clear labels, to the (to a newcomer) totally
opaque grouping of the keys on a piano.
Now, I still think the keys could be labelled without any threat to the
possibilities of expressing one's creativity, but it's a bit less annoying,
having read this. :)
~~~
vidarh
I think part of the resistance you'd meet to labeling piano keys is that
you're highly unlikely to be able to play well if you depend on looking at the
keys, as it slows you down too much to be able to play anything but the
slowest pieces, whereas you can write well (though arguably not type well) on
a keyboard while still looking at the keys.
As a teaching tool, labeling can work for both, but as a crutch for people who
are less than proficient, labeling does not work well for someone trying to
play the piano. There's a greater need for getting to a certain level of
proficiency if you wish to play the piano than if you wish to use a keyboard.
~~~
recoiledsnake
You can always buy this with blank keys.
[http://www.newegg.com/Product/ImageGallery.aspx?CurImage=23-...](http://www.newegg.com/Product/ImageGallery.aspx?CurImage=23-830-001-TS&ISList=23-830-001-Z01%2c23-830-001-Z02%2c23-830-001-Z03%2c23-830-001-Z04%2c23-830-001-Z05&S7ImageFlag=1&Item=N82E16823830001&Depa=0&WaterMark=1&Description=Das%20Keyboard%20DASK3ULTMS1%20Black%20USB%20Wired%20Standard%20Model%20S%20Ultimate%20Keyboard)
But I learn to touch type with a regular keyboard.
------
jpalomaki
"Physical interfaces (and by extension, GUIs) cannot combine at will to create
new behavior."
Or should it say that we don't yet have good enough GUIs that allow
combination at will, to create new behavior? I don't think it is correct to
say that this is impossible.
It's difficult to image what this would mean for GUIs, but maybe we could get
some ideas from the DSL stuff for example Microsoft and JetBrain were doing
some years ago.
~~~
jcromartie
We've already seen it over and over again: once a GUI is actually combinable,
it may as well be a CLI or code.
~~~
andrewflnr
Do you mean that once a GUI is combinable, it will be as hard to understand as
CLI? That makes sense to me; infinite potential combinations will always be
harder to understand than a limited set of actions.
------
andrewflnr
I don't think he thought it all the way through, but I do think the author is
onto something. A very important aspect of any kind of interface is to what
extent it lets you combine and compose actions. But a) the line is not the
same as the GUI/CLI line and b) it's a matter of degree.
A CLI could easily just be a set of five commands with no options that are
roughly orthogonal. There is not much potential for constructing powerful,
expressive commands, nor much of a learning curve. Just memorize the list. On
the other hand, you probably don't need to look far in this thread to find an
example of a GUI that allows powerful combinations of commands/effects/etc.
Depending in the design of the interface, there can be different degrees of
combinability. I think the main point of the article should be (if it isn't)
that what degree you want depends on the domain the interface is for, whether
it should allow an infinite variety of actions.
Apparently this got lost in his stereotypes. By CLI he meant roughly Unix, and
by GUI he meant a point-and-click GUI. There are many more possibilities in
between.
------
techdmn
Maybe there isn't much progression after you learn how to drive a car for
normal people. :) Perhaps similar to lack of progression after learning how to
email or browse the web for most users. Sure, you can only move the wheels,
pedals and gear selector in certain ways. Isn't this equally true of the
mouse, keyboard and guitar? And how is a steering wheel visually suggestive to
those unfamiliar? Or the pedals? Sure, you can't pipe your car without making
physical changes. But hacking a fuel-cut-defender is still hacking. I guess I
just dislike using a car, guitar and EMACS as an analogy. Other than hardware
vs software, they are very similar to me. I'm familiar with all three, and the
one I'm least likely to modify is my guitar.
------
EGreg
Why not combine the two?
CLIs can benefit from autosuggest, a lot. I don't want to type too much or
risk making typos. So they should suggest the legal choices, and order them by
most common first (or maybe alphabetically). For those who don't like the
autosuggest popping up automatically, you'd have a setting to establish a key
combo to bring it up. Also, it's nice to underline possible spelling mistakes,
and be able to hyperlink words to lists of related locations when I click on
them.
Meanwhile, GUIs can include a "drop into CLI mode".
If we have a GUI that has a CLI mode with autosuggest, I would think this is
the best of both worlds. Often times, I just want to design a COMPONENT, and
then go right back to using the GUI.
------
jamesrcole
"Physical interfaces (and by extension, GUIs) cannot combine at will to create
new behavior."
'Physical' doesn't seem to quite capture the distinction he's after.
He uses a guitar as an example of an interface where you can combine at will,
and it's a physical interface.
------
ippisl
Great textual interfaces also try their best to externalize knowledge. That's
part of the reason behind DSL's , Object-oriented-languages and good API
design.
And because they're better at this, they're more useful than GUI's in many
cases.
------
malingo
Don't forget about <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1971200>
------
thomasz
FYI: Typography is totally fucked on win7+chrome <http://imgur.com/7Ad0d>
~~~
recoiledsnake
It was probably tested only in Lynx+Hurd.
/joke
------
recoiledsnake
This is not even wrong.
I don't know where to start. Sure, training people in Latex will eventually
make them churn out better looking documents than Word, but the initial
training costs and learning curve are going to be really high for the average
office worker for who Word with the ribbon is overkill.
I am all for being against conventional wisdom, but surely someone would have
done some experiments on these lines to unlock the creative expression of
their employees? There are even a bunch of companies who allow and provide
facilities for napping since they believe it helps be more productive. What's
stopping them from switching to CLIs exclusively?
Also, he ignores the power of macros(VBScript is very powerful) and keyboard
shortcuts in GUIs. Watch an occasional user of Office vs. a pro user and you
can see the difference clearly. How many here can profess to know about
_every_ feature or shortcut in Word or Excel? Just see
[http://www.shortcutmania.com/Microsoft-Word-2007-Keyboard-
Sh...](http://www.shortcutmania.com/Microsoft-Word-2007-Keyboard-
Shortcuts.pdf)
or
<http://www.asap-utilities.com/excel-tips-shortcuts.php>
Same with IDEs, you can automate a lot of tasks if so choose to spend your
time on it and rarely even use the mouse. You only hit a wall in the most
simplest of applications(same as CLI), for complicated applications, there's a
ton of room to explore.
It makes more sense to rant against programs/devices(browsers, pdf readers,
watching movies) that encourage consumption versus the programs/devices that
encourage creation(photoshop, IDEs, writing HTML in notepad). That's the only
way the analogy of driving a car vs. playing a guitar makes any sense.
I can't fathom why the author is trying to turn that argument into a CLI vs.
GUI argument that superficially sounds plausible but just falls apart with a
little scrutiny.
Since the author has mastered the car UI, I am looking forward for him to
execute this move
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CK94zCXsKI&feature=relat...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CK94zCXsKI&feature=related)
~~~
jerf
When you start scripting with macros or automation tools, you've just left the
limits the GUI imposes for a CLI environment, with all that entails. That's
not a disagreement, that conceding the point.
Nothing stops a "GUI app" from having a CLI or vice versa, though I observe
that generally an app can be fairly cleanly identified as considering one or
the other the "primary" interface, with the other a clear afterthought/second
priority.
~~~
recoiledsnake
In other words, GUI apps can and do incorporate CLI elements. But CLI apps
cannot incorporate GUI elements like click-to-select. So would it be accurate
to say CLI apps are more limited than GUI apps? Or is the point in the article
about forcing people to use CLIs so that they have to know about the more
powerful features(or give up trying to use the program)?
Or does he mean it's a good thing to replace the car's interface with a bunch
of strings like a guitar that allow you to steer, brake and accelerate and
change gears and this will allow for more creative driving? As I said, the
article is not even wrong.
~~~
jerf
Too strong. You've defined "GUI" as something that can include CLI elements,
but then turned around and defined CLI as being unable to include GUI
elements, so you end up in a tautological circle.
A "CLI app with a GUI" is something like emacs in X11 or gvim, where the GUI
is clearly a second-class citizen/afterthought, but it is there.
Alternatively, you can look at something like the various Linux apps for
ripping DVDs, which are mostly nothing but GUI shells around various transcode
and mplayer commands, and it shows. To the point that I once bashed one of
them into doing what I wanted it to do, rather than what it wanted to do, by
exploiting a command-line injection in the so-called "GUI" to inject a
command-line parameter that superseded one of the earlier ones the program
jammed in without asking me. (Subsequently I scripted up a simple rip that
meets my usual use case, but the GUIs are nice when I want to save subtitles
or something and it's harder than just one mencoder call.) Considered as a
system, these are GUIs around underlying CLI apps that do the real work.
~~~
recoiledsnake
A GUI interface can include CLI elements because it is technically capable of
showing a CLI interface.
If a CLI interface can include a GUI, can you use it over in a SSH terminal?
Or on a Linux box without X(or the equivalent) and all it's bloat being
installed? Or on Windows 2008 Server Core? You're pretty much redefining CLI
at this point and cutting away some of it's advantages too, like being able to
run on very low power devices like routers etc.
~~~
jerf
"If a CLI interface can include a GUI, can you use it over in a SSH terminal?"
Yes, you can use every bit of functionality in all the software I cited over
SSH, you just don't get the GUI. (Excepting anything purely GUI-specific, like
opening a new window in emacs, but that's a small set of targeted commands.)
That's why I cited those examples as CLI apps with GUI overlays. I could cite
some others, too, like fetchmailconf, a GUI for fetchmail that is optionally
used for configuration of an otherwise fundamentally CLI app. Unix is full of
these things.
------
010100101
When people use #hashtags in Twitter is this like a command on the command
line?
Do you think there was much debate at Twitter over whether users would be able
to understand and effectively use #hashtags?
~~~
jmmcd
Great example. Before Twitter, Google had already begun the re-education of
the masses to use text-oriented interfaces with things like "label:" in Gmail
search and "filetype:" in Google search.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
10 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Incredibly Happy - emiller829
http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/10-scientifically-proven-ways-to-be-incredibly-happy-wed.html?cid=readmore
======
acconrad
Nothing new here: spend time with friends, exercise, meditate, give back. It
is a bit of pop psychology.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Elon's Musk - thomasfromcdnjs
https://elonsmusk.co/
======
throwaway2016a
Looks like checkout actually works... out of curiosity, what is the legality
of using an actual likeness of Elon Musk?
~~~
gremlinsinc
I'm more curious how they extracted 'essence of Musk' from Musk, is he a
partner? lol
~~~
ashdav
No musk was harmed in the making of Elon’s Musk
------
kitcar
"Our product and brand is intentionally a parody, and is not connected to the
real Elon Musk."
------
muse900
Welcome to the era of the living Meme.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Echelon (signals intelligence) - olalonde
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echelon_(signals_intelligence)
======
russell
If you live in the valley long enough, you get involve in some wierd shit. In
the pre-Internet days, I worked on a search engine that we believed was used
in Echelon. Mind you my info is about fourth hand because the tiny company I
worked for sold the software to a defense contractor who sold it to ... the
NSA. I remember the bugs were a piece of work. They didnt give any of the
search terms, let alone the documents. One was that the parser barfed if the
document contained more than 4k 03's in a sequence.
The company figured out that is was Echelon after the flap emerged and Echelon
was disappeared/disbanded/re-purposed. The feedback that we got was that it
was the Israelis that were doing the commercial espionage. Some of the other
governments were angry that the Israelis were involved at all.
OTOH we could have been given a complete pack of lies to divert our attention
from the real group.
------
michaeldhopkins
I've heard, but have no way to prove, that Echelon allows domestic spying by
arranging for member countries to collect data flows of the other member
countries. Presumably this is then shared by some agreement that falls outside
what is left of the domestic wiretapping restrictions.
Could be nonsense, but after learning that MKUltra was real, who knows
anymore. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKULTRA>
~~~
iwwr
The idea that they have the power to spy and don't use it, when they could and
without consequences is a little hard to fathom. Besides, there is very little
legally nowadays that is really off-limits in that area. And whatever may not
be (like the AT&T spying scandal was), can quickly be covered by new laws
(with bi-partisan support).
~~~
uikjhgyujmn
The problem is who 'they' are
The CIA/NSA etc spying on the US and UK's enemies?
Or US companies spying on UK companies to gain a competitive advantage?
If you were a BP boss would you be confident that they weren't handing your
emails over to the Whitehouse during the gulf spill?
------
runjake
Echelon is largely old news. The best modern, public look at the current
series (yes, series, and disparate at that) of systems is James Bamford's
latest book, "Shadow Factory". It is full of fairly technical details, names,
and places.
[http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Factory-NSA-Eavesdropping-
Ameri...](http://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Factory-NSA-Eavesdropping-
America/dp/0307279391/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1300225377&sr=8-1)
~~~
arctangent
If I were paranoid and/or involved in intelligence work I might wonder whether
these ancient facilities were retained to divert attention from newer
intelligence-gathering facilities.
Disclaimer: I'm currently working my way through the TV series "24" :-)
~~~
runjake
Most of these facilities are still in use. Some are occasionally
decommissioned.
IIRC, one such place out in the woods, back east was decommissioned and
purchased for use by amateur astronomers some years back.
They probably had a field day opening the door for the first time. The
equipment was all stripped out prior, but I'm sure they got a kick out of the
expensive wiring & elaborate shielding _everywhere_.
------
ch0wn
I heard about this for the first time on J. J. Abram's Alias and researched
it. I was quite surprised to see that it's real.
------
ruethewhirled
We hear about this quite often in the New Zealand media. People are often
protesting outside the big "bubble" things and on the odd occasion (I think
twice) people have jumped the fences and gotten past security to "pop" the
"bubbles", causing "millions" in damages, a couple of guys are on trial atm
for this, or very recently were
~~~
arctangent
Please elaborate on what this "bubble" is that you speak of... Do you mean
"listening facility" or something like that, or does "bubble" mean something
more specific in your context?
~~~
ruethewhirled
Oh yeah, sorry I should have said domes for the radio dishes or what ever they
are
[http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/04images/Bases/Wai...](http://www.thelivingmoon.com/45jack_files/04images/Bases/Waihopai_dome_collapsed_719999.jpg)
------
PHPAdam
I don't live far from Menwith Hill. Interesting Read.
~~~
michaelcampbell
Any unusual signage or anything around there? I used to live within driving
distance to a State penitentiary in the US. It was out in the middle of
nowhere (at the time), surrounded by farmland. On all 4 roads that marked the
border around it were numerous signs, "Do Not Pick Up Hitchhikers!"
~~~
WestCoastJustin
It's on google street view -- have a look for yourself ;)
[http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&...](http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Menwith+Hill&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=54.357317,78.398437&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Menwith+Hill,+Harrogate,+North+Yorkshire,+United+Kingdom&ll=54.008828,-1.688161&spn=0.020024,0.03828&t=h&z=15)
~~~
michaelcampbell
Looks like beautiful country. I can't read the signs from the satellite,
though... ;-)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Learning Sales as a Technical Founder - ndewda
https://district.substack.com/p/-learning-sales-as-a-technical-founder
======
ndewda
I have put some of the tips and resources that I found helpful while learning
to Sale our product as a technical founder.
I am curious to know how did you learn and started to sale your product?
What strategies worked?
What didn't work?
What would you do differently next time around?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
PipesFS: Fast Linux I/O in the Unix Tradition (2008) - mpweiher
https://research.vu.nl/en/publications/pipesfs-fast-linux-io-in-the-unix-tradition
======
amckinlay
Still wish the Linux kernel had zero-copy IPC with pipes. vmsplice(1) can
zero-copy data into the pipe, but the destination process cannot vmsplice(1)
the data out of the pipe without incurring a copy.
~~~
en4bz
Modifying virtual mappings tends to be just as expensive as copying.
~~~
voidlogic
I'd be curious to see if this is still true with large page sizes and to see
on current processors where the cross over point is.
------
LukeShu
The paper mentions that the source code is available at netstreamline.net,
which is now a spam domain. Here's the most recent IA link:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20130624173559/http://netstreaml...](https://web.archive.org/web/20130624173559/http://netstreamline.org/)
If the topic of the paper is interesting to you, you will likely be interested
in other parts of the Streamline project.
~~~
justinjlynn
Looks like it's been re-hosted to university services:
[https://www.cs.vu.nl/~herbertb/projects/streamline/index.htm...](https://www.cs.vu.nl/~herbertb/projects/streamline/index.html)
Unfortunately, it appears that the institution's internal project hosting
system (that would hold the source code I'm after) is down -- I suppose an
e-mail to the department would be in order.
------
navaati
This is probably very interesting but I would need to pay for access to the
article...
~~~
jbapple
Second Google hit when searching for the paper title:
[https://www.cs.vu.nl/~herbertb/papers/osreview2008-2.pdf](https://www.cs.vu.nl/~herbertb/papers/osreview2008-2.pdf)
~~~
navaati
Oh thanks !
------
htor
ooh, this sounds wicked cool! unix pipelines and unix tools is what made me
like computers.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Whitehouse Petition to stop SOPA - gbelote
https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/petition/stop-e-parasite-act/SWBYXX55
======
rhizome
All online petitions are worthless wastes of time and energy.
Always.
~~~
mey
I would disagree in this case, this petition has hit a threshold which will
cause the White House staff to officially respond to it. At worst, if the
response isn't what the constituents want, it may change their election votes.
~~~
rhizome
What's the best case scenario, based on prior petitions?
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
What A CEO Does - mgrouchy
http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2010/08/what-a-ceo-does.html
======
webwright
The interesting thing about this is that it boils down to sales. The CEO
sells/evangelizes a vision internally and externally. The sell the idea of
working at the company (recruiting). Early they sell the dream to investors
and the earliest revenue deals (whatever they are). Later, their sales efforts
might be limited to bigger deals/partnerships and recruiting other leaders for
their company.
I wonder how many founders on Hacker News (who are aimed at big growth) want
to be this type of CEO. And I wonder if there are any other types of CEOs at
the top. I've never met any.
~~~
staunch
You're looking at it through your own prism. Selling is just a _prerequisite_
(along with multiple other skills), it's not the most important part of being
a good CEO.
Discovering the _right strategy/vision_ of the company is not a sales job.
Communicating it to people is though.
Choosing the _right people_ to hire isn't sales either. Convincing them to
join is though.
I think it's very harmful to boil down the role of a CEO to merely
salesmanship. There's so much more that matters at least as much.
Thought experiment: Where would Steve Jobs be now if all he had was his master
salesmanship, but none of his design and product skills?
~~~
webwright
Your examples illustrate my point (which was not that being a CEO is MERELY
salesmanship, but that it-- in terms of time spent-- is mostly salesmanship.)
Of course it'd be silly to say that it's merely salesmanship. If I had a
crappy vision and I was an epic salesman, I'd be a pretty lousy CEO, right?
In all of those tasks, how much of your time are you spending selling?
Discover/find your vision, spend the rest of your career selling it. Deciding
who you want to hire and the persuasive dance (where you have to persuade them
that working at your company is a good idea AND sell them your vision to
boot!) takes a lot more time.
Steve Jobs is a great example. As product-focused as he is, what % of the time
do you think he spends tinkering or wireframing? I'd wager he's
selling/reinforcing ideas for most of his day. Steve Jobs is different because
he spends 99% of his sales time selling vision/product ideas versus all of the
other types of persuasion he could engage in. Oh, and because his ideas are
unusually good. ;-)
edit: I'd add two things. Once, I've run 2 different companies for about 70%
of my 13 year tech career and two: I really don't enjoy sales as much as I
enjoy other work tasks. So if I am looking at it through my prism, it's the
prism of my experience.
~~~
staunch
You don't discover your vision in a month and then spend years selling it. You
spend years discovering what your idea should be, refining the idea, making
the idea happen, and selling it.
Selling is just a _single_ component. If you had to single anyone of them out
it would be "making the idea happen" and most of that is not selling, it's a
thousand concrete decisions and problems to overcome about the product and
marketing.
Hiring is even less about salesmanship. Convincing someone to join (or not)
takes weeks at most. Finding the right people and making them effective takes
months or years.
I think outsiders probably have a very skewed perspective on Steve Jobs and
most other CEOs because we only see them when they're selling. To outsiders it
looks like 100% of their time is spent selling, so it's natural that people
think that's primarily what they do.
What you don't see is how Jobs is spending his time during the 364 days before
a Stevenote.
------
arethuza
From bitter experience, I think the statement about setting "overall vision
and strategy" should have a qualification so that the vision and strategy
stays in place for at least as long as it takes to actually build something
and deliver it to someone who uses it.
If your company "vision and strategy" changes more frequently than a
development team can react then you are doomed.
~~~
auxbuss
That's one reason why a business must have a competent CIO on the management
team.
Sometimes you can let the apparent changes ride, since they are politicing
between other senior members of the team; sometimes you can simply say, "No";
and sometimes you must explain the cost of what will be thrown away, how it
will affect morale, and how long pivoting the team, re-motivating them, and
delivering will cost.
You average CEO, finance, marketing, and sales honchos will not understand
these things without an interpretation into their language.
------
ojbyrne
A former colleague of mine used to say that their role was to "align
individual goals with corporate goals."
~~~
ulf
For that to work properly, the CEOs goals have to be aligned with the
companies goals in the first place. Like founder-CEO, not like Bank-CEO with
no interest in long-term outlook of the enterprise.
------
grammaton
"Determines a vision and strategy..."
...and for this nebulous MBA speak, gets paid 40x as much as the people who
actually do work.
~~~
michael_dorfman
Well, it's not always 40x. Here in Norway, it's more often 3x-5x (except in
the largest companies.)
And don't knock the value of determining a vision and strategy: people don't
just wake up in the morning knowing what they should be doing at the office
today/this week/this year. If you don't think a clear vision and strategy
matters, just ask Yahoo.
~~~
grammaton
I'm glad it's like that in Norway. You're a lot saner than most countries.
Here in America 40x is closer to the mark. And i'm not knocking the _value_ of
thinking carefully about the next step. That's an obviously important thing. I
just don't see why someone should be paid so much more to sit around thinking
about the next step than the people who actually _implement_ the "vision."
~~~
oz
I suppose it's for the same reason that buildings are attributed to
architects, and symphonies to composers, rather than to builders and
musicians.
~~~
grammaton
Having spoken to actual CEOs, I think it's a bit of a stretch to put them in
the same class as famous architects and composers. The latter are
identifiable, and to some degree quantifiable, skillsets that require training
and a certain degree of talent. I'm not so sure you can say the same thing
about being the guy who makes sure that cross disciplinary paradigms for
excellence synergize with the vision's core values.....
------
joel_liu
Cross reading: [http://bhorowitz.com/2010/05/30/how-andreessen-horowitz-
eval...](http://bhorowitz.com/2010/05/30/how-andreessen-horowitz-evaluates-
ceos/) [http://bhorowitz.com/2010/03/14/notes-on-leadership-be-
like-...](http://bhorowitz.com/2010/03/14/notes-on-leadership-be-like-steve-
jobs-and-bill-campbell-and-andy-grove/)
------
jasonlbaptiste
See this is why your CEO needs to be technically competent to some level. If
they are hiring and setting the vision for the entire company, you can't build
a good product if you don't have the basic technical understanding yourself.
------
jsean
Well.. I do that and I also code.
~~~
budu3
<joke>Well, you need to delegate the coding part then.</joke>
------
b0b
A CEO goes out and find the money to keep the executives happy so they go out
and make the business work.
~~~
mathgladiator
The CEO also makes the executives get along to work together effectively.
------
marze
Steve Jobs has been listed as the #1 CEO in the USA. He seems to be doing a
great job on 1 through 3, and has #3 particularly in the bag. He may do other
things as well, but you couldn't say he has in any way shortchanged any of
these three jobs.
------
DougBTX
I'm not going to comment on the content of the article, but I'd like to take a
second to point out how clever the writing is. I like how the first paragraph
tells you about what you're going to hear: it's something special from the
real world. Then he talks about getting his start in, lets say, the mid 80s.
About 25 years ago. Then we hear of another VC, very experienced, that's 25
years you know?
A nice way to say, "I'm experienced, listen to me." He's probably right too.
------
mhd
4\. Come up with pithy slogans that will impress your underlings.
------
SandB0x
I was under the impression that a CEO:
Gets rewarded when their company does well.
Gets paid off when their company does badly.
(Golden parachutes:
[http://www.economist.com/node/16685706?story_id=16685706&...](http://www.economist.com/node/16685706?story_id=16685706&fsrc=rss))
~~~
byoung2
Those are things the company does _to_ a CEO, not what a CEO does.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Launch: dropify – Make Files Social on Facebook - andrewhyde
http://dropify.com
======
jtansley
The UI is absolutely incredible although it wasn't immediately clear to me
that I can click on the "How it works" steps to move the slider. You might
want to make it more obvious or add another method to move the slider, such as
a big arrow to the right with text like "Next Step: Add Basic Info".
Again, fantastic job on the UI. It looks great.
------
glomph
How is this 'nice' UI? It is a box with drag to upload written on it. As seen
on: every other file hosting site at the moment. The only twist is that to
download stuff you have to connect to facebook.
This is literally people charging for the software to do the horrible practice
of requiring I advertise your brand in order to get free stuff.
'Like Gating' as they call it is scummy and already widespread enough as it is
and they are trying to sell it as a service!
------
alexheilmann
<http://dropify.com>
------
Dirlewanger
Please STOP tagging everything under the sun as social.
------
mikk0j
Really really nice UI and design. Well done there.
------
Uldis
so what exactly does it do?
~~~
danvoell
It wasn't clear to me either. I understand the UI, it looks great, but why do
I put a file there in the first place?
~~~
andrewhyde
I think they are testing homepages between that and <http://dropify.com/cases>
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Anatomy of the Great Adderall Drought - pier0
http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/2/16/anatomy-of-the-great-adderall-drought
======
alexhaefner
I find this absolutely startling: "It’s well known that many college students
use Adderall to give themselves an extra edge for getting work done whether
they’re prescribed or not ... Furthermore, a 2009 study on non-medical use
(defined as use of a prescription drug without a doctor’s order) of Adderall
among full-time college students showed that subjects aged 18 to 22 were twice
as likely as their counterparts, who were not full-time college students, to
have used Adderall."
Along with: "Stephanie Lee found her freshman year of college unusually
difficult. She had trouble adjusting to the levels of stress she encountered."
And: "Without Adderall, you might feel bored by your math homework or unable
to focus on the multiple steps needed to reach a solution, but on Adderall you
might literally feel like you’re in love with math."
So many people are taking this drug to deal with the fact that they cannot
handle the type of work, or the stress. I find it fascinating that people have
come to assume that the problem is with them because they find the work
uninteresting, or they find school stressful, and not because that is how the
systems (colleges) and the work (math, science) are designed. Instead of
telling people how they are not designed properly for the work, perhaps we
should take some time to reflect on how the work is repetitive and not
creative, and not fulfilling, and that is perhaps the issue.
Note: I do think math and science and intellectual work can be creative when
at a high level. But at a learning level you're treated more like a machine
designed to learn and repeat.
I was recently chatting with another student about how classes here are just
becoming increasingly demanding. In looking at computer science classes as an
example, the complexity of even the basic computer science classes has grown
with time, and nothing has been removed. Every one of our professors expects
us to spend 10-15 hours per week just on their class. And it's obviously not
possible. Instead of trying to find ways to optimize time, people are trying
to optimize their minds to be something that is not creative, but rather very
much like a machine. College is not designed around passionate work, it is
designed to be a grind on you and force you to do a lot of work you hate.
Every four months you take all the previous work you did and throw it out and
start over. How is any part of that designed to be gratifying? I don't
necessarily share entirely positive views of college. It's an institution
designed to meld and mold people to fit into our economic model.
I have spent some time thinking about this trend and have come to the
conclusion that it could be a real damage to creativity and individuality when
you can medicate your mind into a machine.
~~~
DanBC
I'm also surprised that they're taking adderall for an off-label use, when
there's not much research supporting that use, and that they're not taking
anti-anxiety medication (diazepam, lorazepam, etc (but addictive potential is
worrying)) or taking a known placebo such as homeopathic tablets. Why aren't
dealers pushing homeopathic pills as "street adderall"?
~~~
danneu
Because Adderall is cheap, easy to get, amphetamine works, and it's worlds
different from things that are not amphetamine (homeopathic pills?!).
~~~
DanBC
> _easy to get_
In response to something titled _"the drought"_ ?
> _amphetamine works, and it's worlds different from things that are not
> amphetamine (homeopathic pills?!)._
I would love to see placebo controlled trials for this particular use case
(students needing a bit of help to concentrate).
------
AJ007
I'm against drug prohibition. I'm also against telling people they have a
medical disorder and need to take a recreational drug for it.
And damn right Adderall is a recreational drug, it makes stuff that is boring
fun. I've also watched people working while using it, they are easily
distracted and then focus 100% of their attention on the distraction. Makes
for a good illusion of productivity.
~~~
phillmv
I think a lot of people, for either environment or genetic reasons, just have
crappy brain chemistry for succeeding in our modern, deep-focus oriented
world.
Back in the day, you work on the farm, you chat with people, you do your
regular business. You didn't have to sit still in a large box for 70% of the
day, and so it wasn't such a big deal if you were a little "light headed".
I have a wee cousin who has ADHD and she's a problem child from hell. We know
this 'cos her father was also a problem child from hell. She literally has an
immense problem sitting still.
Once she takes her meds though… it's hard to describe the feeling I had when I
realized she had spent the last half an hour quietly colouring a book.
So yeah. Some people pop it to do all nighters; for a lot of other people it's
necessary in order for them to achieve the neuronormativity expected of them
in say, an office job or 12 years of mandatory schooling.
~~~
jonhendry
"in order for them to achieve the neuronormativity expected of them in say, an
office job or 12 years of mandatory schooling."
And there are a lot of fields a person might want to enter, entirely on their
own initiative (not teacher-imposed), that inherently require you to spend a
lot of time doing 'boring' or repetitive things. And if you don't, you'll
fail. Or give up painting/piano/whatever early out of frustration.
------
noonespecial
One of the greatest coups corporatism can pull in modern times is to get a
patent on something and then get the government to mandate its use and
restrict all substitutes. Its 100%, grade A, screw society, corporate win.
~~~
kristopolous
I'm curious as to the pricing structure in less corporatist countries,
especially in places with public health care where (unlike the US), the
government has the legal right to bargain prices and doesn't just satisfy any
arbitrary price set by a manufacturer.
~~~
anigbrowl
It's flatter, but patients are given their medicine and told to take it rather
than being invited to select from a menu. Pharmaceutical companies don't
advertise direct to the public and doctors make all the decisions about which
version of a drug patients should be taking, based on the clinical outcome (eg
whether the side effects of a generic are well-tolerated or problematic). In
the US you have to be a lot more knowledgeable about what you're taking and
the information is much more available, so in that sense the patient has more
control, and arguably more freedom; on the other hand most of us are not
doctors and spending time becoming expert on the finer points of your meds is
perhaps like becoming an expert on the difference between Coke and Pepsi - you
may strongly prefer one over the other, but is it really making any difference
to your nutritional outcome?
In other countries the win for the drug companies is predictability; the
government will negotiate far more aggressively but will then contract to
purchase a certain amount for the next x years, providing the drug companies
with a predictable revenue stream. Where public healthcare is the norm, the
government also absorbs a lot of the insurance/liability costs; if a drug is
approved for sale but later turns out to have problematic side-effects, the
government will compensate or support the affected patients, on the theory
that since it approved the medicine for sale it accepted the potential risks
as well. Obviously, there are exceptions, such as if a manufacturer had data
on clinical risks that it concealed to get approval, but those cases are a
minority.
------
refurb
Another great example of a gov't regulation that isn't in sync with the
marketplace.
If you are a company that produces product A and product B, and the gov't says
you can only produce a limited amount of A+B, why wouldn't you automatically
shift all of your production to the product with the highest profit margin.
This is economics 101!
~~~
pyre
Assuming that Shire has a patent on Vyvanse, then this is more like limit
production of A+B and create product C that is more expensive and has an
artificial monopoly (patent). This will then drive everyone that needs
products A or B to your new product C. Profit!
~~~
refurb
I didn't get a sense from reading the article that Shire is limiting
production of their branded amphetamine salts. However, you do have a point in
that having more patients on a branded therapy makes a move to Vyvanse more
likely.
~~~
pyre
I was going off of this:
Luckily, Shire had magically possessed enough amphetamines from
their DEA quota to produce plenty of their new ADHD medication,
Vyvanse. In fact, Shire doubled its third quarter profits from 2010
to 2011, with most of that increase resulting from Vyvanse sales.
During this time, coinciding nicely with the Adderall shortage,
Shire hiked the price of Vyvanse.
------
Game_Ender
The government centrally controls the production of narcotics, and people are
wondering why there are shortages? It is obvious the purpose of their central
control is not working, people who need the drug can't get it, and people who
want to "abuse" it are still able to acquire the drug. I doubt we will see the
sane solution of just stopping control on the production of these drugs.
~~~
jrockway
Technically, "narcotic" means "opiate" (or more generally, a sleep-inducing
drug), which Adderall is not. I think you meant "schedule II controlled
substance", or something.
~~~
ahupp
The legal and medical definitions of narcotic are not the same, unfortunately.
------
phren0logy
This article ignores an important point about Vyvanse. It's a pro-drug: it's
metabolized into one of the components of Adderall, but at a constant rate.
That means you can't crush and snort it (well, you can, but the constant rate
of conversion does not change).
As such, it has less abuse potential than Adderall XR (though not zero abuse
potential). In states like Florida where there has been more scrutiny on
prescription of controlled substances, these details can be important.
------
mindcreek
I live in Turkey and I am using concerta for about 5 years now, if you have
ADHD the drug calms you and makes focusing and completing tasks easy, it also
unfortunately makes you immune to coffee no matter how much coffee you drink,
you can still drink more :).
When somone without ADHD uses the drug it causes tachycardia, high blood
pressure, restlessness and sometimes paranoia, not all of them though, it
migth be a recreational drug to someone but I need it to function in my daily
life and I'm not using it to have fun in any way, I had periods ( at most 6
months) which, I had not taken any concerta of methylphenidate derivative and
results were not good for my productivity.
It is also a type II controlled substance here in Turkey You are prescribed
one pill for one day and you cannot have more even if you want to, but we dont
have any quotas on the precursors and drug use in Turkey is very low
considering Europe and US.
~~~
kristopolous
How much money is a 30 day supply?
~~~
mindcreek
85$
------
NegativeOne
Yet again the government tramples it's citizens freedom and desires and tells
THEM how to live. Doesn't matter if this drug helps countless people across
the country function in their day-to-day.
------
vvpan
Have any of you been diagnosed with ADHD? How dose it get diagnosed? I am
really wondering how much is known about this ailment.
~~~
tweak2live
Attention deficit is a conduct disorder, which means that its diagnosis relies
entirely on assessment of patient's behavioural patterns. Since it's next to
impossible to keep a patient under 24/7 observation, secondary sources have to
be used. In most cases, the diagnostic process reduces to an "intake session"
interview with a patient and a few multiple-choice diagnostic questionnaires.
So an AD* diagnosis is trivial to hack. Moreover, it's impossible to design a
diagnostic process that's not easily hackable because, ultimately, everything
will boil down to a subjective assessment of patient's behaviour, i.e. a
"doctor's call". Furthermore, the more you restrict prescriptions and tighten
the diagnostic criteria, the more you increase the risk of denying medication
to "legitimate" sufferers. Since the guiding philosophy of the medical
community prioritizes "helping people" over "prescription security", the
problem of how to keep people from getting "illegitimate" prescriptions is
ultimately intractable.
------
funkah
What a scam. People don't even understand how these drugs work in the first
place, and now the government, insurance, and pharm industries combine to
screw people out of the things they're convinced they need for their brains to
work. Gross.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Why can't smartphones be used directly as POS terminals? - ihavequestions
Hi HN! I'm interested in this space, and my google fu is failing to penetrate into this particular bubble.<p>I'd like to know about standards regarding the workings of payments at all levels of the technology stack, down to the hardware. Any links are welcome.<p>This has come about through reading the Stripe Terminal product page. It has always struck me as rather odd and redundant that an external POS terminal is mandatory when phones have NFC chips in them. I'm clearly missing something, and would like to know what that is. I guess that the phone's NFC chips lack something?<p>I understand how Google/Apple pay works, but I'd like to know why I can't set an amount to charge directly on my phone, pass it to a customer, and have them tap their credit/debit card on my phone.<p>Slightly different scenario, but also wondering why I have to interact with a POS terminal in-store at all, when there is the option of an online payment directly on my phone. I guess this is more of a UX nightmare rather than a constraint of technology, but would love to have this confirmed.<p>Thanks!
======
tdeck
One reason is that traditionally any device that accepts PINs for payment
cards needs to meet special tamper-proofing requirements. This was a big
challenge that Square was working on when I worked there. Here's a thread on
SO about it: [https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/159118/how-
does...](https://security.stackexchange.com/questions/159118/how-does-square-
reader-comply-with-emv-pin-entry-requirements)
~~~
ihavequestions
Thanks for the info!
------
badrabbit
What if I don't have a smartphone or don't or can't install the app to make
direct payment? I personally would not use online payment if I am in store.
Privacy concerns aside,inserting a card is easier for me compared to unlocking
my phone,opening an app and doing whatever is needed to confirm the price abd
approve payment. That said,I am sure there are a lot of people that wouldn't
mind who have "nothing to hide" and find physical cards inconvenient. This is
already being done in east Asian countries.
You will still need a card reader in the US unless you wanna go all dystopian
like China by forcing everyone to use an app which will be tied to your phone
number and other accounts.
I would however challenge you to do this in a privacy conserving way, if you
can get around anti-money laundering laws. The last thing I need is yet
another app and company tracking my purchase history and promising they don't
share it with a third party while sharing processed versions of it. Ymmv.
------
detaro
Security requirements, credit card companies wouldn't accept a random phone as
a terminal.
~~~
ihavequestions
I see, thanks for your reply. So it's a certification issue rather than a
technological one - makes sense!
~~~
detaro
It is a technological issue in the sense that certification has technical
requirements a smartphone can't meet.
------
hesarenu
Kinda like UPI? You scan merchant account no and pay directly from your
account
~~~
ihavequestions
Not quite the workflow I was describing but it's interesting that UPI is a
thing (in India).
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Google’s Featured Snippets are often wrong, and also damaging to businesses - lucabenazzi
https://theoutline.com/post/1399/how-google-ate-celebritynetworth-com
======
joelrunyon
Google's "quality guidelines" prohibits scraping other sites and covering the
first half of your site with ads.
Google's results these days tend to scrape the information from most sites +
list ads on >50% of the listings page.
Really frustrating when Google doesn't even follow their own guidelines.
~~~
Klathmon
That's because those guidelines aren't meant for them.
Google is saying that if you don't follow their guidelines, you "shouldn't" be
included in their search results. They aren't saying you are committing some
kind of atrocity, just that pages that do that provide bad results from
searches.
Of course google doesn't want scraped results showing up in their search
results. Would you want your search engine to show results from other search
engines which show results from other search engines which show results from a
page with a snippet which points to the real source?
They aren't "not following their own rules" any more than a train is braking
the rules by being on the tracks in spite of the "stay off the train tracks"
sign.
~~~
tyingq
From Google's post about the "too many ads above the fold" update:
_" As we’ve mentioned previously, we’ve heard complaints from users that
if...it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the
experience. Rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want
to see content right away"_[1]
So, they recognize pages that are heavy with ads at the top, which push down
the actual content, aren't a good user experience. That's exactly what I get
when I search Google...a bunch of ads or other self-serving stuff on top, that
pushes down the content (actual organic results) that I'm looking for.
[1][https://search.googleblog.com/2012/01/page-layout-
algorithm-...](https://search.googleblog.com/2012/01/page-layout-algorithm-
improvement.html)
~~~
true_religion
To me the ads are the content as well. Often times the tip search result is
the same as the top advertisement.
~~~
malchow
My mother has exactly one way to get to the Nordstrom e-commerce site: search
Google for Nordstrom, and then click on the first authoritative-looking
Nordstrom search result, which is an AdWords ad, landing her at the home page.
Seems expensive for Nordstrom.
~~~
jessaustin
Would a browser extension that _just_ moved AdWords to the bottom of the page
be banned from the chrome web store?
I'm sort of tempted to try this, but if so I guess I should start backing up
my gmail account...
~~~
memmcgee
Are adblockers blocked from the Chrome store?
~~~
tyingq
Desktop extensions aren't, but perhaps GP is remembering a similar situation
with mobile ad blockers and the Play Store.
[https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/09/google-reverses-its-
decisi...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/02/09/google-reverses-its-decision-to-
ban-ad-blocking-apps-from-the-google-play-store/)
------
gdulli
> At the time of writing, the [google] queries “Larry David net worth” and
> “how much is Larry David worth?” both turned up the answer $900 million and
> credited Business Insider
> The Business Insider story says that “it has been estimated” that Larry
> David is worth up to $900 million [...] Then it cites CelebrityNetWorth’s
> lower number, $400 million, and quotes Larry David denying he was worth even
> $500 million
The most valuable asset Google could possibly develop at this point is
humility.
~~~
1_2__3
Google more than any other organization on the planet has bought at least some
of its own bullshit. For at least 6-7 years they've been consistently, 100%
sure that generally-useful AI (or something sufficiently approximately close)
is just a few short years away, and thus any investment in anything else (like
people) would be wasted.
They've sacrificed countless customers, products and services on this altar,
and will continue to do so probably indefinitely. They've decided they're
going to live or die by the AI. Humans work there only to build, configure and
maintain the machine. Every time I hear someone say "Google really needs to
hire some <people>" or "Google needs to train their <people>" better I shake
my head - it's like saying Ford should solve an efficiency problem with their
cars by building boats.
Google is not going to do that, ever, and Google is not going to learn
humility either. They're convinced they have it figured out, reality be
damned.
~~~
Danylon
1\. Google has been an AI company from the very beginning (information
retrieval).
2\. Google is investing and doing generally useful applied AI, not an AGI
moonshot.
3\. Google's AI researchers are not 100% sure that AGI is just a few short
years away.
4\. Major source of income is advertisements. A lot of non-technical people
work on this, allowing others to do more research and improve search.
5\. Like said, AI is Google's DNA from the start. They are the biggest AI
company in the world, and will die/be dethroned when they let AI research
wither.
6\. Avoid blanket humility, and lose hunger, innovation, dare. "At Hooli,
nothing is ever impossible".
------
gjm11
Here's a lovely snippet-box example I encountered just the other day (and
reported to Google; nothing's changed yet). Search for "tintinnabulum".
(Advance warning: You might want to avoid doing this at work or in a public
place.) The box at the top contains two things.
1\. Some text from the Wikipedia article, correctly informing you that a
tintinnabulum is a small bell on a pole in a Roman Catholic basilica
symbolizing its connection with the Pope.
2\. An image of a sculpture whose title happens to be "Tintinnabulum". The
sculpture is of a naked woman riding on a penis-with-legs. The penis has a
penis of its own, too. (Regrettably this doesn't continue recursively.)
I am fairly confident that nothing resembling that sculpture is to be found in
any Roman Catholic basilica symbolizing its connection with the Pope.
~~~
diggan
Judging by the Wikipedia page (but note I really have no idea/experience with
this subject in general), it seems to related to phallic figures, so it's no
shock that you get a picture with that.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintinnabulum_(Ancient_Rome)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tintinnabulum_\(Ancient_Rome\))
------
dahart
> Featured Snippets usually have a note that says “About this result,” while
> Knowledge Graph answers do not.
This seems like the potentially most interesting part to me. Excerpting data &
web sites to build a service without citing the source or giving credit seems
like it could be a copyright violation.
The snippets case at least cites the source, and has a link to get you there,
so even if it is damaging to a business it's probably legal.
While copyright does have exceptions carved out for copying small snippets of
a work, e.g., for educational purposes, there's no clear line for copying all
of a work in thousands of tiny slices that are published separately. Seems
like an area where copyright law is due for a change as a result of all things
digital.
~~~
ChicagoBoy11
In the case of the celebrity net worth site, though, it seems pretty clear
that he'd have a very thin case when it came to copyright. Just because it
took them a lot of effort to come up with the numbers doesn't make the end
result copyrightable - it is an estimation of a fact, and there is no
copyright possibility there. Even if they took the whole thing, there is
nothing non-obvious about a list of celebs and their estimated net worth. To
me, that seems to have been the biggest problem in their particular business:
they invested a lot of money into building something that it would be very
hard to protect someone from just taking it once it is done.
~~~
dahart
> Just because it took them a lot of effort to come up with the numbers
> doesn't make the end result copyrightable
You're bringing up a valid point - facts aren't copyrightable. And while I was
talking about the bigger picture, I'd have to agree that this argument may be
harder for the celebrity net worth site than others.
But
Compilations of facts are copyrightable, _and_ a large amount of effort spent
compiling the numbers does in fact strengthen their case. It's called the
"sweat of the brow doctrine", and copyright cases have been decided in favor
of people primarily due to their efforts.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweat_of_the_brow)
I speculate this doctrine does apply to sleuthing celebrity net worth from a
variety of sources. But nobody knowns until it goes to court, and it depends
on the quality of the lawyers as well as the nitty gritty details about how
celebrity net worth gather their data.
Either way, the bigger picture is that regardless of whether the celeb site
lives, there may a problem with the way Google is doing business.
~~~
ChicagoBoy11
From the Wikipedia article that you linked:
>The United States rejected this doctrine in the 1991 United States Supreme
Court case Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service;[4] until then it had
been upheld in a number of US copyright cases
(which is what I remembered from my IP law class ;-) )
~~~
dahart
Yes, that's correct, the Feist case was the first one rejected on those
grounds, and found that "A mechanical, non-selective collection of facts
(e.g., alphabetized phone numbers) cannot be protected by copyright."
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_law_of_the_United_States#Copyright_limitations.2C_exceptions.2C_and_defenses))
But sweat of the brow doctrine still applies to collections of facts when some
creative work has been done, and does strengthen a case when there has been
more sweat.
The case of the celebrity net worth site is one that is not a mechanical
reproduction of facts. They are not a phone book, they are doing research and
estimating net worth using implications. Their work is not single-sourced, but
based on what they say is a wide variety of sources, some of which may not be
publicly available. Who knows, some of it might be unsubstantiated rumor, or
even "creative guessing". Just on the face of it, there is arguably enough
creative work in what they're doing to satisfy a copyright claim. I doubt
they're interested, and I don't think it'd be easy. I don't speak for them,
I'm not a lawyer, and I don't recommend it. But to my eyes, it's not out of
the realm of possibility.
~~~
ChicagoBoy11
Completely agree - would be interesting to see it judged!
I've often thought about this in the context of data collected by major sports
leagues. They sure are very vocal with their legalese about how they hold all
rights to use any of the data that they collect, but I have a strong suspicion
that if someone with deep pockets held their feet to the fire, they may not
like the result. The PGATour's ShotLink data is an example that comes to mind.
------
xutopia
I remember the days when we all feared Microsoft in the startup world for the
same reason we fear Google today.
~~~
amorphid
I bet we'll fear Amazon's AWS in the future.
~~~
djsumdog
I stopped shopping at Amazon after returning to the US. They're pretty much
the new Wal-Mart, except with mutant superpowers.
~~~
amorphid
I've definitely cut back in Amazon shopping. There's too much garbage on the
site. And it is nearly impossible to flag fraudulent items.
------
sly010
The examples in the article are all kind of acceptable, but I have asked
google some very factual question (e.g. can covariance be negative) where it
picked out the wrong answer from stack overflow that was clearly the opposite
of the truth. It confused the hell out of me.
~~~
tyingq
Google sometimes gives out pretty dangerous advice as well:
[http://imgur.com/a/bsP98](http://imgur.com/a/bsP98)
~~~
rchaud
It's frankly quite shocking that Google's ad results are displayed with pretty
much the same look and feel of their search results. Yes, the more tech-savvy
among us will see the "Ad" button in gold, and those with ad-blockers won't
see the ads at all.
But just a few years ago, Google's ads would appear in a sidebar, clearly
separated from the search results content.
Not everyone is able to tell the difference today, and I think Google exploits
this. I recently activated a new B2B website for an client and the senior
manager was an older gentleman in his 50s. He never uses the browser address
bar to navigate to websites, preferring instead to use the Google search box
on his homepage. He sent me a panicked email saying when he typed in the new
website's name, the Google search results showed competitors' names ahead of
his. This was well after Google had crawled the site and it was showing up on
the results page.
As it turned out, he did not understand that the first few results he was
seeing were ads. While he isn't a savvy user, I would wager that many, many
people are similar to him in that they don't exercise good judgement when
they're on the web and would easily be fooled into thinking that something
like "proton therapy" is a cure for cancer because it's at the top of the
search results.
~~~
thomasahle
They always (at least since 2007) had ads in the main search result column:
[http://searchengineland.com/search-ad-labeling-history-
googl...](http://searchengineland.com/search-ad-labeling-history-google-
bing-254332) They've certainly removed some of the distinguishing features
though.
~~~
tyingq
Here's a pre-2007 result. It's still at the top, but across both columns.
[http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4f2992c7eab8ea28690...](http://static1.businessinsider.com/image/4f2992c7eab8ea286900000b-1200/these-
are-the-early-search-results-just-a-list-of-links-with-some-ads-on-the-sides-
and-the-top.jpg)
The point that they've slowly made changes over the years to make the ads look
less like ads is very clear though.
They've also generally done a lot of work to push the organic results down.
It's very easy to find queries where there's no organic result showing above
the fold, even on a fairly decent desktop monitor.
------
caust1c
I like to collect incorrect google cards:
[https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/659154907899936768](https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/659154907899936768)
[https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/811356518977138688](https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/811356518977138688)
Edit: Today
[https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/855193855422943234](https://twitter.com/Caust1c/status/855193855422943234)
------
cronjobber
> “But then they went ahead and took the data anyway.”
The only question remaining for me is why Googlers still enjoy the respect of
their peers. It was fine in 2000, nobody knew how it would turn out. Today, we
need to start disrespecting the _kind of person_ that would still work for
that company.
~~~
ocdtrekkie
To be fair, and I was considering placing this as a reply to
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14157988](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14157988)
Google has incredible PR/marketing. And this isn't just a public-facing
engagement. Google seems to do an incredible amount of _inward_ marketing. The
same high quality rhetoric that sells a large amount of the public on the
notion that Google is a good company trying to make the world a better place
works even better on Googlers themselves.
Bear in mind, Googlers are provided food and amenities on campus, which keep
them surrounded by the Google mindset most of the time. One of the funniest
things recently, on another site, was getting a response from someone
condemning my post about pay equality by a "Googler with a Googler wife". Many
Googlers friends and family are also Googlers... that's where they spend all
of their time. So there are plenty of people at Google whose entire social
circle comprises of other Googlers. And that's _before_ you talk about the
fact that Google is paying them to be there.
That's a huge amount of social pressure, and a huge amount of bias in what
information they take in and how they interpret it. If their entire social and
financial structure is built around a single entity, I suspect it'd be fairly
difficult for the ordinary person in such a situation to leave. I don't fault
individual Googlers for the direction of the machine.
A movie called _The Circle_ comes out in eight days, and I suspect it will be
quite worthwhile on this.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUlr8Am4zQ0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUlr8Am4zQ0)
~~~
Animats
That's a movie now? Didn't know that was coming.
"Unleash the drones!"
------
ape4
The snippets aren't in the spirit of the web. The take traffic away from
independent sites.
~~~
bhartzer
Yes, they may not be in the spirit of the web. But if you have ever had a
featured snippet (or earned one), you'll know that they actually bring a lot
more traffic to your site.
They hardly take away traffic from sites, as people are saying. That's just
flat-out wrong.
~~~
sushisource
Except for the subject of the article who lost 65% of his traffic...
------
Neliquat
I find 2/3 to be insultingly wrong.
Example search: eye of round steak
Result: Eye of round is irredeemable cut of meat.
Wtf google.
~~~
mbell
> Eye of round is irredeemable cut of meat.
To be fair, that is actually fairly accurate.
~~~
chrischen
To be even more fair, I'm not getting that. I'm getting a Wikipedia excerpt.
~~~
parenthephobia
Google US gives [https://www.splendidtable.org/story/eye-of-round-is-one-
of-t...](https://www.splendidtable.org/story/eye-of-round-is-one-of-the-few-
unredeemable-cuts-of-meat)
Google UK gives
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_steak](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Round_steak)
Possibly this is because in the UK (and presumably wherever you are) we don't
call that cut "eye of round" (it seems to be from roughly the same part of the
cow as our silverside), so we're googling to find out what it is, whilst in
the US people are googling to find out how to cook it.
------
elsewhen
i get the sense that google wants the featured snippets feature but are not
devoting enough resources to it. the following featured snippet has been
appearing for over 8 months, and i have sent feedback multiple times:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=apartments+for+rent+minneapo...](https://www.google.com/search?q=apartments+for+rent+minneapolis)
the featured snippet is completely incomprehensible (and embarrassing)... they
just don't seem to care enough.
~~~
patmcguire
They just scraped the first three days of the first three weeks of a
calendar...
~~~
elsewhen
exactly what a user wants who is looking for a list of available apartments
</s>
------
dhatch387
This amounts to copyright violation. CelebrityNetWorth went to great extent to
organize this data and holds copyright on their site. Google is duplicating
and redistributing this research without permission of the author.
~~~
tedivm
What's worse is that Google essentially uses its monopoly (or at least extreme
popularity) on search to essentially extort people into going along with stuff
like this. If the site in question actually filed a DMCA notice or requested a
takedown in a more tactful manner (assuming he could actually find someone to
talk to about it) Google would probably just tell them to update their
robots.txt file so that the site doesn't show up on the search result pages.
------
erickj
it seems like the better question is:
"is it a good idea to build a business around trivia answers?"
if your entire business model could be upended by a collection of 1 line
wikipedia edits, then it seems like the problem is in the inability to
forecast.
~~~
tyingq
That's one space that Google is gobbling up with this sort of thing. It's not
the only one.
Try: status flight 111 american airlines
That used to result in a visit to aa.com
Now they are way below the fold at around #6 or so.
Google isn't planning just to eat up traffic for trivia sites.
~~~
bpicolo
That looks to be a result of those flight radar sites doing heavy SEO for the
terms vs aa.com =/
~~~
tyingq
That explains #6, but the "below the fold" is because Google injects their
widget: [http://imgur.com/a/tr5cs](http://imgur.com/a/tr5cs)
It's handy, sure. But it does take away a customer interaction that AA used to
get.
~~~
richardwhiuk
how is protecting AA's customer interactions Google's responsibility?
from my perspective as a consumer, Google is providing the information I asked
for, in a clear simple straightforward manner.
~~~
mytherin
It isn't, but it is Google's responsibility not to infringe on the copyright
of other people/companies. Google is not displaying their own content in those
snippets. They are taking content from other websites, reformatting it and
putting it on their own website. By stealing that content and displaying it to
the user, the user now no longer needs to visit the website from which the
content originated. They are directly taking away potential customers/revenue
from these companies. It seems pretty clear that that's not entirely kosher.
~~~
Animats
Facts aren't copyrightable in the US. See _Feist vs. Rural Telephone_. If it's
a pure fact and exposed to public view, Google can take the data and repurpose
it.
------
jefe_
I get this, but in another sense, the answer is to offer people a reason to
visit the site beyond the number, build an app with features people who care
about celebrities' net-worth will enjoy, make something compelling so it's not
as one-dimensional and easy to sidestep. It's like the whole 'keep american
jobs' thing. I agree that American jobs are good, but many of the people
calling for 'bringing back jobs,' aren't asking for new jobs with new
technologies, efficiencies, and ways of doing things profitably, they want
things to go back to 'the way they were,' and that really can't be done. Cut
the losses try something new, keeping lessons learned.
~~~
fiter
Google's offering isn't self-sustaining. These numbers will not be updated
without the celebrity net worth company and Google will have to remove the
outdated snippets. The celebrity net worth company started because no one was
doing the leg work for the simple number.
Your suggestion to the celebrity net worth company rings hollow after reading
the article: the people Google to get the information and get the information
at the top. Now there is no opportunity for the celebrity net worth company to
offer a reason to visit the site! When the people had to visit the site, then
there was a chance for the site to drive further engagement.
------
awqrre
The snippets are always wrong if you think about the ad revenue that Google
steals and the copyright material that Google is using for profit. It sounds
like a class action lawsuit could fix that.
------
crispytx
Sponsored
Paul Graham's Net Worth Will Leave You Speechless
------
Gigablah
As discussed previously here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14139621](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14139621)
~~~
tyingq
Also related:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13885631](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13885631)
------
hbcondo714
Search _software quality attributes in software engineering_ and Google will
return a featured snippet from a 8-year old Microsoft site.
------
AznHisoka
"I one-hundred-percent think we should be credited for them."
But in the Floyd Mayweather example, his site is mentioned in the blurb so in
a way he is credited with it.
If he doesnt want to be in the snippet, then tell bankrate and every site that
mention you to take down that mention.
if he doesnt want his site to be linked to from any snippet, just add Google
to your robots.txt
dont want to do any of the above? ah... now we see he doesnt really have a
legitimate complaint.
~~~
turc1656
Yeah, the issue here is that he doesn't want to block Google from indexing his
site because he wants to be ranked in the results, so he allows Google to
display information that is on his site. He would have to disallow
reproduction of his site's materials formally, or the much easier method of
robots.txt that you mention. Ideally, he would do both. But he knows that will
also kill traffic because then he's limited to other search providers like
(gasp) Bing.
This is all on him. Is what Google is doing shitty? Yeah. But at the same time
it's almost insane that this guy knew his research could be boiled down to a
single number (which is clearly displayed on his website) and his whole
business model was getting Google traffic. You can't rely on an informal
agreement with a titan of industry and expect to have any bargaining or
negotiating power.
------
msoad
Can website put some sort of copyright clause that disallows Google from doing
this?
~~~
teej
You can use:
<meta name="googlebot" content="nosnippet">
[https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6229325?hl=en](https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6229325?hl=en)
~~~
bhartzer
Or, you can use your robots.txt file and disallow Googlebot from crawling your
site.
~~~
Safety1stClyde
If the business of your company involves Google advertising and getting hits
on Google searches, it's a bad idea to completely block Google from indexing
the site.
~~~
bhartzer
If your business model involves relying on Google for anything, then you need
another business model.
~~~
Safety1stClyde
Virtually every business model involving the internet relies at least partly
on Google, so while your comment may be true it isn't particularly helpful.
~~~
bhartzer
Helpful? actually I've been pitching this same idea (don't rely on Google
traffic for your business model) since 2004. I've seen too many businesses
FAIL and have to lay off employees because they relied on Google traffic.
------
bhartzer
Featured snippets are just that--they've taken a snippet from websites and are
displaying them at the top of the search results for certain queries. Google
doesn't say that the information is correct--they do ask for feedback (there's
a link to submit feedback).
Featured Snippets are not damaging to businesses. In fact, I've seen
businesses benefit greatly by getting a ton of more traffic by having them.
They get more leads and sales, and more ecommerce conversions.
If you’re trying to rank for the answer to a question like “What is Larry
David’s Net Worth?”, and the answer literally is a dollar figure or a “quick
answer”, then I have no problem with Google “stealing” your traffic. In fact,
if the answer is “$125 billion”, and Google can give searchers that answer
without having to go to your website, then sobeit. What do you expect that
visitor to do anyway when they get to your site? They’ll leave. They’ll hit
the back button. They’ll bounce, because your site is focused too much on
short, quick answers. How about creating some real content, content that will
make visitors stick on your website and view more than one page?
~~~
amelius
This doesn't justify Google scraping their database.
~~~
bhartzer
I don't see this as scraping, actually. They're taking part of the content
from a page and displaying it in their search results. They do that with the
site's title tag and meta description tag.
I would be more concerned about the Google cache (for scraping) rather than a
Featured Snippet.
Go ahead and get a featured snippet (or earn one) and you'll see the massive
traffic increase and trust your site will get.
If you're concerned about them scraping, really, then go ahead and just block
Googlebot from indexing the site.
~~~
Safety1stClyde
> Go ahead and get a featured snippet (or earn one) and you'll see the massive
> traffic increase and trust your site will get.
According to the article which we are supposedly discussing, the site in
question got its traffic reduced by half after the snippet was added to the
Google search results.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Potential Tax penalties for Expats - CHsurfer
http://www.thelocal.se/39522/20120306/
======
CHsurfer
Normally, tax penalties are based on any revenue not declared. But in this
case, it's based on the value of the assets and the penalties are huge and
cumulative.
I have always understood that the punishment should fit the crime, but here it
the disconnect can be huge.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Suggest what's missing from the list of resources for entrepreneurs - abhshksingh
http://coursebirdie.com/resources/
======
solvemenow
Form templates for various documents such as MoU, pro bono, Letter of Intent.
It's so hard to unless write those up unless you have a lawyer.
Also why not link the articles directly?
~~~
abhshksingh
Hi thanks for the suggestions. We earlier linked the articles directly. We
were told by the developer that it might have some issues with domain
authority or something.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Apple to Pay Up to $500M to Settle U.S. Lawsuit over Slow iPhones - jbegley
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2020/03/02/business/02reuters-apple-iphones-settlement.html
======
notRobot
Dupe of this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22465829](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22465829)
------
darknoon
What they did is pretty logical imo, though it would have been better to tell
people at the time. I'm a little disappointed by this judgement.
------
exabrial
Only $310m will go to actual victims of their crime. Much like the Equifax
settlement, consumers are not recouping anything from these cases.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The biggest obstacle to Martian colonization isn't technical - lisper
http://blog.rongarret.info/2016/06/the-biggest-obstacle-to-martian.html
======
mordant
Actually, the _biggest_ obstacle to Martian colonization is the fact that Mars
doesn't have a magnetosphere.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Please don't block everything but Googlebot in robots.txt - luu
http://danluu.com/googlebot-monopoly/
======
podgib
Is there a technical reason that other crawlers can't just follow the
googlebot rules? It's great that bots seem to obey the wishes of site owners,
but I'm genuinely surprised that the yandex bot doesn't just follow the Google
bot rule and ignore the general disallow rule.
~~~
Volundr
No technical reason. Following robots.txt is purely self-enforced, crawlers
don't even have to read it if they don't want to. It's just part of being a
good netizen.
~~~
podgib
Thanks. That's what I suspected - I'm just surprised that yandex is behaving
like a good netizen :)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Scrapheap Transhumanism - mhb
http://hplusmagazine.com/articles/enhanced/scrapheap-transhumanism
======
yhxnfm
I never understood why is it such an outrage to healthcare practicioners to
ask fo any sort of "non-essential" electronic device to be implanted. Why is
it that plastic surgery is widely accepted, but when a guy want's a magnet put
into his fingertip he looked at like he was some kind of freak.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
We Found a Free Smartphone Embedded Inside Entertainment Weekly - jamesbritt
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=FQm7k4riCoE
======
xhrpost
Article for people who can't watch video at work:
[http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/fully-functional-
android...](http://www.geek.com/articles/mobile/fully-functional-android-
phone-embedded-in-entertainment-weekly-2012104/)
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Will Spotify Ruin Podcasting? - cjbest
https://mattstoller.substack.com/p/will-spotify-ruin-podcasting
======
liamcardenas
> Spotify is rolling up the internet audio market, which their CEO, Daniel Ek,
> thinks will grow from $100 billion in revenue a year to somewhere near the
> video market, which is $1 trillion. People spend about the same amount of
> time consuming audio as video content. “Are our eyes,” he asks, “really
> worth 10 times more than our ears?”
An economist might be able to articulate this better than me, but this is
likely due to simple supply and demand. Audio content is easier to produce,
which makes a higher supply and a lower price. It is quite possible that audio
is undervalued, but there is no reason to believe that a 10x difference
between audio and video is unreasonable.
~~~
cjbest
How much do people care about what they listen to? What kind of pricing power
can the best stuff command?
I think it might not be as simple as supply and demand, because a) you can't
just trade one piece of content for another and b) the marginal cost is ~$0.
Put another way: there are only so many hours in your life when you can listen
to stuff. If Spotify has all the best stuff, it might be worth it to pay quite
a lot, even if that stuff was cheap to produce.
------
zepto
If they succeed, yes.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Chinese Tesla Rival Planning to Launch an Ultra-Compact’ EV in 2018 - devy
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/chinese-tesla-rival-planning-launch-114500800.html
======
IanDrake
I think rival might be the wrong word here.
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
The Banana Trick and Other Acts of Self-Checkout Thievery - IntronExon
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/03/stealing-from-self-checkout/550940/?single_page=true
======
mrguyorama
The thing that upsets me most about self checkouts is just how artificially
slowed down they are
I used to be a cashier and bagger at a local supermarket. We were expected to
be able to be able to keep up a pace from 20-30 scans per minute, including
handling the money, counting change, etc, and baggers were expected to keep
up, no matter the size of the order.
Meanwhile I struggle to get self checkouts to recognize more than one scan
every ten seconds. I wish I could just log into one of the main, unused lanes
and scan myself out. It would take significantly less time.
The banana trick shows that the security implemented in self checkout is
simply a sham. Just open them up completely and let us go through them at a
higher throughput. You can probably eliminate yet another cashier at that
point.
~~~
grawprog
I think you should have to take a simple intelligence test as you walk into a
store. If you refuse or fail you don't get to use the self checkout. This
should be a very very simple test like being able to read a number properly
and pick something out of a list....when I stand there watching people use
those machines I really feel like 90% of them would fail.
~~~
pavel_lishin
That's right, it's the _users_ who are stupid, and not the designers who
didn't focus enough on the UX.
~~~
grawprog
Ya sometimes it really is the users that are stupid. There are just some
things some people shouldn't use. That's just the way of the world. If someone
has trouble checking their email or doing basic computer tasks or even what
should be simple life tasks, chances are they will struggle with a self
checkout and no amount of good ux wil change that. Some people just can't or
won't learn such things.
~~~
pavel_lishin
Okay. And I get that your original comment was mostly in jest. But ... to what
end, exactly? Fine; some people can't use self-checkout counters. But there
are typically multiple counters, and nearly every one I've ever seen used
operated on a British queue-based system instead of a line, so one person
taking a long to check out shouldn't slow you down significantly.
And I don't even think I agree with your premise, anyway. If Amazon can work
out the kinks out of their magic-zero-checkout stores, then that's the best UX
experience.
~~~
grawprog
I think you're just upset cause you'd fail the test. It's cool most stores
still have cashiers to assist you.
~~~
dang
We've banned this account for repeatedly violating the site guidelines. If you
don't want to be banned, you're welcome to email [email protected] and give
us reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
------
pavel_lishin
> _“Anyone who pays for more than half of their stuff in self checkout is a
> total moron,” reads one of the more militant comments in a Reddit discussion
> on the subject. “There is NO MORAL ISSUE with stealing from a store that
> forces you to use self checkout, period. THEY ARE CHARGING YOU TO WORK AT
> THEIR STORE.”_
That's the most entitled thing I've read all year, but I look forward to the
next 11 months.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
That's the most morally bankrupt thing I've read all year, and, IIRC, beats
anything I read last year.
~~~
brador
If you ask on the thievery forums they argue it is rightous and equivalent to
the corporation minimizing their tax bill, at the significant cost to
societies health and wellbeing, to enrich shareholders.
It could be argued that they are correct.
~~~
AnimalMuppet
That makes it equivalent. _It doesn 't make it righteous._ In fact, the way
they talk about the corporations doing things "at the significant cost to
societies health and wellbeing" shows that they know what the corporations are
doing is morally wrong. Arguing that it's equivalent just shows that this is
also morally wrong.
There is no sane argument for "righteous" for this behavior.
~~~
brador
Was Robin Hood righteous? One could see similarities in their tales. Robbing
the rich (shareholders, corporations, “elites”) to give to the “poor” (lower
classes, themselves). Just at a higher abstraction.
The difference is the thiefs action is illegal, the corp actions legal but
hated by the masses (who it could be argued don’t understand the nuances of
tax accounting), but who should hold power in a democracy.
It is what it is, and those forums are growing at an exponential rate as the
punishments disappear. Worrying.
------
creep
I find the pseudo-moralizing about law-abiding citizens to be rather grating.
If a stranger in front of me dropped a $20 bill I would certainly let them
know. However, that doesn't mean I am a law-abiding citizen. My empathy does
not prevent me from stealing from grocery chains, whether faced with a human
cashier or a machine. My morality is not based on law, nor should law equate
to morality in all cases.
------
rhplus
I was expecting the “banana trick” to be the case where dropping the leading 9
from the item code will ring up organic produce as the cheaper regular version
(9nnnn vs nnnn).
~~~
bvinc
I admit, I use this banana trick. It's the only way that I shoplift. I place
down organic bananas, but using the touchscreen I navigate through "Select by
Picture" -> "Fruits" -> "Bananas".
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
Mysterious: Latest memo from Howard Marks on negative interest rates - sumgame
https://www.oaktreecapital.com/insights/howard-marks-memos
======
monkeydreams
This is an interesting read.
To my mind the current race to negative rates appears to be an outcome of the
ubiquity of a previous solution. Many countries have eschewed Keynesian
stimulus in favour of monetary policy (due to debt cycles, etc and the
difficulty in weaning the citizenry off stimulus when it becomes unnecessary).
This preference became dogma as monetary policy successes grew. This dogma has
led to ubiquity and, thus, the weaknesses of this approach are now becoming
obvious.
I think negative interest rates will begin a march back toward fiscal
stimulus. One day we might reach a balance but I think in 25 years time many
government treasuries will be overrun with fiscal stimulus in the form of
spending and the monetarists will be bemoaning the enormous debt that will
almost inevitably follow.
~~~
sumgame
My concern is mainly how does the world change when the cost of borrowing is
negative ?
It seems like the rat race into buying more and more assets at extreme
premiums will continue as long as they believe that these assets will either
grow or stay constant in valuation.
It's quite an interesting paradgim shift that I don't think many people are
talking about.
Will we close the long term debt cycle via a depression ? Maybe. A sign of an
incoming depression is the populist movement all across the globe, I don't see
why we won't have a major revolution in the next few decades.
Or what happens if we head into world war 3 ?
I guess the best thing to do now is figure out sustainable cash flows like
Howard mentions.
------
harel
I thought it was a memo from Howard Marks AKA Mr. Nice
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Marks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Marks)).
I couldn't understand what's an interest in interest rates to do with him.
Took me a few moments...
| {
"pile_set_name": "HackerNews"
} |
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